The Continuous Parameter Estimation Model is applied to develop individual genomic-level heritabilities for the latent hierarchical structure and developmental dynamics of Life History (LH) strategy LH strategies relate to the allocations of bioenergetic resources into different domains of fitness. LH has moderate to high population-level heritability in humans, both at the level of the high-order Super-K Factor and the lower-order factors, the K-Factor, Covitality Factor, and General Factor of Personality (GFP). Several important questions remain unexplored. We developed measures of genome-level (...) heritabilities employing an American sample of 316 monozygotic (MZ) and 274 dizygotic (DZ) twin dyads and a Swedish sample of 863 MZ and 475 DZ twin dyads. This novel heritability index measures individual genetic transmissibility, therefore opening new avenues for analyzing complex interactions among heritable traits inaccessible to standard structural equations methods. For these samples: (1) moderate to high heritability of factor loadings of Super-K on its lower-order factors is demonstrated, evidencing biological preparedness, genetic accommodation, and the gene-culture coevolution of biased epigenetic rules of development; (2) moderate to high heritability of the magnitudes of the effect of the higher-order factors upon their loadings on their constituent factors, evidencing genetic constraints upon phenotypic plasticity; and (3) that heritability of the LH factors, of factor loadings, and of the magnitudes of the correlations among factors are weaker among those with slower LH speeds, demonstrating that inter-individual variation in transmissibility is a function of individual socioecological selection pressures. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS lVIoore. This is a good thing and, I think, marks an advance (evolutionary ~) in the way the history and philosophy of science should be done. In addition, the book itself is well made with very few printing errora. St.•Jerome's College Univei·sity of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario, Canada F. F. CENTORE Will It Liberate? Questions About Liberation Theology. By MICHAEL NOVAK. New York: Paulist Press, 1986. Pp. (...) viii+ 311. $14.95. Not long ago, it was common for people to interrupt theoretical presentations with the exclamation "Bottom-Line! " as a way of indicating that they wished to get right to the practical conclusions. By and large, Michael Novak's long-running debate with the liberation theologians and philosophers has been a debate at the bottom-line. There theologians and philosophers have developed elaborate and varied intellectual arguments which :finish with quite similar decisions in the realm of political economy and international relations. Gustavo Gutierrez argues in terms.of the Catholic Christian tradition, Jon Sobrino in terms of the gospels, J~nrique Dussel in terms of a phenomenology of presence. But, in the end, they almost invariably anive at positions which are fundamentally opposed to capitalist property and market arrangements in general and to the dominance of the first world over the third world in particular. They come out there, of course, because they start "on the left" in their appreciation of the spiritual and material oppression and its causes. No wonder, then, that their direction in politics and economics is almost invariably for some species of socialism. Novak's question in Will it Liberate? is, as the title indicates, whether they have the causes and the solutions straight, and he goes right to it without much eonsideration of their laborious efforts in formal theology and philosophy. People who have read books like The Spfrit of Democratic Capitalism and Freedom icith Justice will be familiar with the basic line of reasoning here. The state of the world, especially in Latin America, the fons et origo of liberation thought, is indeed parlous, marked by widespread poverty, misery, ignorance, and abuse. Thus far, Novak is in complete accord with the liberationists. Nor does he deny that class divisions and national dependency have much to do with the problems. What he asks, :first of a11, is whether Latin American and other third-world economies have been genuinely capitalist and whether a Leninist dependency analysis will BOOK REVIEWS 363 really account for their woes. He argues that the most troubled economies have remained basically pre-capitalist with heavily regulated and pl'otected markets maintained by authoTitarian political systems and that world trade patterns as well as the experience of the " East Asian Rim " casts doubt on the connection between first-world prosperity and thirdworld indigence. Secondly, he calls into doubt the expectation that socialism, under any form which really undoes capitalist structures, can remedy the woes. The socialist aspirations of the liberationsists remain, on the whole, vague and utopian; but, to the extent that they take flesh, they tend toward a statist control of politics, economics, and culture. But all our experience of statism, in the world beyond dreams, is one of limited political and cultural freedom and of diminished economic energy. The second world, including its extensions in Cuba and Nicaragua, is proof that liberation, so understood, will not liberate. What Novak would like of the liberation theologians and philosophers is to give more serious attention to the liberal tradition with its emphasis on individual autonomy and voluntariness in politics, economy, and culture. Without saying so explicitly, he asks them to study Madison and Mill now in prefel'ence to Marx and Lenin. He insists that this tradition is, in its best manifestations, profoundly social and that its application, in contrast to that of the socialist ideal, has meant unparalleled (albeit imperfect ) achievements in alleviating misery and in liberating people. For the most part, it is a practical tradition which has developed institutions of democratic capitalism while eschewing the discussion of theology and metaphysics. However, Novak believes that these institutions, despite the secularism of many of the chief liberal writers, have their roots in a Judeo-Christian sensibility combining confidence in... (shrink)

Controlled human infection challenge studies (CHIs) involve intentionally exposing research participants to, and/or thereby infecting them with, micro‐organisms. There have been increased calls for more CHIs to be conducted in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs) where many relevant diseases are endemic. This article is based on a research project that identified and analyzed ethical and regulatory issues related to endemic LMIC CHIs via (a) a review of relevant literature and (b) qualitative interviews involving 45 scientists and ethicists with relevant expertise. (...) In this article we argue that though there is an especially strong case for conducting CHIs in endemic (LMIC) settings, certain ethical issues related to the design and conduct of such studies (in such settings) nonetheless warrant particularly careful attention. We focus on ethical implications of endemic LMIC CHIs regarding (a) potential direct benefits for participants, (b) risks to participants, (c) third‐party risks, (d) informed consent, (e) payment of participants, and (f) community engagement. We conclude that there is a strong ethical rationale to conduct (well‐designed) CHIs in endemic LMICs, that certain ethical issues warrant particularly careful consideration, and that ethical analyses of endemic LMIC CHIs can inform current debates in research ethics more broadly. (shrink)

It is not very surprising that it was no less true in antiquity than it is today that adult human beings are held to be responsible for most of their actions. Indeed, virtually all cultures in all historical periods seem to have had some conception of human agency which, in the absence of certain responsibility-defeating conditions, entails such responsibility. Few philosophers have had the temerity to maintain that this entailment is trivial because such responsibility-defeating conditions are always present. Another not (...) very surprising fact is that ancient thinkers tended to ascribe integrality to "what is" (to on). That is, they typically regarded "what is" as a cosmos or whole with distinguishable parts that fit together in some coherent or cohesive manner, rather than either as a "unity" with no parts or as a collection containing members (ta onta or "things that are") standing in no "natural" relations to one another. 1 The philoso phical problem of determinism and responsibility may, I think, best be characterized as follows: it is the problem of preserving the phenomenon of human agency (which would seem to require a certain separateness of individual human beings from the rest of the cosmos) when one sets about the philosophical or scientific task of explaining the integrality of "what is" by means of the development of a theory of causation or explanation ( concepts that came to be lumped together by the Greeks under the term "aitia"). (shrink)

This book is a sustained defense of the compatibility of the presence of idealizations in the sciences and scientific realism. So, the book is essentially a detailed response to the infamous arguments raised by Nancy Cartwright to the effect that idealization and scientific realism are incompatible.

Research on meditation and mindfulness practice has flourished in recent years. While much of this research has focused on well-being outcomes associated with mindfulness practice, less research has focused on how perception of self may change as a result of mindfulness practice, or whether these changes in self-perception may be mechanisms of mindfulness in action. This is somewhat surprising given that mindfulness derives from traditions often described as guiding people to realise and experience the non-separation of self from the world (...) or its ‘oneness’ with the whole of reality. The current study used a collective intelligence methodology, Interactive Management (IM), to explore the nature of oneness experiences. Five IM sessions were conducted with five separate groups of experienced meditators. Participants generated, clarified, and selected oneness self-perceptions they believed most characterised their experience both during meditation and in their everyday experience in the world. Each group also developed structural models describing how highly ranked aspects of oneness self-perceptions are interrelated in a system. Consistent themes and categories of oneness experience appeared across the five IM sessions, with changes in the sense of space (unboundedness), time, identity, wholeness and flow highlighted as most influential. Results are discussed in light of emerging theory and research on oneness self-perception and non-dual awareness. (shrink)

David hume is sometimes viewed as a skeptic who argues that none of our beliefs about the world are justified. this paper challenges that view by developing and explicating an account of justified belief that is compatible with hume's theories about belief formation, inference, and principles governing the association of ideas. it is noted that the resultant account bears some resemblance to contemporary causal/reliability views of justification.

A key takeaway from the recent volume Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique is that no version of theistic evolution that adheres largely to consensus views in biology is a plausible option for orthodox Christians. In this paper we argue that this is false: contrary to the arguments in the volume, evolutionary theory, properly understood, is perfectly compatible with traditional Christian commitments. In addition, we argue that the lines between Intelligent Design and theistic evolution are not as sharp (...) as most scholars have assumed, such that many who self-identify as Intelligent Design adherents would also qualify as theistic evolutionists. (shrink)

The theme of the 2018 Spindel Conference was “Decolonizing Philosophy.” In this introduction, I will elaborate on this theme as a way to set the stage for the essays in this volume. Beginning with the question of what it means to consider philosophy “colonized” in the first place, I will focus on the subfield of the history of philosophy as a way to draw out my account. After elaborating what I take the claim that philosophy is colonized/colonizing to mean, I (...) will turn to ways one might approach its decolonization. Again, my principle focus will be on the history of philosophy, though I take my analysis to extend beyond this subfield. Finally, I will elaborate four key tasks that I take to be essential to the decolonization of philosophy. (shrink)

The concept of intrinsic value has enjoyed a long, rich history. From the time of the ancient Greeks to the present day, philosophers have placed it at the foundation of much of their theorizing. This is especially true of G.E. Moore, who made it the cornerstone of his Principia Ethica. Yet this venerable concept has recently come under serious, sustained attack. My aim in this paper is to show that this attack has been unsuccessful.When Principia Ethica appeared, its impact on (...) the philosophical community was immediate and profound. Of course, much of what Moore had to say was, and continues to be, strongly disputed. The view that goodness is a simple nonnatural property has been criticized by many people and in many ways. Some have argued that goodness is an analyzable property. Others have argued that it is a natural property. Still others have argued, more radically, that goodness is not a property at all. But none of these critics has rejected the very idea of goodness. None of them, that is, has contended that to say of something that it is good is to speak nonsense. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The calls for us to find solace in our “together-apart-ness” obfuscate the calamity of Black lives being lost in numbers exponentially higher than white bodies. In the midst of a virus that “does not discriminate,” but is aided in its deadly spread by those systems that do, the concept of “wake work” demands our time and attention.

The book gives a diverse and even-handed treatment of the topic without attempting to resolve the matter.

This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappropriations of an iconic 1853 story from Francis Galton's African travels. In response to a (...) fundamental lack of physical evidence concerning prehistoric men, savage numbers offered a readily available body of data that helped scholars envisage great extremes of civilizational lowliness in a way that was at once analysable and comparable, and anecdotes like Galton's made those data vivid and compelling. Moreover, they provided a simple and direct means of conceiving of the progressive scale of civilizational development, uniting societies and races past and present, at the heart of Victorian scientific racism. (shrink)

We argue that, insofar as one accepts either supersubstantivalism or strong composition as identity for the usual reasons, one has (defeasible) reasons to accept the other as well. Thus, all else being equal, one ought to find the package that combines both views—the Identity Package—more attractive than any rival package that includes one, but not the other, of either supersubstantivalism or composition as identity.

Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, systematic scientific abstracting played a crucial role in reconfiguring the sciences on an international scale. For mathematicians, the 1931 launch of the Zentralblatt für Mathematik and 1940 launch of Mathematical Reviews marked and intensified a fundamental transformation, not just to the geographic scale of professional mathematics but to the very nature of mathematicians’ research and theories. It was not an accident that mathematical abstracting in this period coincided with an embrace across mathematical (...) research fields of a distinctive form of symbolic and conceptual abstraction. This essay examines the historical, institutional, embodied, and conceptual bases of mathematical abstracting and abstraction in the mid-twentieth century, placing them in historical context within the first half of the twentieth century and then examining their consequences and legacies for the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Focused on scale, media, and the relationship between mathematical knowledge and its forms of articulation, my analysis connects the changing social structure of modern mathematical research communities to their changing domains of investigation and resources for representation and collective understanding. (shrink)

Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the (...) fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Albert would reject the need for a separate fourth mode of common personal supposition, and that his view of merely confused supposition has not been fully explicated by modern scholars. I first examine the various examples of conjunct descent given by modern scholars from his Perutilis logica , and show that Albert clearly adopts it in resolving the sophistic examples involved. Second, I explicate the view of merely confused supposition that Albert defends in his (...) Sophismata , and then attempt to answer the question: which view of merely confused supposition was his final view, the view articulated in the Perutilis logica or the view in the Sophismata ? I conclude that based upon his Sophismata view of merely confused supposition, Albert came to realize the logical strength his revised theory of personal supposition afforded, and consequently, that he is one of the earliest 14th-century logicians to adopt conjunct terminal descent to resolve various sophisms, a move which gave his theory of personal supposition a logical symmetry having two sorts of propositional descents to singulars, and two sorts of terminal descents to singulars. (shrink)

This dissertation is a formulation of a theory of racism that transcends the narrow focus upon individual intentions and attitudes, capturing the ways and means by which it becomes an "institutionalized" part of the larger social context. I argue that this larger institutional level of racism is what makes it oppressive, as opposed to simple prejudice or dislike. Chapter one establishes this basic position, and moves directly into an analysis of oppression, appealing to five basic "premises" which delineate the boundaries (...) within which any adequate theory of oppression must function. The chapter concludes by claiming that a successful theory of oppression, which must be understood in terms of a related notion of freedom, requires a "positive" theory of freedom, rather than the "negative" one that dominates contemporary discourse on race. Chapters two and three develop a concept of positive freedom, and a corresponding understanding of racism , using Hegel, Sartre, and Frantz Fanon. I argue that a successful theory of racism can be constructed with a foundation in Hegelian recognition, aided by the appropriation of the social ontology developed by Sartre in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. I use Fanon's texts both to provide important insights overlooked by Hegel and Sartre, and to provide a theater in which to demonstrate the interpretive and analytic power of the theory of racism as it develops. Chapter four lays out the final theory, and applies it to several compelling contemporary contexts. (shrink)

People are worried that advances in genetics will lead to a revival of eugenics. Such worries are often associated with eugenic practices carried out early in the 20th century---the forcible sterilization of feebleminded persons in the United States and the Nazi program of Racial Hygiene. A "new eugenics" involving prenatal genetic testing and the selective abortion of fetuses diagnosed with severe genetic disorders might, nonetheless, be acceptable. In chapter one I examine the history of eugenics and discuss what might make (...) a new eugenics more tolerable. ;Chapters two and three discuss reproductive decision making by individuals . Chapter 2 investigates the morality of abortion. I conclude that the moral status of the fetus is ultimately uncertain. In exceptional circumstances, such as the case where a fetus would develop into a severely disabled infant, there are good reasons for thinking that abortion is morally permissible. It is plausible, for example, that the value of a fetal life is a function of its future quality of life. ;In chapter three I discuss what quality of life consists in. I develop a pluralistic perspective according to which quality of life is a function of multiple independent components. When deciding to bring a child into existence parents should consider the quality of life expected for the child and also take into account the likely impact on their own lives, the lives of other family members, and society as a whole. ;Chapter four asks whether or not governmental restrictions should be placed on the kinds of genetic interventions which will be permitted. A worry is that interventions aimed at enhancement would only be available to the financially fortunate and thus promote unjust social inequalities. Another worry is that the development and use of such interventions would drain medical resources away from more fruitful purposes and thus have a negative impact on aggregate utility. The social aim to promote liberty, on the other hand, speaks against the imposition of restrictions. Faced with conflicting social values, we need to think more about how to make trade-offs between liberty, equality, and aggregate utility. (shrink)

Pseudonymous mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki and his lesser-known counterpart E.S. Pondiczery, devised respectively in France and in Princeton in the mid-1930s, together index a pivotal moment in the history of modern mathematics, marked by international infrastructures and institutions that depended on mathematicians’ willingness to play along with mediated personifications. By pushing these norms and practices of personification to their farcical limits, Bourbaki’s and Pondiczery’s impersonators underscored the consensual social foundations of legitimate participation in a scientific community and the symmetric fictional character (...) of both fraud and integrity in scientific authorship. To understand authorial identity and legitimacy, individual authors’ conduct and practices matter less than the collective interpersonal relations of authorial assertion and authentication that take place within disciplinary institutions. (shrink)

What forms of collective political action conceivably might offer the best prospects for radical, transformative change in the context of a planet currently in crisis, and characterized by intersecting struggles for environmental, economic, social, and racial justice? The concept of radical subjectivity that Herbert Marcuse developed throughout his life and work can provide social movement theorists, organizations and activists with valuable theoretical and practical resources to identify, encourage, and further develop new and emerging forms of political agency and activism, and (...) thereby contribute to the mobilization of contemporary social movements seeking to address these crises and their underlying causes. This concept, when critically reevaluated and appropriated in light of more recent insights about the nature of subjectivity and political agency as well as in the context of these contemporary struggles, can assist in the development of a theory and practice that might be adequate to address the multiple global crises currently confronting humanity and other forms of life on Earth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:141 HUME AND CAUSAL INFERENCE Hume held that any time we reach by inference a belief about the existence or qualities of some object or event that we have not actually perceived, the inference is grounded in beliefs about causal relations holding between the object of belief and some other object or objects that have actually been experienced. I will examine here Hume's account of such causal inferences. There (...) are many places in the Treatise of Human Nature at which Hume seems to claim that causal inferences take place when and only when the percipient has had an extensive previous experience of objects of the respective types as regularly conjoined in relations of contiguity and temporal priority. It seems to me that reliance on these passages alone gives a distorted view of Hume's theory of causal inference. Contrary to appearances, Hume did not hold that extensive previous experiences of objects of the same types as properly conjoined is either necessary or sufficient for causal inference. Hume's view is more subtle and complicated, and there are important considerations of coherence and holism present in it. Getting Hume's view on this matter clear is important because it shows how he can escape some of the objections that have been laid against his theory, and it makes possible a reading of Hume as a causal realist. Hume's theory of inference provides the resources for drawing a distinction between accidental and genuine causal regularities and it is compatible with the view that causal relations (and not mere de facto regularities) hold among events in the world independently of their being perceived. The examination begins by looking at a different, but related, issue. Why does Hume think 142 that of the three types of association, only cause and effect association is capable of producing belief? Hume puts the question in the form of a possible objection to his account. For it may be said, that if all the parts of that hypothesis be true, viz. that these three species of relation are deriv'd from the same principles; that their effects in inforcing and inlivening our ideas are the same; and that belief is nothing but a more forcible and vivid conception of an idea; it shou'd follow, that that action of the mind may not only be deriv'd from the relation of cause and effect, but also from those of contiguity and resemblance. But as we find by experience, that belief arises only from causation, and that we can draw no inference from one object to another, except they be connected by this relation, we may conclude, that there is some error in that reasoning, which leads us into such difficulties. (T 107) It is important to note that Hume is talking here only about beliefs about the existence or situations of objects that have not been intuited or experienced. Beliefs about relations of ideas (e.g., that 2 + 2 = 4) are intuitions (or perhaps memories 2 of intuitions). Beliefs in the existence of things as experienced or in the previous existence of things as previously experienced automatically have the 3 vivacity of impressions or memory ideas. What Hume takes himself to need to explain is why cause and effect association allows for a transfer of this vivacity to an idea of an object or situation that has not itself been intuited or experienced and why 4 resemblance and contiguity association do not. If I see a green ball next to a red sweater, then I will normally subsequently believe that the green ball existed next to the red sweater at that time (at 143 least until my memories begin to lose vivacity). This is purely a matter of sense experience and memory. Now if I subsequently see a different red sweater (or the same sweater in a different location), I may be led to think of a green ball existing next to it purely through contiguity and resemblance association. But presumably I would not believe that a green ball existed next to the currently perceived red sweater unless I currently perceived a green ball or my belief was based on some 5 form of causal inference... (shrink)

Baker and Detiénne argue that the results reported in Stone and Wang and Alea et al. should be contextualized within a broader historical and societal perspective that takes into account the co‐evolution of social interaction practices and technology‐mediated collaborative activities.

The development of possible worlds semantics for modal claims has led to a more general application of that theory as a complete semantics for various formal and natural languages, and this view is widely held to be an adequate (philosophical) interpretation of the model theory for such languages. We argue here that this view generates a self-referential inconsistency that indicates either the falsity or the incompleteness of PWS.

In this paper it is argued that the conjunction of linguistic ersatzism, the ontologically deflationary view that possible worlds are maximal and consistent sets of sentences, and possible world semantics, the view that the meaning of a sentence is the set of possible worlds at which it is true, implies that no actual speaker can effectively use virtually any language to successfully communicate information. This result is based on complexity issues that relate to our finite computational ability to deal with (...) large bodies of information and a strong, but well motivated, assumption about the cognitive accessibility of meanings of sentences ersatzers seem to be implicitly committed to. It follows that linguistic ersatzism, possible world semantics, or both must be rejected. (shrink)

Creolizing Hegel brings together transdisciplinary scholars presenting various approaches to creolizing the work of Hegel. The essays in this volume take Hegelian texts and themes across borders of method, discipline, and tradition.

Kant's response to ‘Hume's problem’ in his analysis of the a priori structure of causality as law-governed succession in the Second Analogy of Experience has unquestionably overshadowed the account of simultaneity (Zugleichsein), which follows in the Third Analogy. The analysis of simultaneity in the first Critique relies entirely upon that of succession and is ultimately no more than a more complicated variant of the causal dependence of substances: two objects are experienced as simultaneous only when each of those objects grounds (...) some determination of the other, that is when they are reciprocally determined in dynamic community. By investigating Kant's remark in the third Critique that the experience of the sublime “makes simultaneity intuitable” this paper develops a Kantian analysis of simultaneity that is irreducible to the more prominent analysis of causal succession. This more robust account of simultaneity is then seen to play an essential role in the constitution of the objects of perception (and not only the regulation of their relations) as thematized in the Axioms of Intuition in the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)