Height preferences reflecting positive assortative mating for height—wherein an individual’s own height positively predicts the preferred height of their mate—have been observed in several distinct human populations and are thought to increase reproductive fitness. However, the extent to which assortative preferences for height differ strategically for short-term versus long-term relationship partners, as they do for numerous other indices of mate quality, remains unclear. We explore this possibility in a large representative sample of over 500 men and women aged 15–77 from (...) Canada, Cuba, Norway and the United States. Participants’ own heights were measured, and they indicated their height preferences for a long-term and short-term mate using graphic stimuli containing metric indices. Replicating the “male-taller norm,” participants on average preferred taller-than-average male mates, and shorter-than-average female mates. Positive assortative preferences for height were observed across sexes and samples, however the strength of these height preferences varied with relationship context for men, and not for women. Taller men preferred relatively shorter women for short-term relationships than for long-term relationships, indicating stronger assortative preferences for height in a long-term context. These results provide preliminary evidence that, in addition to mate preferences for other physical traits related to mate quality such as masculinity in the body, face, and voice, assortative preferences for height do vary as a function of expected relationship length, but this was surprisingly only observed in preferences for female height. (shrink)

Hospitality can be considered a key institution in the social relationships in the ancient Mediterranean. To identify the people involved in a hospitality agreement, in certain contexts small objects were used in a similar way to a password, which the Greeks called symbolon and the Romans tessera hospitalis. We know how the latter were used thanks to Plautus' Poenulus. At least 64 pieces are currently known which may be identified as tesserae hospitales. All come from the Western Mediterranean. The majority (...) contain brief inscriptions, written in Etruscan, Latin, Greek, or Celtiberian. They share a series of common features, which impart a clear family resemblance beyond geographic, cultural, or linguistic borders. (shrink)

El presente artículo pretende invitar al estudio del impacto que tuvo _El Evangelio en Triumpho_ de Olavide sobre el pensamiento decimonónico. Con ese fin propone, en primer lugar, leerlo captando en sus rasgos esenciales el valor alegórico de sus personajes en sus relaciones. A continuación, señala qué aspectos de esa lectura habrían influido de manera más marcada en las obras de Maistre y Saint-Simon, con las que abarca las dos tendencias post-revolucionarias de entender la historia, catecóntica y quiliástica. Finalmente, presenta (...) la unidad milenarista de la obra de Olavide, ajena a aquellas interpretaciones precisamente por su ortodoxia, apuntando, como lectura alternativa a la francesa, la que sugiere Dostoyevski en _El Gran Inquisidor_. (shrink)

ESPAÑOL: Traducción de segmentos de los capítulos 1 y 6 del libro de Evan Wolson’s Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). ENGLISH: Translation (English to Spanish) of segments from chapters 1 and 6 of Evan Wolfson’s Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People’s Right to Marry. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004).

A posteriori physicalism is the combination of two appealing views: physicalism (i.e. the view that all facts are either physical or entailed by the physical), and conceptual dualism (i.e. the view that phenomenal truths are not entailed a priori by physical truths). Recently, some philosophers such as Goff (2011), Levine (2007) and Nida-Rümelin (2007), among others, have suggested that a posteriori physicalism cannot explain how phenomenal concepts can reveal the nature of phenomenal properties. In this paper, I wish to defend (...) a posteriori physicalism from this new and interesting challenge, by arguing that a posteriori physicalists have the resources to explain how phenomenal concepts can reveal at least something of what it would take for the corresponding phenomenal property to be instantiated. (shrink)

This paper examines what agents should do when others fail to comply with their responsibilities to prevent dangerous climate change. It distinguishes between six different possible responses to noncompliance. These include what I term (1) 'target modification' (watering down the extent to which we seek to prevent climate change), (2) ‘responsibility reallocation’ (reassigning responsibilities to other duty bearers), (3) ‘burden shifting I’ (allowing duty bearers to implement policies which impose unjust burdens on others, (4) 'burden shifting II’ (allowing some to (...) protect peoples rights in ways which impose otherwise unjustified burdens on the duty bearers, (5) 'compromising moral ideals' (permitting agents to compromise non-justice ideals that they are otherwise bound by); and (6) ‘promoting compliance (implementing policies and creating institutions which reduce noncompliance). It concludes by outlining a methodological framework for evaluating these options, and by setting out my tentative and provisional evaluation of which responses are the least bad. (shrink)

Nicht wenige Autoren in der politischen Ideengeschichte sind der Überzeugung, dass die Grundpfeiler des modernen Rechts- und Verfassungsdenkens nicht als das Erbe oder die kontinuierliche Weiterentwicklung der aristotelischen Tradition zu betrachten sind, sondern als Neuerungen, die sich gerade dem radikalen Bruch mit ihr verdanken. Die entscheidende Demarkationslinie zwischen antikem und modernem politischem Denken verlaufe dabei entlang der Idee der natürlichen Rechte des Individuums: Erst die politische Philosophie der Neuzeit und die auf ihr fußende Verfassungswirklichkeit verhelfe dem Menschen zu seinen ihm (...) angeborenen und unveräußerlichen Rechten. Die vorliegende Interpretation der aristotelischen Politik zeigt, dass das Kernanliegen der politischen Moderne, die Begründung und Durchsetzung der natürlichen Rechte des Individuums, jedoch als die Fortschreibung und Ausformulierung eines Grundgedankens von Aristoteles' politischer Philosophie begriffen werden sollte, nicht als radikaler Bruch mit ihr. (shrink)

In many cases, rivers, mountains, forests, and other so-called natural entities have value for us because they contribute to our well-being. According to the standard model of such value, they have instrumental or “service” value for us on account of their causal powers. That model tends, however, to come up short when applied to cases when nature contributes to our well-being by virtue of the religious, political, historical, personal, or mythic meanings it bears. To make sense of such cases, a (...) new model of nature’s value is needed, one that registers the fact that nature can have constitutive value for us on account of the role it plays in certain meaningful wholes, such as a person’s sense of who he or she is. (shrink)

The paper has the following structure. In Section I, I introduce some important methodological preliminaries by asking: How should one reason about global environmental justice in general and global climate change in particular? Section II introduces the key normative argument; it argues that global climate change damages some fundamental human interests and results in a state of affairs in which the rights of many are unprotected: as such it is unjust. Section III addresses the complexities that arise from the fact (...) that some of the ill effects of global climate change will fall on the members of future generations. Section IV shows that some prevailing approaches are unable to deal satisfactorily with the challenges posed by global climate change. If the argument of this paper is correct, it follows that those who contribute to global climate change through high emissions are guilty of human rights violations and they should be condemned as such. (shrink)

Sustainability as a narrative has mainstreamed, but practice is stuck in the ‘valley of death,’ with exemplary business action to internalize social and environmental externalities remaining ad hoc and small scale. Civil regulation has had significant impacts, but appears unable to act as a driver of systemic change. Addressing change at the system level requires the evolution of corporate governance away from intensive towards an extensive accountability, embedded within a ‘public fiduciary.’ Such a shift in fiduciary arrangements is needed to (...) institutionalize and leverage the growing involvement of the state in economic and industrial practice through direct enterprise ownership, the increasing importance of sovereign wealth funds and national development banks, and the significance of public-private partnerships. This re-emergence of the role of the state in economic governance will underpin the next generation of corporate responsibility, framed largely by an international political economy led by major emerging economies. (shrink)

Cap-and-trade systems for greenhouse gas emissions are an important part of the climate change policies of the EU, Japan, New Zealand, among others, as well as China and Australia. However, concerns have been raised on a variety of ethical grounds about the use of markets to reduce emissions. For example, some people worry that emissions trading allows the wealthy to evade their responsibilities. Others are concerned that it puts a price on the natural environment. Concerns have also been raised about (...) the distributional justice of emissions trading. Finally, some commentators have questioned the actual effectiveness of emissions trading in reducing emissions. This paper considers these three categories of objections – ethics, justice and effectiveness – through the lens of moral philosophy and economics. It is concluded that only the objections based on distributional justice can be sustained. This points to reform of the carbon market system, rather than its elimination. (shrink)

The authors challenge the reigning “causal power framework” as an explanation for whether a particular outcome was actually caused by a specific potential cause. They test a new measure of causal attribution in two experiments by embedding the measure within the Structure Induction model of Singular Causation (SISC, Stephan & Waldmann, 2016).

This article investigates the prospects of deliberative democracy through the analysis of small-scale deliberative events, or mini-publics, using empirical methods to understand the process of preference transformation. Evidence from two case studies suggests that deliberation corrects preexisting distortions of public will caused by either active manipulation or passive overemphasis on symbolically potent issues. Deliberation corrected these distortions by reconnecting participants’ expressed preferences to their underlying “will” as well as shaping a shared understanding of the issue.The article concludes by using these (...) insights to suggest ways that mini-public deliberation might be articulated to the broader public sphere so that the benefits might be scaled up. That mini-public deliberation does not so much change individual subjectivity as reconnect it to the expression of will suggests that scaling up the transformative effects should be possible so long as this involves communicating in the form of reasons rather than preferred outcome alone. (shrink)

Employee attitudes to change are key predictors of organizational change success. In this article, change engagement is defined as the extent to which employees are enthusiastic about change, and willing to actively involve themselves in ongoing organizational change. A model is tested showing how change-related organizational resources influence change engagement, in part through their influence on change-related job resources. Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equations Modeling results yielded good fit to the data in two independent samples: 225 Australian working professionals, (...) and 201 employees from a Prolific sample. As proposed, change-related organizational resources were positively associated with higher order change-related job resources. Change-related job resources were positively associated with change engagement. In contrast to expectations, organizational resources were not directly associated with change engagement. Instead, change-related job resources fully mediated the relationship. Overall, the study provides empirical support for new measures of organizational change resources and employee change engagement. By drawing from well-established models in the change and engagement literatures, the study provides a promising research direction for those interested in further understanding positive employee attitudes to organizational change. Practical implications and future research opportunities are discussed. (shrink)

In this article we study how reported speech markers are used as procedural resources in a laboratory based parapsychology experiment to investigate forms of anomalous communication, such as extrasensory perception. In particular, we focus on how specific activities in a key part of the experiment are mediated by the use of `you said' formulations which project that whatever is said next is a paraphrase or a verbatim report of what the recipient had said earlier. We identify two uses of reported (...) speech markers. First, they are used in utterances that initiate some form of repair, such as correction or clarification. Second, they cluster in sequential locations that mark, after a temporary suspension, the resumption of key activities in the experiment. In this we hope to contribute to the study of the institutional properties of reported speech. We conclude by discussing the ways in which broader cultural understandings of the inferential force of `you said' formulations inform their use in this institutional setting, and reflecting on the significance of these findings for parapsychological investigation of anomalous communication in this setting. (shrink)

Readings of Derrida’s work on law and justice have tended to stress the distinction between them. This stress is complicated by Derrida’s own claim that it is not ‘a true distinction’. In this essay I argue that ordinary experiences of the inadequacy of existing laws do indeed imply a claim about what would be more just, but that this claim only makes sense insofar as one can appeal to another more adequate law. Exploring how Derrida negotiates a subtle path between (...) classical Platonism and classical conventionalism about justice, the attempt is made to take seriously Derrida’s aim to affirm the idea of a ‘mystical’ foundation of the authority of laws by taking ‘the use of the word “mystical” in what I venture to call a rather Wittgensteinian direction’. (shrink)

We consider the Stag Hunt in terms of Maynard Smith’s famous Haystack model. In the Stag Hunt, contrary to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, there is a cooperative equilibrium besides the equilibrium where every player defects. This implies that in the Haystack model, where a population is partitioned into groups, groups playing the cooperative equilibrium tend to grow faster than those at the non-cooperative equilibrium. We determine under what conditions this leads to the takeover of the population by cooperators. Moreover, we compare (...) our results to the case of an unstructured population and to the case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Finally, we point to some implications our findings have for three distinct ideas: Ken Binmore’s group selection argument in favor of the evolution of efficient social contracts, Sewall Wright’s Shifting Balance theory, and the equilibrium selection problem of game theory. (shrink)

Unconscious stimuli can influence participants’ motor behavior but also more complex mental processes. Recent research has gradually extended the limits of effects of unconscious stimuli. One field of research where such limits have been proposed is spatial cueing, where exogenous automatic shifts of attention have been distinguished from endogenous controlled processes which govern voluntary shifts of attention. Previous evidence suggests unconscious effects on mechanisms of exogenous shifts of attention. Here, we applied a cue-priming paradigm to a spatial cueing task with (...) arbitrary cues by centrally presenting a masked symmetrical prime before every cue stimulus. We found priming effects on response times in target discrimination tasks with the typical dynamic of cue-priming effects indicating that central symmetrical stimuli which have been associated with endogenous orienting can modulate shifts of spatial attention even when they are masked. Prime–Cue Congruency effects of perceptual dissimilar prime and cue stimuli suggest that these effects cannot be entirely reduced to perceptual repetition priming of cue processing. In addition, priming effects did not differ between participants with good and poor prime recognition performance consistent with the view that unconscious stimulus features have access to processes of endogenous shifts of attention. (shrink)

Memes, of the kind found often on the internet, are an increasingly significant medium of expressive activity. I develop a theory of their ontological nature and, in parallel, an analysis of the concept meme. On my view, memes are abstract artifacts made out of norms for production of instances. The norms say things like ‘use a certain image; add text of a certain kind; the text should be delivered in two chunks, one at the top of the image, one at (...) the bottom, etc.’ Instances of these memes are created when users follow these norms and publish the results. The concept meme is analyzed in terms of the notion of memographic practice, a historically situated form of activity within which memes are created and their instances produced and made public. (shrink)

This paper examines the process through which micro-businesses ‘go green’. It builds upon previous studies that have identified the different drivers of this greening process. However, rather than a static focus on specific drivers, the study articulates the evolution of environmental practices over time. The paper uses comparative case studies of six micro-businesses to build a composite sequence analysis that plots the greening process from its roots through to large-scale and ambitious ecological projects. The study identifies three distinct stages that (...) businesses pass through during this greening process. This has important implications for policy-makers and advisors as it was found that the support needed by the businesses changed as they passed through these different stages. In particular, it was found that appropriate support is currently lacking at certain key points of the businesses' greening development. The paper therefore adds to current understanding of small business ecological responsibility by showing how activities and drivers change with the level of engagement. Pointers are provided as to how support can be improved. (shrink)

Online exam supervision technologies have recently generated significant controversy and concern. Their use is now booming due to growing demand for online courses and for off-campus assessment options amid COVID-19 lockdowns. Online proctoring technologies purport to effectively oversee students sitting online exams by using artificial intelligence systems supplemented by human invigilators. Such technologies have alarmed some students who see them as a “Big Brother-like” threat to liberty and privacy, and as potentially unfair and discriminatory. However, some universities and educators defend (...) their judicious use. Critical ethical appraisal of online proctoring technologies is overdue. This essay provides one of the first sustained moral philosophical analyses of these technologies, focusing on ethical notions of academic integrity, fairness, non-maleficence, transparency, privacy, autonomy, liberty, and trust. Most of these concepts are prominent in the new field of AI ethics, and all are relevant to education. The essay discusses these ethical issues. It also offers suggestions for educational institutions and educators interested in the technologies about the kinds of inquiries they need to make and the governance and review processes they might need to adopt to justify and remain accountable for using online proctoring technologies. The rapid and contentious rise of proctoring software provides a fruitful ethical case study of how AI is infiltrating all areas of life. The social impacts and moral consequences of this digital technology warrant ongoing scrutiny and study. (shrink)

In their article “Three Kinds of Decision-Making Capacity for Refusing Medical Interventions,” Navin et al. (2022) argue that we should recognize two forms of decision-making capacity (DMC) besides...

The paper analyzes the famous passage in "on denoting" where russell appears to be attacking frege's theory of the sense and reference of proper names. We argue that russell's attack has been misinterpreted and unjustly condemned. The strategy is to show what difficulties do genuinely face a two-Part theory, And then to show that it is quite easy to interpret russell as having perceived them.

We study the relationship between the cofinality $c(Sym(\omega))$ of the infinite symmetric group and the cardinal invariants $\frak{u}$ and $\frak{g}$ . In particular, we prove the following two results. Theorem 0.1 It is consistent with ZFC that there exists a simple $P_{\omega_{1}}$ -point and that $c(Sym(\omega)) = \omega_{2} = 2^{\omega}$ . Theorem 0.2 If there exist both a simple $P_{\omega_{1}}$ -point and a $P_{\omega_{2}}$ -point, then $c(Sym(\omega)) = \omega_{1}$.

Lust, says Simon Blackburn, is furtive, headlong, always sizing up opportunities. It is a trail of clothing in the hallway, the trashy cousin of love. But be that as it may, the aim of this delightful book is to rescue lust "from the denunciations of old men of the deserts, to deliver it from the pallid and envious confessor and the stocks and pillories of the Puritans, to drag it from the category of sin to that of virtue." Blackburn, author (...) of such popular philosophy books as Think and Being Good, here offers a sharp-edged probe into the heart of lust, blending together insight from some of the world's greatest thinkers on sex, human nature, and our common cultural foibles. Blackburn takes a wide ranging, historical approach, discussing lust as viewed by Aristophanes and Plato, lust in the light of the Stoic mistrust of emotion, and the Christian fear of the flesh that catapulted lust to the level of deadly sin. He describes how philosophical pessimists like Schopenhauer and Sartre contributed to our thinking about lust and explores the false starts in understanding lust represented by Freud, Kinsey, and modern "evolutionary psychology." But most important, Blackburn reminds us that lust is also life-affirming, invigorating, fun. He points to the work of David Hume who saw lust not only as a sensual delight but also "a joy of the mind." Written by one of the most eminent living philosophers, attractively illustrated and colourfully packaged, Lust is a book that anyone would lust over. (shrink)

New computer systems of discovery create a research program for logic and philosophy of science. These systems consist of inference rules and control knowledge that guide the discovery process. Their paths of discovery are influenced by the available data and the discovery steps coincide with the justification of results. The discovery process can be described in terms of fundamental concepts of artificial intelligence such as heuristic search, and can also be interpreted in terms of logic. The traditional distinction that places (...) studies of scientific discovery outside the philosophy of science, in psychology, sociology, or history, is no longer valid in view of the existence of computer systems of discovery. It becomes both reasonable and attractive to study the schemes of discovery in the same way as the criteria of justification were studied: empirically as facts, and logically as norms. (shrink)

A central task in efforts to identify pathways to ecologically and socially sustainable economies is to reduce inequality and poverty while reducing material consumption, which has recently inspired future post-growth scenarios. We build a model to explore the potential of a universal basic income (UBI) to serve these objectives. Starting from the observation that post-growth trajectories can take very different forms we analyze UBI in two scenarios advanced in the literature. Comparing UBI in a “local self-sufficiency” economy to a UBI (...) in an “automation” economy, we show that although both scenarios satisfy central sustainability criteria, the impact of a UBI would differ greatly between these contexts. Our analysis shows that a UBI is less compatible with a labor-intensive local self-sufficiency economy than a capital-intensive, high tech economy. We conclude that the feasibility and attractiveness of a UBI in a post-growth scenario depends greatly on the specific characteristics of the economy. (shrink)

I address the problem of reconciling environmental holism with the intrinsic value of individual beings. Drawing upon Madhyamaka Buddhism, the later philosophy of Martin Heidegger, and deep ecology, I present a distinctly holistic conception of nature that, nevertheless, retains a commitment to the intrinsic worth of individual beings. I conclude with an examination of the practical implications of this “thing-centered holism” for environmental ethics.

The psychological continuity theory of personal identity has recently been accused of not meeting what is claimed to be a fundamental requirement on theories of identity - to explain personal moral responsibility. Although they often have much to say about responsibility, the charge is that they cannot say enough. I set out the background to the charge with a short discussion of Locke and the requirement to explain responsibility, then illustrate the accusation facing the theory with details from Marya Schechtman. (...) I aim some questions at the challengers’ reading of Locke, leading to an argument that the psychological continuity theory can say all that it needs to say about responsibility, and so is not in any grave predicament, at least not with regard to this particular charge. (shrink)

I argue that it is not ideally rational to believe that some of one's current beliefs are false, despite the impressive inductive evidence concerning others and our former selves. One's own current beliefs represent a commitment which would be undermined by taking some of them to be false. The nature of this commitment is examined in the light of Nagel's distinction between subjective and objective points of view. Finally, I suggest how we might acknowledge our fallibility consistently with this special (...) attitude to our own beliefs. (shrink)

The public University is an actor capable of energizing local ecosystems to transform the territory, and open innovation is its instrument of connection with the environment. University open innovation was studied through factor analysis by the principal components’ method in Mexico and Colombia. Data were collected in 54 research groups of two public universities. The analysis showed that the first six components explain 82.479% of the variance of the university open innovation model. The coincidences were evidenced in the factors that (...) affect the general process of open innovation in Universities of Mexico and in Colombia. It was concluded that open innovation is a relevant mechanism for linking the University with its environment. (shrink)

Inspiré par des analyses décisives de penseurs aussi dissemblables que Nietzsche, Heidegger, Althusser et Foucault, nous avons tenté d’esquisser un cadre théorique réaliste dans lequel le phénomène mal compris de l’intégrisme contemporain puisse être interprété comme un phénomène au sens existentiel de ce terme. C’est-à-dire, comme une réalité phénoménale qui affecte l’existence de l’individu moderne dans sa contingence historique. Laquelle présuppose et met en relief l’incontournable fragilité métaphysique de l’homme en tant qu’être mortel. Un être («Dasein») dont l’existence se laisse (...) souvent restreindre et appauvrir par la fuite permanente de la mort. Une fuite dont le questionnement critique lui ouvre («Erschliessen» au célèbre sens heideggérien dans Sein und Zeit) l’horizon de sa singularité finie. La fonction de l’idéologie intégriste est conçue, suivant la critique d’Althusser, comme l’assignation de l’homme à une «résidence fixe». Autrement dit, un cadre conceptuel rigide dans lequel une «onto-idéologie» intégriste persécute «l’Être» mortel qui se laisse persécuter («Sich Nachstellen des Seins») comme le souligne Heidegger dans sa Conférence de Brême «Le Danger» («Die Gefahr»). Sauvegarder notre monde de l’intégrisme présuppose donc un nouvel «art». Un «art» dont la pratique reflète un mouvement de liberté d’être dont la valorisation universelle est la principale tâche de la philosophie contemporaine. (shrink)