I argue that the magnitude and nature of sex differences in aggression, their development, causation, and variability, can be better explained by sexual selection than by the alternative biosocial version of social role theory. Thus, sex differences in physical aggression increase with the degree of risk, occur early in life, peak in young adulthood, and are likely to be mediated by greater male impulsiveness, and greater female fear of physical danger. Male variability in physical aggression is consistent with an alternative (...) life history perspective, and context-dependent variability with responses to reproductive competition, although some variability follows the internal and external influences of social roles. Other sex differences, in variance in reproductive output, threat displays, size and strength, maturation rates, and mortality and conception rates, all indicate that male aggression is part of a sexually selected adaptive complex. Physical aggression between partners can be explained using different evolutionary principles, arising from the conflicts of interest between males and females entering a reproductive alliance, combined with variability following differences in societal gender roles. In this case, social roles are particularly important since they enable both the relatively equality in physical aggression between partners from Western nations, and the considerable cross-national variability, to be explained. (shrink)

Campbell's analysis of the evolution of human sex differences to include selection pressures on the female is generally welcomed. This commentary raises some specific issues about the evidence cited: the impact of paternal death on survival prospects; a possible mechanism underlying a sex difference in fear; the selective advantage of dominance hierarchies; and the absence of evidence that testosterone causes human aggression.

In September 2008, 10 years after the untimely death of Pere Alberch (1954–1998), the 20th Altenberg Workshop in Theoretical Biology gathered a group of Pere’s students, col- laborators, and colleagues (Figure 1) to celebrate his contribu- tions to the origins of EvoDevo. Hosted by the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) outside Vienna, the group met for two days of discussion. The meeting was organized in tandem with a congress held in May 2008 at the Cavanilles Institute (...) for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology (ICBiBE) in Valencia, Spain. The talks at the KLI were equal parts: nostalgic remembrance, excitement over new ways of thinking about old problems, and an unrepressed vitriol against the resurgence of reductionist thinking in EvoDevo. Here we highlight some of the key aspects of Pere’s life and work that informed and infused the talks. (shrink)

Extended staying alive theory (SAT) raises the issue of the extent to which its various attributes are linked or whether they provide alternative means to the same adaptive ends. Theories such as SAT that consider an array of sex differences may benefit from the application of the multivariateDstatistic, rather than using a series ofdvalues, as is common at present.

Mazur & Booth fail to consider the conceptual complexities of dominance; it is unlikely that there is a motive to dominate in animals. Also, the lack of empirical evidence for a causal link between testosterone and dominance is obscured by the narrative reviewing procedure, which is prone to bias.

Gangestad & Simpson's (G&S's) analysis of strategic pluralism is welcomed as a balance to the current emphasis on between-sex variation. It could have been clarified by acknowledging the extent to which males and females represent fundamentally different mating strategies, since this affects how we view within-sex strategic variation. The distinction between conditional and alternative strategies could also have been highlighted.

My response is organized into three sections. The first revisits the theme of the target article, the explanatory power of sexual selection versus social role theory. The second considers the range and scope of sexual selection, and its application to human sex differences. Two topics are examined in more detail: (1) the paternity uncertainty theory of partner violence; (2) evolution of inter-group aggression. Section 4 covers ultimate and proximal explanations and their integration within an ethological approach. I consider the development (...) of sex differences in aggression, and their causal mechanisms, within this framework. (shrink)

At the heart of the debate between social role theorists and evolutionary psychologists is whether natural selection has designed the minds of the sexes differently to some interesting extent. In this commentary I describe the standards of evidence for both the positive and negative claims. In my opinion, Archer has met the standard for designed sex differences in intrasexual conflict.

Two specific aspects of Mealey's model are questioned: (1) the application of the concept of Evolutionarily Stable Strategy to all alternative strategies, including those that involve reduced lifetime reproductive success; and (2) the evidence for the dual role of testosterone, which is based mainly on studies of a modulating effect on aggression.

Archer's argument regarding sex differences in partner violence rests on a general account of between-sex differences in reproductive strategies and in social roles. However, men's partner-directed violence often is predicted by perceived risk of female infidelity. We hypothesize that men's partner-directed violence is produced by psychological mechanisms evolved to solve the adaptive problem of paternity uncertainty.

What is integrity and why is it valuable? One account of the nature of integrity, proposed by John Cottingham amongst others, is The Integrated Self View. On this account integrity is a formal relation of coherence between various aspects of a person. One problem that has been raised against this account is that it isn’t obvious that it can account for the value of integrity. In this paper I will respond to this problem by providing an account of the (...) value of an integrated self. I will do so by first looking closely at two examples from literature: John Sassal in John Berger’s A Fortunate Man and Tetrius Lydgate in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Based on my comparison of these two case studies I will argue that an integrated self is valuable as it makes people more likely to act in line with their moral judgements. (shrink)

The irony of the rejection of the sex/gender distinction is that it renders sociology per se an impossible enterprise. For it is my submission that, contra Hood-Williams (1996) and others, the biological and the social constitute distinct, irreducible levels of reality: to conflate (in a ‘downwards’ or ‘upwards’ direction) the two levels is immediately to render analysis of their relative interplay at best intractable. It is indeed arguable that Hood-Williams is not so much concerned with (rightly) rejecting the so-called ‘additive’ (...) approach to the biological and the social where the biological base is seen a priori as immutable, but more fundamentally with rejecting the necessary dualism of nature and culture (ie the biological and the social). In contradistinction, a realist defence of the sex/gender distinction will be made, involving critical reference to various major writers in the field and offering a brief but tentative discussion of the provenance of gender. (shrink)

According to the Strong Belief Thesis (SBT), intending to X entails the belief that one will X. John Brunero has attempted to impugn SBT by arguing that there are cases in which an agent intends to X but is unsure that she will X. Moreover, he claims that the standard reply to such putative counterexamples to SBT – namely, to claim that the unsure agent merely has an intention to try – comes at a high price. Specifically, it prevents (...) SBT from playing the kind of explanatory role the cognitivist requires. This article meets Brunero's challenge to SBT by offering an account of trying and intending to try that not only saves SBT from Brunero's criticism, but does so in a way that preserves the explanatory significance that cognitivists typically take SBT to have. (shrink)

In his 1934 book Art as Experience John Dewey explores the relationship between human experience and art. His theory builds on the conception of experience inspired by Darwinian biology as the dyna...

This book investigates the extensive and growing economic inequalities that characterize the affluent market societies in which we currently live. It uses insights both from political philosophy and the new science of happiness to make the case for more just alternatives. We diagnose the damaging impact that existing inequalities have on our well-being. We draw on philosophical, psychological, social scientific and other insights to diagnose what has gone wrong in our highly unequal and frequently unhappy societies. Combining the approaches both (...) of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Georg Wilhem Friedrich Hegel, John Rawls and Philip Pettit and analyses from political economists, we uncover the economic, social and political mechanisms that create and perpetuate income and wealth inequality. The key claim is that wealthy elites engage in rent seeking and opportunity hoarding and shape our social, economic and political structures in ways that benefit them and harm the rest. We assess important insights from the new science of happiness to assess the impact of inequality on the well-being of the poor, the middle class and the rich. We specifically examine the role of key emotions, such as shame (amongst the poor), envy and admiration (towards and for the rich). We discuss which emotional narratives serve to justify and entrench excessive inequalities in income and wealth. The result is an explanation of the emotional regime that characterizes our capitalist societies and that perpetuates the unfair gap between the extravagance of the rich and the misery of the poor. We conclude with policies and proposals to re-shape this emotional regime in the interests of justice and solidarity. (shrink)

This paper discusses basic critical realism within the context of economic anthropology and develops an approach to studying material relations between people. A diachronic form of analysis, following the work of Bhaskar and Archer, is described as a practical means of analysing property rights. This new approach emphasises epistemic relativism and ontological realism in order to compare disparate forms of human interaction across cultures. The aim of doing this is to develop a philosophical framework that allows for the comparison (...) of economic practices without resorting to judgemental relativism. The implications are significant for institutional economics and anthropology alike, particularly for researchers examining multiple overlapping practices such as market and gift exchange. (shrink)

Structure/agency theories presuppose that there is a unity to structure that distinguishes it from the (potential) diversity of agents' responses. In doing so they formally divide the robust social processes shaping the social world (structure) from contingent agential variation (agency). In this article we question this division by critically evaluating its application to the concept of role in critical realism and structural functionalism. We argue that Archer, Elder-Vass and Parsons all mistakenly understand a role to have a singular structural (...) definition which agents may then diverge from. Drawing on the work of Gross, Mason and McEachern we argue instead that if agents diverge in their conceptions of what role incumbents should do, there is no single role definition, but rather a range of diverse role-expectations. Acknowledging this can help us to understand variation in role behaviour, with different incumbents potentially being more exposed to some expectations than others. We argue that considering roles in this way can extend the ability of social scientists to identify robust social processes shaping role behaviour and decrease the extent to which they need to call on contingent factors in such explanations. (shrink)

The history behind the ‘Madagascar’ example of Gareth Evans is traced, suggesting that the decisive reference-shift occurred in the 16th, not the 17, century. The difference between this example and the ‘Gödel’ example of Saul Kripke is explained in terms of the distinction between de re and de dicto beliefs and intentions.

_ The Subject of Human Being_ discusses the basic powers of human kind arising from the foundation of the biological brain and manifesting in extraordinary psychological and social capacities and developments. The book consolidates theoretical insights into social ontology from several thinkers, whose profound advances toward understanding the relationship between individuals and society ought to revolutionize social theory as understood and practiced in the social sciences and humanities. Drawing from critical realist social theory developed by Bhaskar and Margaret Archer, (...) John Searle’s philosophy of mind and social ontology, Husserlean and Sartrean phenomenology of consciousness, and Lacanian and existential psychoanalytic theory, the book seeks to portray a unified social ontology that is materialist, emergent, realist, dialectical, processual, and liberatory. Offering a dialectical and progressive view of human being to counter the forces of exploitation and division inflicted on human kind and the ecosystems in which we reside, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of critical realism, philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

John Collins defends the doctrine of linguistic pragmatism--arguing that linguistic meaning alone fails to fix truth conditions and detailing the relative sparseness of what language alone can provide to semantic interpretation--through his novel analysis of the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of weather reporting.

Sir John Eccles, a distinguished scientist and Nobel Prize winner who has devoted his scientific life to the study of the mammalian brain, tells the story of how we came to be, not only as animals at the end of the hominid evolutionary line, but also as human persons possessed of reflective consciousness.

When we think of desire in the Middle Ages we immediately recall the religious exhortation to love God and despise the flesh. My present subject is not the desire for God but the less sublime theme of sexual desire, however the two may have been linked. Sexual desire was a central intellectual concern for medieval thinkers despite their reputed aversion to the subject. It was not, for example, the trifunctional schema of modern celebrity — oratores, bellatores, laboratores — that was (...) the earliest and most pervasive of medieval social classifications, but the trisexual division among coniugati, continentes, and virgines. In other words, the human race was fundamentally grouped according to sexual activity. As advocates of virginity, the monks were the first to pronounce on sexuality, and they formulated the terms of discourse lasting into the early Middle Ages. By 1200, however, I can find no new monastic treatise De laude virginitatis in northern France deemed worthy of transcribing because of the author's fame or the weight of its argument. Contemporary theologians were equally indifferent. (shrink)

Isolation in the back-country: George Chamier, G.B. Lancaster, Katherine Mansfield, John Mulgan, and Graham Billing -- Outsiders and misfits in fragmented social milieux: William Satchell, Vincent Pyke, John A. Lee, Robin Hyde, Frank Sargeson, and others -- The lonely and the alone in the fiction of Janet Frame -- Maurice Gee and postmodern isolation -- Women, isolation, and history: Fiona Kidman, Noel Hilliard, and Patricia Grace -- Cultural deracination and isolation : Witi Ihimaera, Keri Hulme, and Alan Duff.

Natural selection comes in degrees. Some biological traits are subjected to stronger selective force than others, selection on particular traits waxes and wanes over time, and some groups can only undergo an attenuated kind of selective process. This has downstream consequences for any notions that are standardly treated as binary but depend on natural selection. For instance, the proper function of a biological structure can be defined as what caused that structure to be retained by natural selection in the past. (...) We usually think of proper functions in binary terms: storing bile is a function of the gall bladder, but making stones is not. However, if functions arise through natural selection, and natural selection comes in degrees, then a binary approach to proper functions is in tension with the biological facts. In order to resolve this tension, we need to revise our standard accounts of proper function. In particular, we may have to seriously consider the possibility that functions themselves come in degrees, in spite of the ramifications this will have for the way we speak about functions and related concepts such as dysfunction, disease, and teleosemantic content. (shrink)

In this short monograph, John Horty explores the difficulties presented for Gottlob Frege's semantic theory, as well as its modern descendents, by the treatment of defined expressions. The book begins by focusing on the psychological constraints governing Frege's notion of sense, or meaning, and argues that, given these constraints, even the treatment of simple stipulative definitions led Frege to important difficulties. Horty is able to suggest ways out of these difficulties that are both philosophically and logically plausible and Fregean (...) in spirit. This discussion is then connected to a number of more familiar topics, such as indexicality and the discussion of concepts in recent theories of mind and language. In the latter part of the book, after introducing a simple semantic model of senses as procedures, Horty considers the problems that definitions present for Frege's idea that the sense of an expression should mirror its grammatical structure. The requirement can be satisfied, he argues, only if defined expressions--and incomplete expressions as well--are assigned senses of their own, rather than treated contextually. He then explores one way in which these senses might be reified within the procedural model, drawing on ideas from work in the semantics of computer programming languages. With its combination of technical semantics and history of philosophy, Horty's book tackles some of the hardest questions in the philosophy of language. It should interest philosophers, logicians, and linguists. (shrink)

Aristotle’s solution to Zeno’s arrow paradox differs markedly from the so called at-at solution championed by Russell, which has become the orthodox view in contemporary philosophy. The latter supposes that motion consists in simply being at different places at different times. It can boast parsimony because it eliminates velocity from the ontology. Aristotle, by contrast, solves the paradox by denying that the flight of the arrow is composed of instants; rather, on my reading, he holds that the flight is a (...) unity which is ontologically prior to the temporal parts that may be abstracted from it. I label this position temporal holism; and an entity that is ontological prior to its temporal parts lasting. Lasting, I argue, is the key to Aristotle’s solution to the arrow paradox, but it has received insufficient attention in the relevant literature. I therefore set out here to investigate lasting and highlight its major role in Aristotle’s metaphysics more broadly, and in his solution to other problems of change. I show, too, how lasting within a contemporary context underwrites a parsimonious and intuitive solution to the arrow paradox that retains instantaneous velocity, and hence solves a problem for those who think velocity is required within the ontology to underwrite certain causal roles. (shrink)

[Editor's introduction: The following are excerpts from three talks given at the conference "Policies and Publics for Science and Technology, " London, April 1990. They introduce a British research initiative in public understanding of science and point to early results. The program was developed and coordinated by the Science Policy Support Group. At the meeting, a new journal for specialists in this area was launched: Public Understanding of Science, to be edited by John Durant, Science Museum, London SW7 2DD, (...) UK. The first issue of the journal is expected to appear in April 1991. Science, Technology, & Human Values reaffirms its long commitment to publishing research on public attitudes toward science and particularly welcomes articles on this topic of general interest to the field of science and technology studies.]. (shrink)