Williams, Ron As I consider the list of previous AHOY recipients since the inaugural award in 1983, I can only say that this is an immeasurable honour. It means much to me because, for almost ten years now, Humanism has been there for my family. In 2005-2006, when separation of church and state school issues first crept into our lives, the Humanist Society of Queensland was to appear as the only beacon of secularist activism upon the deep northern horizon. So (...) in 2006 Andrea and I joined the HSQ. (shrink)

In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology. This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of the contrasts (...) that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. This book will appeal to students and professionals in the philosophy and history of science, and biology. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate millions of jobs, from finance to truck driving. But artisanal products are valued precisely because of their human origins, and thus have some inherent “immunity” from AI job loss. At the same time, artisanal labor, combined with technology, could potentially help to democratize the economy, allowing independent, small-scale businesses to flourish. Could AI, robotics and related automation technologies enhance the economic viability and environmental sustainability of these beloved crafting professions, perhaps even expanding their niche (...) to replace some job loss in other sectors? In this paper, we compare the problems created by the current mass production economy and potential solutions from an artisanal economy. In doing so, the paper details the possibilities of utilizing AI to support hybrid forms of human–machine production at the microscale; localized and sustainable value chains at the mesoscale; and networks of these localized and sustainable producers at the macroscale. In short, a wide range of automation technologies are potentially available for facilitating and empowering an artisanal economy. Ultimately, it is our hope that this paper will facilitate a discussion on a future vision for more “generative” economic forms in which labor value, ecological value and social value can circulate without extraction or alienation. (shrink)

Ron Mallon explores how thinking and talking about kinds of person can bring those kinds into being. He considers what normative implications this social constructionism has for our understanding of our practices of representing human kinds, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, and for our own agency.

Some psychologists aim to secure a role for psychological explanations in understanding contemporary social disparities, a concern that plays out in debates over the relevance of the Implicit Association Test. Meta-analysts disagree about the predictive validity of the IAT and about the importance of implicit attitudes in explaining racial disparities. Here, I use the IAT to articulate and explore one route to establishing the relevance of psychological attitudes with small effects: an appeal to a process of “accumulation” that aggregates small (...) effects into large harms. After characterizing mechanisms of accumulation and considering some candidate examples, I argue that such mechanisms suggest how a contemporary attitude with small effects could figure in the explanation of large disparities, but they do not vindicate the importance of such an attitude since such mechanisms are typically also determined by competing causes. I close by sketching several strategies for advancing a defense of the relevance of attitudes with small effects. (shrink)

It is highly likely that, to achieve full human–machine symbiosis, truly intelligent cognitive systems—human-like —may have to be developed first. Such systems should not only be capable of performing human-like thinking, reasoning, and problem solving, but also be capable of displaying human-like motivation, emotion, and personality. In this opinion article, I will argue that such systems are indeed possible and needed to achieve true and full symbiosis with humans. A computational cognitive architecture is used in this article to illustrate, in (...) a preliminary way, what can be achieved in this regard. It is shown that Clarion involves complex structures, representations, and mechanisms, and is capable of capturing human cognitive performance as well as human motivation, emotion, personality, and other relevant aspects. It is further argued that the cognitive architecture can enable and facilitate true human–machine symbiosis. (shrink)

The so-called "adaptationism" of mainstream evolutionary biology has been criticized from a variety of sources. One, which has received relatively little philosophical attention, is developmental biology. Developmental constraints are said to be neglected by adaptationists. This paper explores the divergent methodological and explanatory interests that separate mainstream evolutionary biology from its embryological and developmental critics. It will focus on the concept of constraint itself; even this central concept is understood differently by the two sides of the dispute.

Birth Control and the state: a plea and a forecast by C P Blacker A discussion of the arguments for and against Birth Control, considered from the personal, social and international aspects and its bearings upon the future. Halcyon, or the Future of Monogamy by Vera Brittain Examines the institution of monogamous marriage in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, through the eyes of a fictional Professor Huxterwin. Hymen, or the Future of Marriage by Norman Haire This candid survey examines (...) why many marriages today seem to be so unsatisfactory and finds the answer in the sexual ethic of our society which is ill adapted to our social and economic needs. The problems of morality, sex-education, prostitution, birth-control and polygamy are all touched upon. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the relationship between cultural and cognitive-psychological processes, and discusses the potential impact of the cognitive sciences on understand...

Through a philosophical lens, this book explores the powerful educational capabilities of classic psychedelics.

A Tale of Two Stories: Customary Marriage and Paternity. A Discourse Analysis of a Scandal in Egypt. By Björn Bentlage. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, vol. 333. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2017. Pp. 337. €49.80.

Recent work shows an important asymmetry in lay intuitions about moral dilemmas. Most people think it is permissible to divert a train so that it will kill one innocent person instead of five, but most people think that it is not permissible to push a stranger in front of a train to save five innocents. We argue that recent emotion-based explanations of this asymmetry have neglected the contribution that rules make to reasoning about moral dilemmas. In two experiments, we find (...) that participants show a parallel asymmetry about versions of the dilemmas that have minimized emotional force. In a third experiment, we find that people distinguish between whether an action violates a moral rule and whether it is, all things considered, wrong. We propose that judgments of whether an action is wrong, all things considered, implicates a complex set of psychological processes, including representations of rules, emotional responses, and assessments of costs and benefits. (shrink)

This exploratory study examines how managers and professionals regard the ethical and social responsibility reputations of 60 well-known Australian and International companies, and how this in turn influences their attitudes and behaviour towards these organisations. More than 350 MBA, other postgraduate business students, and participants in Australian Institute of Management management education programmes were surveyed to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible they believed the 60 organisations to be. The survey sought to determine what these participants considered 'ethical' and 'socially (...) responsible' behaviour in organisations to be. The survey also examined how the participants' beliefs influenced their attitudes and intended behaviours towards these organisations. The results of this survey indicate that many managers and professionals have clear views about the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies. This affects their attitudes towards these organisations which in turn has an impact on their intended behaviour towards them. These findings support the view in other research studies that well-educated managers and professionals are, to some extent, taking into account the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies when deciding whether to work for them, use their services or buy shares in their companies. (shrink)

This book provides new perspectives on endurance sport and how it contributes to a good and sustainable life in times of climate change, ecological disruption and inconvenient truths. It builds on a continental philosophical tradition, i.e. the philosophy of among others Peter Sloterdijk, but also on “ecosophy” and American pragmatism to explore the idea of sport as a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. Since ancient times, human beings have been involved in practices of the Self in order to work (...) on themselves and improve themselves, for instance by strengthening their physical condition and performance through sport. In the contemporary world, millions of individuals engage in endurance sports such as running, swimming and cycling, to get or keep themselves in shape. This study focuses on the ethical dimension of long-distance sport, notably cycling, as a way to become better citizens, but also to contribute to a more sustainable society and healthier planet. Dominant world-views are challenged and an alternative vision is presented. Discourse analysis and conceptual analysis are combined with phenomenology and self-observations of a dedicated practitioner of endurance sport. This book is a great source for philosophers, sport philosophers, environmental philosophers, sport scientists, policy makers, sport journalists, and endurance sport practitioners. (shrink)

Mike Anderson1 has given us a thoughtful and useful field guide: Not in the genre of a bird-watcher’s guide which is carried in the field and which contains detailed descriptions of possible sightings, but in the sense of a guide to a field (in this case embodied cognition) which aims to identify that field’s general principles and properties. I’d like to make some comments that will hopefully complement Anderson’s work, highlighting points of agreement and disagreement between his view of the (...) field and my own, and acting as a devil’s advocate in places where further discussion seems to be required. Given the venue for this guide, we can safely restrict the discussion to embodied artificial intelligence (EAI), even if such work draws on notions of embodied cognition.. (shrink)

The Nature of Dignity argues that, given what evolutionary biology tells us about human nature, we need a new understanding of what is involved in the exhibition of personal dignity, since Kant and other Enlightenment figures whose ideas of dignity have shaped our own were wrong in several of their key assumptions. The required new conception of dignity is then developed on the basis of insights gleaned from history, political-economics, literature, film, hermeneutical ethics, and evolutionary biology.

One influential view is that at least some putatively natural human kinds are actually social constructions, understood as some real kind of thing that is produced or sustained by our social and conceptual practices. Category constructionists share two commitments: they hold that human category terms like “race” and “sex” and “homosexuality” and “perversion” actually refer to constructed categories, and they hold that these categories are widely but mistakenly taken to be natural kinds. But it is far from clear that these (...) two commitments are consistent. The sort of mismatch between belief and underlying nature constructionists’ suppose is often taken to indicate a failure of reference. Reliance on a causal-historical account of reference allows the preservation of reference, but unfortunately, constructionists' appropriation of causal historical accounts of reference is beset by difficulties that do not attend natural kind theorists’ appeals to such accounts. Here, I set out these difficulties, but argue that they can be answered, allowing terms for apparently natural human kinds refer to some sort of social construction about which there is massive error. (shrink)

This paper considers discussions of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre in management literature. It argues that management scholars who have attempted to appropriate his After Virtue as a supportive text for conventional business ethics do so only by misreading or by ignoring his other work. It shows that MacIntyre does not argue for a reformed capitalism in which individual virtue overcomes institutional vice. Rather he argues that capitalist businesses are inherently vicious and that therefore individual virtue cannot be realised within (...) them. The job of the virtuous is to resist them.2. The paper first presents an account of MacIntyre’s position on management and introduces some of the critical and supportive uses of his work in management scholarship. It focuses on two papers3 typical of the approach taken by conventional business ethicists to his work. These have attempted to deploy concepts developed by MacIntyre while denying the account of management and organisation of which they form a part. The paper provides some tentative hypotheses as to why management scholars have approached MacIntyre in this way. It argues that these attempted appropriations not only have failed but also must fail as conceptual coherence is sacrificed when the account within which those concepts make sense is denied.4. (shrink)

Research in computational cognitive modeling investigates the nature of cognition through developing process-based understanding by specifying computational models of mechanisms (including representations) and processes. In this enterprise, a cognitive architecture is a domaingeneric computational cognitive model that may be used for a broad, multiple-level, multipledomain analysis of behavior. It embodies generic descriptions of cognition in computer algorithms and programs. Developing cognitive architectures is a difficult but important task. In this article, discussions of issues and challenges in developing cognitive architectures will (...) be undertaken, and an example cognitive architecture (CLARION) will be described. (shrink)

This article explicates the interaction between implicit and explicit processes in skill learning, in contrast to the tendency of researchers to study each type in isolation. It highlights various effects of the interaction on learning (including synergy effects). The authors argue for an integrated model of skill learning that takes into account both implicit and explicit processes. Moreover, they argue for a bottom-up approach (first learning implicit knowledge and then explicit knowledge) in the integrated model. A variety of qualitative data (...) can be accounted for by the approach. A computational model, CLARION, is then used to simulate a range of quantitative data. The results demonstrate the plausibility of the model, which provides a new perspective on skill learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Corporate management is torn between either focusing solely on the interests of stockholders or taking into account the interests of a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Of course, there need be no conflict where taking the wider view is also consistent with maximising stockholder wealth. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a conflict actually exists by examining the relationship between a company's positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities and equity performance. In general, we find little evidence to (...) suggest that managers taking a wider stakeholder perspective will jeopardise the interest of its stockholders. However, our findings do suggest that the market is not only influenced by the independent CSR activities, but also the totality of these activities and that the facets that they value do vary over time. It seems that most recently, the market has valued most firms that satisfied minimum requirements in the areas of diversity and environmental protection but were most proactive in the area of employee-relations. (shrink)

Over the last several decades, Richard Rorty has developed a compelling metaphilosophical theory on the history of analytic philosophy. On this telling, analytic philosophy was atavistic from the outset, a forlorn attempt to reinstate scheme/content distinctions. Rather than asking whether our claims "correspond" to some nonhuman, eternal way the world is, we should ask about their pragmatic utility. On Rorty's account, analytic philosophy terminates in pragmatism. In this paper, I argue against this assessment of the fate of our tradition. More (...) specifically, I argue against Rorty's indictment of the notion of correspondence truth. My aim is to show that correspondence truth, in providing an indispensable background for the intelligibility of pragmatism, is not the needless dogma that Rorty takes it to be. Rorty's pragmatism, I thus argue, fails to be a freestanding doctrine. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is an extension of the Naturalists’ Challenge to the use of intuitions in philosophy. This chapter explores this challenge and traditional or “armchair” responses to it, focusing especially on the case of reference. It first considers the role and nature of intuitions, along with two kinds of experimental philosophical challenges to their use: the challenge from irrelevant determination and the challenge from diversity. It then explores using the challenge from diversity to undermine the reliability of intuitions as evidence (...) for the truth of philosophical claims, and examines critical responses to the challenge from diversity. The chapter concludes by evaluating the possibility that diversity in responses to thought experiments occur even within individuals, and the implications of this for the Naturalists’ Challenge. (shrink)

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a special edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions – Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like – could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the (...) debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition. (shrink)

This book is a definitive reference source for the growing, increasingly more important, and interdisciplinary field of computational cognitive modeling, that is, computational psychology. It combines breadth of coverage with definitive statements by leading scientists in this field. Research in computational cognitive modeling explores the essence of cognition through developing detailed, process-based understanding by specifying computational mechanisms, structures, and processes. Computational models provide both conceptual clarity and precision at the same time. This book substantiates this approach through overviews and many (...) examples. (shrink)

Philosophically inclined psychologists and psychologically inclined philosophers often hold that the substantive discoveries of psychology can provide an empirical foundation for epistemology. In this paper it is argued that the ambition to found epistemology empirically faces certain unnoticed difficulties. Empirical theories concerned with knowledge?gaining abilities have been historically associated with specific epistemological views such that the epistemology gives preferential support to the substantive theory, while the theory empirically supports the epistemology. Theories attribute to the subject just those epistemic abilities which (...) associated epistemologies attribute to the scientist. The concept of epistemological significance is introduced as the significance a psychological theory can have for modifying the epistemological suppositions with which the theory was originally associated. Substantive psychological theories are strongly constrained by the epistemologies used in their development; the endorsement an epistemology receives from its associated theory should carry no weight. The alliance between psychology and epistemology is not progressive to the development of either field. Alternative sources of progress in epistemology and psychology are suggested. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a flurry of work on the metaphysics of race. While it is now widely accepted that races do not share robust, bio-behavioral essences, opinions differ over what, if anything, race is. Recent work has been divided between three apparently quite different answers. A variety of theorists argue for racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all.[iv] A second group defends racial constructionism, holding that races are in some way socially constructed.[v],[vi] And (...) a third group maintains racial population naturalism, the view that races may exist as biologically salient populations albeit ones that do not have the biologically determined social significance once imputed to them.[vii] The three groups thus seem to disagree fundamentally upon the metaphysical character of race. (shrink)