fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists.

Over _Principles_ 42-43, Berkeley worried that we might "in truth" see things existing at a distance from us, in which case they could not plausibly be supposed to exist independently of being perceived. He went on to say that he had developed his new theory of vision to address this worry. This paper argues that the worry is serious and that Berkeley was right to think that it would take nothing less than a theory of vision to address it. The (...) paper further argues that Berkeley's theory of vision fails to adequately address the worry. The locus of the failure is Berkeley's account of what he called "situation." The term has an ambiguity that Berkeley exploited. It can refer to how coloured points are localized on a two dimensional visual field or it can mean how the visual field is oriented with respect to the direction of gravity. Berkeley focused on the second when he needed to explain how the first is possible without granting that we originally experience objects as disposed over at least two spatial dimensions. (shrink)

Using a policy-capturing approach with a broad student sample we examine how individuals’ economic, social and environmental values influence their propensity to engage in a broad range of sustainability-related corporate actions. We employ a multi-dimensional sustainability framework of corporate actions and account for both the positive and negative impacts associated with corporate activity—termed strength and concern actions, respectively. Strong economic values were found to increase the propensity for concern actions and the willingness to work in controversial industries. Individuals with balanced (...) values were as likely as those with strong economic values to pursue positive economic outcomes, but without the same downside potential for concern actions. We also found significant gender effects, with females being less likely to engage in concern actions and more supportive of social and environmental strength actions. (shrink)

Summary Long-standing claims have been made for nearly the entire twentieth century that the biometrician, Karl Pearson, and his colleague, W. F. R. Weldon, rejected Mendelism as a theory of inheritance. It is shown that at the end of the nineteenth century Pearson considered various theories of inheritance (including Francis Galton's law of ancestral heredity for characters underpinned by continuous variation), and by 1904 he ?accepted the fundamental idea of Mendel? as a theory of inheritance for discontinuous variation. Moreover, in (...) 1909, he suggested a synthesis of biometry and Mendelism. Despite the many attempts made by a number of geneticists (including R. A. Fisher in 1936) to use Pearson's chi-square (X 2, P) goodness-of-fit test on Mendel's data, which produced results that were ?too good to be true?, Weldon reached the same conclusion in 1902, but his results were never acknowledged. The geneticist and arch-rival of the biometricians, Williams Bateson, was instead exceptionally critical of this work and interpreted this as Weldon's rejection of Mendelism. Whilst scholarship on Mendel, by historians of science in the last 18 years, has led to a balanced perspective of Mendel, it is suggested that a better balanced and more rounded view of the hereditarian-statistical work of Pearson, Weldon, and the biometricians is long overdue. (shrink)

Given the tremendous burst of activity in the philosophy of science during the last quarter century, the number of books by trained philosophers dealing with the logic of biology is surprisingly small. Simon’s book resembles Morton Beckner’s The Biological Way of Thought in its comprehensive ambitions: "trying to discover what, if anything, is distinctive about biological science, its concepts, and its mode of explaining." The most obvious difference of the two books is Simon’s long central chapter on "Theories, Models, and (...) the Concept of the Gene," which deals with the history of genetics from Mendel’s predecessors to the successors of Watson and Crick. Beckner paid little explicit attention to the history of biology. Another difference lies in Beckner’s dogged assessment of all problems in the logic of biology from the perspective of what he called the Humean Pattern of Explanation—a detailed and difficult variant of the approach of Hempel, Oppenheim, and Nagel. Simon’s philosophical position is more flexible than Beckner’s. He provides an acceptable review of the literature of the last decade and a half; some of his conclusions are most interesting—even when incompletely supported by his arguments; and the utility of his book is insured by the fact that it is necessary to go back over twelve years to find another with which it can be compared. The first chapter contains a very effective critique of J. J. C. Smart’s thesis that biology is no more an autonomous science than is electrical engineering, but is merely applied physics and chemistry. Smart had argued from the grounds that all biological generalizations implicitly refer to terrestrial evolution and are not truly universal, and Simon demonstrates the general lack of success of all efforts to demonstrate a difference in kind between so-called laws of nature and empirical generalizations of the sort found in biology. The second chapter continues in this same vein, drawing an interesting contrast between phylogenetic explanation in biology and the explanation of individual events in human history, and claiming that ‘explanatory’ status may be granted to accounts which do not meet the requirements of the deductive-nomological model, as in the case of Darwin’s theories of the geographical distribution of plants and animals and the persistence of rudimentary organs. The author’s negative reaction to much of the recent philosophical literature concerning the role of functional analysis in biology seems particularly well placed. Following Hempel, most philosophers writing in the past ten years have regarded the occurrence of the item whose function is in question as the event to be explained. Simon correctly points out that in the biological literature, statements indicating the presence of this item are part of the explanans, usually one component in an explanation of the normal functioning of the organism. He also insists that functional or teleological statements cannot effectively be replaced by nonteleological ones. A functional account is one that relates an entity to the role it plays in an organized system. In the first of several serene non-sequiturs which mar the latter half of this book, Simon insists that the above account shows that the notion of function is essentially an "extrinsic" one and that teleological principles generally cannot be used to account for experience. No better argument than an appeal to Kant’s authority backs up this conclusion. The third chapter deals with the recent history of genetics; its summary makes the claim that "at no time during this history was it correct to say that one model was replaced by another one; rather, the development appears to have been one involving successive correction and refining of earlier conceptions. There has been no revolution: geneticists have always succeeded in either repelling or accommodating critical attacks on the model." The evidence presented earlier in the chapter confers some plausibility on this conclusion, but no more: Simon takes no notice of the controversy surrounding Kuhn and the notion of scientific revolutions, and provides no criteria by which to distinguish "revolutions" from "accommodations." The precise nature of the methodological continuity to be found in the history of genetics is crucial for the view that "biology, or at least genetics, must be regarded as incapable of yielding a complete explanation of the phenomena that come within its purview; if the ultimate principles appealed to are not those of chemistry and physics and hence essentially nonbiological, the explanation cannot be regarded as complete." The text does not clearly indicate the extent to which the author agrees with the statement just quoted; perhaps he only attributes it to "many biologists" impressed by the successes of molecular genetics. It is clear the Simon regards something he calls the "Cartesian attitude" as pervasive in biology. "Biologists are committed to attempting to explain the phenomena of life in terms of the nonliving... The property of being alive or being associated with a living system is simply not treated as a logical primitive within biological science." But this seems to take us back full circle—to the position of Smart, that biology is no more than applied physics and chemistry. Simon disagrees with Smart. How does he stand vis-a-vis this last statement of the Cartesian spirit he finds so pervasive in biology? I think he disagrees with it, but it is very hard to tell. Perhaps the answer is that the resolution of the issue of the autonomy of biology is a pragmatic matter, relative to a complex set of needs and commitments: the sorts of things that determine life styles, political attitudes, and religious points of view, as well as the growth of scientific understanding. The question of the precise configuration of Simon’s pragmatism remains very vague indeed—a consequence of his over use of the style of impersonal attribution rather than direct assertion. Simon says generally sane and familiar things about Biology and the Idea of Progress and about Biology and Ethics. The really startling assertion of the penultimate chapter, that "consciousness" is neither a biological nor a behavioral predicate, and that its foundations are essentially moral and legal, is unfortunately supported by no argument whatsoever. Instead, the reader is urged to examine two of the author’s previous articles.—E. M. (shrink)

Replies to criticisms by John Perry, Lorne Falkenstein, and Don Garrett of my book HUME'S DIFFICULTY: TIME AND IDENTITY IN THE TREATISE, in a book symposium in PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES.

This paper is concerned with the uses of history in science. It focuses in particular on Anglo-American genetics and on university textbooks—where the canon of a science is consolidated, as the heterogeneous approaches and controversies of its practice are rendered unified for its reproduction. Tracing the emergence and eventual standardization of geneticists’ use of a case-based method of teaching in the 1920s–1950s, this paper argues that geneticists created historical environments in their textbooks—spaces in which students developed an understanding of the (...) laws of genetics through simulations of their discovery and use. Witnessing the unfolding of Mendel’s and Morgan’s experiments and performing genetic crosses on paper, students learned not only the rules that were explicitly taught as such, but also the experientially-based, tacit skills needed to find and follow these rules. This didactic system taught them how to go on when confronting new situations, and in doing so, provided geneticists with an important disciplinary tool, freeing the first steps of their student’s enculturation from the physical infrastructure of the laboratory. (shrink)

For at least a century it has been known that multiple factors play a role in the development of complex traits, and yet the notion that there are genes “for” such traits, which traces back to Mendel, is still widespread. In this paper, we illustrate how the Mendelian model has tacitly encouraged the idea that we can explain complexity by reducing it to enumerable genes. By this approach many genes associated with simple as well as complex traits have been identified. (...) But the genetic architecture of biological traits, or how they are made, remains largely unknown. In essence, this reflects the tension between reductionism as the current “modus operandi” of science, and the emerging knowledge of the nature of complex traits. Recent interest in systems biology as a unifying approach indicates a reawakened acceptance of the complexity of complex traits, though the temptation is to replace “gene for” thinking by comparably reductionistic “network for” concepts. Both approaches implicitly mix concepts of variants and invariants in genetics. Even the basic question is unclear: what does one need to know to “understand” the genetic basis of complex traits? New operational ideas about how to deal with biological complexity are needed. (shrink)

This paper reviews the principal objections that Hume's Scots "common sense" contemporaries had to his account of the understanding. In the absence of any but the most scant evidence of Hume's own reactions to these criticisms, it weighs what he might have said in his own defense.

This is the first edition in over a century to present David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Dissertation on the Passions, Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and Natural History of Religion in the format he intended: collected together in a single volume. Hume has suffered a fate unusual among great philosophers. His principal philosophical work is no longer published in the form in which he intended it to be read. It has been divided into separate parts, only some of (...) which continue to be published. This volume repairs that neglect by presenting the four pieces that Hume in later life desired to "alone be regarded as containing [his] philosophical sentiments and principles" in the format he preferred, as a single volume with an organization that parallels that of his early Treatise of Human Nature. This edition's introduction comments on the historical origins and evolution of the four parts and draws attention to how they mutually inform and support one another. The text is based on the first (1758) edition of Hume's Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. Notes advise the reader of the changes made in the final (1777) edition. Excerpts from the work of some of Hume's most important contemporary critics are included as appendices. Hume's abundant references to ancient historians, geographers, poets, and philosophers—many of them now quite obscure—are rendered accessible in this volume through extensive textual notes and a bibliography of online sources. (shrink)

This book examines the legal principle of judicial independence in comparative perspective with the goal of advancing a better understanding of the idea of an independent judiciary more generally. From an initial survey of judicial systems in different countries, it is clear that the understanding and practice of judicial independence take a variety of forms. Scholarly literature likewise provides a range of views on what judicial independence means, with scholars often advocating a preferred conception of a model court for achieving (...) 'true judicial independence' as part of a rule of law system. This book seeks to reorient the prevailing approach to the study of judicial independence by better understanding how judicial independence operates within domestic legal systems in its institutional and legal dimensions. It asks how and why different conceptualisations of judicial independence emerge over time by comparing detailed case studies of courts in two legally pluralistic states, which share inheritances of British rule and the common law. By tracing the development of judicial independence in the legal systems of Malaysia and Pakistan from the time of independence to the present, the book offers an insightful comparison of how judicial independence took shape and developed in these countries over time. From this comparison, it suggests a number of contextual factors that can be seen to play a role in the evolution of judicial independence. The study draws upon the significant divergence observed in the case studies to propose a refined understanding of the idea of an independent judiciary, termed the 'pragmatic and context-sensitive theory', which may be seen in contradistinction to a universal approach. While judicial independence responds to the core need of judges to be perceived as an impartial third party by constructing formal and informal constraints on the judge and relationships between judges and others, its meaning in a legal system is inevitably shaped by the judicial role along with other features at the domestic level. The book concludes that the adaptive and pragmatic qualities of judicial independence supply it with relevance and legitimacy within a domestic legal system. (shrink)

The claim that an information revolution is underway is scrutinized in this paper. Particular attention is given to the notions that new information technology will radically increase human choice and rationality in decision-making. The literature on informatics and technology is selectively reviewed in order to determine whether the present use of technology seems to predict an increased choice and rationality in the future; earlier technologies have had this effect; and past social predictions of this type have proven generally correct. We (...) reach a mixed or negative conclusion in every case. Although the possibility of an information revolution cannot be dismissed, neither can it be readily accepted at this point unless we significantly diminish what is normally meant by a 'revolution'. (shrink)

Following the practice of human beings everywhere historians distinguish the real or most significant cause of an occurrence or state of affairs from ‘less important considerations’, ‘precipitating circumstances’, or ‘mere conditions’. I shall term claims that some phenomenon is most basically to be attributed to some one of the factors causally necessary for its occurrence attributive causal explanations or causal attributions and discuss here the extent to which moral convictions are constitutive of them.

Reid maintained that the perceptions that we obtain from the senses of smell, taste, hearing, and touch are ‘suggested’ by corresponding sensations. However, he made an exception for the sense of vision. According to Reid, our perceptions of the real figure, position, and magnitude of bodies are suggested by their visible appearances, which are not sensations but objects of perception in their own right. These visible appearances have figure, position, and magnitude, as well as ‘colour,’ and the standard view among (...) Reid scholars has been that Reid maintained that our perceptions of visible figure, position, and magnitude are also not suggested by any sensation. They are instead suggested by the material impression on the retina. Gideon Yaffe challenges the standard interpretation. According to Yaffe, Reid believed that our perceptions of visible figure are suggested by corresponding sensations, by sensations of colour. We defend the standard interpretation of Reid. According to Reid, there is no “local sign” in our sensations of colour. The same colour sensation can be associated with different positions on the visual field, and different colour sensations can be associated to the same position on the visual field. According to Reid, we only have evidence for a correlation between the image on the retina and the perception of visible figure. (shrink)

Identifying corporate governance mechanisms to improve firm performance has been at the forefront of policy discussion and research in recent years. Existing research in this area focuses on large-capitalisation firms, and has not provided much insight on smaller firms. This paper tests for the optimality of deployment of governance mechanisms for Canadian small-cap firms by estimating a simultaneous equation system that links four control mechanisms to firm performance, using recent data. The results confirm simultaneity between several governance mechanisms and Canadian (...) small-cap firm performance. CEO ownership and shareholder rights are shown to determine board independence. CEO ownership in turn is shown to depend on the extent of shareholder rights and whether the CEO is also Chairperson of the board. Canadian small-cap firms appear to overutilise debt as a control mechanism. There is somewhat weaker evidence that board independence and CEO ownership are beyond the optimum. The latter, given the relatively high degree of CEO ownership in Canadian small-cap firms, is consistent with management entrenchment. We also do not find any significant discount to performance for Quebec-based firms, or for firms with dual or multiple voting class shares structures. (shrink)

I argue that there is an important emotion for which we do not have a name.Export citation.

This study examines whether differences in financial performance exist for investment trusts which base their portfolio selection primarily on an ethical screen, compared to indexes which incorporate a broader spectrum of investments. Results indicate that on a risk-adjusted basis there is an insignificant difference in the financial performance of these trusts against three common market benchmarks. However as to the extent of the directional effect, there does exist slightly superior financial performance by ethical trusts against their respective industry average indexes, (...) but an underperformance against a smaller company's index and the market as a whole. The lack of a distinct advantage in the short to medium term for applying an ethical screen, may in part be due to the recent development of ethical investments in Australia. Stronger performances by older ethical investment trusts may indicate superior returns are more likely to occur over a longer term. (shrink)

Two studies examined the link between social dominance and male waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Groups of four men interacted in a leaderless group discussion. In both studies, men with higher WHRs (associated with current and long-term health status) were rated by other group members as behaving more leader-like when an observer was present, and rated themselves as being more assertive. In Study 2, men with higher WHRs were rated by independent observers as behaving more dominantly, but only when the evaluator was (...) present. These results are discussed in terms of evolutionary models of health, attraction, and intrasexual competition. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

This book presents a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of all of the major arguments and explanations in the "aesthetic" of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The first part of the book aims to provide a clear analysis of the meanings of the terms Kant uses to name faculties and types of representation, the second offers a thorough account of the reasoning behind the "metaphysical" and "transcendental" expositions, and the third investigates the basis for Kant's major conclusions about space, time, appearances, things in (...) themselves, and the cognitive constitution of the subject. A major goal of the work is to establish that Kant takes spatiotemporal form to be originally given through the constitution of the subject's receptive faculty, not generated through synthetic procedures of the imagination or understanding. (shrink)

Review of Gary Hatfield, The Natural and the Normative. Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz. MIT Press, 1990.

The claim that an information revolution is underway is scrutinized in this paper. Particular attention is given to the notions that new information technology will radically increase human choice and rationality in decision-making. The literature on informatics and technology is selectively reviewed in order to determine whether (1) the present use of technology seems to predict an increased choice and rationality in the future; (2) earlier technologies have had this effect; and (3) past social predictions of this type have proven (...) generally correct. We reach a mixed or negative conclusion in every case. Although the possibility of an information revolution cannot be dismissed, neither can it be readily accepted at this point unless we significantly diminish what is normally meant by a ‘revolution’. (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

Architectural ethics has only begun to consider in earnest what it means, in a moral sense, to be an architect.1 The academy, however, has yet to adequately to explore the ethical problems raised,2 to evaluate the types of moral issues that arise, and to develop moral principles or moral reasons that should guide decisions when encountering these moral issues inherent in certain project types. This is the case despite the practice of architecture entailing “behaviours, our choices of which may be (...) illuminated by ethical analysis.”3 Although distinguishing practice from product allows ethical critique of the practice involved in designing buildings, and recognises the significance of the architect’s moral agency, there remains very little empirically-based understanding of how the architect, once identified as a moral agent, operates as such, and still less about the circumstances in which ‘professional’ conduct may be at odds with ‘ethical’ behaviour. (shrink)

The works of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) ranged from the early _Thoughts on the Education of Daughters_ to _The Female Reader_, a selection of texts for girls, and included two novels. But her reputation is founded on _A Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ of 1792. This treatise is the first great document of feminism—and is now accepted as a core text in western tradition. It is not widely known that the germ of Wollstonecraft’s great work came out of an earlier (...) and much shorter vindication—A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), written in the context of the issues raised by the French Revolution. This edition, which follows the model of other Broadview Editions in including a range of materials that help the reader to see the work in the context of its era out of which it emerged, is arranged chronologically, opening with Wollstonecraft’s “other vindication.” It also includes a wide range of other documents in appendices, as well as a comprehensive and authoritative introduction, chronology, and full index. (shrink)