Exploring the role of values in scientific inquiry, Hugh Lacey examines the nature and meaning of values, and looks at challenges to the view, posed by postmodernists, feminists, radical ecologists, Third-World advocates and religious fundamentalists, that science is value free. He also focuses on discussions of 'development', especially in Third World countries. This paperback edition includes a new preface.

Niche construction is a concept that captures a wide array of biological phenomena, from the environmental effects of metabolism to the creation of complex structures such as termite mounds and beaver dams. A central point in niche construction theory is that organisms do not just passively undergo developmental, ecological, or evolutionary processes, but are also active participants in them Evolution: From molecules to men, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Laland KN, Odling-Smee J, Feldman MW, In: KN Laland and T Uller (...) Evolutionary causation: Biological and philosophical reflections, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2019). In this paper, we distinguish between two fundamentally different ways in which organisms are active participants: as agents and as contributors. Roughly, organisms act as agents when niche constructing effects are a result of a goal-directed behavior over which the organisms have some degree of control. Organisms act as contributors when the niche constructing effects do not arise from a goal to perform the constructive activity. As illustrative examples we discuss plants altering leaf-morphology to optimize light exposure as reported by Sultan and bacteria creating novel niches through excreting energy-rich metabolites. The difference between agential and contributional niche construction is important for understanding the different ways organisms can actively participate in development, ecology, and evolution. Additionally, this distinction can increase our understanding of how the capacity of agency is distributed across the tree of life and how agency influences developmental and evolutionary processes. (shrink)

El «Didascalicon» es una obra de capital importancia dentro de la literatura de carácter pedagógico surgida en la Edad Media. El autor, que redactó su obra en 1130, selecciona y define todas las áreas de conocimiento vigentes en su época, demostrando que no solo están totalmente integradas entre ellas, sino que resultan necesarias para el logro de la perfección tanto en lo referente a la vida terrenal como en lo tocante a la eterna. Dividida en seis libros, presenta una clasificación (...) nueva de la ciencia. Divide la Filosofía en cuatro ramas: Teórica, Práctica, Mecánica y Lógica. La Teórica, a su vez, comprende la Teología, la Matemática y la Física. La Filosofía Práctica consta de tres partes: moral personal, moral administrativa o privada y moral civil o pública. La Mecánica tiene seis ramas: el lanificio o arte textil, la fabricación de armas, la agricultura la caza, la medicina y el arte teatral. La Lógica abarca la gramática y la teoría de la argumentación. La obra fue escrita para los estudiantes que acudían a la Escuela de San Víctor y su finalidad, que el mismo Hugo señala en el prefacio, es establecer normas para sacar el máximo provecho a su estudio. La obra se presenta aquí por primera vez en edición bilingüe latín-castellano, con una traducción ampliamente contrastada y un completo estudio preliminar. (shrink)

Path-dependence offers a promising way of understanding the role historicity plays in explanation, namely, how the past states of a process can matter in the explanation of a given outcome. The two main existing accounts of path-dependence have sought to present it either in terms of dynamic landscapes or branching trees. However, the notions of landscape and tree both have serious limitations and have been criticized. The framework of causal networks is both more fundamental and more general that that of (...) landscapes and trees. Within this framework, I propose that historicity in networks should be understood as symmetry breaking. History matters when an asymmetric bias towards an outcome emerges in a causal network. This permits a quantitative measure for how path-dependence can occur in degrees, and offers suggestive insights into how historicity is intertwined both with causal structure and complexity. (shrink)

Self‐pollination in some groups of plants is prevented by a sophisticated biochemical signalling system. The molecule active in the female emerges as a highly charged glycoprotein, but the identity of the male determinant remains unknown. Studies of both the molecular biology and the physiology of the interaction suggest that the female polypeptide belongs to a family of glycoproteins which may play an additional, and more general, role in pollination. Pollen compatibility is controlled by one of two genetic systems and new (...) information indicates a mechanism by which they may have arisen, together with the different stigma types with which they are correlated. (shrink)

Some of the most significant policy responses to cases of fraudulent and questionable conduct by scientists have been to strengthen professionalism among scientists, whether by codes of conduct, integrity boards, or mandatory research integrity training programs. Yet there has been little systematic discussion about what professionalism in scientific research should mean. In this paper I draw on the sociology of the professions and on data comparing codes of conduct in science to those in the professions, in order to examine what (...) precisely the model of professionalism implies for scientific research. I argue that professionalism, more than any other single organizational logic, is appropriate for scientific research, and that codes of conduct for scientists should strengthen statements concerning scientific autonomy and competence, as well as the scientific service ideal. (shrink)

In the past decade, policy-makers in science have been concerned with harmonizing research integrity standards across Europe. These standards are encapsulated in the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Yet, almost every European country today has its own national-level code of conduct for research integrity. In this study we document in detail how national-level codes diverge on almost all aspects concerning research integrity – except for what constitutes egregious misconduct. Besides allowing for potentially unfair responses to joint misconduct by (...) international collaborations, we argue that the divergences raise questions about the envisaged self-regulatory function of the codes of conduct. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 2 Seiten: 903-932.

Distrust in scientific experts can be surprisingly stubborn, persisting despite evidence supporting the experts’ views, demonstrations of their competence, or displays of good will. This stubborn distrust is often viewed as a manifestation of irrationality. By contrast, this article proposes a logic of “status distrust”: low-status individuals are objectively vulnerable to collective decision-making, and can justifiably distrust high-status scientific experts if they are not confident that the experts do not have their best interests at heart. In phenomena of status distrust, (...) social status is thus an indicator of distrust, and this has wider implications for the literatures on trust in science and on expert communication. (shrink)

In the first part of this article an attempt was made to clear the ground for a functional theory of knowledge, and the discussion of structure and function with which it concluded enables us to approach the problem of cognition. If the view already set forth is sound, it seems clear that the relation of the mind to its object is a function and not a structure of the mental processes involved. The mere existence of a mental content, however complex (...) it may be, however decorated with fringes or set off by a background, does not constitute an act of knowledge or give the content a meaning. In order to see a mental act as cognitive we must consider its function, its origin, its results, and in general the circumstances in which it stands. (shrink)

Codes of ethics currently offer no guidance to scientists acting in capacity of expert. Yet communicating their expertise is one of the most important activities of scientists. Here I argue that expert communication has a specifically ethical dimension, and that experts must face a fundamental trade-off between "actionability" and "transparency" when communicating. Some recommendations for expert communication are suggested.

The dominant view today on evolutionary progress is that it has been thoroughly debunked. Even value-neutral progress concepts are seen to lack important theoretical underpinnings: natural selection provides no rationale for progress, and natural selection need not even be invoked to explain large-scale evolutionary trends. In this paper I challenge this view by analysing how natural selection acts in heterogeneous environments. This not only undermines key debunking arguments, but also provides a selectionist rationale for a pattern of “evolutionary unfolding”, where (...) life radiates across an increased range of exploitation of environmental heterogeneity. (shrink)

We propose that measures of information integration can be more straightforwardly interpreted as measures of agency rather than of consciousness. This may be useful to the goals of consciousness research, given how agency and consciousness are “duals” in many (although not all) respects.

This book investigates the ethical values that inform the global carbon integrity system, and reflects on alternative norms that could or should do so. The global carbon integrity system comprises the emerging international architecture being built to respond to the climate change. This architecture can be understood as an 'integrity system'- an inter-related set of institutions, governance arrangements, regulations and practices that work to ensure the system performs its role faithfully and effectively. This volume investigates the ways ethical values impact (...) on where and how the integrity system works, where it fails, and how it can be improved. With a wide array of perspectives across many disciplines, including ethicists, philosophers, lawyers, governance experts and political theorists, the chapters seek to explore the positive values driving the global climate change processes, to offer an understanding of the motivations justifying the creation of the regime and the way that social norms impact upon the operation of the integrity system. The collection focuses on the nexus between ideal ethics and real-world implementation through institutions and laws. The book will be of interest to policy makers, climate change experts, carbon taxation regulators, academics, legal practitioners and researchers. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper takes issue with the idea that there is a variety of moral theories available which can in some way usefully be applied to problems in ethics. The idea is reflected in the common view that those favouring a systematic approach would do well to abandon consequentialist thinking and turn to some alternative theory. It is argued here that this is not an option, since each of the usual supposed alternatives lacks the independent resources to meet the minimal (...) requirements of being a moral theory at all. The aim is to demonstrate that virtue ethics, rights theory and deontology lack the different forms of explanation that would make them genuinely alternative theories. The conclusion is that this part of ethics is much more of a unity than is standardly assumed and that, far from our being able to move on from consequentialism, certain problems that arise from its very nature are bound to remain central to any attempt at moral theory. (shrink)

The dominant view on the ethics of cognitive enhancement (CE) is that CE is beholden to the principle of autonomy. However, this principle does not seem to reflect commonly held ethical judgments about enhancement. Is the principle of autonomy at fault, or should common judgments be adjusted? Here I argue for the first, and show how common judgments can be justified as based on a principle of service.

ExcerptWhen we examine European anti-Semitism during the 1930s, and especially the Shoah, the case of Germany looms so large that the Nazi regime immediately appears as the paradigmatic form of fascism and the manifold policies directed against European Jewry during the 1930s little more than German racial policy writ large. Without in any way trivializing or, worse, relativizing in an ethical sense the German case, one might nevertheless suggest that it occupies too much conceptual space and occludes a more precise (...) comparative understanding of other European cases where anti-Semitic policies had been autonomously generated, relatively independent of direct Nazi pressure. (shrink)

Darwin hypothesized that some animals, when selecting sexual partners, possess a genuine “sense of beauty” that cannot be accounted for by the logic of natural selection. This hypothesis has been notoriously controversial. In this chapter I propose that the concept of agency can be useful to operationalize the “sense of beauty”, and can help identify the conditions under which one can infer that animals are acting as (aesthetic) agents. Focusing on a case study of the behavior of the Pavo cristatus, (...) I identify the types of evidence that would allow for the inference of agency through aesthetic choice. (shrink)

It is often maintained that, since the buying and selling of organs—particularly the kidneys—of living people supposedly constitutes exploitation of the living vendors while the so-called “altruistic” donation of them does not, the former, unlike the latter, should be a crime. This paper challenges and rejects this view. A novel account of exploitation, influenced by but different from those of Zwolinski and Wertheimer and of Wilkinson, is developed. Exploitation is seen as a sort of injustice. A distinction is made between (...) justice and fairness. To exploit someone is to take advantage of him or her unjustly. Exploitation pertains to the nature of actions, interactions, and transaction rather than to their outcomes or to how they are perceived by exploitees. Desperation on the part of one or other of the parties to a transaction does not preclude the giving of valid consent to the transaction. Disparities of power or wealth between the parties to a transaction do not indicate or entail that the transaction will be exploitative. A disparity in the benefits that arise from a transaction between the parties does not indicate or entail that exploitation has taken place. (shrink)

This paper describes the UK Research Ethics Committee’s (REC) preparations and review of the global first SARS-CoV-2 human infection challenge studies. To frame our review, we used the WHO guidance and our UK Health Research Authority ethical review framework. The WHO criteria covered most issues we were concerned about, but we would recommend one further criterion directing RECs to consider alternative research designs. Could research questions be equally well answered by less intrusive studies? The committee met virtually, ensuring broad representation (...) across the UK nations and also ensuring applicants could attend easily. We worked in collaboration with the applicants but while we recognise that such proximity might raise the accusation of ‘collusion’, we made every effort to maintain ‘moral distance’ and all decisions were made by the committee alone. Prior existing processes and policy facilitated training and review but even with this preparation, review took time and this could have hindered a rapid response to the emergency. Review for the various follow-on studies will now be speedier and once the pandemic has subsided, our group could be reconvened in future emergencies. In conclusion, we have tried to make decisions in good faith. We know there is controversy and disagreement and reasonable people may feel we have made the wrong decision. A more detailed analysis, built on the WHO guidance, is provided in online supplemental material. (shrink)

Philosophers of science and metascientists alike typically model scientists’ behavior as driven by credit maximization. In this article I argue that this modeling assumption cannot account for how scientists have a default level of trust in each other’s assertions. The normative implication of this is that science policy should not focus solely on incentive reform.

Hugh Rice explains why belief in God need not be seen as a strange or irrational kind of belief, but can be a natural extension of our ordinary ways of thinking. He suggests that we should think of God in an abstract way, and he offers a satisfying account of the relationship between God and goodness. Anyone interested in the nature of God and the basis of religious belief will enjoy this book.