In a recent reply to Takacs and Bourrat’s article (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022), Autzen and Okasha (Biol Philos 37:37, 2022) question our characterization of the relationship between the geometric mean and arithmetic mean measures of fitness. We here take issue with the claim that our characterization falls prey to the mistakes they highlight. Briefly revisiting what Takacs and Bourrat (Biol Philos 37:12, 2022) accomplished reveals that the key issue of difference concerns cases of deterministic but nonconstant growth. Restricting focus to (...) such cases shows that there is in fact no reason for disagreement. (shrink)

"At places distant from where you are, but also uncomfortably close," writes David Takacs, "a holocaust is under way. People are slashing, hacking, bulldozing, burning, poisoning, and otherwise destroying huge swaths of life on Earth at a furious pace." And a cadre of ecologists and conservation biologists has responded, vigorously promoting a new definition of nature: biodiversity --advocating it in Congress and on the Tonight Show; whispering it into the ears of foreign leaders redefining the boundaries of science and politics, (...) ethics and religion, nature and our ideas of nature. These scientists have infused the environmental movement with new focus and direction, but by engaging in such activities, they jeopardize the societal trust that allows them to be public spokespersons for nature in the first place. The Idea of Biodiversity analyzes what biodiversity represents to the biologists who operate in broader society on its behalf, drawing on in-depth interviews with the scientists most active today in the mission to preserve biodiversity, including Peter Raven, Thomas Lovejoy, Jane Lubchenco, and Paul Ehrlich. Takacs explores how and why these biologists shaped the concept of biodiversity and promoted it to society at large--examining their definitions of biodiversity their opinions about spirituality and its role in scientific work the notion of biodiversity as something of intrinsic value and their views on biophilia, E. O. Wilson's idea that humans are genetically predisposed to love nature. Takacs also looks at the work of twentieth-century forerunners of today's conservation biologists--Aldo Leopold, Charles S. Elton, Rachel Carson, David Ehrenfeld--and points out their contributions to the current debates. He takes readers to Costa Rica, where a group of scientists is using biodiversity to remake nature and society. And in an extended section, he profiles the thoughts and work of E. O. Wilson. "When I'm asked, 'should we save this species orthat species, or this place or that place?' the answer is always 'Yes!' with an exclamation point. Because it's obvious. And if you ask me to justify it, then I switch into a more cognitive consciousness and can start giving you reasons, economic reasons, aesthetic reasons. They're all dualistic, in a sense. But the feeling that underlies it is that 'yes!' And that 'yes!' comes out of the affirmation of being part of it all, being part of this whole evolutionary process. And agreeing with Arne Naess that each species, each entity, should be allowed to continue its evolution and to live out its destiny... just do its thing, as we say. Why not? And the 'why not?' is there's too many people."--Michael E. Soule, from an interview in The Idea of Biodiversity "An important contribution, a first distanced examination of a critical, modern topic by a scholarly, honest broker."--E. O. Wilson, Harvard University. (shrink)

In our article, we argue, following Nelson Goodman and Arthur Danto, that in contrast to the essentialist conception of authenticity, it is more fertile to consider authentic patterns not as the inner core of the person, but as a case of metaphorical exemplification. According to our approach, if we accept that authentic style is a metaphorical exemplification, then, based on Richard Rorty’s concepts of language and metaphor, style can be seen as an exaptation or reuse of symbols previously adapted through (...) cultural selection to other specific functions. To support this approach, we proceed as follows. First, using Goodman’s and Danto’s model, we argue that authentic style can best be grasped through metaphorical exemplification. We then show that the metaphorical use of linguistic, pictorial, and other symbols is the result of exaptation. According to our results, the authentic style is the exaptation of symbols previously adapted to culturally selected functions. We then separate authenticity from creativity through the concepts of style and manner—borrowed from Danto—and we point out that whether a particular symbol is authentic or not is not affected by whether creative or mechanical mental processes are responsible for its creation. Finally, we examine the relationship between authenticity and autonomy, and we show that in an environment that promotes autonomous decisions and authentic style, agents that originally generated inauthentic symbols may be able to produce authentic ones. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of historical facticity in the phenomenological tradition. I argue that taking historicity into consideration in its factical constitution means transgressing the realm of the primordial or existential temporality. Following Ricoeur’s discussion of the idea of the “referential status of the past,” the question of the material foundation of historical meaning-formation, i.e., relation between temporality and materiality will be brought into the forefront of phenomenological investigations. It is with this context in mind that I argue (...) that exploring the conditions of historicity with regard to its factical and material determinations should assume a realist position in phenomenology. (shrink)

Showing that the arithmetic mean number of offspring for a trait type often fails to be a predictive measure of fitness was a welcome correction to the philosophical literature on fitness. While the higher mathematical moments of a probability-weighted offspring distribution can influence fitness measurement in distinct ways, the geometric mean number of offspring is commonly singled out as the most appropriate measure. For it is well-suited to a compounding process and is sensitive to variance in offspring number. The geometric (...) mean thus proves to be a predictively efficacious measure of fitness in examples featuring discrete generations and within- or between-generation variance in offspring output. Unfortunately, this advance has subsequently led some to conclude that the arithmetic mean is never a good measure of fitness and that the geometric mean should accordingly be the default measure of fitness. We show not only that the arithmetic mean is a perfectly reasonable measure of fitness so long as one is clear about what it refers to, but also that it functions as a more general measure when properly interpreted. It must suffice as a measure of fitness in any case where the geometric mean has been effectively deployed as a measure. We conclude with a discussion about why the mathematical equivalence we highlight cannot be dismissed as merely of mathematical interest. (shrink)

Lookism is a term used to describe discrimination based on the physical appearance of a person. We suppose that the social impact of lookism is a philosophical issue, because, from this perspective, attractive people have an advantage over others. The first line of our argumentation involves the issue of lookism as a global ethical and aesthetical phenomenon. A person’s attractiveness has a significant impact on the social and public status of this individual. The common view in society is that it (...) is good to be more attractive and healthier. This concept generates several ethical questions about human aesthetical identity, health, authenticity, and integrity in society. It seems that this unequal treatment causes discrimination, diminishes self-confidence, and lowers the chance of a job or social enforcement for many human beings. Currently, aesthetic improvements are being made through plastic surgery. There is no place on the human body that we cannot improve with plastic surgery or aesthetic medicine. We should not forget that it may result in the problem of elitism, in dividing people into primary and secondary categories. The second line of our argumentation involves a particular case of lookism: Melanie Gaydos. A woman that is considered to be a model with a unique look. (shrink)

A provision of the Hungarian constitution, adopted in 2011, has renamed the state. The name changed from the Republic of Hungary to Hungary, while the form of the state has remained “republic”. The purpose of this study is to explore the meaning, significance, and several consequences of this provision. The analysis consists of three main parts. The first one gives a general overview of the functions of the names of states. It claims that not only names but also changing or (...) modifying names of states—taking place either by name-giving or by shaping convention—can serve certain functions. The second part focuses on the historical and constitutional details of renaming the Hungarian state, and summarizes the legal context that provided the framework for the 2011 renaming. The third part outlines the arguments for the change, takes a look at the official justification and actual reasons, and reveals some of the consequences of the name change in the past decade. The main contention of the paper is that the renaming of the Hungarian state that took place in 2011 lacked any overt and reasonable justification, and is best explained as an expression of anti-republican sentiment, which indicated, and partly paved the way for the transition into a kind of an authoritarian regime. Finally, the study raises a possible interpretation of the renaming of the Hungarian state in 2011, the point of which is that it adumbrated many later changes in public law and political systems. (shrink)

The most consistent definition of fitness makes it a static property of organisms. However, this is not how fitness is used in many evolutionary models. In those models, fitness is permitted to vary with an organism’s circumstances. According to this second conception, fitness is dynamic. There is consequently tension between these two conceptions of fitness. One recently proposed solution suggests resorting to conditional properties. We argue, however, that this solution is unsatisfactory. Using a very simple model, we show that it (...) can lead to incompatible fitness values and indecision about whether selection actually occurs. (shrink)

The paper differentiates between three levels of the notion of health – biological health, medical health, and social health – and underlines the cultural concept of health and disease, its dependence on religion, ideology, and the general view of life. Keywords: biological health, medical health, normality, social health, well-being CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

We relax the assumption that priors are common knowledge, in the standard model of games of incomplete information. We make the realistic assumption that the players are boundedly rational: they base their actions on finite-order belief hierarchies. When the different layers of beliefs are independent of each other, we can retain Harsányi's type-space, and we can define straightforward generalizations of Bayesian Nash Equilibrium and Rationalizability in our context. Since neither of these concepts is quite satisfactory, we propose a hybrid concept, (...) Mirage Equilibrium, providing us with a practical tool to work with inconsistent belief hierarchies. When the different layers of beliefs are correlated, we must enlarge the type-space to include the parametric beliefs. This presents us with the difficulty of the inherent openness of finite belief subspaces. Appealing to bounded rationality once more, we posit that the players believe that their opponent holds a belief hierarchy one layer shorter than they do and we provide alternative generalizations of BNE and Rationalizability. Finally, we show that, when beliefs are degenerate point beliefs, the definition of Mirage Equilibrium coincides with that of the generalized BNE. (shrink)

In this commentary I discuss the role of types of knowledge and conceptual structures in lexical representation, revealing the explanatory potential of frame-based knowledge. Although frame-based lexical semantics is not alien to the theoretical model outlined in Jackendoff's conceptual semantics, testing its relevance to the analysis of the lexical evidence presented in his book has been left out of consideration.

Cet article porte sur la question des conditions historiques et sociales de la démocratie, objet de réflexion permanent dans les écrits politiques de Lukács, et singulièrement entre 1945 et 1951, quand il s’engage dans les débats, en Hongrie et à l’échelle européenne, sur la situation politique de l’après-guerre. C’est aussi sous cet angle que Lukács développe ses idées en faveur d’une nouvelle forme de démocratie sociale. On reconstitue ici les arguments historiques et théoriques de Lukács contre la démocratie représentative libérale (...) et et l’on présente la conception inédite de la démocratie socialiste qu’il défend. Mais on analyse aussi l’évaluation lukácsienne du fascisme et son rôle fondamental dans le discrédit de la « réalité politique » de la démocratie traditionnelle. (shrink)

This workshop was designed for faculty teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels who incorporate or wish to incorporate climate change and sustainability into their teaching repertoire. Following an introduction, the workshop addressed challenges, frameworks, and models for teaching about climate change and sustainability. Breakout sessions then focused on these three aspects of our teaching. The workshop concluded with a sharing of ideas from the breakout sessions and thoughts on moving forward. A resource list for teaching about climate change (...) was discussed at the workshop and is included herein. (shrink)

This commentary asks the reader to examine Pylyshyn's target article and the imagery debate at four levels of analysis – institutional, programmatic, empirical, and individual. It is proposed that the debate follows somewhat generic patterns of discourse at all four levels, but the discourse associated with one side of the debate may or may not be expressible and evaluated in terms of the other. The different sides of the debate might better serve cognitive science if they proceed as separate research (...) programs in their respective sub-disciplines. A more inclusive program could result, however, if the opposing approaches could somehow unite. (shrink)

The current use of citation-based metrics to evaluate the research output of individual researchers is highly discriminatory because they are uniformly applied to authors of single-author articles as well as contributors of multi-author papers. In the latter case, these quantitative measures are counted, as if each contributor were the single author of the full article. In this way, each and every contributor is assigned the full impact-factor score and all the citations that the article has received. This has a multiplication (...) effect on each contributor's citation-based evaluative metrics of multi-author articles, because the more contributors an article has, the more undeserved credit is assigned to each of them. In this paper, I argue that this unfair system could be made fairer by requesting the contributors of multi-author articles to describe the nature of their contribution, and to assign a numerical value to their degree of relative contribution. In this way, we could create a contribution-specific index of each contributor for each citation metric. This would be a strong disincentive against honorary authorship and publication cartels, because it would transform the current win-win strategy of accepting honorary authors in the byline into a zero-sum game for each contributor. (shrink)

This paper invokes the conceptual framework of Bourdieu to analyse the mechanisms, which help to maintain inappropriate authorship practices and the functions these practices may serve. Bourdieu’s social theory with its emphasis on mechanisms of domination can be applied to the academic field, too, where competition is omnipresent, control mechanisms of authorship are loose, and the result of performance assessment can be a matter of symbolic life and death for the researchers. This results in a problem of game-theoretic nature, where (...) researchers’ behaviour will be determined more by the logic of competition, than by individual character or motives. From this follows that changing this practice requires institutionalized mechanisms, and change cannot be expected from simply appealing to researchers’ individual conscience. The article aims at showing that academic capital is translated into honorary authorship. With little control, undetected honorary authorship gives the appearance of possessing intellectual capital. In this way a dominant position is made to be seen as natural result of intellectual ability or scientific merit, which makes it more acceptable to those in dominated positions. The final conclusion of this paper is that undemocratic authorship decisions and authorship based performance assessment together are a form of symbolic violence. (shrink)

This paper deals with the origin, history and various appearances of the problem of coincidences (matches, rencontres) in the theory of probability.

Existentialism and existentialist thinkers enjoyed sustained interest in Hungary under communist rule. From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, this branch of “bourgeois philosophy” never ceased to generate renewed attention. However, this reception was not subsumed into the ideological orthodoxy, nor was it simply destined to fuel Marxist–Leninist criticism. Whereas Georg Lukács’s polemics with existentialism in the 1940s set the agenda to embrace a highly critical reception, it was precisely Sartre’s influence in the 1960s that had opened the door (...) for a more open-minded Marxist reading of existentialist thinkers in Hungary. This paper seeks to reconstruct the intellectual motifs and contexts that underlie this uncommon development. In focusing predominantly on the period of the 1960–1980s, I am particularly interested in exploring Lukács’s role in the changing attitude towards existentialism in Hungary; the controversies between various Marxist approaches dealing with existentialist thinkers and the ways which the influence of Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Camus in literary circles influenced the tenor of their philosophical reception. Through this exploration, I will seek to provide a deep insight into one of the richest intellectual landscapes of the philosophical culture in state socialist Hungary. (shrink)

We examine corruption across three Central and Eastern Europe countries through a social psychology framework which integrates social identity theory, social cognitive theory and moral disengagement mechanisms. We illustrate how various social identities influence individual and collective action in terms of ethical behavior and corruption, thereby creating, maintaining and perpetuating petty, grand and systemic public/private corruption through triadic co-determination via cognition, behavior and the environment. Despite growing research on corruption normalization, less is known about the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms in (...) ethical decision making, the cognitive workings of how individuals reconcile unethical behavior and the social psychological processes behind corruption in society and organizations. Expert interviews reveal internally conflicted multi-layered social identities perpetuating corruption, some embedded in nationalistic history and others tied to the European Union, which supports the divergent paths of CEE countries since the fall of communism. Some moral disengagement mechanisms are common across all three countries, while others are linked to specific circumstances. Social identity mechanisms feed into moral disengagement, which individuals draw upon to reconcile the conflict between unethical behavior and moral codes. Patterns of moral disengagement aggregate to the country level and explain normalization of corruption in CEE society and organizations. (shrink)

The evolution of complex life forms, such as multicellular organisms, is the result of a number of evolutionary transitions in individuality (ETIs). Several attempts have been made to explain their origins, many of which have been internalist (i.e., based largely on internal properties of these life form's ancestors). Here, we show how an externalist perspective, via the ecological scaffolding model in which properties of complex life forms arise from an external scaffold, can shed new light on the question of ETIs. (...) Ultimately, we anticipate progress in the field will occur by recognizing the importance of both the internalist and externalist modes of explanation for ETIs. We illustrate this by considering an extension of the ecological scaffolding model by niche construction in which particles modify the environment which later becomes the scaffold giving rise to collective-level individuality. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 187-205, January 2021.