The Bible is normative for all Christian theology and ethics, including responsible theological reflection on the biotechnological future. This article considers the representation of creaturehood and what might be labelled ‘deification’ within the biblical material, framing these concepts in terms of participation in providence and redemption. This participatory emphasis allows us to move past the simplistic dismissal of biotechnological progress as ‘playing God’, by highlighting ways in which the development of technology and caregiving are proper creaturely activities, but ones that (...) must be morally aligned to the goodness of God. Framing our approximation of divine character in terms of ‘deification’ highlights its relational and soteriologically defined shape, preventing us from conceiving its attainment in any way that is loosed from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The discussion allows us to affirm the pursuit of biotechnological research, but to recognize that it is unable by itself to accomplish certain ends, and that it must be pursued in alignment with the standards of goodness by which God loves his world. (shrink)

The first mention of the concept of an inconsistency measure for sets of formulas in first-order logic was given in 1978, but that paper presented only classifications for them. The first actual inconsistency measure with a numerical value was given in 2002 for sets of formulas in propositional logic. Since that time, researchers in logic and AI have developed a substantial theory of inconsistency measures. While this is an interesting topic from the point of view of logic, an important motivation (...) for this work is also that some intelligent systems may encounter inconsistencies in their operation. This research deals primarily with propositional knowledge bases, that is, finite sets of propositional logic formulas. The goal of this paper is to extend the concept of inconsistency measure in a formal way to sets of formulas with the modal operators “necessarily” and “possibly” applied to propositional logic formulas. We use frames for the semantics, but in a way that is different from the way that frames are commonly used in modal logics, in order to facilitate measuring inconsistency. As a set of formulas may have different inconsistency measures for different frames, we define the concept of a standard frame that can be used for all finite sets of formulas in the language. We do this for two languages. The first language, AMPL, contains formulas where a prefix of operators is applied to a propositional logic formula. The second language, CMPL, adds connectives that can be applied to AMPL formulas in a limited way. We show how to extend propositional logic inconsistency measures to such sets of formulas. Finally, we define a new concept, weak inconsistency measure, and show how to compute it. (shrink)

It is a truism that some industries are controversial either because the processes employed or the resulting products, for instance, can potentially harm the well-being of people. The controversy that surrounds certain industries can sharply polarise public opinion and debate. In this article, we employ legitimacy theory and morality policy to show how one industry sector (the electronic gaming machine sector as part of the wider gambling industry) is subject to this reaction. We suggest that the difficulty in establishing legitimacy (...) surrounding CSR practices in this sector is related to morality policy, whereby ideology and personal values play important roles in dividing opinion. Thus, gambling is often framed as an activity that is morally and ethically problematic. To show how this can manifest, we examine the veracity of two state-funded studies in Australia used in the development of gambling policy and their subsequent adoption in academic research. We highlight methodological, analytical and reporting issues in these studies that normally should be identified by those using such findings. The significance is that when morality policy and conflict surrounding legitimacy are involved, then it can explain why adherence to normative research standards is potentially lowered. Our theoretical posture leads us to further speculate that the adoption and communication of CSR in electronic gambling will be contested by opponents of the industry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.1 (2005) 83-85 [Access article in PDF] Lacan, Science, and Determinism Douglas McConnell Grant Gillett Keywords Lacan, the unconscious, free will Van Staden And Hinshelwood's commen-taries raise a number of issues, but there are two particular themes common to both that we pick up in this response.The first theme concerns the reconcilability of Lacanian theory to the disciplines of analytic philosophy and "Anglo-American positivist (...) psychiatry." This is closely related to the relationship between the unconscious and the empirical sciences discussed in the editorial (McConnell and Pickering 2005). The second theme concerns the relevance of Lacanian theory to our understanding of free will and the structure of the mind. Lacan, Analytic Philosophy, and Scientific Psychiatry First, psychoanalysis or psychotherapy generally should not try to reunite with neuroscience because of the fundamental difference in their approaches to the patient, which is likely to mean that even if a theoretical rapprochement can be found, a working relationship is unlikely.Although there are many facets of Lacan's theory that were not addressed in our paper and even if many of those are totally irreconcilable to analytic philosophy, we believe that we have addressed the most ontologically fundamental issues and that these can genuinely contribute to and challenge analytic philosophy of mind.As Hinshelwood points out, psychiatry does operate with a philosophical basis, critical (or sometimes relatively uncritical) scientific realism (even though it may not be acknowledged), and it as such it can legitimately be contributed to or challenged by the philosophical aspects of Lacanian theory outlined in our paper.In fact, the theoretical basis is evinced in van Staden's commentary when he remarks on the relation between Lacanian theory and psychiatry: "... the unconscious is not only structured like a language but actually reflects and is produced by linguistic interaction between the subject and others. This is a difficult claim to verify, no doubt, but it prompts further related questions... whether the conscious mind is structured like a language" (van Staden 2005, 78). And one must ask whether this is the kind of claim that can be verified or whether it is a hermeneutic claim (in somewhat the way suggested by Jaspers), serving more as a framing belief to allow people to make sense of what has influenced them in their life histories and is currently played out in their relationships with others. We would lean toward this interpretation of the unconscious, explicitly distancing ourselves from any overreaching, quasi-scientific realism about unconscious contents and mental structures, but clinging to the thought that dealing with such contents is an essential part of the therapeutic encounter. [End Page 83]Looked at in this way, both the Lacanian unconscious and conscious mental life bear the imprint of language due to the subject's immersion and participation in the symbolic realm. This may seem a "difficult claim to verify," but because verification is linked to the scientific framework of inquiry rather than the hybrid that is clinical knowledge, we would better regard it as being difficult to establish as an axiom of therapy. The linguistic structure of the conscious and unconscious mind is, on this account, a conceptual implication of the role of the symbolic register in thought and not a thesis that requires verification (a Wittgensteinian thesis espoused by a number of contemporary philosophers, including Dummett and Davidson).As it happens, cognitive science has found linguistic structure to be important in operations of the cognitive unconscious (arguably different from the dynamic unconscious due to the former's dependence on scientific experiment and the latter's connections to life history rather than mere psychological or cognitive traits [see Gillett and McConnell 2005]). Given that language and problem solving are so closely intertwined, it would suggest that cognitive science was overlooking something important rather than damaging Lacanian theory if linguistic structure did not appear on cognitive science's "radar." So, how does language logically (in the sense defended by Husserl and Frege, that is, to do with the sense or content of thoughts not merely the processes underpinning one's contingently evolving stream... (shrink)

This book is an analysis and discussion of the soul as a psychophysical process and its role in mental representation, meaning, understanding and agency. Grant Gillett and Walter Glannon combine contemporary neuroscience and philosophy to address fundamental issues about human existence and living and acting in the world. Based in part on Aristotle's hylomorphism and model of the psyche, their approach is informed by a neuroscientific model of the brain as a dynamic organ in which patterns of neural oscillation (...) and synchronization are shaped by biological, social and cultural factors inside and outside of it. The authors provide a richer and more robust account of the soul, or mind, than other accounts by framing it in neuroscientific and philosophical terms that do not explain it away but explain it as something that is shaped by how it responds to the natural and social environment in enabling flexible and adaptive behavior. (shrink)

As consistency is such an important topic in logic, researchers have for a long time investigated how to attain and maintain it. But consistency can also be studied from the point of view of its opposite, inconsistency. The problem with inconsistency in classical logic is that by the principle of explosion a single inconsistency leads to triviality. Paraconsistent logics were introduced to get around this problem by defining logics in such a way that the explosion principle does not apply to (...) them. Another approach stays in the classical framework and evaluates the amount of inconsistency in a set of formulas. The great bulk of this work has been done for propositional logic and presents many interesting issues about inconsistency. A previous paper introduced the concept of generalized propositional logic (GPL) to provide a uniform method for measuring inconsistency in logics that allow the application of unary operator pairs, such as for modality, time, and space, to propositional logic formulas. The universality of GPL manifests itself in the fact that such an operator pair is evaluated in a uniform manner across all such logics. The difference lies solely in the choice of a frame for each logic. But some logics also contain nonunary operators. For example, temporal logics typically contain a binary Until operator. The purpose of this paper is to show how to extend generalized propositional logic to extended generalized propositional logic (EGPL) by adding nonunary operator pairs and measure inconsistency in such logics. The universality of EGPL manifests itself in the fact that once the evaluation of the nonunary operators is given, it carries over to all such logics. For example, the temporal Until operator becomes applicable to modal logic. Furthermore, while relative inconsistency measures were previously considered for GPL, they are now extended to EGPL and a new approach removes an undesirable feature from the previous version. Also, this paper provides results about various properties of the new inconsistency measures. Many examples and explanations are given to illustrate the issues involving this extension. (shrink)

Intercultural research poses critical ethical challenges. In 2019, in collaboration with more than 200 researchers from more than 30 countries, a group of researchers developed an ethical conflict analysis model that seems relevant for Latin America. The model proposes a flexible frame of reference where ethical challenges depend on four factors present throughout the research process: the place where the research is carried out, the people involved, the relevant ethical principles, and the precedents from previous research. This article discusses (...) the applicability of this model through two case analyses: one study with Indigenous peoples in Chile and the other with Latin-American migrants on the border between Mexico and US. (shrink)

This study expands theoretical understanding of organizational misconduct through qualitative analysis of widespread deceptive sales practices at a large U.S. life insurance company. Adopting a symbolic interactionist perspective, this research describes how a set of taken-for-granted interpretive frames located in the organization’s culture created a worldview through which deceptive sales practices were seen as normal, acceptable, routine operating procedure. The findings from this study extend and modify the dominant theoretical ‘pressure/opportunity’ model of organizational misconduct by proposing that the process engine (...) driving misconduct is not amorally rational organization members, but rather is organizational members acting on socially constructed views of the organization that normalize misconduct. (shrink)

In this article, I draw an important distinction between two kinds of inquiry. “Framed inquiries” take for granted and use a conceptual framework in order to ask and answer questions, while “framing inquiries” require the creation, revision, or expansion of the conceptual framework itself in order to address the problem at hand. This distinction has been largely ignored in epistemology, and collapsed by two radically opposed philosophical camps: representationalism and antirepresentationalism. While the former takes all inquiries to be in the (...) business of discovering mind-independent facts, the latter takes all inquiries to be primarily governed by pragmatic considerations. Against the objections raised by both camps, I defend a pragmatist and substantive distinction between framed and framing inquiry, inspired by Rudolf Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions and reformulated in terms of John Dewey’s theory of inquiry. (shrink)

*Work on this paper was funded in part by NIH grant K01-AT00054, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan The proper study of mankind i...

Religionists and leftists have aligned themselves with several green causes, but have yet to engage each other in a real discussion of environmental issues. In this paper, I try to establish the basis for a dialogue between those segments of the religionist and leftist traditions that appear to have the most promise for forging a united green front. I label these two subgroups constructive postmodern religionistsand constructive postmodern leftists. I summarize the key ideas shared by each group, discuss how each (...) can rectify some of the weaknesses of the other, and consider some potential philosophical barriers to their union. I conclude by issuing a call for dialogue on the issues presented here. (shrink)

The first edition of The Mind and its Discontents was a powerful analysis of how, as a society, we view mental illness. In the ten years since the first edition, there has been growing interest in the philosophy of psychiatry, and a new edition of this text is more timely and important than ever. -/- In The Mind and its Discontents, Grant Gillett argues that an understanding of mental illness requires more than just a study of biological models of (...) mental processes and pathologies. As intensely social animals, he argues, we need to look for the causes of human mental disorders in our interactions with others; in social rule-following and its role in the organization of mental content; in the power relations embedded within social structures and cultural norms; in the way that our mental life is inscribed by a cumulative life of encounters with others. Drawing upon work from within the philosophy of mind, epistemology, post-modern continental philosophy, and philosophy of language, he tries to elucidate the nature of psychiatric phenomena involving disorders of thought, perception, emotion, moral sense, and action. Within this framework, a series of chapters analyse important psychiatric disorders such as depression, attention deficiency, autism, schizophrenia, and anorexia. Along the way, Gillett explores the nature of memory and identity; of hysteria and what constitutes rational behaviour; and of what causes us to label someone a psychopath or deviant. -/- Updated, available in paperback, and more accessible than before, the new edition of this fascinating book will provide readers with important insights into the causes and nature of psychosis. In addition, Gillett's arguments have considerable implications for the way in which we understand and treat people suffering from psychiatric disorders. The Mind and its Discontents will be read by researchers and postgraduate students in a range of academic areas, including psychiatry, bioethics, philosophy of mind, social theory, and clinical psychology. It will also be of considerable interest to practising psychiatrists. (shrink)

The validity and utility of the proximate-ultimate distinction in biology have recently been under debate. Opponents of the distinction argue that it rules out individual-level organismic processes from evolutionary explanations, thereby leading to an unfounded separation between organismic causation and evolutionary causation. Proponents of the proximate-ultimate distinction, on the other hand, argue that it serves an important epistemological role in forming different kinds of explanation-seeking questions in biology. In this paper we offer an interpretation the proximate-ultimate distinction not only as (...) a means of forming explanation-seeking questions, but also as a distinction that can help highlight the way in which individual-level organismic processes can be evolutionary causes. We do this by interpreting the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes as a distinction between structuring and triggering causes. (shrink)

George Grant's magnificent four-part meditation sums up much that is central to his own thought, including a critique of modern liberalism, an analysis of John Rawls's Theory of Justice, and insights into the larger Western philosophical ...

Faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines are typically expected to pursue grant funding and publish to support their research or teaching agendas. Providing effective professional development programs on grant preparation and management and on research publications is crucial. This study shares the design and implementation of such a program for Native STEM faculty from two tribal colleges and one public, non-tribal, Ph.D. granting institution during a 3-year period. The overall development and implementation of the program (...) is centered on the six R’s Indigenous framework – Respect, Relationship, Representation, Relevance, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. The role of NAF-STEM and their interactions with the program, as members of the community formed by their participation, impacted the program. Their practices and the program co-emerged over time, each providing structure and meaning for the other. Through such reciprocity, NAF-STEM and the program research team continually refined the program through their mutual engagement. They took on the shared responsibility of the program while they participated in and shaped its practices. The process and results of formative and summative assessment and the impact of COVID-19 on the program are reported. Results of the program offer lessons on the implementation of six R’s framework in professional development at institutions of higher education. (shrink)

Conventional imagers and almost all vision processes use and rely on theories that are based on the principle of static image-frames. A frame is a 2D matrix that represents the spatial locations of intensities of a scene projected on the imager. The notion of a frame itself is so embedded in machine vision, that it is usually taken for granted that this is how biological systems store light information. This paper presents a biosinpired event-based image formation principle, which (...) output data rely on an asynchronous acquisition process. The generated information is stored in temporal volumes, which size and information depend only on the dynamic content of observed scenes. Practical analysis of such information will shows that the processing of visual information can only be based on a semiotic process. The paper also provides a general definition of the notion of visual features as the interpretation of signs according to different possible readings of the codified visual signal. (shrink)

From text to action -- Park fiction, ala plastica, and dialogue -- The risk of diversity -- Programmatic multiplicity -- Art theory and the post-structuralist canon -- Lessons in futility -- Enclosure acts -- The twelfth seat and the mirrored ceiling -- The atelier as workshop -- Labor, praxis, and representation -- The divided and incomplete subject of yesterday -- Memories of development -- The limits of ethical capitalism -- The art of the locality -- Blindness and insight -- The (...) invention of the public -- The boulevards of the inner city -- Park fiction : desire, resistance, and complicity -- A culture of needles : project row houses in Houston. (shrink)

The discursive approach to psychiatry, taking as it does an ethological approach to the human organism, directs us to rules and story lines that structure our ways of dealing with the challenges thrown up by particular situated positions in our discursive world. For human beings this means engaging with the sense they are making of the world and the words they use to try and communicate that. Doing things with words is behavior that draws on certain skills attuned to prompts, (...) cues, expectations, and so on, all of which can go seriously awry in any setting where certain features are unfamiliar or where one of the participants is "impaired" or out of step with prevailing norms and assumptions. Discursive competence and the reality of the human psyche as a mode of being-in-relation-with others crucially depends on intact neural function and brain pathways slowly and cumulatively developed throughout life and is vulnerable to disruption of that substrate. Hysteria and dementia represent two very different situations in which the discursive mismatch between an individual and his or her context of being causes the voice of a person to be "lost in translation" so that understanding what is happening and then care and restoration demand a great deal of us not just as biomedical scientists but also as human beings who are reaching out to those who suffer and try to endure so as to help hold them in being. (shrink)

_Black Intellectual Thought in Education_ celebrates the exceptional academic contributions of African-American education scholars Anna Julia Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and Alain Leroy Locke to the causes of social science, education, and democracy in America. By focusing on the lives and projects of these three figures specifically, it offers a powerful counter-narrative to the dominant, established discourse in education and critical social theory--helping to better serve the population that critical theory seeks to advocate. Rather than attempting to "rescue" a few (...) African American scholars from obscurity or marginalization, this powerful volume instead highlights ideas that must be probed and critically examined in order to deal with prevailing contemporary educational issues. Cooper, Woodson, and Locke’s history of engagement with race, democracy, education, gender and life is a dynamic, demanding, and authentic narrative for those engaged with these important issues. (shrink)

Since the late 1970s, theologians have been attempting to integrate mimetic theory into different fields of theology, yet a distrust of mimetic theory persists in some theological camps. In" Rene Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology," Grant Kaplan brings mimetic theory into conversation with theology both to elucidate the relevance of mimetic theory for the discipline of fundamental theology and to understand the work of Rene Girard within a theological framework. Rather than focus on Christology or atonement (...) theory as the locus of interaction between Girard and theology, Kaplan centers his discussion on the apologetic quality of mimetic theory and the impact of mimetic theory on fundamental theology, the subdiscipline that grew to replace apologetics. His book explores the relation between Girard and fundamental theology in several keys. In one, it understands mimetic theory as a heuristic device that allows theological narratives and positions to become more intelligible and, by so doing, makes theology more persuasive. In another key, Kaplan shows how mimetic theory, when placed in dialogue with particular theologians, can advance theological discussion in areas where mimetic theory has seldom been invoked. On this level the book performs a dialogue with theology that both revisits earlier theological efforts and also demonstrates how mimetic theory brings valuable dimensions to questions of fundamental theology. "Grant Kaplan's" Rene Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology" is an accessible and original work advancing the discussion of Girard and theology. Kaplan claims mimetic theory for Catholic theology and shows how it can strengthen Catholic theology by providing a powerful apologetic. Immensely helpful, too, is his situating of Girard's work alongside formative theologians and other thinkers." Scott Cowdell, author of "Rene Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis" ". (shrink)

Preface to paperback edition -- Why Schelling? why naturephilosophy? -- The powers due to becoming: the reemergence of platonic physics in the genetic philosophy -- Antiphysics and neo-Fichteanism -- The natural history of the unthinged -- "What thinks in me is what is outside me". phenomenality, physics and the idea -- Dynamic philosophy, transcendental physics -- Conclusion: transcendental geology.

The usefulness of ‘realism’ in explaining Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine has become a keenly contested debate not only in International Relations but in wider public intellectual discourse since the onset of the war in February 2022. At the centre of this debate is the punditry of John J. Mearsheimer, a prominent offensive realist who is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Chicago. This article argues that although Mearsheimer is indeed a realist, his offensive realism is but (...) one of many different realist theories that can forward an explanation of the Ukraine War. Beyond the apparent hegemony of structural realism (the branch of realism to which Mearsheimer’s offensive realism belongs), it is argued that classical and neoclassical realist frameworks can provide more nuanced and, ultimately, convincing arguments as to why Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine. This is because both classical and neoclassical realism can incorporate insights from non-realist studies—such as the concepts of civilization and ontological security—and combine them into an overarching power politics framework. Although neither classical nor neoclassical realism is flawless in their explanations, they demonstrate that realism does not just have to be about international power structures but can offer multivariate accounts of why a state, like Russia, decided to act, such as invading Ukraine. (shrink)

The Italian Republic was created at the close of World War II by the political forces that had taken part in the Resistance, with an explicitly anti-fascist ideological foundation. However, the official commitment to anti-fascism and democracy was belied by the continuing role of neo-fascist parties and organizations in the political system. This role was firstly as a potential alternative source of support for the ruling Christian Democrats, and secondly as the key element of a hidden network ready to use (...) violent and undemocratic means to condition the normal political process. This network moved into action at the height of the “strategy of tension” (1969–80). Analysis of this period leads us to reassess the nature of postwar Italian democracy. In the “Second Republic” (post-1994) Silvio Berlusconi has promoted a revisionist approach to Fascism and the Resistance as part of his own strategy to maintain himself in power, while also espousing a plebiscitarian conception of democracy that presents certain analogies with the methods and style of the Fascist regime. (shrink)

The ideal of relating as equals is, in part, an ideal of virtue – the attitudes and dispositions that support social relations of equality. These are standardly taken to involve accepting the Equal Authority of other persons, giving other persons Equal Consideration, and treating the interests of other persons as having Equal Importance. But why does relational equality involve these attitudes and dispositions, and what exactly do they entail? I aim to make progress on answering these questions by focusing on (...) adult autonomy, using the workplace as an apt setting for exploring the resulting autonomy-focused conception of relational egalitarian virtue. I first consider and reject an interest- focused conception of relational egalitarian virtue, which treats Equal Importance as central. This view allows for a paternalistic stance that is incompatible with social relations of equality. I then develop an autonomy-focused view that treats Equal Authority as central, what I call the “Authority-Centered Relational Egalitarian” virtue (ACRE). ACRE avoids the paternalistic implications of the interest-focused view. I conclude by exploring how managers can sustain and enact ACRE in exercising organizational authority over employees. (shrink)

Sexual abuse by clergymen, poisoned water, police brutality—these cases each involve two wrongs: the abuse itself and the attempt to avoid responsibility for it. Our focus is this second wrong—the cover up. Cover ups are accountability failures, and they share common strategies for thwarting accountability whatever the abuse and whatever the institution. We find that cover ups often succeed even when accountability mechanisms are in place. Hence, improved institutions will not be sufficient to prevent accountability failures. Accountability mechanisms are tools (...) that people must be willing to use in good faith. They fail when people are complicit. What explains complicity? We identify certain human proclivities and features of modern organizations that lead people to become complicit in the wrongdoing of others. If we focus exclusively on the design of institutions, we will fail to constrain the perpetrators of wrongdoing. Understanding complicity is key to understanding accountability failures. (shrink)

In this important new study, Hamilton establishes and develops innovative links between the sites of postcolonial literary theory, the fiction of the South African/Australian academic and Nobel Prize-winning writer J.M. Coetzee, and the work of the French poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Centering on the key postcolonial problematic of representation, Hamilton argues that if one approaches the colonial subject through Gilles Deleuze’s rewriting of subjectivity, then a transcendent configuration of the colonial subject is revealed. Importantly, it is this rendition of the (...) colonial subject that accounts best for the way in which the colonial subject is able to propose and offer instances of resistance to colonial structures of subjectification. In elucidating this claim, the study turns to the fiction of Coetzee. Offering unique Deleuzean readings of three of Coetzee’s most theoretically beguiling novels – Dusklands, Waiting for the Barbarians, and Foe – On Representation will prove to be essential reading to those interested in Coetzee studies, the literary terrain of Deleuze’s philosophy, and those engaging with contemporary debates in postcolonial literature and theory. (shrink)

Charles Darwin found much in Australia to challenge and inform his thinking. This book explores the impact that Darwin’s short visit to Australia in 1836 had on the man himself and on the emerging nation. Now, more than 170 years later, Darwin continues to influence Australian attitudes to life and living.

The propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF) is commonly taken to be subject to a set of simple counterexamples. We argue that three of the most important of these are not counterexamples to the PIF itself, but only to the traditional mathematical model of this propensity: fitness as expected number of offspring. They fail to demonstrate that a new mathematical model of the PIF could not succeed where this older model fails. We then propose a new formalization of the PIF that (...) avoids these (and other) counterexamples. By producing a counterexample-free model of the PIF, we call into question one of the primary motivations for adopting the statisticalist interpretation of fitness. In addition, this new model has the benefit of being more closely allied with contemporary mathematical biology than the traditional model of the PIF. (shrink)

Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory. Just as it is central to biological evolution, so, it seems, it should be central to cultural evolutionary theory. But importing the biological fitness concept to CET is no straightforward task—there are many features unique to cultural evolution that make this difficult. This has led some theorists to argue that there are fundamental problems with cultural fitness that render it hopelessly confused. In this essay, we defend the coherency of cultural fitness against (...) those who call it into doubt. (shrink)

This paper addresses and proposes to resolve a longstanding problem in the philosophy of physics: whether and in what sense Albert Einstein’s Chasing the Light thought experiment was significant in the development of the theory of special relativity. Although Einstein granted this thought experiment pride of place in his 1949 Autobiographical Notes, philosophers and physicists continue to debate about what, if anything, the experiment establishes. I claim that we ought to think of Chasing the Light as Einstein’s first attempt to (...) problematize the very idea of the electromagnetic ether frame, and that it thereby contributed to his eventual adoption of one of special relativity’s two foundational axioms: the “light postulate”. This interpretation requires the assumption that Einstein had presupposed special relativity’s other axiom, the “principle of relativity”, when initially considering Chasing the Light. This argument is novel insofar as it provides evidence that such a presupposition by Einstein is both conceptually and historically plausible. Moreover, this paper directly challenges John D. Norton’s compelling claim that Chasing the Light is best understood as a refutation of emission theories of light propagation; while both interpretations of the experiment are conceptually coherent, I argue that the interpretation found in this paper is supported more straightforwardly by historical evidence. (shrink)

There are three related criteria that a concept of fitness should be able to meet: it should render the principle of natural selection non-tautologous and it should be explanatory and predictive. I argue that for fitness to be able to fulfill these criteria, it cannot be a property that changes over the course of an individual's life. Rather, I introduce a fitness concept--Block Fitness--and argue that an individual's genes and environment fix its fitness in such a way that each individual's (...) fitness has a fixed value over its lifetime. (shrink)

The developmental properties of organisms play important roles in the generation of variation necessary for evolutionary change. But how can individual development steer the course of evolution? To answer this question, we introduce developmental channeling as a disposition of individual organisms that shapes their possible developmental trajectories and evolutionary dappling as an evolutionary outcome in which the space of possible organismic forms is dappled—it is only partially filled. We then trace out the implications of the channeling-dappling framework for contemporary debates (...) in the philosophy of evolution, including evolvability, reciprocal causation, and the extended evolutionary synthesis. (shrink)

We introduce here evoText, a new tool for automated analysis of the literature in the biological sciences. evoText contains a database of hundreds of thousands of journal articles and an array of analysis tools for generating quantitative data on the nature and history of life science, especially ecology and evolutionary biology. This article describes the features of evoText, presents a variety of examples of the kinds of analyses that evoText can run, and offers a brief tutorial describing how to use (...) it. (shrink)

In this essay I examine a well-known articulation of human nature skepticism, a paper by Hull. I then review a recent reply to Hull by Machery, which argues for an account of human nature that he claims is both useful and scientifically robust. I challenge Machery’s account and introduce an alternative account—the “life-history trait cluster” conception of human nature—that I hold is scientifically sound and makes sense of our intuitions about—and desiderata for—human nature.

The ability to reflect on practice is a fundamental component of effective medical practice. In a sector increasingly focused on professionalism and patient-centred care, Developing Reflective Practice is a timely publication providing practical guidance on how to acquire the reflective skills necessary to become a successful clinician. This new title draws from a wide range of theoretical and practical multidisciplinary perspectives to assist students, practitioners and educators in embedding reflection in everyday activities. It also offers structures and ideas for more (...) purposeful and meaningful formal reflections and professional development. Developing Reflective Practice: Focuses on the developing practitioner and their lifelong learning and the development of professional identity through reflection Provides practical how-to information for students, practitioners and educators, including realistic case examples and practice-based hints and tips Examines and explains the theoretical and conceptual approaches to reflective practice, including its models and frameworks"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Examines how the animal/human divide has influenced power dynamics. The division of life into animal and human is one of the fundamental schisms found within political societies. Ironically, given the immense influence of the animal/human divide, especially upon power dynamics, the discipline in charge of theorizing and studying power—political science and theory—has had little to say about the animal/human. This book seeks to amend this vast oversight. Acknowledging the complexity of the changing differences between animals and humans, the contributors explore (...) such topics as Marx, Freud, the animal, and civilization; dog breeding, racism, and democracy; the meaningful silences of animals; how sovereignty reconfigures the animal/human; and the paradoxical struggles against being dehumanized among immigrant workers in a slaughterhouse. Political Theory and the Animal/Human Relationship is necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand how power has been influenced by the animal/human divide, and what we can do about it. (shrink)

Homology is a biological sameness relation that is purported to hold in the face of changes in form, composition, and function. In spite of the centrality and importance of homology, there is no consensus on how we should understand this concept. The two leading views of homology, the genealogical and developmental accounts, have significant shortcomings. We propose a new account, the hierarchical-dependency account of homology, which avoids these shortcomings. Furthermore, our account provides for continuity between special, general, and serial homology.

The study of animal culture is a flourishing field, with culture being recorded in a wide range of taxa, including non-human primates, birds, cetaceans, and rodents. In spite of this research, however, the concept of culture itself remains elusive. There is no universally assented to concept of culture, and there is debate over the connection between culture and related concepts like tradition and social learning. Furthermore, it is not clear whether culture in humans and culture in non-human animals is really (...) the same thing, or merely loose analogues that go by the same name. The purpose of this paper is to explicate core desiderata for a concept of culture and then to construct a concept that meets these desiderata. The paper then applies this concept in both humans and non-human animals. (shrink)

Recent scientific advances have indicated that it may be technically feasible to sustain human embryos in vitro beyond 14 days. Research beyond this stage is currently restricted by a guideline known as the 14-day rule. Since the advances in embryo culturing there have been calls to extend the current limit. Much of the current debate concerning an extension has regarded the 14-day rule as a political compromise and has, therefore, focused on policy concerns rather than assessing the philosophical foundations of (...) the limit. While there are relevant political considerations, I maintain that the success of extension arguments will ultimately depend on the strength of the justifications supporting the current 14-day limit. I argue that the strongest and most prevalent justifications for the 14-day rule—an appeal to individuation and neural development—do not provide adequate support for the limit of 14 days. I instead suggest that an alternative justification based on sentience would constitute a more defensible basis for embryo protection and that a consideration of such grounds appears to support an amendment to the current limit, rather than the retention of it. While these conclusions do not establish conclusively that the current limit should be extended; they do suggest that an extension may be warranted and permissible. As such, this paper offers grounds on which a reassessment of the 14-day rule may be justified. (shrink)