We investigate whether age profiles of ethnobiological knowledge development are consistent with predictions derived from life history theory about the timing of productivity and reproduction. Life history models predict complementary knowledge profiles developing across the lifespan for women and men as they experience changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring. We evaluate these predictions using an ethnobiological knowledge assessment tool developed for an off-grid pastoralist population known as Choyeros, from Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our results indicate that (...) while individuals acquire knowledge of most dangerous items and edible resources by early adulthood, knowledge of plants and animals relevant to the age and sex divided labor domains and ecologies (e.g., women’s house gardens, men’s herding activities in the wilderness) continues to develop into middle adulthood but to different degrees and at different rates for men and women. As the demands of offspring on parents accumulate with age, reproductive-aged adults continue to develop their knowledge to meet their children’s needs. After controlling for vision, our analysis indicates that many post-reproductive adults show the greatest ethnobiological knowledge. These findings extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring predict the development of men’s and women’s ethnobiological knowledge across the lifespan. (shrink)

It is standardly assumed that there are three — and only three — ways to solve problem of temporary intrinsics: (a) embrace presentism, (b) relativize property possession to times, or (c) accept the doctrine of temporal parts. The first two solutions are favoured by endurantists, whereas the third is the perdurantist solution of choice. In this paper, I argue that there is a further type of solution available to endurantists, one that not only avoids the usual costs, but is structurally (...) identical to the temporal-parts solution preferred by perdurantists. In addition to providing a general characterization of this new type of solution, I discuss certain of its anticipations in the literature on bundle theory, as well as provide a detailed development of it in terms of my own preferred metaphysics of ordinary objects — namely, a distinctive form of substratum theory tracing to Aristotle. (shrink)

This book presents a wide range of thinking about how the discipline of philosophy has engaged and might in the future engage with the profound questions raised by rapidly shifting methods of communication. Although social media and telecommunications have dramatically altered the daily lives of people, and no technology has enjoyed the same rapid success as that of the mobile phone, the philosophical underpinnings and consequences of these changes have been insufficiently explored. Clustered in six sections, this book addresses major (...) questions of interest to the thoughtful professional. Section I considers ontology: How should we consider emerging media and what are the categories through which we can organize and understand this new realm of social reality. Section II investigates human nature and its relationship to the social transformations that are occurring through new media. It also considers and compares historical methods of communication such as paper. In Section III, questions of time, narrative voice, and emotions are assessed in relation to emerging media. General issues concerning emergence of meaning, philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and agency are the focus of Section IV. Symbols and speech acts—including the philosophical ramifications of the communication process itself as viewed through emerging technologies—represent the key concerns of Section V. Section VI probes various interpersonal, institutional, and political/power dimensions stemming from new systems of communication. A coda points forward to outstanding open questions, calling for further research to be done. The book represents a seminal contribution assembling original thoughts from both leading and rising scholars of the field. (shrink)

Analogies must be symmetric. If a is like b, then b is like a. So if a has property R, and if R is within the scope of the analogy, then b (probably) has R. However, analogical arguments generally single out, or depend upon, only one of a or b to serve as the basis for the inference. In this respect, analogical arguments are directed by an asymmetry. I defend the importance of this neglected – even when explicitly mentioned – (...) feature in understanding analogical arguments. (shrink)

Changes in pupil size can reflect social interest or affect, and tend to get mimicked by observers during eye contact. Pupil mimicry has recently been observed in young infants, whereas it is unkno...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Demography of Roman Egypt. Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time 23John WhitehorneRoger S. Bagnall and Bruce W. Frier. The Demography of Roman Egypt. Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xix + 354 pp. 22 figs. 21 tables. Cloth, $49.95.“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from (...) Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.... And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.” Thus the familiar words of Luke 2:1, 3, telling of the return of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth to be registered in their own home town of Bethlehem.We have no census returns from ancient Judaea. What we do have, however, are 300 or so returns from Roman Egypt, written on papyrus and submitted to the local authorities in connection with a similar house-to-house census which was held every 14 years from early in the reign of Augustus until the mid-third century A.D. The returns detail the composition of individual households, including in many cases tenants and slaves as well as family members, and constitute perhaps the best source available for the study of any ancient population. It is these texts which form the basis of Bagnall and Frier’s study.This is not, of course, the first time that the demographic importance of this body of evidence has been recognised. The information contained in the census returns was brought together and comprehensively discussed as long ago as the 1950s by M. Hombert and C. Préaux, Recherches sur le recensement dans l’Égypte romaine, Leiden 1952. But many more documents have been published since then and the science of demography itself has developed considerably in the last 40 years. As a result The Demography of Roman Egypt represents a quantum leap forward in the study of Roman Egypt’s population.The book is divided into two parts. The first, written mainly by Frier, analyses and interprets the data and makes use of the techniques of modern demography [End Page 341] to construct as full a picture as possible of the population of Roman Egypt throughout the 250 years covered by the census returns. The second consists of a Catalogue, in which Bagnall sets out all the known returns in their chronological and topographical order. Bagnall has examined all available texts, many in the original, and corrected and improved the reading of many of them in a series of articles in BASP 1990–93. His results are summarised here in a form comprehensible to the nonspecialist reader and there can be no doubt that the study’s database is as accurate, complete and up-to-date as is humanly possible to make it.This does not mean, however, that what finally emerges from the evidence is anywhere near a complete portrait of an ancient population. The majority of the census returns come from only three nomes (the Arsinoite with its three merides, the Oxyrhynchite, and Prosopite, representing the Fayum, Middle Egypt and the Delta respectively) out of a total of some 50. They are concentrated almost entirely in the second century A.D., with the examples from the Prosopite deriving almost entirely from the census of 173. Nevertheless throughout their work the authors remain alert to the chronological and geographical limitations of their data and sensible of the dangers of pushing their conclusions too far. The result is the construction of a hypothetical population, which probably corresponds quite closely to the historical ancient population of the Arsinoite and the Oxyrhynchite, which remain the two best documented regions of Greco-Roman Egypt.The first part of the book begins with a chapter on the history of the census insofar as it is known, the census process and the uses which the government made of the information extracted. Chapter 2 considers the value of the census returns as demographic evidence and the relationship of the census population as reconstructed from the data to the actual population of Roman Egypt. In Chapters 3–8 we are introduced to the census population itself, with chapters... (shrink)

In recent years there has been increasing concern about the various forms of abuse faced by birthing patients during labour and childbirth. Common examples include being scolded, slapped, pinched, stabbed with scissors or struck with a ruler or other instruments. This mistreatment is collectively termed obstetric violence.A growing body of literature examines legal responses to obstetric violence including the potential use of the criminal law. The present article explores whether, in South Africa, common-law crimes or statutory offences could be used (...) to prosecute healthcare workers for the range of harms falling within the broad definition of obstetric violence. It does not question whether criminal law is an appropriate response in this instance.The article concludes that existing crimes are sufficient to address obstetric violence. It is clear that the common-law crimes of crimen iniuria, assault, assault with intention to commit grievous bodily harm and the statutory offence of involuntary sterilisation, could be used to address both physical and emotional forms of obstetric violence. It is submitted that they cater adequately for the broad range of conduct that potentially falls into the definition of obstetric violence. Further research is required in this area and it may mean that prosecutorial guidelines are needed. (shrink)

And how are the answers to these questions affected by the Black and Latino experience in the United States"-From the Preface This collection of new essays explores the relation between race and ethnicity and its social and political ...

We argue that Isaac Newton really is best understood as being in the tradition of the Mechanical Philosophy and, further, that Newton saw himself as being in this tradition. But the tradition as Newton understands it is not that of Robert Boyle and many others, for whom the Mechanical Philosophy was defined by contact action and a corpuscularean theory of matter. Instead, as we argue in this paper, Newton interpreted and extended the Mechanical Philosophy's slogan “matter and motion” in reference (...) to the long and distinguished tradition of mixed mathematics and the study of simple machines. (shrink)

David Hume's most brilliant and ambitious work is entitled A Treatise of Human Nature, and it, together with his other writings, has left an indelible mark on philosophical conceptions of human nature. So it is not merely the title of Hume's work that makes discussion of it an appropriate inclusion to this volume, but the fact of its sheer influence. However, its pattern of influence – including, of course, the formulations of ideas consciously antithetical Hume's own – is an immensely (...) complex one, subtle and incredibly difficult to decode. In all probability ‘Hume's’ presence in contemporary thinking of human nature is to likened to the end product of a historiographical game of Chinese whispers, whereby ‘Hume's’ view on x and y is now inflected with interpretations his work – or, more accurately, selected parts of it – that are in turn filtered by thinkers and traditions with different focuses and interest from Hume's own. I am not equipped even to begin to trace this line of influence, a lack compounded by my relative ignorance of the present state of the debate on human nature. Nevetheless various ‘humean’ doctrines still orient debate and I guess these claims include the idea that causation is a matter of instantiating a universal regularity, that normativity can understood causally, that motivation is a matter of belief plus some independently intelligibly ‘attitude’, that a self is best conceived as a collection of independent states that combine to yield a self and so on. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Purpose Medical students receive a varying amount of training in medical ethics and are expected to navigate clinical ethical dilemmas innately. There is little literature on attempts to navigate ethical dilemmas experienced during early clinical experiences and whether current curricula prepare students for these dilemmas. This study explores the different ethical dilemmas experienced by medical students on their third-year clerkships and analyzes the factors, sources, and resolutions proposed by them.Methods From 2016 to 2018, third-year medical students completed a written assignment (...) to describe, analyze, and reflect on a clinical situation in which they experienced an ethical dilemma. They identified specific ethical dilemmas present, potential preventative and aftermath solutions, and reflected on their professional development from their experience. The research team utilized applied thematic analysis to identify themes and patterns in the data. A thematic matrix was utilized to examine similarities and differences across medical students.Results Of the 162 reflections, 144 (88.9%) students indicated an ethical dilemma that included issues related to autonomy and beneficence. Of these, 116 (71.6%) students found the two ethical principles in direct conflict. Students identified three common sources of this conflict: lack of communication; unclear understanding of clinical policies regarding family authority and psychiatric capacity; and medical negligence. Lastly, students suggested different solutions for dealing with and preventing this conflict.Conclusion Our findings suggest that an overwhelming number of students face ethical challenges when confronted with medical situations that raise conflicts between autonomy and beneficence. Their recommended solutions reveal an appeal among students to have tools and strategies in place to ease the need to make difficult decisions. Medical students might be better served by learning about the complexities of ethical decision-making and the likelihood of experiencing moral distress when they feel an inability to implement what they envision as the best solution. (shrink)

Warning research participants and patients about potential risks associated with participation/treatment is a fundamental part of consent. However, such risk warnings might cause negative expectations and subsequent nocebo effects (i.e., negative expectations cause negative outcomes) in participants. Because no existing review documents how past research has quantitatively examined nocebo effects – and negative expectations – arising from consent risk warnings, we conducted a pre-registered scoping review (N = 9). We identified several methodological issues across these studies, which in addition to (...) mixed findings, limit conclusions about whether risk warnings cause nocebo effects. (shrink)

This study investigated the use of mobile telephones by males and females in a public bar frequented by professional people. We found that, unlike women, men who possess mobile telephones more often publicly display them, and that these displays were related to the number of men in a social group, but not the number of women. This result was not due simply to a greater number of males who have telephones: we found an increase with male social group size in (...) the proportion of available telephones that were on display. Similarly, there was a positive relationship between the number of visible telephones and the ratio of males to females. Our results further show that the increased display of telephones in groups with more males is not due to the ostensive function of these devices (i.e., the making and receiving of calls), although single males tended to use their phones more. We interpret these results within the framework of male-male competition, with males in larger group sizes functioning in an increasingly competitive environment. This competitive environment is suggested to be akin to a lek mating system in which males aggregate and actively display their qualities to females who assess males on a number of dimensions. We suggest that mobile telephones might be used by males as an indicator of their status and wealth (sensu “cultural ornaments”). (shrink)

This article argues for two theses. The first is that many of the sociological factors endemic in the philosophical community function as barriers to the recruitment of members of minority groups in the profession and to their functioning as public intellectuals. The division into familial groups, the fights for security and success, and the weakness of the federal organization of the American Philosophical Association all contribute to these barriers. The second is that sociology has a place in philosophy, even though (...) it should not be confused with it. This means that philosophers need to consider social phenomena. (shrink)

What lies at the heart of physical inquiry? What are the foundational ideas and working assumptions that inform the enterprise of natural science? What principles guide research? How do scientists decide whether they are building theories in the right direction? Is there a right direction? Do physical theories actually approximate an objective reality, or are they simply useful summaries, mnemonics for experimental results? This book is Nobel Prize winner Jim Peebles's contribution to such big, classic debates in the philosophy of (...) science, drawing on a lifetime of experience as a leading physicist and taking the development of physical cosmology as a "worked example." He begins with a consideration of the history of thought about the nature of the physical sciences since Einstein, culminating in a succinct statement of what he sees as the fundamental working assumptions of physics. Then, through a careful examination of the development of the general theory of relativity, Einstein's cosmological principle, the big bang theory, and our current model of the universe, he makes the argument that physical theories ultimately are useful approximations to an objective reality whose nature science is discovering. An essential reflection on and interrogation of the nature and practice of science by a giant in the field, The Whole Truth will be illuminating reading for cosmologists, physicists, and historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science alike. (shrink)