While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms (...) may have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms (...) may have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 35-39 [Access article in PDF] The Ownership of Thoughts John Campbell Keywords: schizophrenia, thought insertion, immunity to error through misidentification. SYDNEY SHOEMAKER FORMULATED a basic point about first-person, present-tense ascriptions of psychological states when he declared that they are, in general, immune to error through misidentification (Shoemaker 1984). Assuming Shoemaker's point to be correct, the puzzle it raises is this: how are (...) we to explain this datum? Why should it be that first-person, present-tense ascriptions of psychological states are immune to error through misidentification? One type of explanation is in terms of the meaning of the first person: that "I" just stands for whoever is the owner of these (demonstrated) psychological states (including any states being self-ascribed). I argued against this account of the first person in a number of places, and in favor of an alternative explanation of Shoemaker's datum. On the alternative explanation, the reason for the immunity is provided by an account of the ownership of psychological states, on which what makes a psychological state mine is the possibility of self-ascription of it by me (Campbell 1986, 1999a). Suppose we call this the Introspectionist explanation of the immunity to error through misidentification of present-tense self-ascriptions of psychological states. I do think, though, that the simple Introspectionist account is too simple an account of Shoemaker's datum (Campbell 1999a, 1999b). The reason is that there is a certain complexity in our notion of the ownership of a token thought. We cannot give a full account of our ordinary notion of the ownership of a thought simply in terms of the person who is capable of introspective knowledge of the thought. The reason is that there is another dimension to our ordinary notion of the ownership of a thought. We also think of the possessor of a thought as being the person who generated that very thought; we think of the owner of the thought as being the person who brought that particular token thought into existence, the person who formed it. Of course, that token thought may be a copying of someone else's idea; that other person may have influenced my formation of that particular thought. But the point remains that I play a special role in the production of my thoughts.Suppose we have a document bearing a signature and we ask, "Whose signature is that?" In this case we are asking about the authorship of the signature; we are asking who made those particular marks on that bit of paper. Of course, someone else can copy my signature, trying to make it look as if what they write was written by me. But for a particular piece of writing to be an authentic signature of mine, the thing has to be generated by me personally. I think it is helpful to bear in mind this aspect of the notion of the ownership of a signature, when we consider a certain complexity in the notion of the ownership of a thought—I mean, an occurrent, episodic [End Page 35] thought. There are, I am saying, two strands in the ordinary notion of the ownership of a thought, which we do not ordinarily have any reason to separate. First, there is the notion of the person who generated that particular thought, which we might think of on the model of the person who inscribed a particular signature. Of course, in generating a particular token thought, you may be subject to all sorts of influences. Perhaps your thought is derivative, largely shaped by others. Perhaps your thoughts are sometimes simply echoes of the things other people have said. Nonetheless, when we consider how your individual token thoughts are being brought about, you play a proximal role in their formation that no one else does. To give an analogy, suppose that I am taking notes at your dictation. Then there is a sense in which the contents of my notes are entirely determined by you. But there is also a sense in which the token sentences are being generated by... (shrink)

Synthetic foods advocates offer the promise of efficient, reliable, and sustainable food production. Engineered organisms become factories to produce food. Proponents claim that through this technique important barriers can be eliminated which would facilitate the production of traditional foods outside their climatic range. This technique would allow reducing food miles, secure future supply, and maintain quality and taste expectations. In this paper, we examine coffee production via biobased means. A startup called Atomo Coffee aims to produce (...) synthetic coffee with the aim of saving ‘the taste of coffee’ from the effects of climate change. This decontextualisation of coffee production ignores the current and historical contributions of coffee farmers in two ways: the traditional varieties in taste of coffee and their cultural significance, and the potential shade-grown coffee plantations have in capturing carbon. In addition, synthetic coffee may lead to the loss of agricultural biodiversity and the removal of resources away from production systems that provide a safe space for tropical flora and fauna. How should the ‘taste of coffee’ be owned? We investigate the property regimes under which we could consider owning the taste of coffee as a ‘synthetic’ agrobiodiversity to help identify rights and responsibilities. Building on this analysis, we consider dimensions of responsible innovation and social justice to help guide synthetic foods as an agricultural innovation. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to highlight ways in which institutional policymakers tend to insufficiently conceptualise their role as ethics practitioners. We use the case of blood product recall notification as a means of raising questions about the way in which, as we have observed it, discourse for those who make institutional ethics policies is constrained by routine balancing of simplified principles to the exclusion of reflexive practices—those that turn ethics reasoning back on itself. The latter allows ethics (...) practitioners with comparatively little formal training to take ownership of traditional parameters, which define their discussions and ultimately ought to make them more insightful when doing ethics. Thus, in the midst of calls for more training to increase the competency of ethics committees, we suggest that an additional problem of how these lay ethicists conceive of their roles also needs to be addressed. (shrink)

The capacity to provide satisfactory nursing care is being increasingly compromised by current trajectories of healthcare funding and governance. The purpose of this paper is to examine how well Marxist theories of the state and its relationship with capital can explain these trajectories in this period of ever‐increasing austerity. Following a brief history of the current crisis, it examines empirically the effects of the crisis, and of the current trajectory of capitalism in general, upon the funding and organization of the (...) UK and US healthcare systems. The deleterious effect of growing income inequalities to the health of the population is also addressed. Marx's writings on the state and its relation to the capitalist class were fragmentary and historically and geographically specific. From them, we can extract three theoretical variants: the instrumentalist theory of the state, where the state has no autonomy from capital; the abdication theory, whereby capital abstains from direct political power and relies on the state to serve its interests; and the class‐balance theory, whereby the struggle between two opposed classes allows the state to assert itself. Discussion of modern Marxist interpretations includes Poulantzas's abdication theory and Miliband's instrumentalist theory. It is concluded that, despite the pluralism of electoral democracies, the bourgeoisie do have an overweening influence upon the state. The bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of production provides the foundation for its influence because the state is obliged to rely on it to manage the supply of goods and services and the creation of wealth. That power is further reinforced by the infiltration of the bourgeoisie into the organs of state. The level of influence has accelerated rapidly over recent decades. One of the consequences of this has been that healthcare systems have become rich pickings for the evermore confident bourgeoisie. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Learning to assume responsibility or "ownership" for patient care is an important aspect of learning what it means to be a physician. To date, most of the research on patient ownership has focused on residents' understanding of what it means to own patients. This exploratory study explored third- and fourth-year students', residents, and attending physicians' understanding of the phrase "taking ownership of a patient." Data included participant observations and interviews that expanded over a five month (...) period. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using psychological ownership as an analytical lens and latent content analysis as a method. Third-year students primarily understood the phrase to mean communicating with patients and their immediate team. Fourth-year students indicated it was an expectation to contribute to the management of patient care. Residents and faculty thought patient ownership included an emotional investment in patients. The phrase taking ownership of patients is understood differently depending on where participants are in their development, even though it is assumed there is a shared understanding across team members. Given the variability in understanding, educators should have explicit discussions with learners about commonly used concepts to help them develop sophisticated understandings and monitor their own development. (shrink)

It seems evident that class differences and class struggle continue to exist in socialist societies; that is to say, in societies like the Soviet Union and China, which have undergone socialist revolutions and in which private property in the means of production has been largely abolished. I shall not attempt to prove this proposition here; rather it will form my starting point. For my purpose in this paper is to show how the phenomenon of class in socialist society (...) can be understood and interpreted in Marxist terms; and, in particular, to explain and expound Mao Zedong's attempt to do so. For one of Mao's most striking and important contributions to Marxism was his recognition that `contradictions among the people' continue to exist in socialist society, and his attempt to explain them within the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Marx outlines his account of historical development in the following well-known words: It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) It has been common to interpret these words as expressing a simple form of economic or even technological determinism which would rule out the very possibility of class divisions continuing to be a fundamental feature of socialist society. For, according to this account, a socialist society, by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, thereby abolishes the material and economic basis of class differences; and so classes are destined to die out in socialist society 2 as the forces of production are developed. According to this interpretation, which I shall call the `traditional' account, in Marx's account of historical development all the emphasis is placed upon the development of the productive forces.. (shrink)

One implication of Laland, Odling-Smee & Feldman's niche construction model concerns the significance of the role of behavioural or cultural traits in comparative analysis. In this commentary it is suggested that cladistic methods already recognise this importance, and that behavioural characters may play a key role in hominid speciation and the definition of species.

The “free world” was the political rhetoric used during the Cold War in contrast to the “communist” countries. However, the “free world” was manifestly never free: the state considerably interfered with people in their persons and their property. And the “communist” countries were manifestly never communist in the Marxist sense: there was no common ownership of the means of production with the absence of social classes, money, and the state. It would have been more accurate to call (...) them the “authoritarian world” and the “totalitarian world”. Today the “free world” is sometimes still used, but Western countries remain authoritarian in terms of taxation and restrictive legislation. The, by implication, “unfree world” is largely only somewhat more authoritarian. Why does this continuing authoritarianism exist in the West? (shrink)

In the past few decades, contextualist conceptions of meaning and knowledge have gained ground in the humanities and social sciences. In literary studies the question of the consequences of contextualism for the practices and self-understanding of the discipline has become one of the most hotly contested topics. The present book addresses this issue, with the purpose of providing a corrective to these debates, which have predominantly relied on simplified notions of the text-context relationship. To this end, the author first presents (...) a systematic account of the issues surrounding contextualism. Proceeding from that, a heterological model of interpretation is proposed which is based on a multi-level notion of context and allows for a heterology of epistemological foundations -- or, “anchorages” -- of meaning. (shrink)

How is ownership established over non-owned things? We suggest that people may view ownership as a kind of credit given to agents responsible for making possession of a non-owned object possible. On this view, judgments about the establishment of ownership depend on attributions of responsibility. We report three experiments showing that people’s judgments about the establishment of ownership are influenced by an agent’s intent and control in bringing about an outcome, factors that also affect attributions of (...) responsibility. These findings demonstrate that people do not just consider who was first to possess an object in judging who owns it, and are broadly consistent with the view that ownership is acquired through labor. The findings also suggest that rather than exclusively being the product of social conventions, judgments about the establishment of ownership over non-owned things also depend on the psychological processes underlying the attribution of responsibility. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren BerlantNicholas AdlerBerlant, Lauren. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Duke University Press, 2022. 256pp.An Ambivalent TriumphAttachment is a double-edged sword. This idea is the scaffolding of the late Lauren Berlant's pivotal work, Cruel Optimism (2011), which explores the idea that attachment to a collectively invested fantasy of "the good life" acts in disservice of personal growth and lasting fulfillment. The (...) Inconvenience of Other People ostensibly repeats this structure while reattributing the role of fantasy. The premise here is that attachments to other people act in disservice to the fantasy of personal sovereignty. Of course, both texts argue for collectivity and for a recasting of the ordinary that structures current fantasies. But while Cruel Optimism builds around the unavoidable condition of fantasy, Inconvenience takes relations within the present as its fundamentally unavoidable condition, specifically the drive to be in relation even though such relations are inconvenient. "People" in the work's title stands for any attachment, any person or thing to which we exist in relation. To be part of the world is to be constantly taking in and living with the objects around us. This constant process of adjustment generates constant friction with our fantasy of sovereignty, or control, over ourselves. In Berlant's words, "inconvenience is another way of pointing to the experience of nonsovereign relationality," making our inconvenience drive the urge to maintain and explore those nonsovereign relations despite the uncomfortable friction they produce (18). Berlant's final monograph investigates the complexities of living with that inconvenience as well the potential for "loosening [those inconvenient objects] and becoming loose with them" in order to make that inconvenience generative of new perspectives and approaches (150).The prospect of overhauling our relationship with inconvenience takes place on multiple registers, both in terms of the affective states that guide the experience of inconvenience and the frameworks that determine its expression in the world. Refiguring ambivalence and dissociation, [End Page 123] the traditional affective responses to inconvenience, as well as offering a more dynamic structure for engaging with inconvenience than that of the institution, Berlant demonstrates—in a contained and structured way—the very object-loosening for which the text advocates. Although the book is presented as a collection of "assays...clusters of actions that become forms of life that shift the pressures of being in relation," it is nonetheless broken into three distinct chapters that focus on the role of the inconvenient in political relations, sexual relations, and relations with the self (11). These chapters, respectively, take up the inconvenient with regard to infrastructure, ambivalence, and dissociation.To productively engage with inconvenience, it must be accommodated within a social infrastructure. The term infrastructure positions the material of lived relationality as more flexible than that of institutions and more legible than that of expressive causality. For Berlant, "infrastructures are productive, durationally extensive spaces for the pliable forms of life that people use to make rules and norms and other means of extending the world" (23). In Chapter 2, they invoke the concept of the commons, "an orientation toward life and value unbound by concepts of property as constituted by division and ownership," using it as a way to illustrate infrastructuralism in effect (82). The commons can refer to as concrete a physical space as the Boston Common, as explored through Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature," or as abstract an inheritance as shared language, as explored through Juliana Spahr's lyrical autobiography, The Transformation (2007).The commons of both Emerson and Spahr make use of the concept of analogy. For Emerson, it stands for "the separation within the nonsovereign relation [of the commons] that makes linking possible" (Berlant 94). Spahr takes a more critical approach, continuing Emerson's use of the term while shining light on the glitches that emerge when any analogy is examined too closely. Acknowledging the rhetorical gymnastics required to "figure equally valued social being" within "imperialist capitalist infrastructures" reveals every possible analogy as both grossly oversimplifying and only temporarily comprehensible (105). Objects within these commons are constantly adjusting and generating new relations. The sense of an ongoing dynamic is what Berlant hopes this... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Asset Ownership? The Content of Work: Meaningful Work The Governance of Work: Protection against Arbitrary Interference The Status of Work: Workers as Property Owners Conclusion References.

Normal children learn tens of thousands of words, and do so quickly and efficiently, often in highly impoverished environments. In How Children Learn the Meanings of Words, I argue that word learning is the product of certain cognitive and linguistic abilities that include the ability to acquire concepts, an appreciation of syntactic cues to meaning, and a rich understanding of the mental states of other people. These capacities are powerful, early emerging, and to some extent uniquely human, but they are (...) not special to word learning. This proposal is an alternative to the view that word learning is the result of simple associative learning mechanisms, and it rejects as well the notion that children possess constraints, either innate or learned, that are specifically earmarked for word learning. This theory is extended to account for how children learn names for objects, substances, and abstract entities, pronouns and proper names, verbs, determiners, prepositions, and number words. Several related topics are also discussed, including naïve essentialism, children's understanding of representational art, the nature of numerical and spatial reasoning, and the role of words in the shaping of mental life. Key Words: cognitive development; concepts; meaning; semantics; social cognition; syntax; theory of mind; word learning. (shrink)

We argue that ownership is a highly flexible concept, shaped by both innate and learned aspects, and heavily influenced by culture. Boyer's model focuses solely on universal personal ownership, neglecting other forms such as shared ownership, fractionalized property rights, and the ownership of the meanings and memories attached to possessions. A comprehensive understanding requires considering diverse human relationships with objects.

In this thesis I provide an interpretation of Kant's theories of knowledge, nature, and being in order to argue that Kant's ontology is a productive ontology: it is a theory of being that includes a notion of production. I aim to show that Kant's epistemology and philosophy of nature are based on a theory of being as productivity. The thesis contributes to knowledge in that it considers in detail Kant's ontology and theory of being, topics which have generally been (...) ignored or misunderstood. In arguing for Kant's productive ontology, I argue against Heidegger's interpretation of Kant, which states that Kant understands being as "produced permanent presence" or as divinely created materiality. Based on Kant's definition of being as positing, I argue, by contrast to Heidegger, that Kant understands being as the original productive relation between subject and object. This can also be expressed as the relation between formality and materiality, or between epistemic conditions and existence, that is productive of objects of experience. Being is not producedness but a relation of productivity, through which both subject and object are themselves productive. The subject is productive in its spontaneity, and nature, determined as dynamical interaction, is interpreted as productive. The subject, I will argue, does not understand nature as produced, but approaches it with a comportment towards its production as object of experience. Because of its own subjective productivity - spontaneity or "life" - the subject has a "productive comportment" towards nature. Ontology, I claim, concerns the realm of the productive relation of being, the realm of the relation between epistemic conditions and existence, and therefore the realm of possible experience. This marks Kant as divergent not only from what Heidegger calls "the ontology of the extant", but also from the concept-based ontology of the German rationalists. The general aims of the thesis are, first, to argue that being for Kant is the original relation between subject and object, and that ontology concerns this relation; second, to argue that ontology and being are understood in terms of production and productivity; and third, to argue that Heidegger is wrong to ascribe to Kant an understanding of being as "produced pennanent presence". I approach these aims by examining a number of Kant's texts in detail, focusing particularly on Kant's theses about existence and being in The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God and the Critique of Pure Reason; on Kant's philosophy of nature and dynamical matter in the Transcendental Analytic and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science; on Kant's doctrine of experience and objectivity in the Transcendental Deductions; on ontological reflection and the productive comportment of "life" in the Critique of Judgment; and on Kant's final theory of matter, life and production in the Opus Postumum. (shrink)

Émile Meyerson (1859–1933) is an epistemologist, in the French meaning of the term: he himself introduced the word in French as a synonymous for “philo- sophy of science” in his major book of 1908 Identity and Reality. First educated as a chemist, Meyerson discovered philosophy while reading Auguste Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive. However, he strongly rejected Comte’s positivism: metaphysics, he said, penetrates science and even common sense; men, whether they are scien- tists or not, are interested in finding a (...) cause behind the stream of phenomena. This anti-positivism is justified in so far as Meyerson used the same method and pursued the same goal as Comte: the philosopher must practice an “a posteriori analysis of the products of thought”, so as to determine the laws of human mind. Consequently, Meyerson’s work is not a mere philosophy of science, it is more than an “épistémolo- gie” in the French sense. Its ambition is to reach the intellectual basis of all thought. The philosopher can resort to the resources of metaphysics to reach the psychologi- cal foundations of humanity, when he reflects on the historical products of thought. He establishes the transcendent or metaphysical logic involved in the process of thought. Meyerson’s work consequently deserves the name its author eventually gave to it in his posthumous Essais: a “philosophy of intellect”. But is such a philoso- phy wide enough to embrace the meaning of all the products of human thought? It seems that Meyerson was embarrassed and limited by his very starting point, namely Comte’s system. I argue that scientific or common conceptions may need more than the anti-positivist claim of the preservation of one substance behind phenomena. Truth to tell, men generally tend to identify a large and rich configuration of causes or substances. Only such architectonics can give an idea of what people mean by invoking their “vision of the world”. (shrink)

The density matrix ρ describing a decaying system can be expressed in terms of correlations among observables belonging to the subsystems. Due to this structure and to the difficulties in measuring higher rank tensors of decay products for a single decay event, it is found that the mean value of ρ cannot be determined, in general, from measurements on the decay products. We also discuss the consequences of this conclusion as far as tests of quantum mechanics are concerned.

In this thesis I provide an interpretation of Kant's theories of knowledge, nature, and being in order to argue that Kant's ontology is a productive ontology: it is a theory of being that includes a notion of production. I aim to show that Kant's epistemology and philosophy of nature are based on a theory of being as productivity. The thesis contributes to knowledge in that it considers in detail Kant's ontology and theory of being, topics which have generally been (...) ignored or misunderstood. In arguing for Kant's productive ontology, I argue against Heidegger's interpretation of Kant, which states that Kant understands being as "produced permanent presence" or as divinely created materiality. Based on Kant's definition of being as positing, I argue, by contrast to Heidegger, that Kant understands being as the original productive relation between subject and object. This can also be expressed as the relation between formality and materiality, or between epistemic conditions and existence, that is productive of objects of experience. Being is not producedness but a relation of productivity, through which both subject and object are themselves productive. The subject is productive in its spontaneity, and nature, determined as dynamical interaction, is interpreted as productive. The subject, I will argue, does not understand nature as produced, but approaches it with a comportment towards its production as object of experience. Because of its own subjective productivity - spontaneity or "life" - the subject has a "productive comportment" towards nature. Ontology, I claim, concerns the realm of the productive relation of being, the realm of the relation between epistemic conditions and existence, and therefore the realm of possible experience. This marks Kant as divergent not only from what Heidegger calls "the ontology of the extant", but also from the concept-based ontology of the German rationalists. The general aims of the thesis are, first, to argue that being for Kant is the original relation between subject and object, and that ontology concerns this relation; second, to argue that ontology and being are understood in terms of production and productivity; and third, to argue that Heidegger is wrong to ascribe to Kant an understanding of being as "produced pennanent presence". I approach these aims by examining a number of Kant's texts in detail, focusing particularly on Kant's theses about existence and being in The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God and the Critique of Pure Reason; on Kant's philosophy of nature and dynamical matter in the Transcendental Analytic and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science; on Kant's doctrine of experience and objectivity in the Transcendental Deductions; on ontological reflection and the productive comportment of "life" in the Critique of Judgment; and on Kant's final theory of matter, life and production in the Opus Postumum. (shrink)

Dentro del contexto histórico de la sociedad tecnológica parece urgente considerar los alcances insólitos y los problemas éticos que suscita la provocación técnica actual, los cuales mueven a poner en cuestión la provocación productiva que el hombre ejerce respecto de la naturaleza. Sin embargo antes de tal cuestionamiento es necesario encontrar una vía de acceso a la esencia originaria de la técnica. Este artículo propone un camino de comprensión de la técnica a partir del sentido de la ποíησις según el (...) pensamiento de Platón, en cuyo “Banquete” puede extraerse cómo la τέχνη, en vez de ejercer una producción provocante, depende ella misma de la provocación de la naturaleza. According to the historical context of technological society, it seems urgent to consider the unusual scope and the ethical issues raised by the present technological provocation, which lead to questioning the productive provocation which man exerts over nature. Nevertheless before such questioning takes place, it is necessary to access the primary essence of technique. This paper sets a path for the comprehension of technique starting from the meaning of ποíησις based on Plato’s ideas. In his work "Symposium", technique emerges as τέχνη, which instead of exerting a provocative production, depends on the provocation of nature. (shrink)

Whether the economic base refers ultimately to the relations of production or to the modes of production is a problem that involves understanding an important principle of historical materialism and political economics and thus is related to how we use fundamental social contradictions in solving real present problems; this must be clarified.

This paper focuses on the concept of sterility as idealized in the Biblical text and exemplified in the stories of Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel and Jacob. My analysis of these stories leads to the hypothesis that sterility is one of the foundational themes of Israel’s ancient past, by condensing some of the main obstacles inherent to the emergency of a people who believe to be guided by God. This new perspective on sterility was achieved by focusing on the (...) spectrum of meanings of the Hebrew root ‘qr, which includes infertility and uprooting; these, added to famine in the land, are experiences that will shape the religious conscience of Israel. This approach amplifies the perception of sterility in the Hebrew Bible, as it emerges from the text as a liminal state of deprivation , in opposition to the contents of the divine oath to the patriarchs (progeny and land). But even while enclosing lack of productivity, weakness and death, which have a negative value, Biblical sterility is not a closed circle, but a space open to potentiality, where divine revelation occurs. God reveals himself through sterility and in sterility. The originality and the notion of specificity in the biblical idea of sterility lie in this cyclical trait, which breaks the circumscription and negative orientation of sterility. The Bible presents sterility as a transitory state, an area for individual and corporate transformation of status. In an ideological system, such as ancient Israel’s, where contractual relations replace natural relations, sterility functions as a powerful symbol of the relationship among men and between men and God. And this may be the reason why sterile matriarch’s traditions were continually re-interpreted, from the 10th century BCE. until the 1st century CE, and could be adapted to new contexts and make sense to distinct communities, particularly in times of crisis and transition. (shrink)

In the absence of access to formal credit, informal contracts with independent investors give the small ranchers of the Lower Amazon an acceptable means through which to surmount the high investment hurdle of starting a cattle herd. These contracts – called sociedades – allow small ranchers to raise an outside investor's cattle in return for a portion of the offspring and are commonplace in the cattle production systems of the Amazon. But, notwithstanding a vast literature on cattle (...) class='Hi'>production in the Amazon, informal contracts have been largely overlooked. This paper presents the results of a field survey and financial analysis for informal contracts on small ranches in the Lower Amazon. In the results, we suggest that informal contracts are an important means of cattle herd start-up and herd production for small ranchers. Internal rates of returns in cattle production under these contracts are in the range of –7 to –12% for the small rancher and 12% for the investor. The net present value of the contract to the small rancher ranges from –R$1219 to –R$8599 and from R$1681 to R$8845 for the investor, for a 10-year period, depending on herd size. Financial returns contracts are sensitive to the contract design – e.g., to who pays health costs – and to beef prices. The small ranchers have a negative IRR, lose money, and bear all the risk of loss, yet persist in using this form of herd development. We surmise that this is due to the non-financial benefits of cattle ownership and the lack of access to formal credit structures. In conclusion, although outside the formal economy and apparently financially unrewarding, these contracts are an important mechanism by which the small ranchers on the Amazon Floodplains create cattle herds. (shrink)

Although for many years a sharp distinction has been made in language research between rules and words—with primary interest on rules—this distinction is now blurred in many theories. If anything, the focus of attention has shifted in recent years in favor of words. Results from many different areas of language research suggest that the lexicon is representationally rich, that it is the source of much productive behavior, and that lexically specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation (...) of grammatical structure. But how much information can or should be placed in the lexicon? This is the question I address here. I review a set of studies whose results indicate that event knowledge plays a significant role in early stages of sentence processing and structural analysis. This poses a conundrum for traditional views of the lexicon. Either the lexicon must be expanded to include factors that do not plausibly seem to belong there; or else virtually all information about word meaning is removed, leaving the lexicon impoverished. I suggest a third alternative, which provides a way to account for lexical knowledge without a mental lexicon. (shrink)

Advocates of “Mendelism” early on stressed the usefulness of Mendelian principles for breeders. Ever since, that usefulness—and the favourable opinion of Mendelism it supposedly engendered among breeders—has featured in explanations of the rapid rise of Mendelian genetics. An important counter-tradition of commentary, however, has emphasized the ways in which early Mendelian theory in fact fell short of breeders’ needs. Attention to intellectual property, narrowly and broadly construed, makes possible an approach that takes both the tradition and the counter-tradition seriously, by (...) enabling a more complete description of the theory-reality shortfall and a better understanding of how changing practices, on and off the Mendelians’ experimental farms, functioned to render that shortfall unproblematic. In the case of plant breeding in Britain, a perennial source of lost profits and disputes over ownership was the appearance of individual plants departing from their varietal types—so-called “rogues.” Mendelian plant varieties acquired a reputation for being rogue-free, and so for demonstrating the correctness of Mendelian principles , at a time when Mendelians were gradually taking control of the means for distributing their varieties. Mendelian breeders protected their products physically from rogue-inducing contamination in such a way that when rogues did appear, the default explanation—that contamination had somehow occurred—ensured that there was no threat to Mendelian principles. (shrink)

The experience of owning a body is built upon the integration of exteroceptive, interoceptive, and proprioceptive signals. Recently, it has been suggested that motor signals could be particularly important in producing the feeling of body part ownership. One thus may hypothesize that the strength of this feeling may not be spatially uniform; rather, it could vary as a function of the degree by which different body parts are involved in motor behavior. Given that our dominant hand plays a leading (...) role in our motor behavior, we hypothesized that it could be more strongly associated with one’s self compared to its non-dominant counterpart. To explore whether this possible asymmetry manifests as a stronger implicit association of the right hand with the self, we administered the Implicit Association Test to a group of 70 healthy individuals. To control whether this asymmetric association is human-body specific, we further tested whether a similar asymmetry characterizes the association between a right animal body part with the concept of self, in an independent sample of subjects. Our results revealed a linear relationship between the magnitude of the implicit association between the right hand with the self and the subject’s handedness. In detail, the strength of this association increased as a function of hand preference. Critically, the handedness score did not predict the association of the right-animal body part with the self. These findings suggest that, in healthy individuals, the dominant and non-dominant hands are differently perceived at an implicit level as belonging to the self. We argue that such asymmetry may stem from the different roles that the two hands play in our adaptive motor behavior. (shrink)

Understanding the relationship of democracy and property ownership is one of the most important tasks for contemporary political philosophy. In his concept of property-owning democracy John Rawls explores the thesis that property in productive means has an indirect effect on the formation of true or false beliefs and that unequal ownership of productive capital leads to distorted and deceived convictions. The basic aspect of Rawls’s conception can be captured by the claim that for securing the fair value (...) of the political liberties a widespread dispersal of property in productive resources is required that minimizes the formation of delusions and therefore improves the conditions of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

We highlight the need to focus on the underlying determinants and production mechanisms to fully understand the nature of facial expression of emotion and to settle the theoretical debate about the meaning of motor expression. Although emotion theorists have generally remained rather vague about the details of the process, this has been a central concern of componential appraisal theories. We describe the fundamental assumptions and predictions of this approach regarding the patterning of facial expressions for different emotions. We also (...) review recent evidence for the assumption that specific facial muscle movements may be reliable symptoms of certain appraisal outcomes and that facial expressions unfold over time on the basis of a sequence of appraisal check results. (shrink)

Those in the openness movement believe that access to information is inherently democratic, and assume the effects of openness will all be good from the movement’s perspective. But means are not ends, nothing is inevitable, and just what will be done with openly available information once achieved is rarely specified. One implicit goal of the openness movement is to create and sustain politically useful memory in situations in which official memory may not suffice, but to achieve this, openness is (...) not enough. With the transition from a panopticon to a panspectron environment, the production of open information not only provides support for communities but also contributes to surveillance. Proprietary ownership of information is being challenged, but there is erosion of ownership in the sense of being confident in what is known. Some tactics currently in use need to be re–evaluated to determine their actual effects under current circumstances. Successfully achieving tactical memory in the 21st century also requires experimentation with new types of tactics, including those of technological discretion and of scale as a medium. At the most abstract level, the key political battle of the 21st century may not be between particular political parties or ideologies but, rather, the war between mathematics and narrative creativity. (shrink)

In his latest book, Jedediah Purdy takes up a question of deep and lasting importance: why is property ownership a value to society? His answer returns us to the foundations of American society and enables us to interpret the writings of the patron saint of liberal economics, Adam Smith, in a wholly new light. Unlike Milton Friedman and other free-market scholars, who consider property a key to efficient markets, Purdy draws upon Smith’s theories to argue that the virtues of (...) wealth are social rather than economic. In Purdy’s view, ownership does much more than shield one from government interference. Property shapes social life in ways that bring us closer to, or take us farther from, the ideal of a community of free and equal members. This view of property is neither libertarian nor communitarian but treats the community as the precondition of individual freedom. This view informed U.S. law in the early days of the republic, Purdy writes, and it is one that we need to restore today. Touching upon some of the most charged issues in American politics and law, including slavery, inheritance, international development, and climate change, _The Meaning of Property_ offers a compelling new view of property and freedom and enriches our understanding of democratic society. (shrink)

In his latest book, Jedediah Purdy takes up a question of deep and lasting importance: why is property ownership a value to society? His answer returns us to the foundations of American society and enables us to interpret the writings of the patron saint of liberal economics, Adam Smith, in a wholly new light. Unlike Milton Friedman and other free-market scholars, who consider property a key to efficient markets, Purdy draws upon Smith’s theories to argue that the virtues of (...) wealth are social rather than economic. In Purdy’s view, ownership does much more than shield one from government interference. Property shapes social life in ways that bring us closer to, or take us farther from, the ideal of a community of free and equal members. This view of property is neither libertarian nor communitarian but treats the community as the precondition of individual freedom. This view informed U.S. law in the early days of the republic, Purdy writes, and it is one that we need to restore today. Touching upon some of the most charged issues in American politics and law, including slavery, inheritance, international development, and climate change, _The Meaning of Property_ offers a compelling new view of property and freedom and enriches our understanding of democratic society. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Evidential Argument from Evil Theodicies A Limited Perspective Horrors The Defeat of Horror Sources of Meaning.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Species Counterpoint:Darwin and the Evolution of FormsRandall Everett AllsupMy intention is to tell of bodies changed to different forms; the gods, who made the changes, will help me—or so I hope—with a poem that runs from the World's beginning to our own days.1I.A recent article in a progressive monthly magazine asked by way of a thesis, "Whose music is the blues?" Under the title, the tag line read, "2003 (...) is the 'Year of the Blues.' But as a music born of oppression becomes a feel-good soundtrack for white America, just what are we celebrating?"2 I recall feeling puzzled by this rather old-fashioned topic of investigation. Anyone with access to the Internet knows that music is not for one group or another. Global file sharing has made ownership as easy as, well, sharing a file. Furthermore, the tendency to depart from ancestral forms, whether as rebellious teenagers, rock guitarists, or both, seems genetically built into us. Life is a metamorphosis and music—like life—evolves.To advance the notion that music is made for one people and not another, that it has absolute or essential qualities, opens a terribly large can of worms. We know, for example, that identity and music are linked, but the relationship is not [End Page 159] mono-directional, causal, or fixed. My relationship to the blues or Broadway show tunes for that matter is defined somewhere within a dense web of group associations, educational opportunities, even closet desires. With regard to psychological research on identity, slippery and impermanent as identity is, this research is really about similarities.3 Conservative in this light, such studies look for commonalities: their goal is to identify "what is."4Fear is often the dominant response to the evolution of a cherished form. Change, however, holds equal parts fear and promise. The Chinese word for crisis, wei-ji, means "opportunity with danger." This essay will contextualize the latter, but focus on the former. It is worth asking, for example, what might result from an examination of anomalies? Rather than attempt to identify "what is," such an inquiry would be concerned with "what else" [the abnormality] as well as "what might be" [the opportunity]. Located, I think, within the anomalies and mutations that seem to fit so well our globally connected world are new codes, altered methods for self-understanding, and interaction in the arts.Charles Darwin and The Origins of Species will provide the conceptual framework for this discussion.5 To look for help in the work of Darwin will require a crossbreeding of scientific theory and metaphor, a cross-pollination of hypothesis and the hypothetical. We will look at how the production of new forms, particularly musical forms, is shaped. Speaking metaphorically, a work of art or entertainment can be seen as an adaptation to and of its environment. We know that cultural products, like all living species, are not permanent entities. Change, Darwin stressed, carries with it purpose. To that end, he looked for variation to help him understand how and why an organism or system developed the way it did. What might be revealed if we apply this procedure to the field of music and music education? We might see eco-systems in various stages of growth, health, and decline. A look at musical forms as mutable, living creations that spring from and reflect a particular condition raises interesting questions about place and purpose.II.Only a hundred and fifty years ago, a single event—a theory!—precipitated a cultural crisis that threw down two thousand years of scientific and philosophic thought. The popular revolt that Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species fueled (and continues to fuel) called into question fundamental beliefs about how the world is made. Darwin's theory that matter and energy are in steady flux, that life is in need of constant variation, implied that fixed or universal truths are nothing more than comforts created by the mind. The Origin of Species was therefore more than a scientific revolution.6 A core tenet of Western culture was challenged by its publication: the so-called immaterial spirit, whether viewed in the [End... (shrink)

This chapter is a product of a study undertaken to investigate the influence of gender related factors as regards to adoption of fish farming technology in selected villages of Morogoro Region, Tanzania. Data for this chapter had been collected in various studies conducted earlier and results published by the author about the study area from November 2005 to May 2008. These data were supplemented by primary data which had been collected by the author but not used before, and secondary information (...) from other sources. Descriptive statistics was used to report findings and data were validated by the level of significance and mean percentages. The overall results indicate that the adoption of fish farming technology was not gender neutral. More specifically, the results revealed that the probability of women to adopt fish farming technology was higher than that of men. This was likely because fish farming met women objectives of food security, immobility as they attend to household chores, and lack of alternative opportunities among themselves. Yet, women had lesser access to resources necessary for adoption of fish farming technology and were less reached by extension services than men. This was mainly attributed to the kinship system which favoured men than women, lack of legal information on ownership of productive resources and social-cultural and economic barriers to adoption among women such as high levels of illiteracy, low formal education, immobility, poverty in terms of low income and very heavy workload. In addition, although women participated in all activities of fish farming, men controlled income accruing from the activity. Three recommendations emerge from this study: First, there has to be alignment of extension methodology and activities to the task, needs, objectives, appropriate time and place and socio-cultural and economic barriers of women to technology adoption. Extension staff should be trained to take such aspects into account and plan for training sessions at times and locations suitable for women. Secondly, socio-cultural and economic barriers that hinder women’s access to productive resources should be identified and dealt with during project design. Finally, efforts should be made by women and other organizations to ensure that they are heard and they should exert pressure, through advocacy and lobbying, in order to bring equal distribution of income accruing from using fish farming technology. (shrink)

Libertarians such as Nozick have argued that any redistributive tax scheme intended to achieve and maintain an egalitarian distributive pattern will violate self‐ownership. Furthermore, since self‐ownership is a central component of the idea of freedom, instituting an egalitarian distribution makes a society less rather than more free. All this turns on the claim, accepted by both libertarians and their critics, that a redistributive tax will violate self‐ownership because it must expropriate the fruit of a person’s labour. I (...) show here that there is no reason to accept this claim. The libertarian argument works only if the fruit of one’s labour must be understood to include everything that a person produces through his labour. But there is an alternative reading of the fruit of labour which identifies it with that subset of the total product of one’s labour which is due to his choices rather than luck. I argue that this reading is plausible, that there is nothing in the concept of self‐ownership which disallows it, and that if it is adopted, a redistributive tax need not automatically expropriate the fruit of one’s labour. Consequently there is no necessary inconsistency between redistributive taxation and self‐ownership, and so egalitarians can endorse the latter idea. (shrink)