The history of the vivisection debate is a case study in the use of vilification not unlike its rhetorical use by adversaries in the pro-life/pro-choice controversy. According to Vanderford, vilification in that debate serves a number of functions: to identify adversaries as ; to cast opponents in an exclusively negative light; to attribute diabolical motives to one's adversaries; and to magnify the opposition's power as an enemy capable of doing great evil. In the vivisection debate, both sides have attempted to (...) delegitimize each other by one or more of these means. On the antivivisection side, Samuel Johnson in 1758 produced the fiercest attack up to that time on and When the antivivisectionist movement peaked in England in the 1870s, the animal experimentalists began to organize in earnest to fend off the charge that vivisection was both cruel and useless. By the turn of the century an American neurologist, Charles Loomis Dana, identified a way to discredit the mainly female antiscience in the antivivisection movement by inventing the disease to describe one of the diseases affecting mainly women who, having no children or a useful occupation, joined animal protection societies and campaigned against vivisection. Zoophil-psychosis, it was claimed, was a form of mental illness, an incurable insanity that afflicted the hysterical opponents of vivisection. (shrink)

Genetic engineering is a social invention as much as a biological one. Ordinary citizens interested in the well-being of life on the planet should therefore be involved in the ethical debates concerning the future of nonhuman animals. The creations of genetic engineers ought to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by what the American philosopher R. G. Frey calls Frey is an advocate for putting animals in perspective, which means that animals matter, but not as much as humans. He therefore (...) supports the prevailing moral orthodoxy, which currently in the West means that animals can be eaten, dissected, hunted, and exhibited, provided that these things are done humanely and that the benefits to humans outweigh the harms to the animals. The he suggests, would have no objection to humans killing animals as long as the animals do not suffer. In the present paper, my aim is to raise some of the ethical, welfare, and social issues from an animal-protectionist perspective which ordinary citizens would need to consider if they were ever asked to vote on the benefits or otherwise of the impact of genetic engineering on animal welfare. (shrink)

Australia's Coalition Against Duck Shooting sees duck-shooting as a social problem and as an injustice with moral, legal and environmental consequences. The small animal liberationist group has succeeded in dramatically reducing the numbers of duck shooters in Victoria, which is the home of duck-shooting in Australia. The Coalition's framing work with the public via the electronic media involves three parts: a diagnosis , a prognosis and a motivational frame , all of which construct hunting as a cruel, antisocial blood sport (...) that ought to be banned. In this article, television news bulletins and feature stories from the 1993 and 1994 campaigns are analyzed to show how CADS makes and sustains its claims. In addition to 90 pages of transcripts of news commentaries and descriptive accounts of the visuals, the data include tape-recorded interviews with some of the duck liberationists involved in the campaign. (shrink)

This article addresses a countermovement to the animal liberation movement and its campaigns against vivisection, factory farming, and recreational hunting in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As moderate welfarists, pragmatic animal liberationists , and radical abolitionists who advocate animal rights, animal protectionists campaign for animals. The countermovement defends acts that animal protectionists decry. Meanwhile, sociologists accord little study to interplay between the movements . In Buechler's and Cylke's collection of 34 papers on social movements , only one (...) paper focused on countermovements, describing the connection between social movement and countermovement as "a continuous dialect of social change" . Although extensive writings exist on the main campaigns of the animal liberation movement, little scholarly material exists on the defenses mounted by the countermovement. This article examines key elements of a values war, a struggle over moral capital waged by animal protectionists and their countermovement opponents. (shrink)

Using the results of a survey of animal rights activists, advocates, and supporters, the paper reveals much more convergence than divergence of attitudes and actions by male and female animal protectionists. Analysis of the divergence suggests that the differences between men and women in the movement are contingent upon such things as early socialization, gendered work and leisure patterns, affinity with companion animals, ambivalence about science, and a history of opposition to nonhuman animal abuse by generations of female activists and (...) animal advocates. Aside from the feminist and women's movements and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it is rare to find a social movement in which the standing of women eclipses those of their male colleagues. The paper suggests that animal protection remains a bastion of female activism and advocacy because women care about blood, flesh, and pain and, unlike earlier generations of animal activists, no longer are seen as a liability to the success of the movement. (shrink)

This paper profiles the animal activism of the late American animal activist Henry Spira, whose campaign strategies and tactics suggest a number of links with the nineteenth century pioneers of animal protection as well as with approaches favored by contemporary animal activists. However, the article argues that Spira's style of animal advocacy differed from conventional approaches in the mainstream animal movement in that he preferred to work with, rather than against, animal user industries. To this end, he pioneered the use (...) of "reintegrative shaming" in animal protection, an accommodation strategy that relied on moralizing with opponents as opposed to the more common approach in animal advocacy of adversarial vilification, and hence, disintegrative shaming. The article describes the framing of some of Spira's best-known anti-cruelty campaigns and his use of reintegrative shaming to induce animal users to change their ways. (shrink)

In this article, I provide an interpretation of Heidegger’s critique of Hegel. Hegel’s ability to provide a presuppositionless metaphysics is often taken to be the core strength of his Logic. In his critique of Hegel, Heidegger attempts to show that Hegel in fact smuggles in a decisive presupposition concerning being. Building on the recent work of Robert Pippin, I argue that we can understand this critique by situating it in terms of their common understanding of problems of first principles. Once (...) we do, we can fully appreciate a point that Pippin misses, that Heidegger develops his methodology and concept of ground in order to avoid the problems that he locates in Hegel. The upshots of my interpretation are that it (1) allows us to appreciate the systematicity and radicality of Heidegger’s mature ontology, and (2) forces those sympathetic to Hegel to reevaluate Hegel’s ability to provide a presuppositionless metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper seeks to carve out a distinctive category of conspiracy theorist, and to explore the process of becoming a conspiracy theorist of this sort. Those on whom I focus claim their beliefs trace back to simply trusting their senses and experiences in a commonsensical way, citing what they take to be authoritative firsthand evidence or observations. Certain flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and UFO conspiracy theorists, for example, describe their beliefs and evidence this way. I first distinguish these conspiracy theorists by (...) contrasting them with another group that has recently received a lot of attention from the media, philosophers, and academics more broadly. I then dig more deeply into the nature of these conspiracy theorists’ epistemic self-understanding, in order to give an account of the process by which one becomes such a conspiracy theorist. I conclude with some takeaways and implications: first, I explore the implications of my account for whether these conspiracy theorists’ beliefs are rational; then, I argue that my account has practical takeaways about counteracting beliefs in misinformation, since strategies appropriate to this kind of conspiracy theorist may not be the same ones that are appropriate for other kinds. (shrink)

The representation theorems of expected utility theory show that having certain types of preferences is both necessary and sufficient for being representable as having subjective probabilities. However, unless the expected utility framework is simply assumed, such preferences are also consistent with being representable as having degrees of belief that do not obey the laws of probability. This fact shows that being representable as having subjective probabilities is not necessarily the same as having subjective probabilities. Probabilism can be defended on the (...) basis of the representation theorems only if attributions of degrees of belief are understood either antirealistically or purely qualitatively, or if the representation theorems are supplemented by arguments based on other considerations (simplicity, consilience, and so on) that single out the representation of a person as having subjective probabilities as the only true representation of the mental state of any person whose preferences conform to the axioms of expected utility theory. (shrink)

What is a problem? What's asked in that question, and how does one even begin to take its measure? How else could one begin, except as one does with any other problem--by way of its impulsion. Of Learned Ignorance: Idea of a Treatise in Philosophy is about philosophy because philosophy is about problems: philosophy, in a word, is where problems become a problem. After Anti-Oedipus, in the Kafka book and in A Thousand Plateaus, what Deleuze and Guattari counsel, strikingly, is (...) sobriety. Sobriety is what they praise in Kafka. And it is sobriety that seems above all else to be necessary here. (Steven Shaviro has pointed out the prominence of structure in Deleuze's writing: "even when Deleuze's prose, by himself or with Guattari, seems to be ranging anarchically all over the place, in fact it has a rigid and unvarying architecture, which is what keeps it from falling apart.") Of Learned Ignorance is a dead letter because it names a problem. It's a dead letter because it is, cautiously, a love letter. It's a dead letter because it lovingly stages an experiment in whimsy, and perhaps above all, because it is problematic (in the Kantian sense): It is a (sober) attempt at exemplifying what it talks about -- and what eludes it: A series of footnotes, with blank (transcriptive) pages above, effects something like the integration of a differential, the reciprocal determination where the sources enter into in relation to one another in order to produce a paper, essay, or (inexistent) (chap)book. Of Learned Ignorance, in facing down a problem, makes a wager; it courts failure; it puts it all on the line. All, yes, for love -- a kind of love... (of wisdom?). (shrink)

Probabilistic coherence is not an absolute requirement of rationality; nevertheless, it is an ideal of rationality with substantive normative import. An idealized rational agent who avoided making implicit logical errors in forming his preferences would be coherent. In response to the challenge, recently made by epistemologists such as Foley and Plantinga, that appeals to ideal rationality render probabilism either irrelevant or implausible, I argue that idealized requirements can be normatively relevant even when the ideals are unattainable, so long as they (...) define a structure that links imperfect and perfect rationality in a way that enables us to make sense of the notion of better approximations to the ideal. I then analyze the notion of approximation to the ideal of coherence by developing a generalized theory of belief functions that allows for incoherence, and showing how such belief functions can be ordered with regard to greater or lesser coherence. (shrink)

This Companion celebrates the strength of feminist legal thought, which is manifested in the dynamic combination of stability and change and the diversity of perspectives and methodologies, as well as in the extensive range of subject-matters included within its ambit. Bringing together contributors from across a range of jurisdictions and legal traditions, the book provides a concise but critical review of existing theory in relation to the core issues or concepts that animate feminism. It provides an authoritative and scholarly review (...) of contemporary feminist legal thought, and contributes to the ongoing development of some of its new approaches, perspectives and subject-matters. (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level chemistry (N=145), computer science (N=58), geoscience (N=91), mathematics (N=115), physics (N=123), and statistics/biostatistics (N=64) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: program size; characteristics of graduates; reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); university library size; research support; and publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts to assess quality in graduate education, (...) development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the chemistry, computer science, geoscience, mathematics, physics, and statistics/biostatistics programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that mathematics programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty (N=33) in December 1980 followed closely by physics (N=28) and chemistry (N=23), and that 80 percent of computer science students had job commitments by graduation. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

The quality of doctoral-level biochemistry (N=139), botany (N=83), cellular/molecular biology (N=89), microbiology (N=134), physiology (N=101), and zoology (N=70) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: (1) program size; (2) characteristics of graduates; (3) reputational factors (scholarly quality of faculty, effectiveness of programs in educating research scholars/scientists, improvement in program quality during the last 5 years); (4) university library size; (5) research support; and (6) publication records. Chapter I discusses prior attempts (...) to assess quality in graduate education, development of the study plans, and the selection of disciplines and programs to be evaluated. Chapter II discusses the methodology used, focusing on each of the assessment measures. Chapters III to VIII present, respectively, findings from the analyses of the biochemistry, botany, cellular/molecular biology, microbiology, physiology, and zoology programs. Chapter IX includes a summary of results, correlations among measures, several additional analyses, and suggestions for future studies. Among the findings reported are those indicating that cellular/molecular biology programs had, on the average, the largest number of faculty and that students in cellular/molecular biology, biology, biochemistry, microbiology, and physiology received a relatively high fraction of financial support. (Survey instruments and supporting documentation are included in appendices.) (JN). (shrink)

Beginning from the notion that self is constructed, contributors in Identity Landscapes: Contemplating Place and the Construction of Self are particularly interested in how relationships with place inform identity development. Locating identity inquiry in methodologies that encourage an explicit examination of self (e.g. autoethnography, self-study, autobiographical inquiry, a/r/tography, and reflexive inquiry), authors situate themselves epistemologically and geographically as they explore where place and identity converge. Through critical, qualitative, creative, and arts-integrated approaches, this collection aims to advance thought regarding the myriad (...) ways that place informs identity development. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the principles which should be considered by planners, legislative drafters, and policy-makers as they work to develop legal frameworks on access to genetic resources in their countries. Contextual information on the Convention on Biological Diversity and examples of how countries have approached the issue to date are provided.

"The Communism of Thought takes as its point of departure a passage in a letter from Dionys Mascolo to Gilles Deleuze: "I have called this communism of thought in the past. And I placed it under the auspices of Hölderlin, who may have only fled thought because he was unable to live it: 'The life of the spirit between friends, the thoughts that form in the exchange of words, by writing or in person, are necessary to those who seek. Without (...) that, we are by our own hands outside thought.'"What, in light of that imperative, is a correspondence? What is given to be understood by the word, let alone the phenomenon? What constitutes a correspondence? What occasions it? On what terms and according to what conditions may one enter into that exchange "necessary," in Hölderlin's words, "to those who seek"? Pursuant to what vicissitudes may it be conducted? And what end(s) might a correspondence come to have beyond the ostensible end that, to all appearances, it (inevitably) will be said to have had?". (shrink)

In a 1917 letter to Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin writes, "Theory is like a surging sea." This small book takes more than its title from that line - it takes that line as a point of departure in Erich Auerbach's sense, an Ansatzpunkt, as a compositional principle so that what follows can be read in its entirety as a gloss on the remainder of Benjamin's sentence: "Theory is like a surging sea, but the only thing that matters to the wave (...) [...] is to surrender itself to its motion in such a way that it crests and breaks." That motion, in the pages to follow, takes up in its sweep two threads: it folds an episodic meditation on the negative and the problematic into a series of singular interrogations exemplary of the positive being of the problematic, the objective being of problems and questions, in a movement of implication and explication between poetry and philosophy in the tradition of what's come to be known as theory. Theory is like a surging sea because it's as part of a revolutionary tradition that it crests and breaks. (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis claims that the whole observable universe, including us, is a computer simulation implemented by technologically advanced beings for an unknown purpose. The simulation argument (as I reconstruct it) is an argument for this hypothesis with moderately plausible premises. I develop two lines of objection to the simulation argument. The first takes the form of a structurally similar argument for a conflicting conclusion, the claim that I am a so-called freak observer, formed spontaneously in a quantum or thermodynamic (...) fluctuation rather than through ordinary processes of evolution and growth. The second rejects the basic line of reasoning of both arguments: the sort of evidence they cite is not capable of supporting either the claim that I am a simulant or the claim that I am a freak observer. The evidence that simulants or freak observers exist is not a reason to think that I am one of them. (shrink)

Within the context of the study of the genetics of language, Chomskian laws of grammar, such as theStructure-dependence Condition and theA over A Condition, may be usefully regarded to have a status similar to that of Mendelian Laws in classical genetics. In both the case of Chomsky's Laws and Mendel's Laws, formal genetic principles are postulated which abstract away from the physical mechanisms involved and in both cases certain apparent counterexamples mirror a more complex underlying genetic organisation.

The growing interest in dual‐inheritance models of human evolution has focused attention on culture as a means by which ancestors transmitted acquired phenotypic characteristics to their descendants. The ability of cultural behaviors to be repeatedly transmitted from ancestors to descendants enables individuals to influence their descendant‐leaving success over many more generations than are usually coclusive fitness. This essay proposes that traditional stories, or myths, can be seen as a way in which ancestors influence their descendant‐leaving success by influencing the behavior (...) of many generations of their descendants. The myth of Oedipus is used as an example of a traditional story aimed at promoting proper behavior and cooperation among kin. This interpretation of the Oedipus myth is contrasted with Freudian and structuralist interpretations. (shrink)

Centralised, compliance-focused approaches to research ethics have been normalised in practice. In this paper, we argue that the dominance of such systems has been driven by neoliberal approaches to governance, where the focus on controlling and individualising risk has led to an overemphasis of decontextualised ethical principles and the conflation of ethical requirements with the documentation of ‘informed consent’. Using a UK-based case study, involving a point-of-care-genetic test as an illustration, we argue that rather than ensuring ethical practice such compliance-focused (...) approaches may obstruct valuable research. We call for an approach that encourages researchers and research communities—including regulators, ethics committees, funders and publishers of academic research—to acquire skills to make morally appropriate decisions, and not base decision-making solely on compliance with prescriptive regulations. We call this ‘ethical preparedness’ and outline how a research ethics system might make space for this approach. (shrink)

This report presents the findings of a survey of business ethics education undertaken in the Fall of 1988. The respondents were the deans of colleges and universities associated with the AACSB.Ethics, as a curriculum topic, received significant coverage at over 90 percent of the institutions, with 53 percent indicating interest in increasing coverage of the subject. The tabulations of this survey may prove useful to schools seeking to compare or develop their emphases in business ethics.

Randomized controlled clinical trials play an important role in the development of new medical therapies. There is, however, an ethical issue surrounding the use of randomized treatment allocation when the patient is suffering from a life threatening condition and requires immediate treatment. Such patients can only benefit from the treatment they actually receive and not from the alternative therapy, even if it ultimately proves to be superior. We discuss a novel new way to analyse data from such clinical trials based (...) on the use of the recently developed theory of imprecise probabilities. This work draws an explicit distinction between the related but nevertheless distinct questions of inference and decision in clinical trials. The traditional question of scientific interest asks 'Which treatment offers the greater chance of success?' and is the primary reason for conducting the clinical trial. The question of decision concerns the welfare of the patients in the clinical trial, asking whether the accumulated evidence favours one treatment over the other to such an extent that the next patient should decline randomization and instead express a preference for one treatment. Consideration of the decision question within the framework of imprecise probabilities leads to a mathematical definition of equipoise and a method for governing the randomization protocol of a clinical trial. This paper describes in detail the protocol for the conduct of clinical trials based on this new method of analysis, which is illustrated in a retrospective analysis of data from a clinical trial comparing the anti-emetic drugs ondansetron and droperidol in the treatment of postoperative nausea and vomiting. The proposed methodology is compared quantitatively using computer simulation studies with conventional clinical trial designs and is shown to maintain high statistical power with reduced sample sizes, at the expense of a high type I error rate that we argue is irrelevant in some specific circumstances. Particular emphasis is placed on describing the type of medical conditions and treatment comparisons where the new methodology is expected to provide the greatest benefit. (shrink)

In this essay, I analyze and critique Richard Jeffrey's radical probabilism. The basic theses defining it are examined, particularly the idea that probabilistic coherence involves a kind of "consistency." The main challenges to Jeffrey's view are (1) that there is an inconsistency between regarding probabilities as subjective and some probabilistic judgments as better than others, and (2) that decision theory so conceived has no normative import. I argue that both of these challenges can be met.

Essay review of John Carroll's book, _Laws of Nature_.