INTRODUCTION Linguists who work within the tradition of transformational generative grammar tend to regard semantics as an intractable, perhaps ultimately ...

The radical empiricism of William James was first formally presented in his seminal papers of 1904, 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience'. In James's view, pure experience was to serve as the source for psychology's primary data and radical empiricism was to launch an effective critique of experimentalism in psychology, a critique from which the problem of experimentalism within science could be addressed more broadly. This collection of papers presents James's formal statements on radical empiricism and a (...) representative sample of contemporary responses from psychologists and philosophers. With only a few exceptions, these responses indicate just how badly James was misread - psychologists ignoring the heart of James's message and philosophers transforming James's metaphysics into something quite unintelligible to the emerging generation of experimental psychologists. (shrink)

In this dissertation it is argued that Kant's critique of Leibniz as found in the amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason derives from his theory of reflection. It is argued further that this unfocused and fragmentary amphiboly chapter, which contains the Leibniz-critique, can be seen to have a previously unsuspected unity to it. The keys to perceiving this unity are the appendix's purpose, structure and mosaic composition. ;The primary purpose of the appendix is not to present Kant's criticisms (...) of Leibniz as is commonly thought, but rather it is to sketch his theory of reflection. Not only is this attested to by Kant himself , it is also made evident by the structure of the appendix. Structurally, the appendix is built around an introduction to the operation of transcendental reflection and a discussion of the concepts of reflection, this being the structure of each of the first three sections. By means of each pair of concepts of reflection Kant claims to summarize the basic tenets and origin of Leibniz's philosophy. Kant also claims that Leibnizls whole philosophy rests on one seminal error, which will be shown to be the omission of the operation of transcendental reflection. To be sure, Kant claims Leibniz made a number of other errors, but these various errors all derive from the omission of transcendental reflection. ;While this omission can be used to explain the other more well-known epistemological mistakes with which Kant charges Leibniz, it is undeniable that there are certain textual difficulties with the appendix. These can be dealt with by the hypothesis that the different sections were composed at different times and than pieced together without detailed revisions. If such a mosaic composition is granted, then some allowance can be made for the noticeable incongruities between these sections and for occasional problematic passages. This does not, however, warrant the claim that the appendix is not properly placed or unimportant. On the contrary, supplemented by clearer statements of Kant's theory of reflection and of his Leibniz-critique, the following interpretation shows that the appendix is properly placed and integral to the primary aims of the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

This paper offers a brief introduction, summary, and commentary on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), a burgeoning, interdisciplinary field of study that examines the way mental resources and predispositions facilitate religious beliefs and behavior. This presentation of CSR devotes special attention to research on teleological bias, agency detection, and counterintuitive concepts; moreover, critical discussions of mystical experience and god concepts ensue from treatments of the latter two topics. Research on teleological bias, agency detection, and counterintuitiveness supports the basic position (...) that religious cognition is natural, although distinctive rationales are associated with each topic of investigation. While the major focus of this article is epistemological – how religious thought develops and is sustained – the conclusion briefly addresses the ontological significance of basic CSR findings. (shrink)

The Key Issues series aims to make available the contemporary responses that met important books and debates on their first appearance. These take the form of journal articles, book extracts, public letters, sermons and pamphlets which provides an insight into the historical relevance and the social and political context in which a publication or particular topic emerged. Each volume brings together some of the key responses to the works.

Scholars of classical philosophy have long disputed whether Aristotle was a dialectical thinker. Most agree that Aristotle contrasts dialectical reasoning with demonstrative reasoning, where the former reasons from generally accepted opinions and the latter reasons from the true and primary. Starting with a grasp on truth, demonstration never relinquishes it. Starting with opinion, how could dialectical reasoning ever reach truth, much less the truth about first principles? Is dialectic then an exercise that reiterates the prejudices of one's times and at (...) best allows one to persuade others by appealing to these prejudices, or is it the royal road to first principles and philosophical wisdom? In From Puzzles to Principles? May Sim gathers experts to argue both these positions and offer a variety of interpretive possibilities. The contributors' thoughtful reflections on the nature and limits of dialectic should play a crucial role in Aristotelian scholarship. (shrink)

This article derives from a paper presented at the Philosophy of Religion and Mysticism Conference hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, May 22-24, 2014. That paper introduced theories and methods drawn from the ”cognitive science of religion’ and suggested future avenues of research connecting CSR and scholarship on mysticism. Towards these same ends, the present article proceeds in three parts. Part I outlines the origins, aims, and basic tenets of CSR research. Part II discusses one specific causal (...) perspective that informs a wide range of CSR research, Sperber’s ”epidemiological’ approach to cultural expression, and connects this perspective to the example of creator deities. Part III discusses some possible future directions for CSR research concerning mysticism and mystical experience. Finally, a coda addresses two common misunderstandings concerning the ”reductionist’ nature of CSR research. (shrink)

The Eugenic Mind Project is a wide-ranging, philosophical book that explores and critiques both past and present eugenic thinking, drawing on the author’s intimate knowledge of eugenics in North America and his previous work on the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, the fragile sciences. Informed by the perspectives of Canadian eugenics survivors in the province of Alberta, The Eugenic Mind Project recounts the history of eugenics and the thinking that drove it, and critically engages contemporary manifestations of eugenic thought, newgenics. (...) An accessible, original work of scholarship adopting what the author calls a standpoint eugenics, this book focuses on the roots of eugenic thinking past and present. It will provoke and enrich discussions about human nature and human diversity, the social uses of biotechnology, and social policy governing future generations. You can download the preface and acknowledgements here. (shrink)

Project Chariot, one of the first planned nuclear excavation experiments of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Plowshare program, touched off a controversy over its safety that drew in two prominent American biologists, Paul Sears and Barry Commoner, both now known mainly for their roles as environmental advocates. However, Sears, the ecologist and well-established conservationist, supported Project Chariot and the Plowshare program in general, while Commoner, unacquainted with ecology at the time, strongly opposed it. A close study of their different (...) responses to this project provides insights into the tensions and pressures on scientists during this critical period of the Cold War, 1960–1961, when fear of nuclear war and concerns over radioactive fallout from bomb tests mixed with hopes for peaceful applications of nuclear energy and the environmental movement had not yet begun. For Sears, the close connections in the United States between the science of ecology and the Atomic Energy Commission may well have played a significant role in his support for Chariot, while for Commoner, Project Chariot turned out to be his epiphany moment, the incident that transformed him from an antinuclear activist into an environmentalist. (shrink)

This is a critical response to "Defending Eugenics", published in MBR in 2018.

This paper begins by saying enough about eugenics to explain why disability is central to eugenics (section 2), then elaborates on why cognitive disability has played and continues to play a special role in eugenics and in thinking about moral status (section 3) before identifying three reasons why eugenics remains a live issue in contemporary bioethics (section 4). After a reminder of the connections between Nazi eugenics, medicine, and bioethics (section 5), it returns to take up two more specific clusters (...) of issues at the intersection of eugenics, disability, and bioethics. These concern questions of life, death, and reproductive value (section 6) and the value of standpoint theory and epistemology for understanding some of the tensions between bioethics and disability in light of a shared eugenic past (section 7). (shrink)

Comparisons between germline gene editing using CRISPR technology and a renewal of eugenics are evident in the current bioethical discussions. This article examines the different roles of such references to the past. In the first part, the alleged parallels between gene editing of the germline and eugenics are addressed from three perspectives: First, the historical adequacy of such comparisons is questioned. Second, it is asked whether the evils of the past can in fact be attributed to (future) practices of germline (...) gene editing. Third, it is discussed whether the alleged hazards of eugenics should in fact universally be condemned from a moral perspective. The article attempts to show that references to the eugenic past to rebut gene editing are highly selective and should be abandoned to allow for a more transparent ethical discourse. While the comparison with a eugenic past is frequently drawn by opponents of germline gene editing, the remaining part of this article investigates historic references from the proponents of germline gene editing. It is argued that they also employ different narratives of the past to justify their own liberal position. While such references are equally problematic, some lessons from the history of eugenics will be spelled out that can inform future debates on germline gene editing. (shrink)

Eugenic thinking involves distinguishing between sorts or kinds of people in terms of the perceived desirable or undesirable traits that those people are likely to transmit to future generations. While eugenics itself is often thought of as an ideology that generated a social movement of global influence from roughly 1900 to 1945, eugenic thinking both pre-dates this period and continues to inform a range of contemporary debates and social policies, including those concerning prenatal screening, transhumanism, population control, and disability. Various (...) sciences, including the then-nascent sciences of psychology and psychiatry, played important roles in early twentieth-century eugenics, and their legacy is reflected in contemporary eugenic thinking and policies. Understanding the history of eugenics and the role of these early sciences of cognition in that history is useful in reflecting further on ongoing forms of eugenic thinking to which the contemporary cognitive sciences are relevant. (shrink)

Eugenics does not feel so distant from where I stand. This essay explains why.

Projects of human improvement take both individual and intergenerational forms. The biosciences provide many technologies, including prenatal screening and the latest gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, that have been viewed as providing the means to human improvement across generations. But who is fit to furnish the next generation? Historically, eugenics epitomizes the science-based attempt to improve human society through distinguishing kinds of people and then implementing social policies—from immigration restriction to sexual sterilization and euthanasia—that influence and even direct what (...) sorts of people populate our future. Despite recognition of the horrors of the eugenic extremes of the past and of the subhumanizing of those sufficiently below appearance or ability norms to be viewed as “defective” or “unfit”, many people continue to be drawn to strands of eugenic thinking. (shrink)

This short article provides an overview of the series of eugenic family studies that began in the 1870s in the United States and that were influential in establishing eugenics as a 20th-century movement and ideology.

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.

In Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People (2007), John Harris argues that a proper concern for the welfare of future human beings implies that we are morally obligated to pursue enhancements. Similarly, in “Procreative Beneficience: Why We Should Select The Best Children” (2001) and in a number of subsequent publications, Julian Savulescu has suggested that we are morally obligated to use genetic (and other) technologies to produce the best children possible. In this paper I argue that if (...) we do have such obligations then their implications are much more radical than either Harris or Savulescu admit. There is an uneasy tension in the work of these authors, between their consequentialism and their (apparent) libertarianism when it comes to the rights of individuals to use—or not use—enhancement technologies as they see fit. Only through a very particular and not especially plausible negotiation of the tension between their moral theory and their policy prescriptions can Harris and Savulescu obscure the fact that their philosophies have implications that most people would find profoundly unattractive. (shrink)

This commentary continues an exchange on eugenics in Monash Bioethics Review between Anomaly (2018), Wilson (2019), and Veit, Anomaly, Agar, Singer, Fleischman, and Minerva (2021). The eponymous question, “Can ‘Eugenics’ be Defended?”, is multiply ambiguous and does not receive a clear answer from Veit et al.. Despite their stated desire to move beyond mere semantics to matters of substance, Veit et al. concentrate on several uses of the term “eugenics” that pull in opposite directions. I argue, first, that Veit et (...) al. (2021) makes much the same error as does Anomaly (2018) in characterizing eugenics; second, that the paper misunderstands the relationship between eugenics and enhancement; and third, that it distorts the views expressed in my “Eugenics Undefended”. (shrink)

This article discusses the ethics of the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis to prevent the birth of children with intersex conditions/disorders of sex development , such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia and androgen insensitivity syndrome . While pediatric surgeries performed on children with ambiguous genitalia have been the topic of intense bioethical controversy, there has been almost no discussion to date of the ethics of the use of PGD to reduce the prevalence of these conditions. I suggest that PGD for those (...) conditions that involve serious medical risks for those born with them is morally permissible and that PGD for other “cosmetic” variations in sexual anatomy is more defensible than might first appear. However, importantly, the arguments that establish the latter claim have radical and disturbing implications for our attitude toward diversity more generally. (shrink)

This is the prologue to a collection of essays on eugenics and psychiatry.

This film is a 44-minute documentary film based around the stories of five eugenics survivor from the province of Alberta, Canada, made as part of the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project.

In the intersection between eugenics past and present, disability has never been far beneath the surface. Perceived and ascribed disabilities of body and mind were one of the core sets of eugenics traits that provided the basis for institutionalized and sterilization on eugenic grounds for the first 75 years of the 20th-century. Since that time, the eugenic preoccupation with the character of future generations has seeped into what have become everyday practices in the realm of reproductive choice. As Marsha Saxton (...) (2000) and Adrienne Asch (2000, 2003) have forcefully argued, the use of prenatal screening technologies to facilitate the selective abortion of fetuses with features that signify disabling traits—the paradigm here being trisomy 21 in a fetus indicating Down Syndrome in the child—express a negative view of such disabilities sufficient to warrant terminating an otherwise wanted pregnancy. The eliminative structure of what Rosemary Garland Thompson (2012) has called eugenic logic persists in contemporary practices governing reproductive choice, social inclusion, and democratic participation and their relationship to disability. The tie between eugenics and contemporary disability studies suggests that eugenics and reflection on its history can also play a more positive role in disability politics. After focusing on eugenics in the first half of the paper, we will shift in the second half of the paper to eugenic resonances in contemporary thought and practice, concluding with some thoughts about ongoing practices of silencing and the very idea of eradicating disability. (shrink)

The ArgumentIs genetic counseling a form of eugenics? To some extent, the answer depends upon how the terms “eugenics” and “genetic counseling” are defined. This paper reviews the eugenic implications of four models of genetic counseling. The complexities of slapping the eugenic label on genetic counseling are illustrated with three cases drawn from clinical practice. However, even though genetic counseling is not always a eugenic activity, genetic counselors work in a medical/ financial setting that has the net eugenic effect of, (...) and profits from, reducing the number of people with genetic disorders. (shrink)

Responding to volatile criticisms frequently leveled at Leo Strauss and those he influenced, the prominent contributors to this volume demonstrate the profound influence that Strauss and his students have exerted on American liberal democracy and contemporary political thought. By stressing the enduring vitality of classic books and by articulating the theoretical and practical flaws of relativism and historicism, the contributors argue that Strauss and the Straussians have identified fundamental crises of modernity and liberal democracy.

Certain traits, such as intelligence and mental deficiency, have been the focus of eugenic research and propaganda. This focus on such eugenic traits builds on three commonsense ideas: (1) People differ with respect to some of their traits, such as eye-colour and height; (2) Many traits run in families, being passed on from parents to their children; (3) Some traits are desirable, while others are undesirable. These three ideas about traits—their variability, heritability, and desirability—fed the much more controversial eugenicist view (...) that some traits make a person of “good stock”, while others reflect the fact that she comes from “inferior stock”. In combination with the power to influence human reproduction, the systematic study of eugenic traits has thus been thought to provide the basis for human improvement across generations. Three sources reveal which traits were considered important to eugenicists, the public, and decision makers: the research publications of eugenicists, discussions of eugenics in public and popular media, and legislation. (shrink)