People are biased toward beliefs that are welcomed by their in-group. Some beliefs produced by these biases—such as climate change denial and religious belief—can be fruitfully modeled by signaling theory. The idea is that the beliefs function so as to be detected by others and manipulate their behavior, primarily for the benefits that accrue from favorable tribal self-presentation. Signaling theory can explain the etiology, distinctive form, proper function, and alterability of these beliefs.

" Dr. Cassell discusses the world of the sick, the healing connection and healer's battle, the role of omnipotence in the healer's art, illness and disease, and ...

We think of modern liberalism as the novel product of a world reinvented on a secular basis after 1945. In The Theology of Liberalism, one of the country's most important political theorists argues that we could hardly be more wrong. Eric Nelson contends that the tradition of liberal political philosophy founded by John Rawls is, however unwittingly, the product of ancient theological debates about justice and evil. Once we understand this, he suggests, we can recognize the deep incoherence of (...) various forms of liberal political philosophy that have emerged in Rawls's wake.--. (shrink)

There have been several recent attempts to refute objective consequentialism on the grounds that it implies the absurd conclusion that even the best of us act wrongly. Some have argued that we act wrongly from time to time; others have argued that we act wrongly regularly. Here I seek to strengthen reductio arguments against objective consequentialism by showing that objective consequentialism implies that we almost never act rightly. I show that no matter what you do, there is almost certainly something (...) else you could do that would have even better consequences. If objective consequentialism is true, the ratio of the number of your right actions to the number of your wrong actions is very close to zero. (shrink)

Recently, Doolittle and Inkpen formulated a thought provoking theory, asserting that evolution by natural selection was responsible for the sideways evolution of two radically different kinds of selective units (also called Domains). The former entities, termed singers, correspond to the usual objects studied by evolutionary biologists (gene, genomes, individuals, species, etc.), whereas the later, termed songs, correspond to re‐produced biological and ecosystemic functions, processes, information, and memes. Singers perform songs through selected patterns of interactions, meaning that a wealth of critical (...) phenomena might receive novel evolutionary explanations. However, this theory did not provide an empirical approach to study evolution in such a broadened context. Here, we show that analyzing songs and singers, using patterns of interaction networks as a common ontology for both, offers a novel, actionable, inclusive and mathematical way to analyze not only the re‐production but also the evolution and fitness of biological and ecosystemic interconnected processes. (shrink)

Two articles on the reduction of chemistry are examined. The first, by McLaughlin (1992), claims that chemistry is reduced to physics and that there is no evidence for emergence or for downward causation between the chemical and the physical level. In a more recent article, Le Poidevin (2005) maintains that his combinatorial approach provides grounding for the ontological reduction of chemistry, which also circumvents some limitations in the physicalist program. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Chemistry and (...) Biochemistry, UCLA, 607 Charles E. Young Drive East, Box 951569, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1569; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

This book analyzes crucial episodes in the history of American higher education in order to discover the best way to rescue the humanities. It urges apologists to stop focusing on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of poorly defined skills and envisions a globalized approach to education based on humanistic masterworks.

The idea that there is incommensurability in science has been controversial since its popularization by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. While incommensurability in science does have significant implications for understanding science and its development, much of the controversy about incommensurability appears to be at least in part due to a lack of clarity about exactly what is being claimed, what that claim implies, and how the claim is justified. This can easily be seen in recent literature, which has continued to (...) struggle to delineate a coherent account of incommensurability in science, with some opponents attempting to undercut its legitimacy entirely, and others attempting to accept it in some weakened form, so as to downplay its significance for our understanding of science. For this reason, a clear, precise and unambiguous statement of incommensurability, its causes, consequences and implications may help to demystify something that has proven to be especially difficult to pin down. The remainder of the paper attempts to explain much of the confusion surrounding incommensurability on the basis of metaincommensurability, in an attempt to expose the exact nature of the relationship between incommensurability and scientific realism more clearly. (shrink)

Carrie Figdor's Pieces of mind lays the groundwork for critiquing the mind package view of minds. According to the mind package view, psychological properties travel in groups, such that an entity either has the whole mind package or lacks mentality altogether. Implicit commitment to the mind package view makes it seem absurd to attribute some psychological properties (e.g., preferences) to entities that lack other psychological properties (e.g., feelings). Contra the mind package view, we are psychologically continuous with plants, worms, and (...) bacteria: Our patterns of mindedness resemble theirs, even if such entities do not have the whole mind package. (shrink)

Does a penny viewed at an angle in some sense look elliptical, as though projected on a two-dimensional surface? Many philosophers have said such things, from Malebranche (1674/1997) and Hume (1739/1978), through early 20th-century sense-data theorists, to Tye (2000) and Noë (2004). I confess that it doesn't seem this way to me, though I'm somewhat baffled by the phenomenology and pessimistic about our ability to resolve the dispute. I raise geometrical complaints against the view and conjecture that views of this (...) sort draw some of their appeal from over-analogizing visual experience to painting or photography. Theorists writing in contexts where vision is typically analogized to less-projective media--wax signet impressions in ancient Greece, stereoscopy in introspective psychology circa 1900--are substantially less likely to attribute such projective distortions to visual appearances. (shrink)

Un examen de la division quasi officielle du monde philosophique en deux blocs : phénoménologique et analytique. Bilan de ses prolongements en France ces vingt dernières années.

In this essay, I discuss Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds and Godfrey Smith’s Other Minds: The Octopus and The Evolution of Intelligent Life from a methodological perspective. I show that these both instantiate what I call ‘synthetic philosophy.’ They are both Darwinian philosophers of science who draw on each other’s work. In what follows I first elaborate on synthetic philosophy in light of From Bacteria and Other Minds; I also explain my reasons for introducing (...) the term; and I close by looking at the function of Darwinism in contemporary synthetic philosophy. (shrink)

This article considers the product of self-deception. Many assume, or argue, that the product of self-deception is a belief. I argue against this being a general truth by outlining some of the ways in which the self-deceived can be deeply conflicted, such that there is no fact of the matter concerning what they believe. These situations are not adequately addressed by many accounts of self-deception. Further, I argue that this task requires going beyond our folk psychological classifications.

Canada’s Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans mandates that all research involving human subjects be reviewed and approved by a research ethics board . We have little evidence on how researchers are dealing with this requirement in multisite studies, which involve more than one REB. We retrospectively examined 22 REB submissions for two minimal-risk, multisite studies in leading Canadian institutions. Most REBs granted expedited review to the studies, while one declared the application to be exempt from review. (...) Time between submission and approval ranged greatly, from four to 546 days. We received a total of 155 REB queries for changes and clarifications, most of which asked for further information, clarification, or additional documents. Less than a third of the REB queries were requests for specific changes, and a vast majority had a very limited impact on the research projects. Institutions also varied broadly in their description of what was required of local principal investigators. We conclude that the organizational and practical challenges these results imply could deter researchers from embarking on multisite research projects, and that recently proposed changes to the TCPS will not solve these problems. (shrink)

Governments have been slow to address climate change. If non-governmental agents share a responsibility in light of the slow pace of government action then it is a collective responsibility. I examine three models of collective responsibility, especially Iris Young's social connection model, and assess their value for identifying a collective, among all emitters, that can share responsibility. These models can help us better understand both the growth of the movement to divest from fossil fuels and the nature of responsibility for (...) collective action problems. Universities and colleges share a responsibility because they occupy similar positions of, among other things, power and privilege. (shrink)

Numerous ethical issues are raised in cancer treatment and research. Informed consent is challenging due to complex treatment modalities and prognostic uncertainty. Busy oncology clinics limit the ability of oncologists to spend time reinforcing patient understanding and facilitating end-of-life planning. Despite these issues and the ethics consultations they generate, clinical ethicists receive little if any focused education about cancer and its treatment. As the field of clinical ethics develops standards for training, we argue that a basic knowledge of cancer should (...) be included and offer an example of what cancer ethics training components might look like. We further suggest some specific steps to increase collaboration between clinical ethicists and oncology providers in the outpatient setting to facilitate informed consent and proactively identify ethical issues. (shrink)

Contemporary naturalism, especially through ethology, neuroscience and cognitive science, challenges the traditional ontological points of reference for determining the specificity of human beings. After illustrating the full measure of this upheaval, I will show the inadequacy of a return to traditional essentialism and will then defend the relevance of a different type of essentialism: an approach to human specificity in terms of a homeostatic property cluster.

This article asks what the graffito incised on the Dipylon oinochoē reveals about the nature of the dance competition that it commemorates. Through a systematic analysis of the evaluative and descriptive meaning of the adjective ἀταλός and its cognates in early Greek epic, it is argued that a narrower definition compared to previous suggestions can be established. The word refers to the carefreeness that is specific to a child or young animal, and its uses typically imply a positive evaluation which (...) is connected not only to the well-being that this carefreeness entails but also to the positive emotion of tenderness and the sentiment of care that it engenders in a perceiver. It is concluded that, when used to specify the criterion by which a dance contest will be adjudicated, the term refers to an aesthetic property that is repeatedly praised in archaic Greek texts in other words: that of dancing with the adorable but short-lived carefree abandon of a child. (shrink)

This paper introduces an anthropological approach to the foundations of mathematics. Traditionally, the philosophy of mathematics has focused on the nature and origins of mathematical truth. Mathematicians, however, treat mathematical arguments as determining mathematical truth: if an argument is found to describe a witnessably rigorous proof of a theorem, that theorem is considered—until the need for further examination arises—to be true. The anthropological question is how mathematicians, as a practical matter and as a matter of mathematical practice, make such determinations. (...) This paper looks first at the ways that the logic of mathematical argumentation comes to be realized and substantiated by provers as their own immediate, situated accomplishment. The type of reasoning involved is quite different from deductive logic; once seen, it seems to be endemic to and pervasive throughout the work of human theorem proving. A number of other features of proving are also considered, including the production of notational coherence, the foregrounding of proof-specific proof-relevant detail, and the structuring of mathematical argumentation. Through this material, the paper shows the feasibility and promise of a real-world anthropology of disciplinary mathematical practice. (shrink)

During the campaign of may 1940 and the following month, King Leopold III had as principal political counsellor Henri De Man. He played a primordial role during that period, which was rich with extremely important events for the future of Belgium, such as the surrender of the army and the problem of the King reassuming or not his constitutionalprerogative during the occupation. The former socialist minister did not accidentally hold the situation of confident of the King. Indeed, both men became (...) friends before the war.They shared similar conceptions about interior and foreign policyproblems.In fact, Leopold III supported De Man in his attempt, during the winter 1938-1939, to convoke a peace conference. On the other end early 1939 they both expressed rather similar conceptions on the functioning of the Belgian institutions and especially on the lack of authority of the executive power. The projects of manifestoes by De Man concerning the political future of Belgium were grounded on a reinforcement of the executive power. So the manifesto of june 1940, a consequence of De Man's contacts with the King, reveals the role which the King should or could have assumed if Hitler had permitted it. (shrink)

Various, albeit largely incongruent, attempts have been made at demonstrating the critical force of phenomenology. Mohr seeks to rekindle the project by accentuating the critical potential hidden within a core phenomenological presupposition: the discrepancy between conceptual and intuitive meaning (logos and phenomenon). Phenomenological attention on the discrepancy itself as an experienced phenomenon constitutes the starting point of critical phenomenology. While Adorno famously rejects intuition as a viable candidate for grounding critique, Mohr argues that reflection on lived experiences and the nonformal (...) meanings they yield provide a robust source for critical self-reflection. As such, ideology may be most effectively unmasked by means of a proper attitudinal orientation to the intuitive meanings within one’s lived social experiences. (shrink)

Children and individuals with developmental disabilities compared to typical participants are disadvantaged not only by virtue of being vulnerable to risks inherent in research participation but also by the higher likelihood of exclusion from research altogether. Current regulatory and ethical guidelines although necessary for their protection do not sufficiently ensure fair distributive justice. Yet, in view of disproportionately higher burdens of co-occurring physical and mental disorders in individuals with DD, they are better positioned to benefit from research by equitable participation. (...) Greater elucidation of this ethical dilemma is called for by researchers, institutional review boards, and funding agencies to urgently redress the imbalance. This article discusses many of the regulatory principles to ensure better research participation of children and individuals with DD: human rights, validity, distributive justice, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and autonomy. (shrink)

Is wisdom a virtue? I think it is and also that it is an important virtue. But, it should be granted at the outset that the claim is controversial, that there are philosophers who either do not think of wisdom as a virtue1, or do not think of it as relevantly similar to other virtues. For example, Stanley Godlovitch comments: Wisdom sits alone. We cannot rehearse or practice it. We cannot be prompted to assume it—wheth er for our sake or (...) for the sake of others. We cannot expect, should we be in possession of it, to win friends and influence people. Wisdom calls into prominence a state of mind rather than a readiness to act in specified ways. As such, its status as a virtue must remain rather aloof.2. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

The relationship between game play and naturalistic cooperation, generosity, or market involvement is ambiguous at best, making it difficult to link game results to preferences and beliefs guiding decision-making in daily life. Discounting reputation-based explanations because the games are anonymous, while arguing that game play is guided by motivational structures or framing effects reflecting daily life, is inconsistent.

This article concerns the claim that it is possible to create living organisms, not merely models that represent organisms, simply by programming computers. I ask what sort of things these computer-generated organisms are supposed to be. I consider four possible answers to this question: The organisms are abstract complexes of pure information; they are material objects made of bits of computer hardware; they are physical processes going on inside the computer; and they are denizens of an entire artificial world, different (...) from our own, that the programmer creates. I argue that could not be right, that collapses into, and that would make strong alife either absurd or uninteresting. Thus, "virtual" strong alife amounts to the claim that, by programming a computer, one can literally bring bits of its hardware to life. (shrink)