How Darwin's “endless forms most beautiful” have evolved remains one of the most exciting questions in biology. The significant variety of bacterial shapes is most likely due to the specific advantages they confer with respect to the diverse environments they occupy. While our understanding of the mechanisms generating relatively simple shapes has improved tremendously in the last few years, the molecular mechanisms underlying the generation of complex shapes and the evolution of shape diversity are largely unknown. The emerging field of (...) bacterial evolutionary cell biology provides a novel strategy to answer this question in a comparative phylogenetic framework. This relatively novel approach provides hypotheses and insights into cell biological mechanisms, such as morphogenesis, and their evolution that would have been difficult to obtain by studying only model organisms. We discuss the necessary steps, challenges, and impact of integrating “evolutionary thinking” into bacterial cell biology in the genomic era. (shrink)

The article begins by describing two longstanding problems associated with direct inference. One problem concerns the role of uninformative frequency statements in inferring probabilities by direct inference. A second problem concerns the role of frequency statements with gerrymandered reference classes. I show that past approaches to the problem associated with uninformative frequency statements yield the wrong conclusions in some cases. I propose a modification of Kyburg’s approach to the problem that yields the right conclusions. Past theories of direct inference have (...) postponed treatment of the problem associated with gerrymandered reference classes by appealing to an unexplicated notion of projectability . I address the lacuna in past theories by introducing criteria for being a relevant statistic . The prescription that only relevant statistics play a role in direct inference corresponds to the sort of projectability constraints envisioned by past theories. (shrink)

This essay is devoted to the study of useful ways of thinking about the nature of interpretation, with particular attention being given to the so called normative character of mental explanation. My aim of illuminating the nature of interpretation will be accomplished by examining several views, some of which are common to both Donald Davidson and Daniel Dennett, concerning its unique characteristics as a method of prediction and explanation. Moreover, some of the views held by Davidson and Dennett will be (...) adopted, elaborated, and defended. The conclusions of these philosophers do not, however, form an acceptable whole. Thus I will attempt to moderate some of their views. In particular, I will attempt to show up the deficits of Davidson's view of the mental by defending the possibility some sort of psycho-physical reduction. Despite such philosophical pretensions, major parts of this essay will be devoted to sketching the foundations of a method for the interpretation of intentional behaviour which I take to embody the key features of our ordinary practice of interpretation. In particular, I will attempt to sketch the bases for a method of interpretation which is sensitive to the methodological considerations associated with the seemingly unique normative character of mental explanation. To this end, I will also investigate the question of how certain formal measures of coherence can be made to yield models for understanding the actual and possible bases of interpretation. (shrink)

In a recent article, Joel Pust argued that direct inference based on reference properties of differing arity are incommensurable, and so direct inference cannot be used to resolve the Sleeping Beauty problem. After discussing the defects of Pust's argument, I offer reasons for thinking that direct inferences based on reference properties of differing arity are commensurable, and that we should prefer direct inferences based on logically stronger reference properties, regardless of arity.

We propose that synesthetic cross‐activation between the primary auditory cortex and the anatomically adjacent insula may help explain two puzzling conditions—autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and misophonia—in which quotidian sounds involuntarily trigger strong emotional responses. In ASMR the sounds engender relaxation, while in misophonia they trigger an aversive response. The insula both plays an important role in autonomic nervous system control and integrates multiple interoceptive maps representing the physiological state of the body to substantiate a dynamic representation of emotional wellbeing. (...) We propose that in ASMR cross‐activation of the map for affective (sensual) touch leads to an increase in subjective wellbeing and parasympathetic activity. Conversely, in misophonia the effect of the cross‐activation is to decrease emotional wellbeing and increase sympathetic activity. Our hypothesis also illuminates the connection between hearing and wellbeing more broadly and helps explain why so many people experience decreased wellbeing from modern urban soundscapes. (shrink)

This article attempts to clarify some of the central questions and distinctions that provide the necessary backdrop for thinking in a sophisticated way about security in Africa. Drawing on the developing Critical Security Studies literature it suggests that an understanding of security based on people, justice and change offers the surest route to a stable future. It then sketches preliminary answers to some fundamental questions, namely: whose security should be prioritized? How have security dynamics in Africa been influenced by the (...) wider processes driving world politics? What clusters of threats are the most salient? Where do such threats have the most pernicious effects? Which actors are best placed to alleviate those threats? And what sort of institutions should be built to assist in that process? The role of outsiders concerned with promoting security on the continent should be to try to ensure that as many Africans as possible are able to voice their opinions on these crucial issues. (shrink)

When people encounter potential hazards, their expectations and behaviours can be shaped by a variety of factors including other people's expressions of verbal likelihood. What is the impact of such expressions when a person also has numeric likelihood estimates from the same source? Two studies used a new task involving an abstract virtual environment in which people learned about and reacted to novel hazards. Verbal expressions attributed to peers influenced participants’ behaviour toward hazards even when numeric estimates were also available. (...) Namely, verbal expressions suggesting that the likelihood of harm from a hazard is low yielded more risk taking with respect to said hazard. There were also inverse collateral effects, whereby participants’ behaviour and estimates regarding another hazard in the same context were affected in the opposite direction. These effects may be based on directionality and relativity cues inferred from verbal likelihood expressions. (shrink)

'A mere metaphor', 'only symbolic', 'just a myth' - these tell tale phrases reveal how figurative language has been cheapened and devalued in our modern and postmodern culture. In God and the Creative Imagination, Paul Avis argues the contrary: we see that actually, metaphor, symbol and myth, are the key to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. Avis examines what he calls an alternative tradition, stemming from the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth and Keats and drawing on the (...) thought of Cleridge and Newman, and experience in both modern philosophy and science. God and the Creative Imagination intriguingly draws on a number of non-theological disciplines, from literature to philosophy of science, to show us that God is appropriately likened to an artist or poet and that the greatest truths are expressed in an imaginative form. Anyone wishing to further their understanding of God, belief and the imagination will find this an inspiring work. (shrink)

This article presents results from a simulation‐based study of inheritance inference, that is, inference from the typicality of a property among a “base” class to its typicality among a subclass of the class. The study aims to ascertain which kinds of inheritance inferences are reliable, with attention to the dependence of their reliability upon the type of environment in which inferences are made. For example, the study addresses whether inheritance inference is reliable in the case of “exceptional subclasses” (i.e., subclasses (...) that are known to be atypical in some respect) and attends to variations in reliability that result from variations in the entropy level of the environment. A further goal of the study is to show that the reliability of inheritance inference depends crucially on which sorts of base classes are used in making inferences. One approach to inheritance inference treats the extension of any atomic predicate as a suitable base class. A second approach identifies suitable base classes with the cells of a partition (of a preselected size k) of the domain of objects that satisfies the condition of maximizing the similarity of objects that are assigned to the same class. In addition to permitting more inferences, our study shows that the second approach results in inheritance inferences that are far more reliable, particularly in the case of exceptional subclasses. (shrink)

In Situations and Individuals, Paul Elbourne argues that the natural language expressions that have been taken to refer to individuals — pronouns, proper names, and definite descriptions — have a common syntax and semantics, roughly that of definite descriptions as construed in the tradition of Frege. In the course of his argument, Elbourne shows that proper names have previously undetected donkey anaphoric readings.This is contrary to previous theorizing and, if true, would undermine what philosophers call the direct reference theory (...) (which holds that the sole contribution of a proper name to the truth conditions of a sentence is an individual) as well as the related doctrine that proper names are rigid designators. Elbourne begins by addressing donkey anaphora, relating other concerns about pronouns to the solution of this notorious problem. His subsequent argumentation provides a unified semantics for the donkey anaphoric and bound and referential uses of pronouns and discusses the prospect of unifying the syntax and semantics of pronouns with the syntax and semantics of normal definite descriptions. Elbourne's aim is not only to advance his proposal of a unified syntax and semantics but also to urge linguists and philosophers dealing with pronoun interpretation to consider a wider range of theories than they do at present, and to test the competing claims of description-based theories and dynamic semantics against the data. (shrink)

This article is concerned with frege's "sinn und bedeutung", As an examination of (1) a statement and analysis of frege's argument, And (2) specification and justification of a meaning of 'sense' which fits the data of frege's discussion and does not make 'sense' a subsistent entity. (staff).

Huw Price’s subject naturalism has emerged as a leading pragmatist position within recent debates surrounding philosophical naturalism. Unlike orthodox views which tend to be guided by metaphysical questions about the “place” of, for instance, the mind, meaning, and morality within the natural world, subject naturalism focuses philosophical attention on language-users and the functions that certain concepts play within discursive practices. This paper considers two objections to subject naturalism and argues that they can be overcome by looking to the methodological insights (...) of philosophical genealogy. Although Price occasionally characterizes his project as a kind of genealogy, he offers little explanation of what such a methodological orientation is supposed to involve. I suggest that subject naturalists ought to remedy this theoretical lacuna by looking to the work of Bernard Williams. On the one hand, doing so can serve a diagnostic function: Williams’ conception of genealogy affords a perspective from which subject naturalism’s explanatory inadequacies are more clearly understood. On the other hand, Williams’ elaborated conception of genealogy represents a path by which the subject naturalist can overcome the shortcomings discussed in this paper. (shrink)

The present paper introduces a simple framework for modeling the relationship between environmental states, perceptual states, and action. The framework represents situations where an agent’s perceptual state forms the basis for choosing an action, and what action the agent performs determines the agent’s payoff, as a function of the environmental conditions in which the action is performed. The framework is used as the basis for a simulation study of the sorts of correspondence between perceptual and environmental states that are important (...) for successful navigation of the world. Some of the results are surprising and conflict with long held views about the kind of perception-to-environment correspondence that is important for knowledge of the world. The results also raise doubts concerning the view that our perceptual states provide a basis for knowledge of the real structure of the external world. (shrink)

On the basis of knowledge prior to 1988, Ashbrook pointed out that whereas most men are primarily dependent on the left cerebral hemisphere (“dominant hemisphere”) for verbally related functions, women show a greater hemispheric balance in this respect. For men, he argues, their possession of a “speaking” and a “non‐speaking hemisphere” results in a positive‐negative, bipolar way of thinking that may be characterized as dualistic and dialectically hierarchical. In contrast, the greater balance of hemispheric function in women appears to promote (...) greater generalization and synthesis in their thinking.In this article I cite more recent neuroanatomical and brain imaging studies that provide further evidence of disparities in structure and function of the brains of men and women. As background for an attempt to explain these differences, I give a brief review of the triune evolution of the mammalian brain leading up to the human cerebrum. It is of major significance that the female has played a central role in mammalian evolution for more than 180 million years and that the evolutionary transition from reptilian therapsids to mammals is characterized by the develoment of (1) nursing conjoined with maternal care; (2) audiovocal communication or aiding mother‐offspring contact; and (3) play. In human beings, the infant‐carrying hypothesis suggests one means by which, over generations, certain parts of a woman's right hemisphere could undergo functional and eventual anatomical expansion. The mother‐infant communication of basic mammalian sounds with vowel and consonant components suggests a basis for the origination of speech.Finally, in an expansion of Ashbrook's original thesis, we arrive at the rovocative consideration that, unlike men, with their dialectical reasoning, women, with their more balanced brain, are provided with a trialectial ladder for climbing to achieve knowledge. In terms of quantum mechanics, the particle and wave would correspond to the substance and strength of the sides of the ladder, and the derived psychic information (which is neither matter nor energy) would compare to the rungs in between. (shrink)

Richard Rorty’s attempts to defend liberalism by appeal to pragmatism fail primarily as a result of his conflation of epistemological and political concepts. It is this confusion that leads him to defend unpalatable political views. Once the question of pragmatism is properly distinguished from the question of liberalism, it becomes clear that criticisms of Rorty’s politics have no bearing on his views of philosophy and, similarly, that acceptance of Rorty’s critique of philosophy does not commit pragmatists to his political views.

Everything we experience and do as individuals is assumed to be a function of the nervous system. It is as though we were born with a total supply of algorithms for all given forms of psychic states and solutions for immediate or eventual actions. There is evidence that the forebrain is, so to speak, the central processor for psychic experience and psychologically directed behavior. Since information itself is immaterial, all forms of psychic experience represent immaterial emanations of the forebrain, including (...) sensations, perceptions, drives, affects, thoughts, and the precisely measured, cold hard facts of science. But it is to be emphasized that there can be no manufacture or communication of information without the intermediary of behaving entities. Because of the immateriality of information and the Gödel-like problem of self-reference, a central question arises as to whether or not we can ever rely on the brain with its viscoelastic properties to achieve a reliable yardstick for measuring time and space and the general nature of things. Most needed at the present time is a refined picture of the anatomy and chemistry of the brain’s circuitry accounting for its particular species of algorithms. Emphasis is given to the basic role of various proteins in generating subjective experience. Because of the role of resonance in contributing to the dynamical excitability of neural circuits, examples are given here of how it might play an algorithmic role at macroscopic, microscopic, molecular, and atomic levels. To describe this idea attention is focused on three evolutionary types of cortex that have developed in the triune evolution of the mammalian forebrain from the mammal-like reptiles to human beings. (shrink)

I here aim to show that a particular approach to the problem of induction, which I will call “induction by direct inference”, comfortably handles Goodman’s problem of induction. I begin the article by describing induction by direct inference. After introducing induction by direct inference, I briefly introduce the Goodman problem, and explain why it is, prima facie, an obstacle to the proposed approach. I then show how one may address the Goodman problem, assuming one adopts induction by direct inference as (...) an approach to the problem of induction. In particular, I show that a relatively standard treatment of what some have called the “Reference Class problem” addresses the Goodman Problem. Indeed, plausible and relatively standard principles of direct inference yield the conclusion that the Goodman inference (involving the grue predicate) is defeated, so it is unnecessary to invoke considerations of ‘projectibility’ in order to address the Goodman problem. I conclude the article by discussing the generality of the proposed approach, in dealing with variants of Goodman’s example. (shrink)

At a historic dialogue convened at the University of Richmond, Virginia, Baptist and secular humanist scholars in theology, history, philosophy, and the social sciences, came together to define shared concerns and common values. The dialogue focused on major areas of concern: academic freedom; social, political, and religious tolerance; biblical scholarship; separation of church and state; the social agenda of the Christian Coalition and the Southern Baptist Convention; the danger of militant fundamentalism; freedom of conscience and the historic and current role (...) of American Baptists; as well as the plight of pluralistic democracy. (shrink)

By applying markedness to Semitic morphology in a rigorous manner, this book brings to bear a venerable linguistic construct on a persistent philological crux, in order to achieve deeper clarity in the structures and workings of Canaanite and Hebrew verbs.

This paper is a discussion of points of agreement and conflict between Rorty and Putnam.

The molecular mechanism of temperature‐dependent sex determination (TSD) is a long‐standing mystery. How is the thermal signal sensed, captured and transduced to regulate key sex genes? Although there is compelling evidence for pathways via which cells capture the temperature signal, there is no known mechanism by which cells transduce those thermal signals to affect gene expression. Here we propose a novel hypothesis we call 3D‐TSD (the three dimensions of thermolabile sex determination). We postulate that the genome has capacity to remodel (...) in response to temperature by changing 3D chromatin conformation, perhaps via temperature‐sensitive transcriptional condensates. This could rewire enhancer–promoter interactions to alter the expression of key sex‐determining genes. This hypothesis can accommodate monogenic or multigenic thermolabile sex‐determining systems, and could be combined with upstream thermal sensing and transduction to the epigenome to commit gonadal fate. (shrink)