Once a marginal affair, applied phenomenology is now a vast and vibrant movement. With great success, however, comes great criticism, and critics have been harsh, accusing applied phenomenology’s practitioners of everything from spewing nonsense to assailing down-to-earth researchers with gratuitous jargon. In this article, I reconstruct the most damning criticisms as a dilemma: Either applied phenomenology merely describes experience, in which case it offers nothing distinctive, or it involves the kind of analysis characteristic of classical phenomenology, in which case it’s (...) only of interest to a small number of philosophers; either way, we should explore the experiential dimension by other means. Notwithstanding the enormous body of research in applied phenomenology, few authors have tried to explain what makes it an independent intellectual enterprise distinct from pure phenomenology, and none has defused this dilemma. Here I try my hand at both. After considering eight major approaches to applied phenomenology that fail to defuse the dilemma, I propose an approach that, I argue, does the job, one that understands applied phenomenology as a research program that brings the phenomenological method and the resources of at least one other discipline to bear on problems beyond the scope of any monodisciplinary approach. (shrink)

Most people would agree that a small child, or a cognitively impaired adult, is less responsible for their actions, good or bad, than an unimpaired adult. But how do we explain that difference, and how far can anyone be praised or blamed for what they have done? In this fascinating introduction, Matthew Talbert explores some of the key questions shaping current debates about moral responsibility, including: What is free will, and is it required for moral responsibility? Are we (...) responsible for the unforeseen consequences of our actions? Is it fair to blame people for doing what they believe is right? And are psychopaths open to blame? As Talbert argues, we are morally responsible for our actions when they are related to us in particular ways: when our actions express our true selves, for example, or when we exercise certain kinds of control over them. It is because we bear these relationships to our actions that we are open to praise and blame. _Moral Responsibility_ will be an important resource for students and researchers in ethics, moral psychology, and philosophy of agency and of great interest to all those wishing to understand an important aspect of our moral practices. (shrink)

Ubuntu originated in small-scale societies in precolonial Africa. It stresses metaphysical and moral interconnectedness of humans, and newer Africapitalist approaches absorb ubuntu ideology, with the aims of promoting community wellbeing and restoring a love of local place that global free trade has eroded. Ecological degradation violates these goals, which ought to translate into care for the nonhuman world, in addition to which some sub-Saharan thought systems promote environmental concern as a value in its own right. The foregoing story is (...) reinforced by field research on African hunting operations that appear—counterintuitively—to reconcile conservation with business imperatives and local community interests. Though acknowledging shortcomings, I maintain these hunting enterprises do, by and large, adopt Africapitalist and ubuntu attitudes to enhance community wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and long-term economic viability. I also examine how well-intentioned Western conservation agendas are neocolonial impositions that impede local control while exacerbating environmental destruction and socioeconomic hardship. Ubuntu offers a conciliatory epistemology, which Africapitalism incorporates, and I conclude by considering how standard moral theories and political divisions become less antagonistic within these sub-Saharan frameworks, so even opponents can find common cause. (shrink)

Contempt is typically studied as a uniquely human moral emotion. However, this approach has yielded inconclusive results. We argue this is because the folk affect concept “contempt” has been inaccurately mapped onto basic affect systems. “Contempt” has features that are inconsistent with a basic emotion, especially its protracted duration and frequently cold phenomenology. Yet other features are inconsistent with a basic attitude. Nonetheless, the features of “contempt” functionally cohere. To account for this, we revive and reconfigure thesentimentconstruct using the notion (...) of evolved functional specialization. We develop the Attitude–Scenario–Emotion model of sentiments, in which enduring attitudes represent others' social-relational value and moderate discrete emotions across scenarios. Sentiments are functional networks of attitudes and emotions. Distinct sentiments, includinglove,respect,like,hate, andfear, track distinct relational affordances, and each is emotionally pluripotent, thereby serving both bookkeeping and commitment functions within relationships. The sentimentcontemptis an absence ofrespect; from cues to others' low efficacy, it represents them as worthless and small, mutingcompassion,guilt, andshameand potentiatinganger,disgust, andmirth. This sentiment is ancient yet implicated in the ratcheting evolution of human ultrasocialty. The manifolds of thecontemptnetwork, differentially engaged across individuals and populations, explain the features of “contempt,” its translatability, and its variable experience as “hot” or “cold,” occurrent or enduring, and anger-like or disgust-like. This rapprochement between psychological anthropology and evolutionary psychology contributes both methodological and empirical insights, with broad implications for understanding the functional and cultural organization of social affect. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychologists attempt to infer our evolved psychology from the selection pressures present in our ancestral environments. Their use of this inference strategy—often called “adaptive thinking”—is thought to be justified by way of appeal to a rather modest form of adaptationism, according to which the mind's adaptive complexity reveals it to be a product of selection. I argue, on the contrary, that the mind's being an adaptation is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for the validity of adaptive (...) thinking, and that evolutionary psychology's predictive project is in fact committed to an extremely strong and highly implausible form of adaptationism. According to this “strong adaptationism,” the macroevolutionary trajectory of a population is determined by, and therefore predictable on the basis of, the selection pressures acting upon it. Not only is this form of adaptationism prima facie highly implausible, it requires making a number of naïve and likely false assumptions concerning the nature of heritable phenotypic variation in natural populations. In particular, it assumes that phenotypic variation is inevitably small in its extent, unbiased in its direction, and copious in its quantity. Because it is unlikely that these conditions obtain as a general rule, and even more unlikely that they obtained in early human populations, I conclude that there is little reason to believe that adaptive thinking can be used to infer the current structure of our minds from evidence of past selection pressures. (shrink)

_How does a man who once adored music beyond measure come to revile it as a form of tyranny?_ Throughout Pascal Quignard’s distinguished literary career, music has been a recurring obsession. As a musician he organized the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theatre at Versailles in the early 1990s, and thus was instrumental in the rediscovery of much forgotten classical music. Yet in 1994 he abruptly renounced all musical activities. _The Hatred of Music_ is Quignard’s masterful exploration of the (...) power of music and what history reveals about the dangers it poses. From prehistoric chants to challenging contemporary compositions, Quignard reflects on music of all kinds and eras. He draws on vast cultural knowledge—the Bible, Greek mythology, early modern history, modern philosophy, the Holocaust, and more—to develop ten accessible treatises on music. In each of these small masterpieces the author exposes music’s potential to manipulate, to mesmerize, to domesticate. Especially disturbing is his scrutiny of the role music played in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Quignard’s provocative book takes on particular relevance today, as we find ourselves surrounded by music as never before in history. (shrink)

Although the theological elements of Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy have received careful scrutiny, his reflections on economic issues have largely been overlooked. This article takes a small step towards redressing this state of affairs. Rather than argue that Boyle – like John Locke or David Hume – was as interested in political economy as he was in discovering the nature of Nature, the article treats him as a point of entry for considering how early-modern England negotiated the revolutionary cultural (...) and economic changes that emerged as capitalism took command. More specifically, it uses one of Boyle’s less-famous inventions – a hydrostatic device for discriminating between real, degraded and counterfeit coinage – in order to explore how economic exchange began to acquire a patina of ‘objectivity’ in the 17th-century imagination. (shrink)

This paper argues that attempts to apply Alasdair MacIntyre’s positive moral theory to business ethics are problematic, due to the cognitive closure of MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. I begin by outlining the notion of a practice, before turning to Moore’s attempt to provide a MacIntyrean account of corporate governance. I argue that Moore’s attempt is mismatched with MacIntyre’s account of moral education. Because the notion of practices resists general application I go on to argue that a negative application, which (...) focuses on regulation, is more plausible. Large-scale regulation, usually thought antithetical to MacIntyre’s advocacy of small-scale politics, has the potential to facilitate practice-based work and reveals that MacIntyre’s own work can be used against his pessimism about the modern order. Furthermore, the conception of regulation I defend can show us how management is more amenable to ethical understanding than MacIntyre’s work is often taken to imply. (shrink)

Given that natural selection is so powerful at optimizing complex adaptations, why does it seem unable to eliminate genes (susceptibility alleles) that predispose to common, harmful, heritable mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder? We assess three leading explanations for this apparent paradox from evolutionary genetic theory: (1) ancestral neutrality (susceptibility alleles were not harmful among ancestors), (2) balancing selection (susceptibility alleles sometimes increased fitness), and (3) polygenic mutation-selection balance (mental disorders reflect the inevitable mutational load on the thousands (...) of genes underlying human behavior). The first two explanations are commonly assumed in psychiatric genetics and Darwinian psychiatry, while mutation-selection has often been discounted. All three models can explain persistent genetic variance in some traits under some conditions, but the first two have serious problems in explaining human mental disorders. Ancestral neutrality fails to explain low mental disorder frequencies and requires implausibly small selection coefficients against mental disorders given the data on the reproductive costs and impairment of mental disorders. Balancing selection (including spatio-temporal variation in selection, heterozygote advantage, antagonistic pleiotropy, and frequency-dependent selection) tends to favor environmentally contingent adaptations (which would show no heritability) or high-frequency alleles (which psychiatric genetics would have already found). Only polygenic mutation-selection balance seems consistent with the data on mental disorder prevalence rates, fitness costs, the likely rarity of susceptibility alleles, and the increased risks of mental disorders with brain trauma, inbreeding, and paternal age. This evolutionary genetic framework for mental disorders has wide-ranging implications for psychology, psychiatry, behavior genetics, molecular genetics, and evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior. (Published Online November 9 2006) Key Words: adaptation; behavior genetics; Darwinian psychiatry; evolution; evolutionary genetics; evolutionary psychology; mental disorders; mutation-selection balance; psychiatric genetics; quantitative trait loci (QTL). (shrink)

We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument––a type of rational appeal––can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we used follows Singer’s well-known “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar, & Greene 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein, (...) and Slovic 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We did not find support for our pre-registered hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a significantly stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty. (shrink)

Havstad (2022) argues that the argument from inductive risk for the claim that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in the internal stages of science is deductively valid. She also defends its premises and thus soundness. This is, as far as we are aware, the best reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk in the existing literature. However, there is a small flaw in this reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk which appears to render the argument (...) invalid. This flaw is superficial, and a small amendment to it rescues the claim of validity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Role of Glass in Interior Architecture:Aesthetics, Community, and PrivacyMatthew Ziff (bio)Design education seeks to infuse students with knowledge, skills, and attitudes, regarding the design of the built environment. In the areas of knowledge and attitude, sophistication and competence are developed through both practice (largely carried out in the design studio environment), and engagement with critical analysis (largely carried out in seminar classes and traditional lecture format class environments). (...) For design students the world of design is both to be known and understood, and to be created, at their own studio desk. In order to both know and create design, students often behave like nocturnal predators, seeking what is necessary in a mode that is often unobserved, and then returning to digest their catch, to produce responsive and synthetic work. One arena in which design students find rich fields of information is that of material characteristics. Materials used in the design and construction of the built environment form a significant portion of the skeleton of a designer's body of knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward design. A current hotbed of material character and application is that of the world of glass. This essay is an exploration of some of the issues that the architectural uses of glass raise from the point of view of design student exploration.Materials evoke physical and psychological responses. Human beings are complex creatures and an individual's response to specific material applications can be unpredictable. Even so, it is reasonable to expect that there are shared attitudes that form the basis for responses to the physical character of the built environment. From delight, to confusion, materials used in the architecture of things large and small, from buildings to fountain pens, contain literal meaning, or expression of method, as well as possible symbolic and cultural meaning. The contemporary use of glass, particularly in interior architecture, presents a vivid arena for emotional and intellectual stimulation and response. [End Page 10]Glass planes that are sheer, opaque, translucent, colorful, brittle, imposing in mass, irregular in surface texture, flawlessly smooth, deformed through casting or by application of pressure and heat, are being used to create spaces that convey ambiguous relationships between private experience and public display. What is an ambiguous relationship? It is one to which a reasonable response is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the course of action one might take, or in the degree of understanding of the context one can develop. To know that the stair in the train station leads to track 4 is a condition that can be created by the use of unambiguous design; a visual connection from where one has to make a choice of paths to follow to the destination, track 4, creates a clear understanding of where track 4 is to be found. If track 4 can be seen from the position at which a choice is required, then certainty, clarity, is possible, if not probable. Visual connection is exactly what clear glass allows, and provides, yet ambiguity results because of the physical, hard barrier, transparency aside. "I can see track 4, but I cannot get there". The clarity provided by being able to see through glass, or even by being able to see light coming through translucent glass, is not sufficient to offset the uncertainty, or the mixed message, of not being able to get there, to touch what we can see.Glass in interiors offers a tactile and sensory titillation; the excitement of knowing that with a single swing of a hammer, or an umbrella handle, the beautiful sheet of curved frosted lemon ice colored tempered glass can be shattered into fragments.Windows have long been the predominant interior and exterior architectural element in which glass has played a major role. The glass used in Windows on the World, the famous restaurant atop the World Trade Center, destroyed during its collapse, and the glass used in a simple double hung window in a one story ranch house each share architectural duties of providing view from inside to outside, light transmission from outside to inside, heat gain, and acoustical isolation. Human eyes are sometimes described as "windows to the soul," which suggests the ability to... (shrink)

Mammalian hibernation is characterized by profound reductions in metabolism, oxygen consumption and heart rate. As a result, the animal enters a state of suspended animation where core body temperatures can plummet as low as −2.9°C. Not only can hibernating mammals survive these physiological extremes, but they also return to a normothermic state of activity without reperfusion injury or other ill effects. This review examines recent findings on the genes, proteins and small molecules that control the induction and maintenance of (...) hibernation in mammals. The molecular events involved with remodeling metabolism, inducing hypothermia and maintaining organ function are discussed and considered with respect to analogous processes in non‐hibernating mammals such as mice and humans. The advent of sequenced genomes from three distantly related hibernators, a bat, hedgehog and ground squirrel, provides additional opportunities for molecular biologists to explore the mechanistic aspects of this biological adaptation in greater detail. BioEssays 29:431–440, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This commentary provides a legal analysis of the extent to which changes proposed by scholars to promote care for substance use disorder or other under-treated illnesses through risk adjustment could be implemented administratively, without legislation, in federal risk adjustment systems: Medicare's privatized component, Medicare's pharmaceutical component, and the individual and small group market. As the article explains, federal laws governing risk adjustment provide broad discretion to regulators and can reasonably be interpreted to permit full and final implementation through the (...) administrative process of almost all of the changes that scholars have proposed. (shrink)

This paper argues that attempts to apply Alasdair MacIntyre’s positive moral theory to business ethics are problematic, due to the cognitive closure of MacIntyre’s concept of a practice. I begin by outlining the notion of a practice, before turning to Moore’s attempt to provide a MacIntyrean account of corporate governance. I argue that Moore’s attempt is mismatched with MacIntyre’s account of moral education. Because the notion of practices resists general application I go on to argue that a negative application, which (...) focuses on regulation, is more plausible. Large-scale regulation, usually thought antithetical to MacIntyre’s advocacy of small-scale politics, has the potential to facilitate practice-based work and reveals that MacIntyre’s own work can be used against his pessimism about the modern order. Furthermore, the conception of regulation I defend can show us how management is more amenable to ethical understanding than MacIntyre’s work is often taken to imply. (shrink)

Despite the growing popularityof farmers' markets (FMs) across the UnitedStates, the experiences and perspectives offarmers who sell at markets have received verylittle research attention. This study describesthe views of 18 farmers from Upstate New Yorkon the importance of FMs as part of theirlifestyle and livelihood, the challenges theyface selling at markets, and their conceptionsof ideal FMs. Through in-depth, semi-structuredinterviews, farmers expressed economic andsocial motivations for selling at FMs; socialbenefits from interacting with customers; andthe challenges they faced as small-scalefarmers and (...) sellers, including extra-marketcompetition, uncooperative and problematicmarket vendors, rising farm input costs, andchanging consumer trends. Farmers alsodiscussed personal values associated withselling at FMs, such as pride in raising andmarketing one's own products, working togetherwith other farmer-vendors, and providingcustomers with honest information. Visions ofideal FMs were varied among farmers, but therewas general agreement that FMs should provide adiversity of products to attract customers andeducational opportunities for the public tolearn more about FMs and local produce. Theinterdependence of FM farmers was a majoremergent theme across interviews. Findingssuggested that market experiences of FMfarmers, including economic success, are notonly contingent on personal effort, but canalso be affected by the work of fellow vendors.Future research may look to further explore howFM farmers and other vendors interact ascooperative and competitive social and economicunits. At the community level, FM leadershipshould continue to focus on the experiences andperspectives of farmers and other marketvendors, in addition to identifying ways forenhancing cooperative FM enterprises. (shrink)

This article seeks to historicize both the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the debate on realism occasioned by Russian aggression in Ukraine since 2014. Using the research of Gerard Toal on Russia’s construction of its security interests in the post-Soviet spaces that include Ukraine, the article argues that neorealist geopolitical explanations fail to do justice to the roles of contingency and culture in setting Russia’s so-called ‘red lines.’ It also identifies an agency problem in realism: realists not only (...) fail to do justice to the agency of small states like Ukraine in this conflict but elide the moral and practical agency of decisionmakers like Russian President Vladmir Putin. The article also suggests that the current realism debate is the tip of an iceberg: realism has long had a problem specifying the relation of its theory to its practice. The article concludes by discussing the long shadow of 19th century imperial history over contemporary discussions of spheres of influence and great power status. (shrink)

It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of psycho-physical parallelism and about how we could define probabilities for our individual future observations given our individual present and previous observations. The complexity of the problems is underlined by arguments that unpredictability in ordinary everyday neural functioning, ultimately stemming from small-scale (...) uncertainties in molecular motions, may overwhelm, by many orders of magnitude, many conventionally recognized sources of observed ``quantum'' uncertainty. Some possible ways of avoiding the problems are considered but found wanting. It is proposed that a complete understanding of the relationship between subjective experience and its physical correlates requires the introduction of mathematical definitions and indeed of new physical laws. (shrink)

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, British colonists in Jamaica became increasingly exasperated by the damage caused to their sugar plantations by rats. In 1872, a British planter attempted to solve this problem by introducing the small Indian mongoose (Urva auropunctata). The animals, however, turned on Jamaica's insectivorous birds and reptiles, leading to an explosion in the tick population. This paper situates the mongoose catastrophe as a closing chapter in the history of the nineteenth-century acclimatization movement. While foreign (...) observers saw the introduction of the mongoose as a cautionary tale, caricaturing British Jamaica as overrun by a plague of weasels and ticks, British colonists, administrators and naturalists – identifying a gradual decline of both populations – argued that the ‘balance of nature’ would eventually reassert itself. As this paper argues, through this dubious claim they were attempting to retrospectively rationalize or justify the introductions and their disastrous aftermath. This strategy enabled them to gloss over the lasting ecological damage caused by the mongoose, and allowed its adherents to continue their uncritical support of both the Jamaican plantation economy and animal introductions in the British Empire. (shrink)

Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm's Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm's well-known argument for God's existence in Chapters 2-4, which is often called the "ontological argument," a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of "something than which nothing greater is able to be thought," and subsequently he leads the reader to see that such a (...) reality necessarily exists and cannot be thought not to be. This argument - which is, to be sure, crucial to the work constitutes - but a small portion of the whole. Preceding it is a profound but oft-overlooked opening chapter in which Anselm contemplates his all-too-human condition and disposes the reader to receive aptly his argument for God's existence in the next three chapters. And following this argument are 20 chapters in which Anselm artfully unfolds the depth and breadth of God's true existence as that than which nothing greater is able to be thought, showing God to be (among other things) able-to-sense, pity-hearted, just, good, and uncircumscribed. Indeed, if the reader is willing to give himself over to the work as whole, he will be compelled, under Anselm's deft guidance, to "endeavor to straighten up his mind toward contemplating God," which is how Anselm describes his own role in the work in his prefatory remarks. This edition provides a faithful yet readable English rendering of the whole Proslogion, the objections raised to Anselm's argument by his contemporary Gaunilo, and Anselm's replies to those objections. (After responding to Gaunilo, Anselm himself requested that these objections and replies be included in subsequent editions of the Proslogion.) This edition also includes an introduction that contextualizes the Proslogion within the monastic, pre-Scholastic age in which it first made its appearance. In addition, by means of notes and commentary, this edition articulates how to contextualize Anselm's famous argument in the Proslogion as a whole and in light of his replies to Gaunilo, how to appreciate the artistry whereby Anselm knit the Proslogion together into a coherent and concise unity, and how the work may be taught effectively to interested students. These features set this affordable English edition of the Proslogion apart from those currently available, which too often fail to capture accurately the beauty of Anselm's prose, which often treat the work through the lens of either later Scholasticism or contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, and which take little note of the craftsmanship whereby Anselm constructed this masterfully integrated work that is remembered too often for too few of its 24 chapters. Matthew Walz has taught in the interdisciplinary program at Thomas Aquinas College in California, and since 2008 he has been a professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Directions in Contemporary German AestheticsMatthew PritchardÄsthetisches Denken, 6th ed., by Wolfgang Welsch. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1990 (2003), 223 pp.Aisthetik: Vorlesungen Über Ästhetik Als Allgemeine Wahrnehmungslehre, by Gernot Böhme. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2001, 199 pp.Ästhetische Korrespondenzen: Denken Im Technischen Raum, by Reinhard Knodt. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994, 166 pp.The relationship between the Anglo-American and German aesthetic traditions is a paradoxical one. On the one hand, acquaintance with one or more figures from (...) the “great tradition” in German aesthetic thought over the last 250 years is a given for most philosophically oriented writers on aesthetics in Britain and America. Thinkers such as Kant or Adorno form a real and abiding part of our background. In some cases the connection with German intellectual lineages goes a good deal further. As an extreme case, take Terry Eagleton’s The Ideology of the Aesthetic,1 whose engagement with German thought is so deep that I have come across it as a set text for aesthetics courses in German universities (despite the fact that none of the dozen authors Eagleton analyzes are cited in their original language). On the other hand, interest in contemporary German aesthetics in English and American circles appears to be relatively slight. One would have little idea, from reading any of the philosophical journals in English, of just how much activity there is in this area, only a small proportion of which has been translated, cited, or reviewed. And yet the past two decades have seen the publication of dozens of relevant books by German authors, many proposing independent theoretical approaches. Among these—aside from the books reviewed here—are the substantial work done on performance and performativity by Erika Fischer-Lichte (Ästhetik des Performativen, 2004) and Dieter Mersch (Ereignis und Aura, 2002); the theoretical oeuvre of the prize-winning literary critic Karl Heinz Bohrer, of which Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearance, originally published in 1981, has made it into English; Ruth Sonderegger’s Romantic-leaning plea Für eine Ästhetik des Spiels (2000); Dieter Heinrich’s work on the philosophy of art and subjectivity, Fixpunkte: Aufsätze [End Page 117] und Essays zur Theorie der Kunst (2003); Martin Seel’s Aesthetics of Appearing (2004); the traditional neo-Kantian perspective of the late Rüdiger Bubner as set out in his Ästhetische Erfahrung (1989); Gábor Paál’s Was ist schön?—Ästhetik und Erkenntnis (2003); Konrad Paul Liessmann’s Reiz und Rührung: Über ästhetische Empfindungen (2003)... the list could be continued. And this is not to mention empirical-psychological approaches, works on the history of aesthetics, the reception accorded to analytical aesthetics and American philosophers such as Goodman and Danto, or the continuation of European poststructuralist and Frankfurt School traditions (for example, in the work of Albrecht Wellmer and Christoph Menke).Given this large “backlog” of writing not yet assimilated into Anglo-American discussion, it makes sense to be selective and range a little further than the most recently published texts. Owing to sheer diversity, I cannot honestly claim that the three books I am going to discuss here are “representative” of the interests driving contemporary German aesthetics. But I have chosen them for certain common traits, traditions, and emphases that seem to me to present a stimulating contrast with the approach of Anglo-American philosophical aesthetics, while retaining many points of contact with non-German thought. That the contrast does not come down to the crass standoff of “analytical” vs. “Continental,” and all the clichés about academic style that go with it, should become obvious. It is more interesting than that, and although I want to leave the details to the discussion of the three books, I can mention at the outset a few aspects I regard as important. One is that none of these authors addresses themselves exclusively to either the philosophy of art or to the aesthetics of nature and the environment. Instead they tend to make points relating to both, or to regard both as aspects of a single situation. “Environmental aesthetics” in Anglo-American philosophy—for instance, the work of Allen Carlson—is not only of recent date but is still a subdiscipline separated from aesthetics... (shrink)

The tridecompositional uniqueness theorem of Elby and Bub (1994) shows that a wavefunction in a triple tensor product Hilbert space has at most one decomposition into a sum of product wavefunctions with each set of component wavefunctions linearly independent. I demonstrate that, in many circumstances, the unique component wavefunctions and the coefficients in the expansion are both hopelessly unstable, both under small changes in global wavefunction and under small changes in global tensor product structure. In my opinion, this (...) means that the theorem cannot underlie lawlike solutions to the problems of the interpretation of quantum theory. I also provide examples of circumstances in which there are open sets of wavefunctions containing no states with various decompositions. (shrink)

We use the interpretation of vague scalar predicates like small as an illustration of how systematic semantic models of dialogue context enable the derivation of useful, fine-grained utterance interpretations from radically underspeci- fied semantic forms. Because dialogue context suffices to determine salient alternative scales and relevant distinctions along these scales, we can infer implicit standards of comparison for vague scalar predicates through completely general pragmatics, yet closely constrain the intended meaning to within a natural range.

Economic theory assumes that preferences are rational. However, experiments have found small violations of transitivity. This paper develops a model of rationality with preference discovery costs. Introspection is costly. Thus, agents may find it optimal to use less than full effort, even though this raises the risk of making a poor choice. This model could potentially explain the intransitivities observed in the data while retaining rationality and optimization.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 207-224 [Access article in PDF] Atomism, Atheism, and the Spontaneous Generation of Human Beings: The Debate over a Natural Origin of the First Humans in Seventeenth-Century Britain Matthew R. Goodrum The problem of human origins, of how and when the first humans appeared in the world, has been addressed in a variety of ways in western thought. In the seventeenth (...) century the predominant explanation for the origin of the world and the beings that inhabit it, especially human beings, was based on the biblical account of creation. It was almost universally accepted that humans had been created by a supernatural agent using supernatural means. But alternative explanations for the production of the first humans did exist, according to which the first humans were produced by nature through some form of spontaneous generation. Seventeenth-century proponents of this view differed in their conceptions of how spontaneous generation worked, but all relied heavily upon mechanisms first proposed in antiquity. Some followed the example of Aristotle and other early Greek philosophers, who had described how matter, when subjected to the correct conditions, could produce living beings. 1 Others were influenced by the modifications made to these ideas by medieval Islamic philosophers. 2 [End Page 207] A quite different conception of spontaneous generation was derived from the classical atomists, in part from certain notions attributed to Democritus of Abdera but mainly from the philosophical system of Epicurus.While any suggestion that humans might have originated naturally by some kind of spontaneous generation was widely and vigorously rejected by natural philosophers and theologians alike, the most vehement attacks were often directed against the atomists' accounts of the origin of the first humans. The reasons for this were both scientific and religious. Atomism had long been criticized for its materialism, its reliance on chance, and its atheistic tendencies. Thus, the efforts of a small number of natural philosophers to formulate and support a naturalistic explanation of human origins based upon its principles was bound to raise profound theological, philosophical, and scientific difficulties. To these natural philosophers, however, atomism seemed to offer a viable mechanism to explain spontaneous generation. Yet while atomism solved some problems, it raised others; and even if these scientific objections could be overcome, there remained religious objections to both the notion of a natural origin of humans and the atomists' account of the process that had to be addressed. Complicating matters further is the fact that these scientific and religious objections were sometimes intimately connected.This paper investigates the mechanisms proposed by atomists to explain the spontaneous generation of human beings and the kinds of criticisms their hypotheses received in seventeenth-century Britain. This will illuminate a number of interconnected issues relating to the acceptance of atomism as a philosophy of nature and its application to the biological sciences. By analyzing the ways scientific and religious factors interacted in the debate over the spontaneous generation of the first humans we will not only make a contribution to the history of seventeenth-century atomism but also link problems and ideas in the physical sciences with those in the biological and anthropological sciences. At the same time this study illustrates the ways in which scientific ideas were shaped by, or needed to respond to, ideas and concerns that had their roots in religion. Atomism and the Generation of the First Humans The most complete account of the atomic philosophy and the mechanisms it proposed to account for the origin of human beings to survive from antiquity was Lucretius's De rerum natura. Several editions of the text were available during the seventeenth century, including one published at Cambridge in 1675 and an English translation by Thomas Creech that went through four editions [End Page 208] between 1682 and 1699. 3 But Lucretius was not the only source describing the atomists' ideas about the spontaneous generation of the first humans. A more contemporary and perhaps more influential proponent of the atomic... (shrink)

What are sanctuary cities? What are the political stakes? The literature provides inadequate answers. Liberal migration theorists offer few insights into sanctuary city politics. Critical migration scholars primarily address the relationship between sanctuary cities and political activism, a small part of the phenomenon. The historical literature examines continuities between 1970s sanctuary church activism and contemporary sanctuary cities, confusing what is essential to sanctuary churches and what is only sometimes associated with sanctuary cities. Together these approaches obscure more than they (...) reveal. This article suggests a republican account of sanctuary cities. Reconstructing American migration politics from the colonial era onward shows that sanctuary cities have roots in both the colonial republican revolt and the republican principle of freedom as nondomination. That reconstruction reveals much about both sanctuary cities and the federal government’s long-running assault on them. The resulting robust analytical framework clarifies what is at stake in the politics of sanctuary cities: federal sovereignty in migration politics specifically and republican liberty in migration politics generally. (shrink)

How will the adoption of genetically modified staple crops reconfigure labor processes in Sub-Saharan Africa? This article focuses on Uganda, where GM varieties of matooke, the country’s primary carbohydrate staple, are expected to be commercialized within the next few years. The paper draws on survey data and focus groups with a random sample of over one hundred and fifty growers to investigate the potential ways a variety engineered to be resistant to banana bacterial wilt might impact labor dynamics. A BBW (...) resistant GM variety will displace labor currently allocated to disease prevention and control, and increase the labor required for harvesting higher yields. How farmers can address the need for more harvesting labor varies significantly according to region. In the southwestern highlands, producers can increase their portion of hired labor. In the central and eastern regions, where farms tend to be smaller and subsistence-oriented, farmers are more likely to intensify their use of unpaid family labor, particularly that of wives. Hence, while GM technology may result in increased yields for small-scale farmers in Uganda, this is likely to come at the cost of intensifying the agricultural labor burdens of women in the central and eastern region. (shrink)

This paper argues that Quaker business ethics can be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. To do so, it draws on three key MacIntyrean concepts: community, compartmentalisation, and the critique of management. The emphasis in Quaker business ethics on finding unity, as well as the emphasis that Quaker businesses have placed on serving their local areas, accords with MacIntyre’s claim that small-scale community is essential to human flourishing. The emphasis on integrity in Quaker business ethics means practitioners are well-placed to (...) resist the compartmentalising pressures of contemporary work. Quaker business ethics is also highly critical of the manipulative forms of management that MacIntyre regards as dominant. As such, Quaker business ethics provides evidence that more morally ameliorative forms of running business organisations is possible, even if they remain difficult to achieve. (shrink)

Addiction is a common condition affecting millions of people worldwide of which only a small proportion receives treatment. The development and use of healthcare services is influenced by how addiction is understood (e.g., a condition to treat, a shameful condition to stigmatize), notably with respect to how volition is impacted (e.g., addiction as a choice or a disease beyond one’s control). Through semi-structured qualitative interviews, we explore the implicit views and understandings of addiction and volition across three stakeholder groups: (...) people with lived experience of addiction, clinicians with experience treating addiction, and members of the public without lived experience of addiction. We notably examine whether three paradigms, i.e., three philosophical sets of understandings about the nature of reality and knowledge (realism, relativism, pragmatism) reflect how stakeholders envision addiction and volition in the context of addiction. The use of these paradigms allows for the characterization of different stances on addiction and volition and an assessment of the coherence of beliefs about these matters. Our findings demonstrate that few participants relied on a single epistemic paradigm when describing their views. Furthermore, there were notable differences in understandings of volition between the clinician group, who were more oriented toward pragmatism, and people with lived experience of addiction, who were less oriented toward realism. Despite its limitations, our study suggests that a greater appreciation for the complexity of views held by different stakeholders about addiction and volition could help critically assess the search for coherence expressed in academic and policy debates. (shrink)

Children often refer to things ambiguously but learn not to from responding to clarification requests. We review and explore this learning process here. In Study 1, eighty-four 2- and 4-year-olds were tested for their ability to request stickers from either (a) a small array with one dissimilar distracter or (b) a large array containing similar distracters. When children made ambiguous requests, they received either general feedback or specific questions about which of two options they wanted. With training, children learned (...) to produce more complex object descriptions and did so faster in the specific feedback condition. They also tended to provide more information when requesting stickers from large arrays. In Study 2, we varied only distracter similarity during training and then varied array size in a generalization test. Children found it harder to learn in this case. In the generalization test, 4-year-olds were more likely to provide information (a) when it was needed because distracters were similar to the target and (b) when the array size was greater (regardless of need for information). We discuss how clear cues to potential ambiguity are needed for children to learn to tailor their referring expression to context and how several cues of heuristic value (e.g., more distracters > say more) can promote the efficiency of communication while language is developing. Finally, we consider whether it would be worthwhile drawing on the human learning process when developing algorithms for the production of referring expressions. (shrink)

Among mainstream political philosophers, Charles Mills is probably best known, not as the author of The Racial Contract, but for his long-running critique of ideal theory and Rawls for his association with it. Yet the critique of ideal theory that followed the publication of The Racial Contract is prefigured in that very work, where we find in inchoate form what would be further developed later on. In the book, this early formulation of the critique occupies a small part of (...) a larger, more general argument condemning mainstream political philosophy for the way that it has ignored race. In this paper, I explore the relation of the critique to this more general argument. It might be thought that the general argument leads inevitably to the critique of ideal theory. I will argue that this is not so. I will show how Mills’ more general argument can be made without taking the further step of critiquing ideal theorizing. The blame for why mainstream political philosophy has ignored race, and continues to ignore race, I will argue, should be placed elsewhere. (shrink)

Natural languages vary widely in the degree to which they make use of nested compositional structure in their grammars. It has long been noted by linguists that the languages historically spoken in small communities develop much deeper levels of compositional embedding than those spoken by larger groups. Recently, this observation has been confirmed by a robust statistical analysis of the World Atlas of Language Structures. In order to examine this connection mechanistically, we propose an agent‐based model that accounts for (...) key cultural evolutionary features of language transfer and language change. We identify transitivity as a physical parameter of social networks critical for the evolution of compositional structure and the hierarchical patterning of scale‐free distributions as inhibitory. (shrink)

Physical activity, and likely the motivation for it, varies throughout the day. The aim of this investigation was to create a short assessment (CRAVE: Cravings for Rest and Volitional Energy Expenditure) to measure motivation states (wants, desires, urges) for physical activity and sedentary behaviors. Five studies were conducted to develop and evaluate the construct validity and reliability of the scale, with 1,035 participants completing the scale a total of 1,697 times. In Study 1, 402 university students completed a questionnaire inquiring (...) about the want or desire to perform behaviors “at the present moment (right now).” Items related to physical activity (e.g., “move my body”) and sedentary behaviors (e.g., “do nothing active”). An exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) revealed that 10 items should be retained, loading onto two factors (5 each for Move and Rest). In Study 2, an independent sample (n= 444) confirmed these results and found that Move and Rest desires were associated with stage-of-change for exercise behavior. In Study 3, 127 community-residing participants completed the CRAVE at 6-month intervals over two years- two times each session. Across-session interclass correlations (ICC) for Move (ICC = 0.72–0.95) and Rest (ICC = 0.69–0.88) were higher than when they were measured across 24-months (Move: ICC = 0.53; Rest: ICC = 0.49), indicating wants/desires have state-like qualities. In Study 4, a maximal treadmill test was completed by 21 university students. The CRAVE was completed immediately pre and post. Move desires decreased 26% and Rest increased 74%. Changes in Move and Rest desires were moderately associated with changes in perceived physical fatigue and energy. In Study 5, 41 university students sat quietly during a 50-min lecture. They completed the CRAVE at 3 time points. Move increased 19.6% and Rest decreased 16.7%. Small correlations were detected between move and both perceived energy and tiredness, but not calmness or tension. In conclusion, the CRAVE scale has good psychometric properties. These data also support tenets of the WANT model of motivation states for movement and rest (Stults-Kolehmainen et al., 2020a). Future studies need to explore how desires to move/rest relate to dynamic changes in physical activity and sedentarism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reaching the Age of Majority:The Life Trajectory of the CIHR Institute of AgingYves Joanette, Anne Martin-Matthews, Réjean Hebert, and Joanne GoldbergThe Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) was created in 2001 under the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Act S.C. 2000, c. 6 (Government of Canada, 2000). The creation of CIHR was in follow-up to the Canadian Medical Research Council (MRC) as well as to the National Health Research (...) and Development Program of Health Canada that, up until that point in time, had supported the breadth of health research in Canada. Two important characteristics of CIHR were crucial for the development of research on aging. The first was that CIHR, unlike MRC, was entrusted with the challenge of supporting the whole spectrum of health research, from the basic biomedical perspective to clinical research, research on health services and policies as well as social aspects of health research, not to mention research on ethics and other perspectives (including the science of research). The second characteristic of the nascent CIHR that impacted the community of research on aging was the decision that a small part of the overall CIHR budget would be used to address priority-driven questions or topics (strategic competitions), while the majority of the budget would be invested in grants and awards programs that would be investigator-initiated, as in the time of the MRC (open competition). Since its inception, CIHR has included 13 institutes that are central to the priority-driven actions. Institutes not only play an important convener role within their communities and among their stakeholders, but they are also expected to listen to the needs, gaps and opportunities in their area and to introduce initiatives---most of the time involving more than one Institute---in order to tackle these needs and gaps and to seize upon the opportunities.The Institute of Aging was introduced at the same time as the other 12 Institutes and it is clear that many challenges were awaiting the new Institute since, at that time, research on aging was still in its early years. This article is about the trajectory of the CIHR Institute of Aging in its first 18 years of existence. Having now reached an age that is either the age of majority or quite close to it, it is important to be able to provide a reflection on the evolution of the priorities over this period, while also taking a peek at some of the priorities that will surely come in the near future.The Early Years (2001-2004)The founding Scientific Director of the Institute of Aging was Dr. Réjean Hébert. A well-known and prolific [End Page 1] geriatrician and researcher, Dr. Hébert was the perfect person to launch the Institute. One of his first actions was, in fact, to harmonize the French and English names of the Institute. In French, the name of the Institute focused on Aging (Institut du vieillissement) while, in English, the name of the Institute focused on Healthy Aging. The CIHR Institute of Healthy Aging thus became the CIHR Institute of Aging in all versions of its documentation. But above and beyond this important name change, the real work of Dr. Hebert, accompanied by the first Institute Advisory Board1, chaired by Prof. Dorothy Pringle, was to identify the gaps, the needs and the opportunities. After a rigorous process came the first Strategic Plan of the CIHR Institute of Aging, which was clearly influenced by Dr. Réjean Hébert's vision of the aging population as an opportunity, instead of a catastrophe, for our society that comes, of course, with its own challenges. Dr. Hébert left CIHR during his first mandate as he was called upon to become the Dean of his Faculty, and then went on to become the first CIHR Scientific Director to sit as a Minister of Health and Social Services in the Québec Government. The main outcomes of Dr. Hebert's years (2001-2004) can be summarized as follows2.• Organizing many workshops and meetings to ensure that the Institute of Aging would become the premier national convener for research on aging, bridging between disciplines... (shrink)

Nucleosomes are the basic elements of chromatin structure. Polyamines, such as spermine and spermidine, are small ubiquitous molecules absolutely required for cell growth. Photoaffinity polyamines bind to specific locations in nucleosomes and can change the helical twist of DNA in nucleosomes. Acetylation of polyamines reduces their affinity for DNA and nucleosomes, thus the helical twist of DNA in nucleosomes could be regulated by cells through acetylation. I suggest that histone and polyamine acetylation act synergistically to modulate chromatin structure. On (...) naked DNA, the photoaffinity spermine bound preferentially to a specific ‘TATA’ sequence element, suggesting that polyamines may be involved in the unusual chromatin structure in this region. Further work is needed to test whether the specificities shown by photoaffinity polyamines are also shown by cellular polyamines; such experiments are now feasible. (shrink)

AimTo investigate the associations between Grit, connectedness, and parental involvement in Thai adolescents. Grit, perseverance, and passion for long-term goals are predictors of academic success and health. There is a small but developing knowledge of the predictors of Grit in Asia, especially Thailand. This paper investigates the proposition that connectedness and parental involvement are positively associated with Grit.MethodA total of 2,839 lower secondary, higher secondary, and vocational students from 21 schools in Chiang Mai, Thailand participated in a survey that (...) measured Grit using the Short Grit Scale. Bivariate analysis was conducted using the t-test, ANOVA, or Kruskal–Wallis H test as appropriate. Multiple ordinary least squares linear regression analysis was performed to determine factors associated with Grit.ResultsSatisfactory relationships with teachers, parental support, interest in school, having been asked by parents to do homework, and having been told by parents that they had done something bad associated with Grit. These findings can aid in design of tailored interventions to improve Grit in Thai adolescents. (shrink)

The Single European Market is both the single largest opportunity and the single largest threat to face European companies in the 1990s. The survival of many companies will depend on how well they address these opportunities and react to these threats. First, they need to understand the Single Market issues and legislation, but expertise in these areas is expensive and rare. Many organisations, particularly smaller ones or those affected by the recession cannot afford to pay for this experience.This paper describes (...) PHAROS, an Expert System which advises small to medium sized companies on how changes in Single European Market and Environmental legislation will affect their business. PHAROS was developed by National Westminster Bank and Ernst & Young Management Consultants. To date, PHAROS has cost over £2 million to develop and distribute. (shrink)

Given emerging evidence that learning to play a musical instrument may lead to a number of cognitive benefits for older adults, it is important to clarify how these training programs can be delivered optimally and meaningfully. The effective acquisition of musical and domain-general skills by later-life learners may be influenced by social, cultural and individual factors within the learning environment. The current study examines the effects of a 10-week piano training program on healthy older adult novices’ cognitive and motor skills, (...) in comparison to an inactive waitlisted control group. Fifteen participants completed piano training led by a music facilitator in small groups (max n = 4 per lesson class; two experimental, two waitlisted control groups). Data was collected using an explanatory sequential design: quantitative data from a battery of cognitive and motor tests was collected pre/post-test on all participants, with further post-test data from the waitlisted control group (n = 7). Qualitative data included weekly facilitator observations, participant practice diaries, and an individual, semi-structured, post-experiment interview. Bayesian modelling demonstrated moderate evidence of a strong positive impact of training on part A of the Trail Making test (TMT), indicating improved visuo-motor skills. Moderate evidence for negative impacts of training on part B of the Trail Making Test (and difference score delta) was also found, suggesting no benefit of cognitive... (shrink)

This book provides a systematic reading of Martin Heidegger’s project of “fundamental ontology,” which he initially presented in Being and Time (1927) and developed further in his work on Kant. It shows our understanding of being to be that of a small set of a priori, temporally inflected, “categorial” forms that articulate what, how, and whether things can be. -/- As selves bound to and bounded by the world within which we seek to answer the question of how to (...) live, we imaginatively generate these forms in order to open ourselves up to those intra-worldly entities which determinately instantiate them. This makes us, as selves, the source and unifying ground of being. But this ground is hidden from us – until we do fundamental ontology. In showing how Heidegger develops these ideas, the author challenges key elements of the anti-Cartesian framework that most readers bring to his texts, arguing that his Kantian account of being has its roots in the anti-empiricism and Augustinianism of Descartes, and that his project relies implicitly on an essentially Cartesian “meditational” method of reflective self-engagement that allows being to be brought to light. He also argues against the widespread tendency to see Heidegger as presenting the basic forms of being as in any way normative, from which he concludes, partially against Heidegger himself, that fundamental ontology is, while profound and worth pursuing for its own sake, inert with respect to the question of how to live. (shrink)

Psychiatric involvement in patient morality is controversial. If psychiatrists are tasked with shaping patient morality, the coercive potential of psychiatry is increased, treatment may be unfairly administered on the basis of patients’ moral beliefs rather than medical need, moral disputes could damage the therapeutic relationship and, in any case, we are often uncertain or conflicted about what is morally right. Yet, there is also a strong case for the view that psychiatry often works through improving patient morality and, therefore, should (...) aim to do so. Our goal is to offer a practical and ethical path through this conflict. We argue that the default psychiatric approach to patient morality should be procedural, whereby patients are helped to express their own moral beliefs. Such a procedural approach avoids the brunt of objections to psychiatric involvement in patient morality. However, in a small subset of cases where patients’ moral beliefs are sufficiently distorted or underdeveloped, we claim that psychiatrists should move to a substantive approach and shape thecontentof those beliefs when they are relevant to psychiatric outcomes. The substantive approach is prone to the above objections but we argue it is nevertheless justified in this subset of cases. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty is an insidious problem that besets most tertiary institutions, where considerable resources are expended to prevent and manage students' dishonest actions within academia. Using a mixed retrospective and prospective design this research investigated Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory as a possible explanation for academic dishonesty in 264 university students. The relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was also examined. A significant but small to moderate relationship between academic dishonesty and general criminality was present, including correlations with (...) general dishonesty, violent crime and drug offending subcategories. These findings suggested that a general criminological theory may be of use in explaining academic dishonesty, but the overall ability of self-control variables to explain academic dishonesty was not strong. Controlled logistic regressions indicated that a significant positive association with academic dishonesty was only present for one of 6 self-control subscales (self-centeredness), and even this association was only present in the prospective study component. A strong relationship between past and future academic dishonesty was present. Implications of the study for institutions are discussed. (shrink)

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable (...) if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement. (shrink)

A number of articles and empirical studies over the past decade, most by Paul Robinson and co-authors, have suggested a relationship between the extent of the criminal law's reputation for being just in its distribution of criminal liability and punishment in the eyes of the community – its "moral credibility" – and its ability to gain that community's deference and compliance through a variety of mechanisms that enhance its crime-control effectiveness. This has led to proposals to have criminal liability and (...) punishment rules reflect lay intuitions of justice – "empirical desert" – as a means of enhancing the system's moral credibility. In a recent article, Christopher Slobogin and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein (SBR) report seven sets of studies that they argue undermine these claims of empirical desert and moral credibility and instead support SBR's proposed distributive principle of "individual prevention," a view that focuses on an offender's future dangerousness rather than on his perceived desert. -/- The idea that there is a relationship between the criminal law's reputation for justness and its crime-control effectiveness did not originate with Robinson and his co-authors. Rather, it has been a common theme among a wide range of punishment theory scholars for many decades. A particularly important conclusion of recent Robinson studies, however, is their confirmation that this relationship is a continuous one: even small nudges in moral credibility can produce corresponding changes in the community's deference to the criminal law. This is important because it shows that even piecemeal changes or changes at the margin – as in reforming even one unjust doctrine or procedure – can have real implications for crime-control. SBR's studies, rather than contradicting the crime-control power of empirical desert, in fact confirm it. Further, SBR's studies do not provide support for their proposed "individual prevention" distributive principle, contrary to what they claim. -/- While SBR try to associate their principle with the popular "limiting retributivism" adopted by the American Law Institute in its 2007 amendment of the Model Penal Code, in fact it is, in many respects, just the reverse of that principle. With limiting retributivism, the Model Code's new provision sets desert as dominant, never allowing punishment to conflict with it. SBR would have "punishment" essentially always set according to future dangerousness; it is to be constrained by desert only when the extent of the resulting injustices or failures of justice is so egregious as to significantly delegitimize the government and its law. This ignores the fact that even minor departures from justice may have an important cumulative effect on the system as a whole. What SBR propose – essentially substituting preventive detention for criminal justice – promotes the worst of the failed policies of the 1960s, where detention decisions were made at the back-end by "experts," and conflicts with the trend of the past several decades of encouraging more community involvement in criminal punishment, not less. (shrink)

The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)