Recent philosophical work on the concept of human nature disagrees on how to respond to the Darwinian challenge, according to which biological species do not have traditional essences. Three broad kinds of reactions can be distinguished: conservative intrinsic essentialism, which defends essences in the traditional sense, eliminativism, which suggests dropping the concept of human nature altogether, and constructive approaches, which argue that revisions can generate sensible concepts of human nature beyond traditional essences. The different constructive approaches pick out one or (...) two of the three epistemic roles that are fused in traditional essentialist conceptions of human nature: descriptive, explanatory, definitional, or explanatory and definitional. These turns towards diverging epistemic roles are best interpreted pluralistically: there is a plurality of concepts of human nature that have to be clearly distinguished, each with a legitimate role in respective scientific contexts. (shrink)

When building causal knowledge in behavioural genetics, the natural randomisation of genotypes at conception (approximately analogous to the artificial randomisation occurring in randomised controlled trials) facilitates the discovery of genetic causes. More importantly, the randomisation of genetic material within families also enables a better identification of (environmental) risk factors and aetiological pathways to diseases and behaviours.

This paper summarizes (in German) recent tendencies in the philosophy of the life sciences.

In his response to my essay “Out of Control,” Neil Levy contests my claims that (1) we are often responsible for acts that we do not consciously choose to perform, and that (2) despite the absence of conscious choice, there remains a relevant sense in which these actions are within our control. In this reply to Levy, I concede that claim (2) is linguistically awkward but defend the thought that it expresses, and I clarify my defense of claim (1) (...) by distinguishing my position from attributionism. (shrink)

In a recent article, George Sher argues that a realistic conception of human agency, which recognizes the limited extent to which we are conscious of what we do, makes the task of specifying a conception of the kind of control that underwrites ascriptions of moral responsibility much more difficult than is commonly appreciated. Sher suggests that an adequate account of control will not require that agents be conscious of their actions; we are responsible for what we do, in the (...) absence of consciousness, so long as our obliviousness is explained by some subset of the mental states constitutive of the agent. In this response, I argue that Sher is wrong on every count. First, the account of moral responsibility in the absence of consciousness he advocates does not preserve control at all; rather, it ought to be seen as a variety of attributionism (a kind of account of moral responsibility which holds that control is unnecessary for responsibility, so long as the action is reflective of the agent’s real self). Second, I argue that a realistic conception of agency, that recognizes the limited role that consciousness plays in human life, narrows the scope of moral responsibility. We exercise control over our actions only when consciousness has played a direct or indirect role in their production. Moreover, we cannot escape this conclusion by swapping a volitionist account of moral responsibility for an attributionist account: our actions are deeply reflective of our real selves only when consciousness has played a causal role in their production. (shrink)

Rejecting the notion that Picasso's representations of faces should always be considered in a biographical context as portraits, it is argued that in considering them as human faces we encounter a crisis in the idea of an essential humanity. The essay then discusses Picasso's faces relation to Georges Bataille's treatment of vernacular portrait photography and of animality in human emotional expression, arguing that Picasso's human faces court the inhuman. This inhuman countenance, bred so effectively in the artist's work in the (...) 1930s and 1940s, raises in turn the question of the origin of the human in the inhuman. Turning to Bataille's discussion of the cave of Lascaux, discovered in 1940 and made to stand for the question of humanity posed so brutally by the war, the essay analyses the irruption of the origin of the human ideal in the sovereign act of the depiction of animality. A double refusal of destinies, of animality and of humanity, is caught before our eyes in such depictions. This temporal suspension of destinies is read back into Picasso's human faces. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.1 (2001) 142-154 [Access article in PDF] Critical Discussions The Fortunes of Avant-Garde Poetry Mary Anne O'Neil Invisible Fences. Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature, by Steven Monte; xii & 298 pp. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, $50.00. Modern Visual Poetry, by Willard Bohn; 321 pp. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000, $47.00. The situation of French poetry at the (...) turn of the twenty-first century is far different from what it was during the last fin de siècle. In 1900, poetry was a booming art, and France was home to numerous poets of varied inspiration and expression. The religious verse of Claudel and Péguy shared the attention of the reading public with the philosophical poetry of Valéry and the futuristic celebrations of Paris and modern life found in Apollinaire's Alcools and Calligrammes. Long poems, short poems, poems written in standard verse, free verse, prose, and even published as drawings, suggested that the golden age of poetry begun in the early nineteenth century by the Romantics and continued after 1850 by Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé, would not soon come to an end. This indeed proved to be the case, for the heirs of the Symbolist tradition of the first decade of the twentieth century were soon followed by the Surrealist revolutionaries of the 1920s and 1930s, many of whom directed their talents to the composition of political verse at the time of the Second World War. Political poetry by and large disappeared from France after 1950, only to be [End Page 142] succeeded over the next two decades by two very different types of verse. On the one hand, writers like St. John Perse and Pierre Jean Jouve produced difficult works whose appeal was limited to a sophisticated audience, while lyricists, such as Jacques Prévert and even the songwriter Georges Brassens, made poetry more accessible to the general public, often through popular songs. The fact that, during the days of May 1968, students scrawled verses of the Surrealist-Communist poet Paul Eluard on the walls of the Sorbonne to encourage efforts to bring down the social order attests to the power exerted by poetry on the intellectual life of France well into the second half of the twentieth century. Such, however, is no longer the case today. There are only two well-known living French poets, Francis Ponge and Yves Bonnefoy. While reviews dedicated to original poetry do still exist, especially in the south of France where the poetic arm of the French Resistance was most active in the 1940s, poetry attracts many fewer readers--and fewer writers--than it did even fifty years ago.Such a radical change merits some reflection. What has happened to French poetry since the mid-twentieth century? In a sense, all good things must come to an end sometime, and a century and a half of inventiveness and poetic energy may simply have run its natural course. French publishing houses, well aware that prose sells better than verse, have done little to encourage young poets. However, certain trends in the subject matter and form of contemporary French poetry have probably contributed to the current lack of interest. Since the end of the Second World War, French poets have concerned themselves almost uniquely with everyday life--common objects, geographical locales, and ordinary people. This obsession with the ordinary has produced some excellent poetry, especially René Char's evocations of Provençal landscapes and Yves Bonnefoy's treatments of childhood. Yet, this concentration on everyday life has severed poetry from the traditional subjects that have sustained it ever since classical antiquity, such as the celebration of heroic figures and heroic deeds, philosophical and religious inquiry, love, loss, prophetic vision. This very narrow range of subject risks consigning poetry to the status of a minor art. At the turn of the twenty-first century, French poetry also finds itself at the end of a very long period of formal experimentation that began in the second half of the nineteenth century and which includes... (shrink)

This article lays the ground for a sensuous appreciation of both the human body and the physical world. Drawing on the biographical account of the climber's embodied reflection of rock-climbing, the `climbing body' highlights our overwhelming tactile and kinaesthetic engagement with the phenomenal world. I Begin by emphasizing the need to consider the organic nature of human being, that we should understand how the awareness of death and our consequent sense of mutability provide a significant moment to remember the body. (...) I highlight how this might be achieved through the practice of adventure climbing. The increasing denial of the body's organicity, its mutability - perhaps a key impulse of modernity - is thereby usurped. This is followed by a structure of thought, based around the work of Georg Simmel, conveying the radical materiality of the phenomenal world. In doing so, I highlight the propensity of the environment to inscribe itself upon the human body. This idea is brought alive during the second half of the article, which focuses upon the climbing body and, in particular, the hands of the climber. As they navigate vertical ground climbers are guided by the sense of touch in order to `make sense' of the world. The climbing body orientates itself through tactile navigation: by feeling or grasp-ing its way through the world. To engage with the world tactually is to situate oneself consciously in that world and to have a potentially unmediated relationship with it. In doing so, the climber opens up the possibility for a corporeal reconceptualization of modernity. (shrink)

Although moral history in the twentieth century was much less intense than in earlier centuries, it never entirely disappeared. Now it seems to have increased in the past two decades. Moral history, however, is a difficult genre to define. How many moral judgments on the part of the historian qualifies it as part of the category? What work is without some moral component? But whether or not George Cotkin is mistaken on a few minor matters, this is excellent, thought-provoking (...) historiography that is a benefit to the discipline as a whole. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of how Robertson's History of America depicts the transition of world history from pre-modern disorder to a recognisably modern commercial order. It argues that in his narrative of action he moves beyond the limitations imposed by stadial forms of history, with which America is usually associated, and displays the importance of disordered forms of activity as a creative force in shaping the modern world. It concludes by suggesting that a close reading of his history does (...) not support Robertson's assumptions concerning the formation of a stable, ordered and industrious ‘commercial character’ out of this process, but rather establishes a more complex and less teleological path to modernity. ☆ This paper was presented in abbreviated form at the conference on ‘Political Economy and 18th Century Scottish Culture’ at George Mason University, June 2001. The author wishes to thank all those who contributed to the panel on William Robertson, especially Ingrid Merikoski and Jan Cleaver. (shrink)

I raise the question of what cognitive attitude self-deception brings about. That is: what is the product of self-deception? Robert Audi and Georges Rey have argued that self-deception does not bring about belief in the usual sense, but rather “avowal” or “avowed belief.” That means a tendency to affirm verbally (both privately and publicly) that lacks normal belief-like connections to non-verbal actions. I contest their view by discussing cases in which the product of self-deception is implicated in action in a (...) way that exemplifies the motivational role of belief. Furthermore, by applying independent criteria of what it is for a mental state to be a belief, I defend the more intuitive view that being self-deceived that p entails believing that p. Beliefs (i) are the default for action relative to other cognitive attitudes (such as imagining and hypothesis) and (ii) have cognitive governance over the other cognitive attitudes. I explicate these two relations and argue that they obtain for the product of self-deception. (shrink)

Hegel and Canada is a collection of essays that analyses the real, but under-recognized, role Hegel has played in the intellectual and political development of Canada. The volume focuses on the generation of Canadian scholars who emerged after World War Two: James Doull, Emil Fackenheim, George Grant, Henry S. Harris, and Charles Taylor.

Natural law theory is enjoying a revival of interest in a variety of scholarly disciplines including law, philosophy, political science, and theology and religious studies. This volume presents twelve original essays by leading natural law theorists and their critics. The contributors discuss natural law theories of morality, law and legal reasoning, politics, and the rule of law. Readers get a clear sense of the wide diversity of viewpoints represented among contemporary theorists, and an opportunity to evaluate the arguments and counterarguments (...) exchanged in the current debates between natural law theorists and their critics. Contributors include Hadley Arkes, Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., John Finnis, Robert P. George, Russell Hittinger, Neil MacCormick, Michael Moore, Jeffrey Stout, Joseph Raz, Jeremy Waldron, Lloyd Weinreb, and Ernest Weinrib. (shrink)

In a recent essay, George Annas, the legal columnist for The New England Journal of Medicine, observed that the resuscitation of extremely premature infants, even over parental objection, is not problematic because “once the child's medical status has been determined, the parents have the legal authority to make all subsequent decisions.” Annas himself is quick to concede that treatment in a high-technology neonatal intensive care unit frequently takes on a life of its own. He also acknowledges that although bioethicists (...) and courts agree that there is no ethical or legal difference between withholding or withdrawing a respirator from a patient, parents and physicians find the withdrawal much more emotionally troubling. (shrink)

In the April 2008 issue (volume 69, issue number 2) of the Journal of the History of Ideas, George Cotkin published his article, "History's Moral Turn." Four essays responding to Cotkin's article, written by Neil Jumonville, Michael O'Brien, James Livingston, and Lewis Perry, were also published in the April 2008 issue. In this essay, "A Conversation about Morals and History," Cotkin addresses the critiques of each of these four historians.

This paper, first presented at the spring 1990 conference on Mass Media Ethics in the Information Age, compares and contrasts approaches of five scholars - Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, Neil Postman, and Jacques Ellul - whose works are chief contributions to an influential communications theory that posits that the history of media technologies is central to the history of civilization, that media transformations result in social change, and that changes in the form of media technology alter the (...) structure of consciousness. (shrink)

Xiaohe Lu is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Executive Director of the Centre for Business Ethics, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Georges Enderle is Arthur and Mary O’Neil Professor of International Business Ethics at the Mendoza College of Business, Univer­sity of Notre Dame.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:146 BOOK REVIEWS Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays. Edited by ROBERT P. GEORGE. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Pp. 371. $39.95 (cloth). As the editor of this volume, Robert P. George points out in his foreword that this hook is yet another manifestation of the renewed and growing interest in natural law theory. But why this recent increased interest in natural law theory? What purpose is this theory (...) supposed to serve, or in what way do its proponents see it as an improvement on existing theories? First of all, it must be noted, as the variety of essays in this volume makes abundantly clear, that natural law theory, as it is presently conceived, most certainly does not represent anything like a unified, single theory of tightly knit principles and conclusions. In the present volume one can easily see a half-dozen or more different approaches to natural law theory. So different in tone and spirit are some of the essays that one can easily wonder if they have enough in common even to classify them as " family resemblances." But if they all in their different ways do indeed evidence, as the editor claims, an increased awareness of and interest in natural law theory, the question immediately arises, why this increased interest? What problems do the advocates of these theories hope to solve by them or what questions do they think their theories will better address than the theories currently in place? First of all, one may make a division which places the theories, however divers~ among themselves, into two general groups. The first of these groups wishes natural law theory to function as a general approach to morality. For this group natural law does the work of a moral theory. In this group I would place the essays of Joseph Boyle, Robert George, Russell Bittinger, John Finnis, and Hadley Arkes (probably). The second group uses natural law theory as a way of determining the connection between moral law and positive law or legal theory. The essays of Jeffrey Stout, Neil MacCormick, Jeremy Waldron, Michael Moore, Lloyd Weinreb, Joseph Raz, and Ernest Weinrib fall into this second category. In all there are twelve essays in this volume. Space will not permit me to give a detailed analysis and critique of each. At most I can only indicate very briefly some of their more salient features. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which is titled "Natural Law, Practical Reasoning and Morality." In the very illuminating first essay of this section, "Natural Law and the Ethics of Traditions," Joseph Boyle undertakes to clarify the question of the relation of natural law theory to tradition. Certain approaches to moral theory currently popular BOOK REVIEWS 147 which are called virtues ethics, of which Alasdair Macintyre would he an example, claim that natural law theory is tradition-dependent. If Macintyre and other virtues ethicists are correct, then since natural law theory is culture-hound, and since the culture in which it was horn and flourished, medieval culture, has irretrievably retreated into the pages of history, then natural law theory is equally dead, of interest, if at all, only in an antiquarian way. Boyle carefully points out that there is more than one sense of being tradition-dependent. It is true that natural law theory is tradition-dependent in the sense that it did indeed come into existence in a particular historic epoch and that its language and thought do indeed express the period of its flourishing, i.e. the medieval period. But this, Boyle is careful to point out, does not mean that its validity and meaning were exhausted with the end of that culture. Rather the tradition is a living tradition so that its rich resources can continue to be exploited as that tradition is enlarged by its application to present day moral problems. Boyle's conclusion then is that in some senses natural law is indeed dependent on an ancient and medieval tradition, hut not so totally dependent that it has lost all validity for contemporary moral theory. In the contribution by Robert George, "Natural Law and Human Nature," George tries to defend Germain Grisez's version of natural law... (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Child assent is recommended in addition to parental consent when enrolling children in clinical research; however, appreciation and relevance ascribed to these concepts vary in different contexts, and information on attitudes towards storage of biological samples for future research is limited, especially in developing countries. We assessed caregivers’ understanding and appreciation of consent and assent procedures, and their attitudes towards use of stored blood samples for future research prior to enrolling a child in clinical research. A total of 17 in-depth (...) interviews were conducted with primary caregivers of children at enrolment or on the immediate follow-up date. All caregivers recalled significant amount information from the study information sheet and were able to appropriately link such information to the consent process. While all participants confirmed information received prior to blood sampling as adequate, a few noted that the purpose was not sufficiently well communicated. Caregivers felt children were cognitively vulnerable, and prone to decisions that were not necessarily in their best interest. Nearly all caregivers felt it was their right and responsibility to overrule objections from their ward’s regarding enrolment into specific study or receipt of a therapeutic procedure. There were no objections or concerns regarding use of stored biological samples for future research purposes. There is thus, a need to improve understanding of caregivers on the information provided during the informed consent process. Context-specific studies on the age of assent in specific populations are needed. (shrink)

Dr. Ainslie examines an elementary human paradox: that we are endangered by our own wishes.

George Herbert Mead, one of America’s most important and influential philosophers, a founder of pragmatism, social psychology, and symbolic interactionism, was also a keen observer of American culture and early modernism. In the period from the 1870s to 1895, Henry Northrup Castle maintained a correspondence with family members and with Mead—his best friend at Oberlin College and brother-in-law—that reveals many of the intellectual, economic, and cultural forces that shaped American thought in that complex era. Close friends of John Dewey, (...) Jane Addams, and other leading Chicago Progressives, the author of these often intimate letters comments frankly on pivotal events affecting higher education, developments at Oberlin College, Hawaii, progressivism, and the general angst that many young intellectuals were experiencing in early modern America. The letters, drawn from the Mead-Castle collection at the University of Chicago, were collected and edited by Mead after the tragic death of Henry Castle in a shipping accident in the North Sea. Working with his wife Helen Castle, he privately published fifty copies of the letters to record an important relationship and as an intellectual history of two progressive thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century. American historians, such as Robert Crunden and Gary Cook, have noted the importance of the letters to historians of the late nineteenth century. The letters are made available here using the basic Mead text of 1902. Additional insights into the connection between Mead, John Dewey, Henry and Harriet Castle, and Hawaii’s progressive kindergarten system are provided by the foundation’s executive director Alfred L. Castle. Marvin Krislov, president of Oberlin College, has added additional comments on the importance of the letters to understanding the intellectual relationship that flourished at Oberlin College. Published with the support of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Six Poems GEORGE KALOGERIS The Atomists To see what the matter is, in all of its dense, Teeming particulars, and not through the lens Of a microscope but by the most lucid, precise, Leap of imagination: the first was Leucíppus. But it was his student, Democritus, who stated That human understanding was truly futile, Given the random collisions of atoms. Still, He blinded himself to keep from (...) being distracted. When he broke the long-jump record by two whole feet, Bob Beamon dropped to his knees, buried his face In his hands, and wept in a pit of sand—the trace Of his human, Olympian flight still fresh as a heel-print. When the earthquake struck Kalamáta, and Uncle Sotíri Lost everything, he asked a taxi driver To take him to “a nice high place by the sea. And then come back for me in half an hour.” arion 28.3 winter 2021 58 six poems One Credit Seminar on the Odes of Horace We were sitting around a polished oak table, just getting to Those famous lines near the end of the Sestius Ode: Revenant whitefaced Death is walking not knowing whether He’s going to knock at a rich man’s door or a poor man’s When one of the students (Andrew) said it was “totally weird”— Which led us to look at the paleness of Death’s appearance, Whose pallor is what, when he comes, comes with him: the sickness and shock In his ghastly face. And that’s where we stopped. And then It was Jennifer’s email, saying “I’m sorry for missing class, But I’m having panic attacks. I keep flashing back To March 19th, when I entered my dorm-room and found my boyfriend Dead of an overdose... I can get you a note... What reading should I do to be prepared for next week?” O goodlooking fortunate Sestius, don’t put your hope in the future; The night is falling, the shades are gathering around; The walls of Pluto’s shadowy house are closing you in. There who will be lord of the feast? What will it matter, What will it matter there, whether you fell in love With Lycidas, this or that girl with him, or he With her? So David Ferry’s great translation goes, And its tone of tender, knowing, bemusement is Horace’s Pitying voice, but whose pity has come to speak to us Through the whitefaced mouth of revenant Death, still going From house to house, until he gets to Jennifer’s dorm-room. And what will it matter now if Andrew was drawn to the line About fishermen hauling their caulked boats to the water? It’s late September. We’re sitting around a polished oak table Whose wood is sacred to Jove, whose lightning-bolt Has already sounded deep in the heart of Indian summer. George Kalogeris 59 Greek School The very first poem I ever knew by heart: That sing-song forsaken one assigned to me. Recited on our other Independence Day. When some of the girls were dressed in peasant costumes, And some of the boys in kilts of the freedom fighters. And the timid rest of us in our Sunday best. In the church gym, where Father Mihos called us Up to the microphone, and one by one We showed the parents what we’d learned in Greek school. In Horace’s Ode to his Lyre, the poet prays That his song will serve as the medicine of sorrows, His stricken voice the trembling instrument— Schooled as he was in Sappho, who said the ancient Prescription left a bittersweet taste in her mouth: Glukopikron. For me it’s that first-grade poem I stammer to remember: Egwo tha geino Yiatrós... “I shall grow up to be a doctor...” Just saying that, my elders perk up their ears. And even if Poetry wasn’t the kind of calling Expected of me, and one by one they all Got sick and died, it’s still the medicine That keeps them leaning forward on their folding chairs. 60 six poems Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees But evergreen the... (shrink)