This article looks at the history of the stem cell as an experimental life-form and situates it within the context of biological theories of cellular ageing which emerged in the 1960s, under the banner of ‘biogerontology’. The field of biogerontology, I argue, is crucially concerned not only with the internal limits to a cell's lifespan, but also with the possibility of overcoming limits. Hence, the sense of ‘revolution’ that has surrounded the isolation of human embryonic stem cells. The article goes (...) on to situate the problematic of cellular ageing within the larger historical transition from Fordist to post-Fordist modes of production – a transition whose effects on the life sciences have been insufficiently theorized – and points to resonances between the concerns of biogerontology and an emerging political rhetoric on the crisis of ageing and limits to growth. Having surfaced in parallel with the neo-liberal euphoria of the 1990s, the field of regenerative medicine presents itself as a biomedical solution to the problem of limits to growth. What is at stake in the contemporary biosciences, I suggest, is not so much the mass commodification of life itself as its transformation into a source of speculative surplus value. (shrink)

The identification and valorization of unacknowledged, feminized forms of economic productivity has been an important task for feminist theory. In this article, we expand and rethink existing definitions of labour, in order to recognize the essential economic role women play in the stem cell and regenerative medicine industries, new fields of biomedical research that are rapidly expanding throughout the world. Women constitute the primary tissue donors in the new stem cell industries, which require high volumes of human embryos, oöcytes, foetal (...) tissue and umbilical cord blood. Such material is generally given for free in the advanced industrial democracies, constituted as a surplus (‘spare’ embryos) or waste (umbilical cord ‘afterbirth’, cadaveric foetuses, poor quality oöcytes) whose generative powers should not be withheld from others. At the same time, among impoverished female populations in developing nations, such biological material is now often procured through frankly transactional relations, where women undertake risky procedures for small fees. In each case, female bodily productivity is mobilized to support bioeconomic research, yet the economic value involved in these relations is largely unacknowledged. In this article, we consider both the gift economy and the transactional economy for reproductive tissues as a form of labour. In order to fully conceptualize the specificities of feminized productivity in the bioeconomy, we distinguish between earlier feminist theories of reproductive labour and the emerging practices generated by stem cell research, which we term regenerative labour. We consider how historical transformations in the regulation of feminized labour and the technical repertoires of stem cell research renegotiate the productivity limits of female reproductive biology, opening it out to novel and profitable forms of surplus value and enrolling women in complex negotiations over their role in bioeconomic activity. (shrink)

By examining the global public good nature of pandemic preparedness we can identify key social justice issues that need to be confronted to increase citizens’ voluntary compliance with prevention and mitigation measures. As people tend to cooperate on a voluntary basis only with systems they consider fair, it becomes difficult to ensure compliance with public health measures in a context of extreme inequality. Among the major inequalities that need to be addressed we can find major differences in the extensiveness and (...) intensiveness of quarantine experiences, lack of opportunities to participate in common efforts, hardship in complying with disease control recommendations, and an unfair distribution of the cooperative surplus. (shrink)

A situation, in which a finite set of players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation can be described by a cooperative game with transferable utility, or simply a TU-game. A (point-valued) solution for TU-games assigns a payoff distribution to every TU-game. In this article we discuss a class of equal surplus sharing solutions consisting of all convex combinations of the CIS-value, the ENSC-value and the equal division solution. We provide several characterizations of this class of solutions on variable (...) and fixed player set. Specifications of several properties characterize specific solutions in this class. (shrink)

A situation, in which a finite set of players can obtain certain payoffs by cooperation can be described by a cooperative game with transferable utility, or simply a TU-game. A (point-valued) solution for TU-games assigns a payoff distribution to every TU-game. In this article we discuss a class of equal surplus sharing solutions consisting of all convex combinations of the CIS-value, the ENSC-value and the equal division solution. We provide several characterizations of this class of solutions on variable (...) and fixed player set. Specifications of several properties characterize specific solutions in this class. (shrink)

The article considers a surprisingly resilient argument, going back to Adam Smith, for the fairness of proportionate taxation: that proportionate taxation represents the fair way to divide the surplus value produced by social cooperation among all of society's members. The article considers two recent variants on that argument, one by Richard Epstein in Takings and one by David Gauthier in Morals by Agreement. It concludes that the normative and empirical assumptions that underlie these, and all other variants, of the (...) argument are so implausible as to suggest the argument cannot be taken seriously as a defense of proportionate taxation. The article concludes by considering other possible explanations for the enduring attraction of proportionate taxation for political philosophers, particularly those with libertarian and quasi-libertarian leanings. Footnotes I am grateful to participants in faculty workshops at Vanderbilt, NYU, Virginia and Stanford Law Schools and the Qunnipiac College School of Law Conference on Law and Philosophy, as well as the anonymous outside readers for this journal, for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts. (shrink)

This essay explores an overlooked dimension of Slavoj Žižek's thought: his perspective on, and engagement with, a concrete philosophy of Trans-History. Specifically, it examines the philosophy of Trans-History presented in Surplus Enjoyment. While I do not claim that Žižek constructs a new philosophy of Trans-History in this book, I demonstrate that he directly and consistently engages with this philosophical domain and adopts several premises from Hegelian, Marxist, and Christian philosophies of Trans-History. Building on this analysis, I elucidate Žižek's stance (...) on historicism, his advocacy for the use of theological concepts to understand and safeguard contemporary history, and his interpretation of Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019) as a figure that should not be considered a sociopolitical paradigm for achieving the telos of contemporary history—namely, the unification and cooperation of global societies to avert a looming ecological catastrophe. Additionally, I challenge Žižek's praise of Joker for its portrayal of a profound and ambiguous character symbolizing "self-destructive political nihilism." I argue that this depiction of the Joker lacks originality and merit within the context of the film, as it borrows heavily from the Joker's extensive history in comics, a legacy dating back to 1940 and shaped by numerous writers. (shrink)

What explains and justifies factor shares, that is, the returns that workers and capital owners receive on their contribution to economic production? Arguably, neither economic theory nor theories of distributive justice give a satisfactory answer to this question. One important explanation of this shortcoming, this paper argues, lies in the fact that they fail to take the full measure of the phenomenon of increasing returns from specialisation or, as economist often call it, of total factor productivity. This paper aims to (...) fill this gap by asking what follows for distributive justice from taking this phenomenon seriously. The paper proceeds in four steps. First, it demonstrates in detail how a sophisticated division of labour creates a cooperative surplus. Second, it puts forward a counterfactual experiment to measure this surplus. Third and crucially, the paper argues that justice requires an equal division of this surplus and that this idea turns out to be a surprisingly ecumenical one. The final section defends the equal surplus proposal against two objections, namely the suggestion that an equal distribution of the cooperative surplus is either politically unfeasible or economically inefficient. (shrink)

Since at least as long ago as Plato’s time, philosophers have considered the possibility that justice is at bottom a system of rules that members of society follow for mutual advantage. Some maintain that justice as mutual advantage is a fatally flawed theory of justice because it is too exclusive. Proponents of a Vulnerability Objection argue that justice as mutual advantage would deny the most vulnerable members of society any of the protections and other benefits of justice. I argue that (...) the Vulnerability Objection presupposes that in a justice-as-mutual-advantage society only those who can and do contribute to the cooperative surplus of benefits that compliance with justice creates are owed any share of these benefits. I argue that justice as mutual advantage need not include such a Contribution Requirement. I show by example that a justice-as-mutual-advantage society can extend the benefits of justice to all its members, including the vulnerable who cannot contribute. I close by arguing that if one does not presuppose a Contribution Requirement, then a justice-as-mutual-advantage society might require its members to extend the benefits of justice to humans that some maintain are not persons (for example, embryos) and to certain nonhuman creatures. I conclude that the real problem for defenders of justice as mutual advantage is that this theory of justice threatens to be too inclusive. (shrink)

Gauthier argues in Morals by Agreement that morality is derivable from rationality. A crucial premise is that rational bargaining is procedurally fair. Gauthier defends this claim by trying to show that his principle of rational bargaining determines a fair distribution of the overall return from cooperation, including the cooperative surplus. He supports this point in part by the argument from agreement: since (1) procedurally fair principles proportion return to contribution, and since (2) every bargainer has the power to (...) agree in equal measure, and since (3) the agreement component of the bargainer’s contribution is what makes the cooperative surplus available, it follows (4) that fairness requires a distributive principle that divides the cooperative surplus equally among the bargainers. I argue that the falsity of (3) not only renders the argument unsound, it refutes the conclusion. Hence Gauthier should think that rational bargaining is not procedurally fair and that his own derivation of morality from rationality is unsound. (shrink)

The question of what a group of rational agents would agree on were they to deliberate on how to organise society is central to all hypothetical social contract theories. If morality is to be based on a social contract, we need to know the terms of this contract. One type of social contract theory, contractarianism, aims to derive morality from rationality alone. Contractarians need to show, amongst other things, that rational and self-interested individuals would agree on an impartial division of (...) a cooperative surplus. But it is often claimed that contractarians cannot show this without introducing moral assumptions. This paper argues that on the right understanding of the question contractarians are asking, these worries can be answered. Without relying on moral assumptions, the paper offers a novel derivation of symmetry, which is the axiom responsible for the impartiality of the most famous economic bargaining solutions appealed to by contractarians. (shrink)

The most recent major contribution to the literature on justice as mutual advantage is Peter Vanderschraaf’s book Strategic Justice. In this book, he develops a theory of justice as convention, where justice is those principles that rational, self-interested agents would choose to solve problems of partially conflicting interest. His theory is thus a kind of theory of justice as mutual advantage. A common criticism of theories of justice as mutual advantage is the Vulnerability Objection: if the principles of justice require (...) that resources are only shared with those that are net-contributors to a cooperative surplus, then those that are not net-contributors to that cooperative surplus (so-called vulnerable people) have no claim of justice to any share of the resources. But, the objection states, surely justice cannot exclude people simply because they are vulnerable. Vanderschraaf argues that his theory of justice as convention successfully answers the Vulnerability Objection. However, in this paper, I argue that although Vanderschraaf’s theory successfully demonstrates that it can be to the mutual advantage of rational, self-interested people to agree to share equally even when some people contribute more than others, the problem remains of why such people would share with those that can never contribute more to the cooperative surplus than what they would withdraw from it. Vanderschraaf’s solution is to weaken the requirement that people actually contribute. But that, I argue, undermines the claim that his theory is a theory of justice as mutual advantage. (shrink)

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the way in which, as well as the extent to which, two key variables potentially allow for the development of more left-wing versions of libertarianism and hobbesianism. It turns out that hobbesianism, while disposing of ways to extend the scope of what should be seen as the “cooperative surplus”, is in trouble when it comes to justifying “equal division” as a general rule to divide up such a surplus. In contrast, (...) libertarianism can meaningfully rely on strategies extending the notion of external resources as well as on an equal division rule. We then explore what this entails with respect to the capacity of such theories to offer more redistributive versions than their standard forms. We also briefly look at how to map such left-wing versions, and especially left-libertarianism, once they are compared with other theories such as luck egalitarianism or sufficientarianism. (shrink)

How may nations protect their interests in space if its fragility makes military operations there self-defeating? This essay claims nations are in Prisoners Dilemmas on the matter, and applies David Gauthier’s theories about how it is rational to behave morally—cooperatively—in such dilemmas. Currently space-faring nations should i) enter into co-operative space sharing arrangements with other rational nations, ii) exclude—militarily, but with only terrestrial force—nations irrational or existentially opposed to other nations being in space, and iii) incentivize all nations into co-operation (...) by redistributing some space-generated wealth to nations that might otherwise ruin space. Further, since all nations are rationally incentivized to ever greater dependence on space, and since each, by threatening space, can hold hostage its benefits to all, each can demand resolution of terrestrial discontents with other nations. So each has a rational interest in treating others morally both in space and on terrestrial issues. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: La notion de propriété de soi présuppose la définition des droits de propriété sur les ressources externes que le libertarisme de gauche limite habituellement aux ressources naturelles. Or, dans une économie spécialisée, la propriété de soi doitégalement être complétée par une définition des droits de propriété sur le surplus coopératif. S'il est cohérent, pour un libertarien de gauche, de considérer le surplus coopératif comme ressource externe et de le distribuer d'une manière égale, on doit en outre observer (...) qu'une théorie de la justice doit se prononcer sur les questions distributives dans plusieurs contextes. Articuler les différences entre ces contextes nous permet de préciser la relation que le libertarisme de gauche entretient avec d'autres théories de la justice.ABSTRACT: Any substantive notion of self-ownership presupposes well-defined property rights over external resources. Left-libertarians usually limit this category to natural resources. I argue that in a specialized economy, substantive self-ownership equally needs to be complemented by a definition of property rights to the cooperative surplus. The natural way for left-libertarianism to provide such a definition is to view the cooperative surplus as an external resource and to distribute it equally. The second part of the article makes the general point that a complete theory of justice needs to take a stance on distribution in various contexts. Articulating the differences between these contexts allows us to gain a better understanding of how left-libertarianism relates to other theories of justice. (shrink)

While, as Marx argued, periods of expanded accumulation present the best conditions for increasing working-class living standards, the expansion that began in 1982 was based in large part on the rapidfallin the value of labour-power in the US. This recovery and rapid rise in the rate of surplus-value in the US was enabled by the collapse of union-resistance beginning in 1979 and the strategic choices made by union-leaders across the economy from that time on. The expansion was sustained in (...) the 1980s by dramatic work-reorganisation, enabled by the embrace of labour-management cooperation-schemes by much of the trade-union leadership, and the restructuring of several major industries that undermined the industry-wide bargaining on which rising postwar incomes had been based. Productivity, boosted by lean production-methods, would continue to outstrip real wages up until the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 and resume again in the wake of a weak recovery in the US. The rapid geographic expansion of capital after 1990 provided new investment-possibilities, as did the explosion of financial instruments. What stands out, however, is that rising productivity, far from providing the basis for increases in working-class income, had become coupled with flat or declining real wages and a fall in the value of labour-power as the necessary condition to sustain almost any level of growth in the real economy. The link between productivity and wage-increases, central to Keynesian and institutional collective-bargaining theory, had been broken and Marx’s idea of the most favourable conditions stood on its head. The breaking of this link had, in the final analysis, been an outcome of class-struggle in which capital had the upper hand. All of this underlines the failed strategies and practices of most of the trade-union leadership in the US since 1979. New approaches to the workplace and broader forms of mobilisation will be needed. Signs of worker-resistance to the latest neoliberal clampdowns in Latin America, Europe, China, and even the US, however, may point to a renewed era of intensified class-struggle. (shrink)

In cooperative game theory with transferable utilities, there are two well-established ways of redistributing Shapley value payoffs: using egalitarian Shapley values, and using consensus values. We present parallel characterizations of these classes of solutions. Together with the axioms that characterize the original Shapley value, those that specify the redistribution methods characterize the two classes of values. For the class of egalitarian Shapley values, we focus on redistributions in one-person unanimity games from two perspectives: allowing the worth of coalitions to (...) vary, while keeping the player set fixed; and allowing the player set to change, while keeping the worth of coalitions fixed. This class of values is characterized by efficiency, the balanced contributions property for equal contributors, weak covariance, a proportionately decreasing redistribution in one-person unanimity games, desirability, and null players in unanimity games. For the class of consensus values, we concentrate on redistributions in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document}-person unanimity games from the same two perspectives. This class of values is characterized by efficiency, the balanced contributions property for equal contributors to social surplus, complement weak covariance, a proportionately decreasing redistribution in \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$$$\end{document}-person unanimity games, desirability, and null players in unanimity games. (shrink)

Grey zone attacks tend to paralyze response for two reasons. First, they present us with choice scenarios of inherently dilemmatic structure, e.g., Prisoners’ Dilemmas and games of chicken, complicated by difficult conditions of choice, such as choice under risk or amid vagueness. Second, they exploit our uncertainty about how much we do or should care about the things under attack¬—each attack is small in effect, but their effects accumulate: how should we decide whether to treat a given attack as something (...) meriting a serious response rather than a mere irritation to be ignored? This chapter brings standard decision theoretic tools to bear on the issues, tools such as the maximization of expected utility principle, and the precautionary principle. But it also develops three innovations. It shows that seeing it as possible to make choices not just of actions given our values, but also choices of values themselves, can extricate us from certain kinds of decision paralysis. It shows how we can rationally regard ourselves as having bright decision lines even when nothing in the circumstance of choice has these lines in its structure. And it shows how certain conflict escalation risks from the former two strategies can be managed by both parties seeing that cooperation can yield a sharable surplus of goods, and that cooperation can be rational upon a rationally defensible change in their values so that each comes to derive utility from the success of both parties. This yields cooperative solutions to what amount to Prisoners’ Dilemmas. The Cold War was prosecuted on the logic of strategic rationality and that part of game theory that is deterrence theory. We need a new logic from decision theorists for the games that constitute grey zone conflict. (shrink)

John McDowell rejects the idea that non-conceptual content can rationally justify empirical claims—a task for which it is ill-fitted by its non-conceptual nature. This paper considers three possible objections to his views: he cannot distinguish empty conception from the perceptual experience of an object; perceptual discrimination outstrips the capacity of concepts to keep pace; and experience of the empirical world is more extensive than the conceptual focusing within it. While endorsing McDowell’s rejection of what he means by non-conceptual content, and (...) appreciating his insight into the experiential synthesis of intuition and conception (in particular, its role in grasping objects), I will argue that Edmund Husserl presents an even more comprehensive account of perceptual experience that explains how we experience the contribution of receptivity and sensibility and how they cooperate in perceptual discrimination. Further, it reveals “horizons”—a unique kind of contents, surplus content (rather than independent non-conceptual content)—beyond the synthesis of intuitive and conceptual contents through which objects are grasped. Such horizons play a constitutive role, making experience with its conceptual dimensions and justificatory potential possible; they in no way function like a bare given that is to fulfill some independent justificatory role. Whereas McDowell focuses on how experience does not take place in isolation from the exercise of conceptual capacities, Husserl complements his view by situating experience in a more encompassing whole and by elucidating the surplus-horizons that exceed the conceptual content of experience; play an inseparable, constitutive role within it; and indicate the limits of conceptual comprehension. (shrink)

The rediscovery of the silver-backed chevrotain, an endemic species to Vietnam, in 2019, after almost 30 years of being lost to science, is a remarkable outcome for the global conservation agenda. However, along with the happiness, there is a tremendous concern for the conservation of the species as eating wildmeat, including chevrotain, is deeply rooted in the socio-cultural values of Vietnamese. Meanwhile, conservation plans face multiple obstacles since the species has not been listed in the list of endangered, precious, and (...) rare wildlife prioritized for protection and is still classified by the IUCN as lacking data. Given the limited effectiveness of conservation measures, this essay discusses the determining roles of local actions, community cooperation, and humanistic values oriented toward eco-surplus culture in addressing the global biodiversity conservation agenda, specifically the conservation of the silver-backed chevrotain. Local actions and community cooperation for conservation can be actualized to achieve conservation goals through citizen and community sciences, integration of modern technologies (e.g., Internet, crowdfunding platforms, social media, AI, etc.), and the bonding capability of humanistic values that prioritize environmental healing. Communicating conservation information to the community, especially the children, has to stimulate their thinking and imagination about nature, develop their curiosity and desire to protect wildlife, and eventually build eco-surplus core values in their mindsets. To successfully awaken the humanistic values within the community and incorporate them into conservation endeavors, the conservation message with the name “mouse-deer”, “chevrotain”, or scientific name (Tragulus versicolor) is largely insufficient as they show an unfamiliar feeling. Therefore, we suggest calling the mouse-deer “cheo cheo”, a local name that can create familiarity and closeness, awaken the environmental conscience and humanistic values, and stimulate thinking and imagination. All these factors are essential for conservationists, scientists, and the government to support the community in building the eco-surplus culture. (shrink)

Environmental activism is crucial in increasing awareness of environmental degradation and preventing actions that harm the environment. A radical environmentalist movement has emerged within the community of activists. They advocate using illegal measures to attain their goals. This paper discusses these radical environmentalist groups’ motivations, their actions and their consequences. Activities that many consider unacceptable, such as art vandalism and road blockades, may result in adverse outcomes and diminish public support for environmental endeavors. We propose an alternative solidarity approach whereby (...) activists focus their efforts on disseminating information to the general public on climate change and other environmental issues, advocating for the adoption of eco-surplus culture, and fostering cooperation among governments, businesses, and individuals to develop effective solutions. (shrink)

David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement presents a partial theory of distributive justice. It is partial because it applies only to the distribution of gains from joint endeavors, or what we may call the ‘social surplus’ from cooperation. This surplus is the benefit we receive from cooperation insofar as this is greater than what we might have produced through individual efforts without interaction with others. The central core of Gauthier's theory of distributive justice is his bargaining theory of ‘minimax (...) relative concession’ or MRC. Whether his theory is compelling turns essentially on whether MRC is workable and compelling. It is this issue that I wish to address. (shrink)

Anger gaslighting is behavior that tends to make someone doubt herself about her anger. In this paper, I analyze the case of anger gaslighting, using it as a paradigm case to argue that gaslighting can be an affective injustice (not only an epistemic one). Drawing on Marilyn Frye, I introduce the concept of “uptake” as a tool for identifying anger gaslighting behavior (persistent, pervasive uptake refusal for apt anger). But I also demonstrate the larger significance of uptake in the study (...) of affective injustice: just as the concept of credibility names the epistemic behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an epistemic being, the concept of uptake names the uniquely affective cooperative behavior whereby we take someone seriously as an affective being. I answer Miranda Fricker’s epistemic notion of a prejudicial credibility economy with the affective notion of prejudicial uptake economies: uptake, like credibility, can be produced in a deficit for one social group relative to a surplus for another. Deviating from the parallels with Fricker, for whom the injustice of epistemic injustice is due to prejudice in the motives or character of individuals, as well as from accounts that ground it in aptness or affective goods, I suggest that the injustice of anger gaslighting behavior can be located at the structural scale of power relationships between social groups, in the tradition of Iris Marion Young. Anger gaslighting behavior counts as unjust wherever it (re)produces prejudicial uptake economies. Adapting sociological concepts of feeling rules and the emotion work they demand, I introduce the concepts of “uptake rules” and “uptake work” to further enable analysis of uptake economies as affective social structures, and to suggest a site for resistant or reparative affective agency. (shrink)

Two strains of male mice have bred over fortygenerations, starting with the work of RobertCairns and his colleagues, one strain with ahigh level of intra-species aggression, theother a low level of aggression. Thehigh-aggression mice tend to establishdominance hierarchies and particularly fight inthe presence of female mice. Thelow-aggression mice tend, in groups of theirown, to have a high degree of low-intensity,peaceful social contact, and to be more timidin initiating action than the high-aggressionmice. Biochemical differences have beenobserved between the two strains, and (...) confirmedby the present data: the high-aggression micehave greater dopamine concentrations (in thecaudate nucleus and nucleus accumbens), lowerlevels of the stress hormone corticosterone,and higher levels of testosterone than thelow-aggression mice. The current experimentswere designed to answer questions about theflexibility of adaptive behaviors:specifically, what is the effect of early dailymaternal separation on adult stress response ineach strain? What are the behavioral andhormonal mechanisms by which, as has beenobserved, low-aggression mice achieve adominant status when brought into situationswhere they compete for territory withhigh-aggression mice? Finally, what are thesocial and neurochemical mechanisms by whichhigh-aggression mice can develop low-aggressionbehavior if brought out of isolation and intogroups?Maternal separation was found to lead todecreases in stress levels, as measured bycorticosterone, in the low-aggression but notthe high-aggression, mice – presumably becauseof the surplus of maternal care the pupsreceive on returning to the nest. When alow-aggression mouse became dominant and ahigh-aggression mouse became submissive, theirusual pattern of corticosterone andtestosterone levels was found to be reversed. The change to low-aggression behavior inhigh-aggression mice switching from anisolation condition to a group condition, wasmediated by a decrease in D 1 dopaminereceptor densities.These results, like the ones on which theybuild, argue for substantial developmentalinfluences in expressions of the genesinfluencing aggressive or cooperative behavior. In this approach to evolution, epigenesis istreated not as a set of traits and behaviorspredetermined by the genome, but as a set ofprobabilistic tendencies toward certain traitsand behaviors. (shrink)

The impacts of early fishing on aquatic ecosystems were minimal, as primitive technologies were used to harvest fish primarily for food. As fishing technology grew more sophisticated and human populations dispersed and expanded, local economies transitioned from subsistence to barter and trade. Expanded trade networks and mercantilization led to surplus catches becoming tradable commodities. Today, global export fish commodities, including fresh, frozen, cured, and canned fish, are valued at over US$ 100 billion, but commoditization loses the ecological imperative, with (...) overfishing the result. To sustain global fisheries, human and ecosystem relationships with living fish need to be valued, as fish landed for both food and profit. Toward this end, we propose two decommoditization strategies: (a) valuing cultural property, the intergenerational relationships of people to places, in environmental policy and (b) instituting social subsidies that reward or enable local communities to cooperate in sustaining aquatic living resources, such as with marine protected areas. (shrink)

There are two fundamental problems for instituting a social contract. The first is cooperating to produce a surplus; the second is deciding how to divide this surplus. I represent each problem by a simple paradigm game, a Stag Hunt game for cooperating to produce a surplus, and a bargaining game for its division. I will discuss these simple games in isolation, and end by discussing their composition.

The principle of differential marginality (Casajus in Theory and Decis 71(2):163-–174) for cooperative games is a very appealing property that requires equal productivity differentials to translate into equal payoff differentials. In this paper we apply this property to axiomatic characterizations of values. We show that differential marginality implies additivity and symmetry under certain conditions. Based on this result, we propose new characterizations of the equal division and the equal surplus division values. Finally, we characterize two classes of convex (...) combinations of values, i.e., α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-egalitarian Shapley values and α\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\alpha$$\end{document}-equal surplus division values, by employing differential marginality and establishing the uniqueness of these values on inessential games. (shrink)

Recent work on the ethics of war has struggled to simultaneously justify two central tenets of international law: the Permission to kill enemy combatants, and the Prohibition on targeting enemy noncombatants. Recently, just war theorists have turned to collectivist considerations as a way out of this problem. In this paper, I reject the argument that all and only unjust combatants are liable to be killed in virtue of their complicity in the wrongful war fought by their side, and that noncombatants (...) are not permissible targets because they are not complicit. I then argue that just combatants have some reason to direct force against unjust combatants rather than unjust noncombatants, because they should respect the reasonable self-determining decisions of other political communities, when those communities settle on the distribution of a negative surplus of cost for which they are collectively but not individually responsible. These collectivist reasons will not fully justify the Permission and the Prohibition, but they can contribute to that justification. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship is usually understood as an economic activity which focuses at social values, goals, and investments that generates surpluses for social entrepreneurs as individuals, groups, and startups who are working for the benefit of communities, instead of strictly focusing mainly at the financial profit, economic values, and the benefit generated for shareholders or owners. Social entrepreneurship combines the production of goods, services, and knowledge in order to achieve both social and economic goals and allow for solidarity building. From a (...) broader perspective, entities that are focused on social entrepreneurship are identified as parts of the social and solidarity economy. These are, for example, social enterprises, cooperatives, mutual organizations, self-help groups, charities, unions, fair trade companies, community enterprises, and time banks. Social innovation is a key element of social entrepreneurship. Social innovation is usually understood as new strategies, concepts, products, services, and organizational forms that allow for the satisfaction of needs. Such innovations are created in particular in the contact areas of various sectors of the social system. For example, these are spaces between the public sector, the private sector, and civil society. These innovations not only allow the solving of problems but also extend possibilities for public action. (shrink)

The present study, a result of exploratory qualitative field research roughly made between 2018 and 2022 is concerned with critical remembering (revisiting or revising) of the past in the indigenous philosophical traditions of Ethics of the Oromo, Amhara, and Gurage peoples of Ethiopia. Consequently, using a critical hermeneutics interpretation of the notion of ‘remembering’ found to be depicted in two Ethiopian aphorisms: kan darbe yaadatani, issa gara fuula dura itti yaaddu (in remembering the past, the future is remembered) and/or yȅhuwǝlaw (...) kǝlele yȁlam yȁfitu (the future cannot exist without the past), as a normative analytical guide, the present study sought to achieve two major and highly interrelated objectives. The first objective is to make a critical rediscovery, and/or remembering of the moral and humanistic foundations and features of Ethiopian indigenous ethics by taking anecdotes from the ethical thinking and moral languages of the Oromo, Amhara, and the Gurage people. The second objective seeks to determine whether these living Ethiopian indigenous philosophical traditions, if examined in terms of the “remembered future,” could reveal some emancipatory ‘surplus meanings and/or principles’ and might in turn provide answers to some of the essential questions of inter-cultural dialogue, peacebuilding and democracy in Ethiopia. The study found out that, the indigenous moral values in the study areas are complex and largely connected to humanness (the strong quality of human beings), cooperation, a healthy sense of community, generosity, and respect for others, which are highly meaningful in the above regards, i.e., intercultural dialogue for peacebuilding in the country. (shrink)

Critical analysis of the biotechnological reproduction of biological life increasingly emphasises the role of value-producing labour in biotechnologically reproductive processes, while also arguing that Marx’s use of the terms ‘labour’ and ‘value’ is inadequate to the critical scrutiny of these processes. Focusing especially on the reformulation of the value-labour relation in recent work in this area by Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, this paper both critiques this reformulation and questions the explanatory efficacy of the category ‘labour’ in this context. Emphasising (...) the contemporary global expansion of capital relative to value-producing labour – specifically, the expansion of fictitious capital and debt on the one hand, and of global surplus populations on the other – it argues that this reformulation misrepresents the mediated capacities of capital as the immediate capacities of labour. This reformulation, moreover, is indicative of broader tendencies in the contemporary theorisation of labour, tendencies exemplified by autonomist Marxism. (shrink)

This paper compares the very different results of the use of the theories of Arthur Lewis in constructing the mixed economies of China and the Caribbean, the widely diverging paths these economies took in the era of neoliberal globalization, and how the two can cooperate now that China has entered its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) phase. We argue that in response to the great depression of the 1930s, both China and the Caribbean embarked on socialist alternatives to pure capitalism. (...) China took the path of revolutionary socialism, while many of the Caribbean territories embarked on reformist paths of democratic socialism. Although both of these experiments went through what we have called their Lewisian phases, several decades later China, now a market socialist state is the home of the world’s number two economy, and will soon be, if it is not already a major center of the global economic system. China now exports not only industrial goods but also capital on global scale, with the Caribbean being one of the major recipients of China’s exporting of surplus capital via its BRI. With the Caribbean remaining very much a peripheral area within the global economic system, the paper discusses the complicating factors that are likely to arise in the cooperative relations between the two regions as this gap in their locations in the global economy continues to widen. (shrink)

Andrew Cooper presents the first systematic study of Kant's account of natural history. Cooper contends that Kant made a decisive contribution to one of the most explosive and understudied revolutions in the history of science: the addition of time to the frame in which explanations are required, sought, and justified in natural science. Through addressing a wide range of Kant's works, Cooper challenges the claim that Kant's theory of science denies a developmental conception of nature and argues instead that it (...) establishes a method by which natural historians can genuinely dispute historical claims and potentially come to consensus. This method, Cooper argues, can be used to expose serious flaws in Kant's own historical reasoning, including the formation and defence of his racist views. The book will be valuable to philosophers seeking to discern both the power and limitations of Kant's theory of science, and to historians of science working on the fractured landscape of eighteenth-century Newtonianism. (shrink)

Cooper, Austin Review(s) of: The Bloomsbury guide to Christian spirituality, by Richard Woods and Peter Tyler, eds. (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), pp. viii + 422, $65.00.

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 63-78, January 2021.