This work helps highlights how the innovations in Flathman's thought have shaped the field of political theory and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Reviews evidence which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. Ss are sometimes unaware of the existence of a stimulus that importantly influenced a response, unaware of the existence of the response, and unaware that the stimulus has affected the response. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes, that is, on the processes mediating the effects of a stimulus on a response, they do not do (...) so on the basis of any true introspection. Instead, their reports are based on a priori, implicit causal theories, or judgments about the extent to which a particular stimulus is a plausible cause of a given response. This suggests that though people may not be able to observe directly their cognitive processes, they will sometimes be able to report accurately about them. Accurate reports will occur when influential stimuli are salient and are plausible causes of the responses they produce, and will not occur when stimuli are not salient or are not plausible causes. (shrink)

This chapter combines formal models of how the fitness of a collective can become decoupled from the fitness with more empirical work on the volvocine algae. It uses the Volvox clade as a model system. It describes the evolution of altruism in the volvocine green algae. This chapter suggests that altruism may evolve from genes involved in life-history trade-offs. It shows the several cooperation, conflict, and conflict mediation cycles in the volvocine green algae. This cycle of cooperation, conflict, and conflict (...) mediation drives evolutionary transitions in individuality. (shrink)

This book is a critical and analytical survey of the major attempts, in modern philosophy, to deal with the phenomenon of intentionality—those of Descartes, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Frege, Russell, Bergmann, Chisholm, and Sellars. By coordinating the semantical approaches to the phenomenon, Dr. Aquila undertakes to provide a basis for dialogue among philosophers of different persuasions. "Intentionality" has become, since Franz Brentano revived its original medieval use, the standard term describing the mind's apparently paradoxical capacity to relate itself to objects existing (...) in the world. One approach to the phenomenon emphasizes the mental act. The author argues that the most adequate account involves elements of both approaches. Contemporary treatments tend to formulate problems of intentionality primarily in terms of logic and semantics rather than those of metaphysics and phenomenology. Dr. Aquila's effort to coordinate these approaches will make his book useful to students both of analytical philosophy of mind and also of phenomenology. (shrink)

The fitness of any evolutionary unit can be understood in terms of its two basic components: fecundity (reproduction) and viability (survival). Trade-offs between these fitness components drive the evolution of life-history traits in extant multicellular organisms. We argue that these trade-offs gain special significance during the transition from unicellular to multicellular life. In particular, the evolution of germ–soma specialization and the emergence of individuality at the cell group (or organism) level are also consequences of trade-offs between the two basic fitness (...) components, or so we argue using a multilevel selection approach. During the origin of multicellularity, we study how the group trade-offs between viability and fecundity are initially determined by the cell level trade-offs, but as the transition proceeds, the fitness trade-offs at the group level depart from those at the cell level. We predict that these trade-offs begin with concave curvature in single-celled organisms but become increasingly convex as group size increases in multicellular organisms. We argue that the increasingly convex curvature of the trade-off function is driven by the cost of reproduction which increases as group size increases. We consider aspects of the biology of the volvocine green algae – which contain both unicellular and multicellular members – to illustrate the principles and conclusions discussed. (shrink)

Husserl's theory of meaning is often regarded as a somewhat obscure attempt at a view which frege stated more clearly. I argue that while this may be true with respect to the "ideas," it is false with respect to the "logical investigations." the theory presented in the latter work is superior to frege's theory. It provides an objective foundation for the semantical distinctions which concerned frege while remaining within the confines of an ontology that is more economical than frege's.

As Archer argues, recent developmental data on human physical aggression support the sexual selection hypothesis. However, sex differences are largely due to males on a chronic trajectory of aggression. Maternal characteristics of these males suggest that, in societies with low levels of physical violence, females with a history of behavior problems largely contribute to maintenance of physical aggression sex differences.

In this paper I argue that resource allocation in publicly funded medical systems cannot be done using a purely substantive theory of justice, but must also involve procedural justice. I argue further that procedural justice requires institutions and that these must be “local” in a specific sense which I define. The argument rests on the informational constraints on any non-market method for allocating scarce resources among competing claims of need. However, I resist the identification of this normative account of local (...) justice with the actual approach to local decision-making taken within the UK National Health Service. I illustrate my argument with reference to the case of provision of In Vitro Fertilisation within the UK NHS. (shrink)

BRENTANO'S CLAIMS ABOUT INTENTIONALITY DO NOT BEAR SOLELY\nON A CONCERN WITH THE POSITIVE NATURE OF MENTAL STATES.\nTHEY ALSO HAVE NO BEARING ON THE PROBLEM OF MENTAL/MATERIAL\nIDENTITY. PART OF THEIR POINT IS JUST TO OPPOSE A CERTAIN\nVIEW ABOUT THE PROPER OBJECTS OF AWARENESS, NAMELY THAT\nINSOFAR AS WE ARE AWARE OF OBJECTS THEY HAVE AN EXISTENCE\n"IN THE MIND." BOTH HUME AND DESCARTES HELD SUCH A VIEW. AN\nEXAMINATION OF THE NOTIONS OF "IDEA" AND "OBJECTIVE\nREALITY" SHOWS THE INACCURACY OF REGARDING DESCARTES AS A\n"REPRESENTATIVE REALIST." (...) WHAT REPRESENTS EXTERNAL NATURES\nIN THE MIND IS JUST THOSE NATURES THEMSELVES INSOFAR AS\nTHEY EXIST IN THE MIND. (shrink)

In this article, we comment on Ciaffa’s article ‘The Ethics of Unilateral Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders for COVID-19 Patients.’ We summarize his argument criticizing futility and utilitarianism as the key ethical justifications for unilateral do-not-resuscitate orders for patients with COVID-19.

128 female Ss were asked to make 4 judgments about a young woman after reading her "job application portfolio." Five characteristics of the young woman were manipulated orthogonally. Ss were asked to report how each of the 5 manipulated factors had influenced each of their judgments. "Observer Ss," who had access only to very impoverished descriptions of each of the 5 factors, were asked to predict how each of the factors would influence each of the judgments. Results show that S (...) reports about the effects of the factors on the judgments were in general highly inaccurate; observer predictions were extremely similar to S reports; for the single judgment for which Ss showed substantial accuracy, observer predictions were as accurate as S reports. Results indicate that whatever introspective access to cognitive processes may exist, it is not sufficient to produce generally accurate reports about such processes, nor even to produce reports that differ much from those of poorly informed outside observers. (shrink)

We consider a special case of heuristics, namely numeric heuristic evaluation functions, and their use in artificial intelligence search algorithms. The problems they are applied to fall into three general classes: single-agent path-finding problems, two-player games, and constraint-satisfaction problems. In a single-agent path-finding problem, such as the Fifteen Puzzle or the travelling salesman problem, a single agent searches for a shortest path from an initial state to a goal state. Two-player games, such as chess and checkers, involve an adversarial relationship (...) between two players, each trying to win the game. In a constraint-satisfaction, problem, such as the 8-Queens problem, the task is to find a state that satisfies a set of constraints. All of these problems are computationally intensive, and heuristic evaluation functions are used to reduce the amount of computation required to solve them. In each case we explain the nature of the evaluation functions used, how they are used in search algorithms, and how they can be automatically learned or acquired. (shrink)

Staged 2 different videotaped interviews with the same individual—a college instructor who spoke English with a European accent. In one of the interviews the instructor was warm and friendly, in the other, cold and distant. 118 undergraduates were asked to evaluate the instructor. Ss who saw the warm instructor rated his appearance, mannerisms, and accent as appealing, whereas those who saw the cold instructor rated these attributes as irritating. Results indicate that global evaluations of a person can induce altered evaluations (...) of the person's attributes, even when there is sufficient information to allow for independent assessments of them. Furthermore, Ss were unaware of this influence of global evaluations on ratings of attributes. In fact, Ss who saw the cold instructor actually believed that the direction of influence was opposite to the true direction. They reported that their dislike of the instructor had no effect on their rating of his attributes but that their dislike of his attributes had lowered their global evaluations of him. (shrink)