This paper is a public philosophy essay about Friedrich Nietzsche’s discussion of justice in the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morals. My aim is to present the subtle and sophisticated way in which he thought about (i) how individuals relate to the social reality they find themselves in and (ii) how that social reality shapes them. His story regarding (ii) is that with the establishment of justice—that is, with punishment for misdeeds becoming more and more deferred to a (...) central authority—individuals could no longer directly discharge their instinctual drive to bring about suffering in others, so that drive turned inwards, leading to our self-domestication. Regarding (i), Nietzsche argues that popular conceptions of justice—such as that the punishment of wrongdoers is meant to deter others from doing the same, or perhaps that rehabilitation is part of the purpose—are merely rationalizations individuals come up with to justify their social reality, where the unfolding of that social reality is in fact governed by naturalistic laws. I situate the distinction here, between a part of objective reality and an interpretation placed upon it, alongside more general existentialist themes in Nietzsche’s thought, and emphasize the relevance for us now of his naturalistic view of social reality. (shrink)

The animalist view of personal identity, according to which we human persons are identical to animals, is arguably the simplest view of the relationship between human persons and animals. But animalism faces a serious challenge from the possibility of brain transplants. This chapter develops, on behalf of animalism, a new way of modeling such cases. The model is developed by analogy with situations of environmentally determined reference shift familiar from the literature on externalism in the philosophy of mind and language. (...) The resulting externalist animalist model is put to work in describing a range of variant cases and in accounting for certain anti-animalist intuitions. In the final section some wider consequences are elucidated, concerning the extrinsic nature of thought, and the coherence, within a broadly materialist framework, of disembodied consciousness. (shrink)

The partial cooperation displayed by subjects in the Centipede Game deviates radically from the predictions of traditional game theory. Even standard, infinite population, evolutionary settings have failed to provide an explanation for this behavior. However, recent work in finite population evolutionary models has shown that such settings can produce radically different results from the standard models. This paper examines the evolution of partial cooperation in finite populations. The results reveal a new possible explanation that is not open to the standard (...) models and gives us reason to be cautious when employing these otherwise helpful idealizations. *Received January 2007; revised November 2007. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of California, 3151 Social Science Plaza A, Irvine, CA 92697-5100; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

Both advocates and opponents of the animalist view that we are fundamentally biological organisms have typically assumed that animalism is incompatible with intuitive verdicts about cerebrum isolation and transplantation. It is argued here that this assumption is a mistake. Animalism, developed in a natural way, in fact strongly supports these intuitive verdicts. The availability of this attractive resolution of a central puzzle in the personal identity debate has been obscured by a range of factors, including the prevalence in contemporary metaphysics (...) of a certain conception of the nature of organisms. I end by explaining how the animalist can use intuitive verdicts, usually thought to present a difficulty for the view, as positive evidence for claims about the persistence conditions of the relevant kind of organism. (shrink)

This chapter presents Connecting Scotland as a case study, highlighting the correlation between current research into digital inequality to identify those most in need of support, and the practical application of work to address this at scale through third sector organisations working directly with those at greatest risk of digital exclusion. The chapter also considers the vital role of the ‘trusted intermediary’ acting as digital champion for device recipients, and, using the data gathered via sessions with hundreds of frontline staff, (...) explore immediate challenges and opportunities for engagement. It will also reflect on the application of research in the creation of training and resources to support the programme. Finally, the chapter will reflect on some of the many lessons learned, and consider implications for both policy-makers and fieldworkers seeking to address digital inequality at scale. All three authors were involved extensively in the development and delivery of this work. (shrink)

It is generally thought that cognition evolved to help us navigate complex environments. Social interactions make up one part of a complex environment, and some have argued that social settings are crucial to the evolution of cognition. This article uses the methods of evolutionary game theory to investigate the effect of social interaction on the evolution of cognition broadly construed as strategic learning or plasticity. I delineate the conditions under which social interaction alone, apart from any additional external environmental variation, (...) can provide the selective pressure necessary for the initial evolution of learning. Furthermore, it is argued that in the context of social interactions we should notexpect traditional learners that ‘best-respond’ to dominate the population. Consequently, it may be important to consider non-traditional learners when modelling social evolution. 1 Introduction2 The Model3 Adapting to the Population3.1 Learning an equlibrium4 Adapting to Individuals4.1 Learning a best response and non-traditional learners5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Medicine today, as both art and science, embodies a split personality. The ensuing tension—between individualized consideration, experience, and judgment on the one hand, and standardization, objective evidence, and guidelines on the other—plays out in the simultaneous aspirations of the medical humanities and evidence-based medicine, and in a host of other telling terms and movements. This is not a new tension, however. We turn in this paper to the critical but complex history of the term “personal equation” as both reflective and (...) generative of this tension on both sides of the Atlantic during a formative period in medicine from the mid-19th through the mid-20th centuries. The term was featured in almost every... (shrink)

Herët në mëngjes fillova të lexoja “Të bijën e Agamemnonit” të Ismail Kadaresë dhe pashë se ai kishte përdorur fjalën “kalimtar” që do të ishte edhe shprehja relevante për prezantimin e sotëm. Duke ditur se do të vija në Ballkan, nisa të lexoja edhe një tjetër vepër letrare, atë të Stieg Larssonit, “Vajza me tatu të dragoit”. Sikurse te vepra e Kadaresë, edhe në librin e Larssonit gjeta diçka që do të më hynte shumë në punë, që do të ishte (...) relevante për diskutimin tonë të ditës së sotme. Prandaj ju sot do të jeni shtegtarë të ideve, të mishëruar në një farë udhëtimi topografik. Unë do t’ju shpie nëpër një numër të madh personazhesh (karaktere fiktive dhe historike) dhe nëpër ide, secila prej të cilave na del para sysh, por kur bashkohet me tjera, shfamljarizon përvojat tona. Kur t’i vihet kapaku gjithë kësaj që do të shpjegojë, do t’ju familjarizojë me bindjen se plotfuqia mendore filozofike është më shumë se një bashkudhëtar në përvojat tona jetësore, veçanërisht brenda politikëbërjes. (shrink)

In this article, I explain Aquinas' approach to philosophy and theology. I then discuss how Aquinas thought the universe having a beginning is a matter of faith, not reason. I then argue that Aquinas' position is still correct despite the cosmological model of the big bang. Men of faith, I argue, ought to have a notion of God that is based on metaphysics, not a physical model, which at best brings us to a Deistic God.

Utilizing the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Rory Misiewicz argues for a new approach to the problem of theological language in Christian theology. This approach, the "analogy of signs," serves as a critical alternative to influential models of theological language based upon an analogy of being, grammatical analogy, or analogy of faith.

We examine contemporary game-theoretic accounts of ownership as a convention. New results from dynamic networks complicate matters, suggesting that if ownership is conventional, it should not be as...

Joint attention occurs when two (or more) individuals attend together to some object. It has been identified by psychologists as an early form of our joint engagement, and is thought to provide us with an understanding of other minds that is basic in that sophisticated conceptual resources are not involved. Accordingly, it has also attracted the interest of philosophers. Moreover, a very recent trend in the psychological and philosophical literature on joint attention consists of developing the suggestion that it holds (...) partially in virtue of communication: it is because we share our thoughts or feelings about an object that our individual attention becomes joint. This paper unpacks the communicative suggestion in a way that accounts for joint attention's basicness. (shrink)

What does our naïve conception of a conscious subject demand of the nature of conscious beings? In a series of recent papers David Barnett has argued that a range of powerful intuitions in the philosophy of mind are best explained by the hypothesis that our naïve conception imposes a requirement of mereological simplicity on the nature of conscious beings. It is argued here that there is a much more plausible explanation of the intuitions in question. Our naïve conception of a (...) conscious subject imposes a requirement of topological integrity. (shrink)

This book examines 13th century views about time, particularly the views of Thomas Aquinas and his contemporaries in the middle of the century. As medieval thinkers considered time to be just another duration alongside the durations of aeviternity (the aevum) and eternity, the scope of the study covers all three durations, culminating in an examination of God’s relationship to time. Chapter 1 opens the discussion by examining some of the key language and terminology which 13th century thinkers used. Chapters 2-5 (...) examine the topological properties of time: the properties that determine its shape and structure. Chapter 6 investigates the metrical properties of time: the properties pertaining to time when it is considered as a measure. Chapter 7 looks at the criteria, factors, and language which 13th century thinkers typically took as entailing that a particular would be in time. Chapter 8 explores how 13th century thinkers discussed existence outside of time, particularly as it was applied to aeviternity and aeviternal beings. Chapter 9 examines the content of the medieval concept of eternity, and how these ideas are best rendered in contemporary language. Chapter 10 examines the specific question of how 13th century thinkers viewed God’s relationship to time. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay’s aim is to demonstrate how recent defenses of divine simplicity have failed to address the prevailing challenge of analogical language, and thereby render much of their argumentation for simplicity’s appropriateness in Christian theology null-and-void. For this task, three book-length works published within the last few years are examined: Steven Duby’s Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account, D. Stephen Long’s The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy, and Jordan Barrett’s Divine Simplicity: A Biblical and Trinitarian Account. The (...) first section briefly details what each author understands divine simplicity to characterize, and how that characterization involves the pivotal denial of God belonging to any genus. The second section addresses the extent to which each author provides an answer as to how one can analogically speak of a simple God. Finally, the third section critiques the kinds of analogical positions found in Thomas Cajetan’s influential De Nominum Analogia, showing that they do not provide a sufficient analogical framework to ground intelligible propositions or inferences about a simple God, which thereby places the original three authors’ defenses in danger of serious incoherence. (shrink)

Shadmehr and Ahmed cogently argue that vigor of appetitive movements is positively correlated with their value, and that value can therefore be inferred by measuring vigor. Here, we highlight three points to consider when interpreting this account: (1) The correlation between vigor and value is not obligatory, (2) the vigor effect also arises in frameworks other than optimal foraging, and (3) the term vigor can be misinterpreted, thereby affecting rigor.

The aim of Brandon Daniel-Hughes’s book is to explore the following provocative hypothesis: religious communities are communities of inquiry. As suggested by the title, the writings of C. S. Peirce provide the primary resources and rationale for this claim; his ideas on belief, habit, community, continuity, pragmatism, semiotics, and inquiry are deeply constitutive of the project. And for the most part, Daniel-Hughes’s integration produces a compelling read; however, that is not always the case, especially concerning the notion of religious inquiry’s (...) “primary referent”. Nonetheless, Daniel-Hughes brings forth a fascinating and fecund interpretation of religious practice that will be valuable to... (shrink)

Companies are increasingly singing up to a range of corporate responsibility codes and other voluntary commitments. Using evidence from the mining industry’s experience with the Australian Greenhouse Challenge, the Minerals Council’s Code for Environmental Management and the ISO14001 Specification for Environmental Management Systems, this article examines whether the outcomes from the adoption of multiple voluntary approaches differ from those outcomes that would be expected if each voluntary approach was adopted in isolation. The article demonstrates that it is feasible for companies (...) to participate in multiple voluntary approaches and to derive benefits such as reduced transaction costs, improved data quality and enhanced implementation. However, there is limited evidence that the voluntary approaches in combination have enhanced environmental performance, economic efficiency, innovation or competitiveness beyond that which would be achieved from each of the approaches in isolation. Furthermore, many of the limitations of voluntary approaches (in particular, environmental performance, acceptability to NGOs) remain. (shrink)

Signals regarding the behavior of others are an essential element of human moral systems and there are important evolutionary connections between language and large-scale cooperation. In particular, social communication may be required for the reputation tracking needed to stabilize indirect reciprocity. Additionally, scholars have suggested that the benefits of indirect reciprocity may have been important for the evolution of language and that social signals may have coevolved with large-scale cooperation. This paper investigates the possibility of such a coevolution. Using the (...) tools of evolutionary game theory, we present a model that incorporates primitive “moral signaling” into a simple setting of indirect reciprocity. This model reveals some potential difficulties for the evolution of “moral signals.” We find that it is possible for “moral signals” to evolve alongside indirect reciprocity, but without some external pressure aiding the evolution of a signaling system, such a coevolution is unlikely. (shrink)

In “A Case Study in Unethical Transgressive Bioethics” Laurence McCullough and colleagues (2010) call for signers to disavow the Letter of Concern (LoC) regarding Maria New's ongoing work with and...

How can a critical analysis of entrepreneurial intention inform an appreciation of ethics in social enterprise business models? In answering this question, we consider the ethical commitments that inform entrepreneurial action and the hybrid organisations that emerge out of these commitments and actions. Ethical theory can be a useful way to reorient the field of social enterprise so that it is more critical of bureaucratic and market-driven enterprises connected to neoliberal doctrine. Social enterprise hybrid business models are therefore reframed as (...) outcomes of both ethical and entrepreneurial intentions. We challenge the dominant conceptualisation of social enterprise as a hybrid blend of mission and market by reframing hybridity in terms of the moral choice of economic system and social value orientation. We deconstruct the political foundations of charitable trading activities, co-operative and mutual enterprises and socially responsible businesses by examining the rationalities and ethical commitments that underpin them. Whilst conceptual modelling of social enterprise is not new, this paper contributes to knowledge by developing a theory of social enterprise ethics based on the moral/political choices that are made by entrepreneurs when choosing between systems of economic exchange and social value orientation, then expressing it through a legal form. (shrink)

! The Stabilization and Association Agreement between BiH and the European Union is available for readers at the BiH Parliament web page. The content of SAA is available at the front web page of BiH Parliament, under the link entitled "highlighted", BiH Parliament Office for Public Relations stated. ! Thanked to donation of Norway in the amount of about 20.000 KM and UNDP aid with 3.000 KM, National Library in Srebrenica reconstructed its premises for students and reading. They bought furniture (...) and equipment for the reading room which now provides with new services - web page and internet, since six new computers were bought. The library now has more than 35.000 books. Reading room is equipped entirely and it will be open daily. !BiH Defense Ministry announced the second public notice for recruitment of soldiers in professorial military service of BiH Army Forces, valid to August, 4, BiH Defense Ministry stated. The announcement read that in total there are 541 vacancies in the military service for admission to professional service of BiH Army forces, where 202 vacancies are envisaged for Bosniaks, 204 for Croats and 135 for Serbs. Having in mind the fact that the candidates' documents were retained on which basis the candidates were called to testing on the public announcement, on March 27, these potential candidates can apply only by application form. (shrink)

A formal and idealised understanding of intentionality as a mental process is a central topic within the classical Husserlian phenomenological analysis of consciousness. This paper does not define Husserl’s stance, because that has been achieved elsewhere (Kern, 1977, 1986, 1988; Kern & Marbach, 2001; Marbach, 1988, 1993, 2005; Owen, 2006; Zahavi, 2003). This paper shows how intentionality informs therapy theory and practice. Husserl’s ideas are taken to the psychotherapy relationship in order to explain what it means for consciousness to have (...) intentionality in various ways. The role of intentionality in psychopathology and its treatment within cognitive behavioural therapy is explained as a way of showing how understanding intentionality creates a medum for the delivery of care. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 7, Edition 1 May 2007. (shrink)

Rising Tidesis an extensively researched and engagingly written examination of the many factors that have shaped ecological thought.