Known as the Darwin of the twenty-first century, the German biologist Ernst Walter Mayr (1904-2005) studied a great variety of subjects such as Ornithology, Genetics, Evolution, Classification, History, and Philosophy of Biology. This scientist was a giant of the previous century and an icon of Evolutionary Biology. He became famous for his Biological Species Concept and his conclusion that allopatry is the main cause for the origin of species. He provided a decisive contribution to the New Systematics and was the (...) pioneer of the punctuated equilibrium idea. Mayr was one of the main architects of the evolutionary synthesis as also of the Neo-Darwinian wave. Evaluated together, all of his works reveal several elements of his ambition – to organize a philosophical conception inherent for Biology. An assiduous defender of autonomous Biology, Mayr asserted that four sets of factors in Biology differ from those in the Exact Sciences: (I) refutation of essentialism, mechanism, vitalism, and teleology; (II) some physical principles cannot be applied to Biology; (III) absence of general laws in Biology; and (IV) basic principles of biology and their specific character cannot be applied to the inanimate world. The present study took as an axis a minor or even invisible theme from the Ernst Mayr literature and aims to analyze critically the theoretical and epistemological basis that subsidizes – or not– the affirmation that Biology is an autonomous Science. - O biólogo alemão Ernst Walter Mayr (1904-2005), conhecido como o Darwin do século XXI, trabalhou com uma grande variedade de temas: Ornitologia, Genética, Evolução, Classificação, História e Filosofia da Biologia. Esse cientista foi um dos gigantes do século XX e um ícone para a Biologia Evolutiva. Ficou famoso com o seu Conceito Biológico de Espécie e sua conclusão de que a alopatria era a principal causa da origem das espécies. Forneceu uma contribuição decisiva à Nova Sistemática, foi precursor da ideia de equilíbrio pontuado e um dos principais arquitetos da síntese evolutiva, bem como do movimento Neodarwinista. Quando avaliados em conjunto, seus trabalhos revelam os diversos elementos de sua ambição – organizar um corpo de concepções filosóficas próprias da Biologia. Defensor assíduo de uma Biologia autônoma, Mayr afirmou que há quatro conjuntos de fatores que diferenciam a Biologia do conjunto das Ciências Exatas: (I) refutação do essencialismo, do mecanicismo, do vitalismo e da teleologia; (II) convicção de que certos princípios da Física não podem ser aplicados à Biologia; (III) ausência de leis naturais universais em Biologia; e (IV) percepção do caráter único de certos princípios básicos da Biologia não aplicáveis ao mundo inanimado. O presente artigo tomou por eixo um tema aparentemente menor ou mesmo invisível na obra de Ernst Mayr e pretende realizar uma análise crítica acerca de suas bases teóricas e epistemológicas que subsidiaram – ou não – a afirmação da Biologia como uma Ciência autônoma. (shrink)

In recruitment, promotion, admission, and other forms of wealth and power apportion, an evaluator typically ranks a set of candidates in terms of their perceived competence. If the evaluator is prejudiced, the resulting ranking will misrepresent the candidates’ actual ranking. This constitutes not only a moral and a practical problem, but also an epistemological one, which begs the question of what we should do – epistemologically – to mitigate it. The article is an attempt to begin to answer this question. (...) I first explore the presuppositions that must obtain for individual interventions to likely yield positive epistemological effects in ranking situations. I then compare these with the corresponding presuppositions of a novel, ‘post hoc’ approach to deprejudicing due to Jönsson and Sjödahl (Episteme 14(4):499–517, 2017), which does not attempt to change evaluators but attempts to increase the veracity of the rankings they produce after the fact (but before the rankings give rise to discriminatory effects) using statistical methods. With these two sets of presuppositions in place, I describe the limitations imposed by each presupposition on its intervention, compare presuppositions across the two kinds of interventions, and conclude that the two kinds of interventions importantly complement each other by having fairly disjoint, but non–conflicting, presuppositions. The post hoc intervention can thus complement an individual intervention (and vice versa) in situations where both are applicable (by adding further increases in veracity), but also by applying to situations where that intervention is not applicable (and thereby increase veracity in situations beyond the reach of that intervention). (shrink)

There has been much interest in group judgment and the so-called 'wisdom of crowds'. In many real world contexts, members of groups not only share a dependence on external sources of information, but they also communicate with one another, thus introducing correlations among their responses that can diminish collective accuracy. This has long been known, but it has-to date-not been examined to what extent different kinds of communication networks may give rise to systematically different effects on accuracy. We argue that (...) equations that relate group accuracy, individual accuracy, and group diversity are useful theoretical tools for understanding group performance in the context of research on group structure. In particular, these equations may serve to identify the kind of group structures that improve individual accuracy without thereby excessively diminishing diversity so that the net positive effect is an improvement even on the level of collective accuracy. Two experiments are reported where two structures are investigated from this perspective. It is demonstrated that the more constrained network outperforms the network with a free flow of information. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 2, July - August 2020, Page 163-164.

In recruitment, promotion, admission, and other forms of wealth and power apportion, an evaluator typically ranks a set of candidates in terms of their competence. If the evaluator is prejudiced, the resulting ranking will misrepresent the candidates’ actual rankings. This constitutes not only a moral and a practical problem, but also an epistemological one, which begs the question of what we should do—epistemologically—to mitigate it. In a recent paper, Jönsson and Sjödahl in [Episteme 14:499–517, 2017], argue that the epistemic problem (...) can be fruitfully addressed by way of a novel statistical method that changes the products of biased behaviour, i.e. the rankings themselves, rather than the biased persons. Jönsson and Sjödahl’s pioneering proposal is a both a welcome addition to the literature on implicit bias, due the problems with existing implicit bias interventions [see e.g. Lai et al. in J Exp Psychol Gen 143:1765–1785; J Exp Psychol Gen 145:1001–1016, 2014; 2016; Forscher et al. in J Person Soc Psychol 117:522–559, 2019] but also to the literature on prejudice more generally, where many proposed prejudice-reduction strategies enjoy less than adequate empirical support [Paluck and Green in Ann Rev Psychol 60:339–367, 2009]. Their proposal, however, needs supplementation in two ways: the circumstances that must hold in order for it to work needs to be refined, and their claim that it works as intended in these circumstances needs to be validated. We argue that four of Jönsson and Sjödahl’s method’s presumed presuppositions can be weakened, but needs to be supplemented by two additional assumptions, overlooked by Jönsson and Sjödahl. Moreover, we demonstrate that the method does work as intended by way of a statistical simulation. (shrink)

The Enlightenment is generally painted as a movement of ideas and society lasting from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, but this book argues that the Enlightenment is an essential component of modernity itself and in fact can be seen to have lasted from the late sixteenth century to the present day. In the course of the study, Martin Davies offers an original world-view and a critique of some recent interpretations of the Enlightenment.

Although military personnel are required to follow all legal orders, morally the traditional contract between soldier and state rests on shared assumptions about the purposes for which national militaries will and will not be used.

Holistic theories of meaning have, at least since Dummett’s Frege: The Philosophy of language, been assumed to be problematic from the perspective of the incremental nature of natural language learning. In this essay I argue that the general relationship between holism and language learning is in fact the opposite of that claimed by Dummett. It is only given a particular form of language learning, and a particular form of holism, that there is a problem at all; in general, for all (...) forms of holism, and irrespective of how language learning is understood, semantic holism is conducive to language learning. The paper has three main parts. In the first, I demonstrate with the use of a simple formal system, that the form of holism that generates the problem that Dummett draws attention to is really decomposable into three distinct components, each of which is necessary for the problem to arise. In the second part, I demonstrate that even Dummett’s strong form of holism is compatible with one natural way in which to understand the incremental nature of language learning. In the third part, I outline the reasons why all forms of holism are conducive to language learning and offer two ways in which this general fact can be spelled out precisely. I end the paper by addressing some possible objections, and in doing so I draw attention to some affinities between semantic holism and the principle of compositionality, a semantic principle which has long been assumed to be conducive to language learning. (shrink)

A book on history and theory which takes a fresh new look at the whole subject. It takes as its starting point historical ideas and thought about the past - rather than falling into the usual pattern of endlessly debating what history as a discipline does or should do. He doesn't take it for granted that history as a discipline has to exist at all - and looks at the influence and importance of historical ideas across the disciplines more generally. (...) This is quite a complex argument, but the book is written very clearly and takes on real empirical questions as well as theoretical ones. (shrink)

No longer holders of a discretionary right to intervene, all States are now burdened with the responsibility to take action under the doctrine of responsibility to protect …. [Potential intervener...

At various times in history, a single power finds itself, at least for its region and time, a 'sole remaining superpower'. This paper explores the parallels between Athens' superpower status at the end of the Persian War and the US's superpower status in the contemporary world. Athens mismanaged her situation in ways that precipitated her own demise in the Peloponnesian War. The question of what might be analogous to Athens' conduct in contemporary US policy is explored to serve as a (...) kind of 'cautionary tale' for modern US strategy. (shrink)

Martin Davies draws parallels between Herz's personal life and Prussian politics and culture to make sense of the end of the eighteenth century when Enlightenment tradition and Romantic thought coincided.

Volume 18, Issue 3, October 2019, Page 261-262.

Inferential Role Semantics is often criticized for being incompatible with the platitude that words of different speakers can mean the same thing. While many assume that this platitude can be accommodated by understanding sameness of meaning in terms of similarity of meaning, no worked out proposal has ever been produced for Inferential Role Semantics. I rectify this important omission by giving a detailed structural account of meaning similarity in terms of graph theory. I go on to argue that this account (...) has a number of attractive features, prominent among them that it makes sameness of meaning probabilistically determine co-reference. (shrink)

This small volume from Claudia Hauer results from an interesting and important intersection of her professional experiences. Trained in Classics, Hauer has spent most of her career at St. John’s Co...

INTRODUCTION 0.1 Introduction Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) was a Prussian aristocrat, who served the state as minister of education, diplomat, ...

While consensus exists among many practitioners of ethics consultation about the need for and identification of core competencies and standards, there has been virtually no attempt to determine how these competencies and standards are best taught and assessed. We believe that clinical ethics consultation has reached a state of sufficient maturity that expert practitioners can evaluate those who are new to the field. We will outline several steps that can facilitate the creation of a certification process for clinical ethics consultants, (...) assuring the competency and quality of consultation for the patients, families, and healthcare professionals who utilize ECSs. (shrink)

Just peacemaking proposes that it is a creative "third way" between just war and pacifism for Christian engagement with international affairs. It claims that its proposals result from the convergence of a number of important characteristics of the contemporary international scene that cumulatively make this a "kairos" for novel and creative modes of reflection and action. Further, it claims to offer workable and realistic counsel for action in the contemporary world of international relations. This paper critically assesses both claims. It (...) reviews various interpretations of the direction of contemporary international affairs and raises some cautions about too enthusiastic an embrace of just peacemaking's vision of cooperative internationalism. It then focuses specifically on situations that invite intervention in the name of humanitarian concerns. There, the author finds some elements of just peacemaking to be an important supplement to the capabilities of military forces to intervene effectively and to transition successfully to nation-building activities that are necessary if intervention is to have a lasting positive effect. (shrink)

We usually mean what we say, but sometimes we do not. When I ironically utter ‘What lovely weather’ on a rainy day, or mistakenly utter ‘Jim is a barn door’ instead of ‘Jim is a darn bore’, I say one thing and mean another. However, although utterances like these are not uncommon, they are greatly overshadowed by the volume of humdrum utterances of ‘There is wine in the fridge’ or ‘I really like nachos’ where we mean what we say. And (...) since we usually mean what we say, the following simple thesis will usually be correct. (N) S meant that _p_ by uttering _e_ iff S said that _p_ by uttering _e_. The simplicity of (N) raises the question of whether it can be refined in order to also cover situations where we do not mean what we say. In this paper we defend a modal version of (N): an analysis where speaker meaning in most situations is identified with what is actually said, and in other situations with what the speaker _would have said_ in certain counterfactual situations. The analysis constitutes a radical, but welcome, break with Gricean orthodoxy, where linguistic meaning, rather than speaker meaning, is ultimately used to explain other semantic notions. (shrink)

The scene inIliad11 where Nestor's slave Hekamede prepares a restorative κυκεών for his guests in his great cup, which only he can lift when it is full, has often been cited in connection with the skyphos from Ischia, dated toc.735–720 BC, with its verse inscription that alludes to Nestor's εὔποτον ποτήριον. Now that scholarly opinion is increasingly swinging towards a seventh-century dating for theIliad, it seems more prudent than ever to see the Ischia inscription as a reflex not of ourIliadbut (...) of a similar Nestorian drinking episode in earlier epic tradition. His cup, as described, has features of a Bronze Age vessel; and the motif of the mighty goblet is paralleled in the Ugaritic Baal epic, current not later than the fourteenth century.Here I want to consider another element in the scene, namely the grated cheese which Hekamede adds to her posset. I hope to show, by a combination of metrics and archaeology, that this too, even though it cannot be traced back to the Bronze Age, belongs to a traditional account that is many generations older than ourIliad. (shrink)

Review of "Ethics, Killing and War" ; "The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives" ; "The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World" ; and "War and Law Since 1945".

In this pioneering book, noted international scholars explore the limits and definitions of knowing, thinking, and communicating meaning as we move into the 21st century. Coming from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, literature, aesthetics, and art practice, together they work towards reconceiving the boundaries between entrenched domains of knowledge to great effect.

Thinking about the Enlightenmentlooks beyond the current parameters of studying the Enlightenment, to the issues that can be understood by reflecting on the period in a broader context. Each of the thirteen original chapters, by an international and interdisciplinary team of contributors, illustrates the problematic legacy of the Enlightenment and the continued ramifications of its thinking since the eighteenth century. Together, they consider whether modernity can see its roots in the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The collection (...) is divided into six sections, preceded by a comprehensive introduction to the field and the most recent scholarship on the period. Across the sections, the contributors consider modern day encounters with Enlightenment thinking, including Kant's moral philosophy, the conflict between reason and faith, the significance of the Enlightenment of law and the gender inequality that persisted throughout the eighteenth century. By examining specific encounters with the problematic results of Enlightenment concerns, the contributors are able to illuminate and offer new perspectives on topics such as human nature, race, politics, gender and rationality. Drawing from history, philosophy, literature and anthropology, this book enables students and academics alike to take a fresh look at the Enlightenment and its legacy in the modern world. (shrink)

The well-established finding that siblings growing up in the same family turn out to be very different from one another has puzzled psychologists and behavior geneticists alike. In this theoretical note we describe the possible ontogeny and phylogeny of a sibling differentiation mechanism. We suggest that sibling competition for parental investment results in sibling differentiation on a number of characteristics, producing different developmental trajectories within families. Variations in developmental trajectories within families may have had fitness advantages in ancestral environments because(a) (...) sibling competition for extrafamilial resources would be reduced and(b) these variations would be suited to environments containing a variety of niches or to changing environments. Predictions derived from this model and an example of an application to attachment theory are presented. (shrink)

Explores the moral dimensions of the current global role of the U.S. military.

Volume 19, Issue 1, April-May 2020, Page 76-76.

Volume 18, Issue 2, July 2019, Page 164-164.