Discussion surrounding first contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) is hotly debated in the literature. This paper responds to claims made by Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis that the ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language indicates that communication with ETI would not be possible, and that the resultant uncertainty forces us into the Hobbesian Trap—the proclivity to adopt pre-emptive military strategies as a function of mutual distrust and fear of imminent attack. The ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language constitutes largely behaviourist (...) thinking and hinges on ‘shared human context.’ However, shared universal contexts, together with the potential existence of post-biological ETI, suggest that communication at a level sufficient to interpret basic dispositions (what I call the level of ‘performative function’) may be possible. -/- Deploying both philosophical and game theoretical analyses, this paper provides several refutations and a repudiation of Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis's claims: I correct the assumption that ETI would necessarily adopt a game theoretical rationality, critique the notion that ETI would choose a risk-dominant strategy rather than a payoff-dominant strategy, repudiate the claim that communication with ETI would not be possible, and show how the Hobbesian equivalence principle is violated in a proximal first-contact situation. Finally, in the absence of game theoretic decision-making (and inline with the calls from the Billingham report), this paper commences work on the development of an incomplete set of Axioms of First Contact from which to generate a definitive groundwork for both post-detection protocol and rules of engagement. An open invitation to other contributors to criticise, augment, and advance this bottom-up approach to first contact is extended. -/- . (shrink)

Discussion surrounding first contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) is hotly debated in the literature. This paper responds to claims made by Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis that the ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language indicates that communication with ETI would not be possible, and that the resultant uncertainty forces us into the Hobbesian Trap—the proclivity to adopt pre-emptive military strategies as a function of mutual distrust and fear of imminent attack. The ‘dominant thought’ in the philosophy of language constitutes largely behaviourist (...) thinking and hinges on ‘shared human context.’ However, shared universal contexts, together with the potential existence of post-biological ETI, suggest that communication at a level sufficient to interpret basic dispositions (what I call the level of ‘performative function’) may be possible. -/- Deploying both philosophical and game theoretical analyses, this paper provides several refutations and a repudiation of Jebari and Olsson-Yaouzis's claims: I correct the assumption that ETI would necessarily adopt a game theoretical rationality, critique the notion that ETI would choose a risk-dominant strategy rather than a payoff-dominant strategy, repudiate the claim that communication with ETI would not be possible, and show how the Hobbesian equivalence principle is violated in a proximal first-contact situation. Finally, in the absence of game theoretic decision-making (and inline with the calls from the Billingham report), this paper commences work on the development of an incomplete set of Axioms of First Contact from which to generate a definitive groundwork for both post-detection protocol and rules of engagement. An open invitation to other contributors to criticise, augment, and advance this bottom-up approach to first contact is extended. (shrink)

Bachelors Honours Thesis: -/- Much philosophical thought has been given to the subject of personal identity. However, almost all of the discourse on personal identity seems to assume the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics without giving thought to whether or not such a paradigm accurately describes reality – and though David Lewis briefly addresses Personal Identity under the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, his conclusion is Struldbruggian immortality. This paper surveys the major philosophical contributions in personal identity, and attempts (...) to both evaluate forensic agents and responsibility under the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics and critiques current work in this area. (shrink)

The leading models of disability struggle to fully encompass all aspects of “disability.” This difficulty arises, the author argues, because the models fundamentally misunderstand the nature of disability. Current theoretical approaches to disability can be understood as “nounal,” in that they understand disability as a thing that is caused or embodied. In contrast, this paper presents an adverbial perspective on disability, which shows that disability is experienced as a personally irremediable impediment to daily-living tasks or goals-like-ours. The picture theory of (...) disability technically constitutes a species of relational approach because its analysis references the interplay between an individual and their environment; it differs from other relational accounts, however, by interpreting disability as a certain kind of negative experience—rather than a function of that relationship. This purely descriptive theory makes no normative claims about disability and operates as both a mechanism for the evaluation of the experience of disability and a heuristic device for the proper interpretation of disability. When disability is reframed in this way, the theory offers a particularist perspective which shows if, when, where, and how disability is experienced. (shrink)

The Human Condition is neither a well-defined nor well-described concept—nevertheless, it is generally agreed that human sexuality is a fundamental and constituent part of it. For most able-bodied persons, accessing and expressing one's sexuality is a (relatively) trouble-free process. However, many disabled persons experience difficulty in accessing their sexuality, while others experience such significant barriers that they are often precluded from sexual citizenship altogether. Recognising the barriers to the sexual citizenship of disabled persons, the concept of a Welfare-Funded Sex Doula (...) Program has been advanced — a program specifically aimed at meeting the various (and often complex) sexual needs of disabled people. Below we show how that program can be justified within at least two different moral frameworks, the capabilities approach and liberal utilitarianism, and consider and repudiate arguments against it. (shrink)

The Welfare-Funded Sex Doula Programme is a proposed sexual needs service that advances the sexual citizenship of disabled people by providing specially trained ‘sex doulas’ to meet the various, often complex, sexual needs of disabled people. Conceived as providing disabled individuals with practical sexual support services, the role of the sex doula includes advocacy, counselling, therapy, and practical relief from sexual tension. The programme constitutes a robust, comprehensive, and theoretically cohesive welfare service that seeks to provision access to sexual citizenship (...) for disabled people. -/- Grounded in Aristotelian concepts of flourishing, the programme identifies sexual citizenship as a fundamental basic need and seeks to ensure that disabled people have the opportunity to achieve the same level of sexuality as able-bodied people. Work advancing the programme includes both philosophical and theoretical arguments showing how the programme is justified under several moral frameworks, and claims made therein have resulted in velitation in the literature regarding the potential of such a programme to violate individuals’ negative rights. (shrink)

The sexual citizenship of disabled persons is an ethically contentious issue with important and broad-reaching ramifications. Awareness of the issue has risen considerably due to the increasingly public responses from charitable organisations which have recently sought to respond to the needs of disabled persons—yet this important debate still struggles for traction in academia. In response, this paper continues the debate raised in this journal between Appel and Di Nucci, concurring with Appel’s proposals that sexual pleasure is a fundamental human right (...) and that access to sexual citizenship for the severely disabled should be publicly funded. To that endeavour, this paper refutes Di Nucci’s criticism of Appel’s sex rights for the disabled and shows how Di Nucci’s alternative solution is iniquitous. To advance the debate, I argue that a welfare-funded ‘sex doula' programme would be uniquely positioned to respond to the sexual citizenship issues of disabled persons. (shrink)

Social Science relies heavily on the use of ethnography and other forms of qualitative study, research that may place the researcher as well as their subjects at significant ethical risk. In Canada, Research Ethics Boards are responsible for protecting research participants during these studies. But how much ethical oversight ought the Research Ethics Boards be entitled to? Are they repressing valuable qualitative studies or are the Social Science simply rebelling against new but appropriate control mechanisms not formerly applied to them? (...) This paper evaluates how well the changes made in the TCPS 2 respond to the concerns of Social Scientists as presented in the literature. (shrink)

Broadly speaking, exclusion for disabled people can be understood as a general lack of social and political integration within a society. Inequalities arising from the multi-dimensional causes of exclusion not only include poverty, but more fundamental aspects of societal membership such as social participation, financial autonomy, friendship, sexual citizenship, and accessibility. The articles of this thesis offer insight to the nature of the experience of exclusion for disabled people by considering specific examples of exclusion (such as the exclusion from sexual (...) citizenship, discussed in Articles I and II), and a new theoretical approach to disability (advanced in Article III). -/- Analysis of the nature of exclusion for disabled people reveals a unique set of multi-dimensional problems, and despite efforts from the disability rights community and an increased academic interest in disability studies, there has been a limited incorporation of holistic or transdisciplinary approaches to the phenomenon in works of praxis and in governmental policy. Seeking to highlight and ameliorate the experience of exclusion for disabled people, disability rights organisations advocate for greater societal integration and inclusion into the social fabric of society by offering revisionary theoretical interpretations of disability in an effort to steer social change — a devoir to which the works of this thesis contribute academically. -/- Focussing on the interplay between the nature of exclusion, rights, and basic needs, this thesis investigates the limits of the welfare state’s obligations to afford disabled people a life of eu zen, argues for greater obligations in areas such as sexual citizenship, inclusion, and presents an alternate theory of disability. The Introduction situates the articles of this thesis within a wider theoretical context that highlights the importance of social context, and focusses on the nature of exclusion and inclusion for disabled people as a complex set of societal and political disadvantages which go beyond simple poverty and social disenfranchisement. The main claim of this thesis is that the experience of exclusion for disabled people constitutes a multi-faceted and interconnected set of disadvantages and barriers that constitute a greater and more substantive set of exclusions than those experienced by other excluded groups. (shrink)

Abstract“Psychological essentialism” refers to our tendency to view the natural world as emerging from the result of deep, hidden, and internal forces called “essences.” People tend to believe that genes underlie a person’s identity. People encounter information about genetics on a regular basis, as through media such as a New York Times piece “Infidelity Lurks in Your Genes” or a 23andMe commercial showing people acquiring new ethnic identities as the result of their genotyping. How do people make sense of new (...) scientific findings that are inherently complex if they don’t have years of specialized training and education at their disposal? Given the substantial overlap between a lay understanding of genetics and lay intuitions about essences, we argue that, when most people are thinking about genes, they are not really thinking about genes in the complex ways that good scientists are. Combating people’s essentialist biases can be a formidable challenge. Although we have identified some promising results of trying to reduce people’s genetic essentialist tendencies, there is still much to learn about how these essentialist biases can be countered. It is important to help people understand genetic information so they are able make well‐informed decisions about their lives. (shrink)

The reality of truth -- The reality of truth in a fallen world -- The reality of truth in the inerrant word -- The reality of truth in the written word -- The reality of truth in the exclusive Gospel -- The rejection of truth -- The rejection of truth by the first couple -- The rejection of truth by an unbelieving age -- The rejection of truth by a worldly church -- The rejection of truth in the Christian's life (...) -- The reign of truth -- The reign of truth in the expository pulpit -- The reign of truth in a believer's walk -- The reign of truth in the highest worship -- The reign of truth in the final judgment. (shrink)

The identity conception of truth holds that a thinkable is true just in case it is a fact. As such, it sets itself against correspondence theories of truth, while respecting the substantive role played by truth in respect of enquiry. In this article, I motivate and develop that view, and, in so doing, promote a particular conception of sense. This allows me to defend the view from two substantial criticisms. First, that the identity conception of truth is incoherent in respect (...) of its treatment of objects in the realm of reference, and, second, that it is committed to a view of the world in which ordinary objects have no place. (shrink)

While cognitive style congruence has been highlighted as a potentially important variable influencing performance outcomes in work-related contexts, studies of its influence are scarce. This paper examines the influence of leader-follower cognitive style similarity on followers’ organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Data from 430 leader-follower dyads were analyzed using polynomial regression and response surface analysis. Results demonstrate that congruence of leader/follower cognitive style is a predictor of follower OCBs. Organizations may therefore benefit from considering issues of similarity of cognitive styles in (...) their attempts to develop effective leader-follower partnerships leading to increased OCBs and concomitant improvements in both individual and organizational level success. (shrink)

This volume is the latest in a series of books and articles stretching back more than three decades on a theme quite startling in its claims and implications: that terrestrial life did not originate on Earth but arrived in the form of cells or bacteria from outer space. The idea of “panspermia,” that the seeds of life are spread from planet to planet, dates to the 19th century with the ideas of Lord Kelvin. It was championed by the Swedish physicist, (...) chemist, and Nobelist Svante Arrhenius at the beginning of the 20th century. Once scientists recognized the difficulties of life surviving in the conditions of interplanetary and interstellar space, by the 1960s a neo-panspermia became popular: not life itself, but prebiotic chemicals were the new seeds of life, made more likely by the discovery of numerous complex organic molecules in meteorites, comets, and interstellar molecular clouds. But the difficulties of synthesizing anything more complicated than amino acids in the wake of the famous Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 kept alive the idea that life itself may be spread throughout the universe. At the center of this work is Chandra Wickramasinghe, a research student of the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle. In 1962 Hoyle became interested in the origin and nature of interstellar dust, in particular as found in dense molecular clouds, and he and Wickramasinghe set to work on the problem. They became convinced that dust could not form inside molecular clouds, but must have originated in the atmospheres of cool stars, protoplanetary discs, or supernova ejecta, a theory now widely accepted. It was the next steps that became increasingly controversial: that the spectroscopic signature of dust was best explained by complex biomolecules such as cellulose; that biomolecules were assembled into still more complex forms inside comets; and that the living cells and bacteria generated there were responsible for the origin of life on Earth. And not only that: Hoyle and Wickramasinghe argued that the delivery of bacteria from space continues, affecting both the origin and the ongoing evolution of life, and may even be responsible for certain diseases on Earth. These theories were not only reported in reputable scientific journals such as Nature, but also in popular books including Lifecloud (1978), Diseases from Space (1979), and Evolution from Space (1981). Biologists were not impressed; Lynn Margulis, not known for the timidity of her own theories such as endosymbiosis, called the first book “wanton, amusing, promiscuous fiction.”. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance is a global collective action problem with dire consequences for human health. This article considers how domestic and international legal mechanisms can be used to address antimicrobial resistance and overcome the governance and political economy challenges that accelerate it.

Of the many Schoolmen who read the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum secretorum in the thirteenth century, none was more enthusiastic about this book than Roger Bacon. So highly did Bacon regard the Secretum that he prepared a redaction of the text, annotated it, and wrote an accompanying introductory treatise. Historians have long recognized the importance of Bacon's confrontation with the Secretum, but they have also misunderstood it. They have wrongly divided up Bacon's Secretum project between two widely separated dates. They have left (...) unasked the capital question of why Bacon undertook this project. More generally, they have fundamentally misjudged the place of the Secretum in Bacon's intellectual biography. Consequently, there are several distortions and gaps in the picture of Bacon's career currently circulating that deserve our critical attention. (shrink)

At the end of the first part of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel outlines a retributivist theory of criminal punishment. According to this view, crime is an infringement of right, a negation which itself must be negated in order to establish the actuality of right. Crime is superseded through punishment, which inflicts on the criminal an injury that is equal in magnitude or “value” to the injury inflicted by the crime itself. Nothing in this account appears to foreclose the possibility (...) that an appropriate penalty for some crimes may be death. Indeed, some passages in the Philosophy of Right strongly imply an acceptance of the legitimacy of capital punishment for certain crimes, such as murder. (shrink)

Dennett and Kinsbourne ([1992]) argue that metacontrast backward visual masking provides a clear illustration that ‘there is really only a verbal difference’ between two versions of the Cartesian Theater model of the mind. This alleged lack of a distinction is both the crucial premise of their main argument against the Cartesian Theater and a motivator for accepting their own Multiple Drafts model. I argue that metacontrast reveals a difference between the two versions of the Cartesian Theater that meets criteria found (...) in (Dennett and Kinsbourne [1992]) for determining such a difference. This difference undermines the soundness of their argument against the Cartesian Theater, and exerts pressure on Dennett and Kinsbourne to offer a more detailed articulation of their model. 1. Introduction2. Brief Explanation of Metacontrast Backward Visual Masking3. The Stalinesque and Orwellian Models of Metacontrast 3.1. Criteria for determining a difference4. A Difference That Makes a Difference 4.1. Skeptical hypothesis objection5. Other Objections and Replies 5.1. Straw person objection5.2. Corroborative issues objection6. Conclusion. (shrink)

Much of the discourse in the bioethics literature on what is often called “cesarean delivery on maternal request” has focused on balancing respect for patient autonomy with attention to the short- and long-term risks of this procedure to maternal and neonatal well-being. And while there has been some analysis of the social and economic costs inherent in performing cesareans, much of the clinical and ethical analysis has concluded that, given the degree of risk to the mother and neonate from a (...) primary or single repeat cesarean delivery, there is sufficient justification for pregnant women to request and obtain this procedure from obstetricians willing to meet such requests. However, these same analyses often caution that physicians should not offer these elective cesareans to all women, but only to those who initiate the request. This paper analyzes recommendations that do not promote universal access to these procedures and concludes that such a policy is ethically unjustifiable, as it treats women who do not inquire about such procedures differently. Depriving appropriate candidates—for example, healthy women who are good surgical candidates and desire only one or two children—of information about elective cesarean delivery is a form of undue influence on women's decision-making. (shrink)

New natural law advocates are somewhat notorious for their loose action theory, having a track record of counterintuitive claims. In response to criticisms, advocates have entrenched, further defending their questionable action theory. This paper first rehearses the basic criticism against the new natural law action theory. It then examines four recent attempts to revive this action theory and finds these attempts wanting. Within these attempts, certain patterns arise. Given a certain means A to a goal C, a search is made (...) to determine whether any middle means B is implied by A. The standards of this search vary wildly, however. By some standards, a middle means can be found; by others, every middle means can be easily swept aside. The same author will sometimes use both kinds of standards, depending upon the situation. One great weakness of the action theory, then, is a lack of consistency in applying a universal standard. (shrink)

In these remarks to the co-author, I offer general support for their overall argument, especially the relationship between faith and reason, the retrieval of religion as a virtue and its relation to the political community, and their emphasis on the confessional nature of any political community. I also offer some remarks on the importance of their ecclesiological argument.

It was a privilege to attend the symposium Defining Health Law for the Future, and join with so many of Georgia State University College of Law Professor Emerita Charity Scott’s colleagues and friends, supporters, former students, mentees, and presenters. It was a symposium that fittingly served as a tribute to Charity and the remarkable impact she had on the many communities she touched. To the Harrell/Scott family — thank you so much for helping us celebrate Charity and her work.