In the management of common property resources, privatization is often advocated as the surest path to sustainability because of its reliance on human self-interest in natural resources decision making. This article demonstrates that the motive of self-interest, though powerful, does not necessarily lead to environmental outcomes that promote the common good. The key to avoiding the Tragedy of the Commons is not private ownership but controlling access.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, and: The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and PalamasDavid BradshawSaint Gregory Palamas. Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite. Translated by Rein Ferweda with Introduction by Sara J. Denning-Bolle. Binghamton, NY: Global Publications/CEMERS, 1999. Pp. 108. Paper, $17.00.A. N. Williams. The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. 222. Cloth, (...) $49.95.Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) was a Byzantine monk who rose to become Archbishop of Thessalonica and a leading theologian of the Orthodox Church. He is best known for his role in the hesychast controversy. The hesychasts (from hesychia, silence) were monks of Mount Athos who claimed that through prayer and ascetic struggle they had been enabled to see God with their bodily eyes. More precisely, they claimed to see a kind of divine radiance permeating all things, including their own bodies. They insisted that this light was not a created reality but was God himself as he manifested himself to them.When the hesychasts were attacked by an Italian monk named Barlaam, Palamas rose to their defense. The challenge he faced was that of explaining how the transcendent God could be visible to human eyes. His answer was to adapt two terms long in use in other areas of theology, ousia (substance, essence) and energeia (activity, operation). He held that whereas the ousia of God is unknowable to any created intellect, the divine energeiai can be shared in by creatures, who are thereby deified. The "uncreated light" of the monks is simply the divine energeia as it had become visible to the monks through the purification of the heart achieved by prayer, asceticism, and obedience to the divine commandments. Gregory's defense of the hesychasts was endorsed by a series of synods at Constantinople, and to this day he is commemorated in Orthodox churches on the second Sunday in Lent.The importance of Palamas for the history of philosophy lies in the fact that he presents a version of Christian thought that is deeply rooted in tradition, and by most standards fully orthodox, yet owes nothing to western scholasticism. A quick comparison [End Page 586] with Aquinas reveals several points of divergence. (1) Whereas Aquinas holds that all the divine attributes and activities are identical with the divine essence, the distinctions among them being merely quoad nos, Palamas holds that the distinction between the divine ousia and energeia is not just imposed by our perspective but is truly present in God. (2) Whereas Aquinas says little about deification and explicitly reserves the vision of the divine essence to the afterlife, Palamas insists that deification is possible in this life and that the condition of those who experience it is similar (though of course not identical) to that of the blessed after the resurrection. (3) Whereas Aquinas allows that the blessed ultimately do attain a vision of the divine essence, Palamas holds that the divine ousia is intrinsically unknowable to creatures.Whether these differences are as sharp as they seem is a matter that requires careful investigation. The first of the two works under review, Palamas's Dialogue Between an Orthodox and a Barlaamite, is to be welcomed for the clarification it provides of Palamas's views. It is the third of his major works to be translated into English, the others being Triads in Defense of the Holy Hesychasts and One Hundred and Fifty Chapters. I confess to finding it less engaging than the other two; it lacks the freshness and vigor of the Triads (Palamas's earliest work) and the wide-ranging systematic character of the Chapters. Nonetheless, it does provide a helpful elaboration of the ousia -energeia distinction, particularly in the argument (88-90) that such a distinction does not compromise divine simplicity.The second work, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas by A. N. Williams, is the first book-length comparison of these two pivotal figures. It is a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, and has a certain plodding dryness characteristic of the genre; nonetheless, it is clear and well-informed, and Williams is... (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held May 25-26, 2012 at the University of Notre Dame.

Ever since the publication of Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy in 1945, it has been commonly assumed that the pattern of the Last Supper constituted the model which was adopted for the shape of the first‐century Christian eucharist, and that this was later modified when the meal eventually disappeared. This article questions that assumption and suggests an alternative hypothesis.

The old story and the new story -- Have we changed the story? part 1 -- Have we changed the story? part 2 -- Why do we need the new story? -- Some questions in the new story -- Navigating the stories -- Boats and airplanes : a brief digression -- Three questions about God -- Is God angry? -- Is God angry? part 2 -- A small digression about judgment -- Is God distant? part 1 -- Is God distant? (...) part 2 -- Is God distant? part 3 -- Is God distant? part 4 -- Is God a bully? part 1 -- Is God a bully? part 2 -- Is God a bully? part 3 -- A short word on exclusivity -- The path of wisdom -- The eclipse of doctrine -- Ethos versus doctrine -- Where to begin? (shrink)

Three eminent scientists analyze the scientific, social, and political roots of biological determinism.

The traditional verbal/nonverbal dichotomy is inadequate for completely describing cerebral lateralization. Musical functions are not necessarily mediated by the right hemisphere; evidence for a specialist left-hemisphere mechanism dedicated to the encoded speech signal is weakening, and the right hemisphere possesses considerable comprehensional powers. Right-hemisphere processing is often said to be characterized by holistic or gestalt apprehension, and face recognition may be mediated by this hemisphere partly because of these powers, partly because of the right hemisphere's involvement in emotional affect, and (...) possibly through the hypothesized existence of a specialist face processor or processors in the right. The latter hypothesis may, however, suffer the same fate as the one relating to a specialist encodedness processor for speech in the left. Verbal processing is largely the province of the left because of this hemisphere's possession of sequential, analytic, time-dependent mechanisms. Other distinctions are special cases of an analytic/holistic dichotomy. More fundamentally, however, the left hemisphere is characterized by its mediation of discriminations involving duration, temporal order, sequencing, and rhythm, at thesensory level, and especially at themotorlevel. Spatial aspects characterize the right, the mapping of exteroceptive body space, and the positions of fingers, limbs, and perhaps articulators, with respect to actual and target positions. Thus there is a continuum of function between the hemispheres, rather than a rigid dichotomy, the differences being quantitative rather than qualitative, of degree rather than of kind. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of marketing as an ideological set of practices that makes cultural interventions designed to infuse social relations with biopolitical injunctions. We examine a contemporary site of heightened attention within marketing: the rise of online communities and the attendant profession of social media marketing managers. We argue that social media marketers disavow a core problem; namely, that the object at stake, the customer community, barely exists. The community therefore functions ideologically. We describe the ideological gymnastics necessary (...) for maintaining momentum behind a practice that barely exists and we ponder why such ideologies are necessary, and what they allow the marketer to do. Working with such concepts as ‘the wild’, ‘communicative capitalism’, and ‘biopolitical marketing’, we explore a genre of popular business literature that proselytizes for online customer communities and we reflect on the broader implications. (shrink)

Michael Dummett has claimed that analytic philosophy is distinguished from other schools in its belief that a comprehensive philosophical account of thought can only be attained by developing a philosophical account of language. Dummett himself argues persuasively for the priority-of-Ianguage thesis. This, in effect, metaphilosophical position is of special importance for his more straightforwardly philosophical views, for he holds that philosophical investigations of the concepts of objectivity and reality grow directly out of the philosophy of thought. But I argue that (...) some of what Dummett says about the priority of language over thought is problematic, that there may yet be a serious role for concepts within the theory of meaning, and that Dummett’s failure to acknowledge this role both hobbles his account of linguistic understanding and has deleterious consequences for his discussions of metaphysical realism-robbing him of the resources with which he might have avoided some of his anti-realist conclusions. (shrink)

Biological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions about uniqueness (...) and temporality. We show that broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality draws attention to underrecognized philosophical issues and discussions and thereby organizes and enriches the existing debate. (shrink)

This book traces the development of conceptions of God and the relationship between God's being and activity from Aristotle, through the pagan Neoplatonists, to thinkers such as Augustine, Boethius and Aquinas and Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas. The result is a comparative history of philosophical thought in the two halves of Christendom, providing a philosophical backdrop to the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches.

Life goals or aspirations can be distinguished as intrinsic or extrinsic, with different implications for well-being. In this study we used network analysis to reexamine this intrinsic-extrinsic distinction, illustrating how novel candidate aspirations can be mapped along this dimension using innovative methods. We identify four previously unexamined life aspirations, predicting that aspiring for power and social adherence would group with extrinsic goals, whereas aspiring for self-expression and mastery would group with intrinsic goals. In two samples (n = 196; n = (...) 346) we analyze both the original life-goal variables and these novel aspirations using factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, circumplex modeling, and a network analysis using a graphical least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (glasso) to estimate the network structure of aspirations using EBIC. Replicating past intrinsic-extrinsic distinctions, all four methods further classified power and social adherence as extrinsic goals, and self-expression and mastery as intrinsic goals. The intrinsic-extrinsic distinction was also clearly visible in the network analysis. Finally, consistent with hypotheses, power and social adherence were unrelated to wellness indicators, whereas self-expression and mastery correlated positively with well-being indicators and negatively with ill-being indicators, supporting their hypothesized nature as extrinsic and intrinsic, respectively. (shrink)

St. Paul says that same-sex sexual acts are “contrary to nature.” Plainly this is intended as a condemnation, but beyond that its meaning is obscure. In particular, we are given no general account of what it means to be contrary to nature, including what other acts might fit this description. This article attempts to provide such an account. It relies for this purpose on the biblical and classical sources of this idiom as well as its subsequent use within the Greek (...) patristic tradition. It argues that the core meaning of “contrary to nature” is that of violating the integrity of structure and function of the human body. The article further contrasts this biblical and Greek patristic understanding with that of the “sin against nature” developed in the West during the Middle Ages. It argues that they are different in important ways and that a recovery of the biblical and Greek patristic view can help restore the concept of the unnatural to its proper place within Christian ethics. (shrink)

We argue that the gap between an authentically ethical conviction of sustainability and a behaviour that avoids confronting the terrifying reality of its ethical point of reference is characteristic of the field of business sustainability. We do not accuse the field of business sustainability of ethical shortcomings on the account of this attitude–behaviour gap. If anything, we claim the opposite, namely that there resides an ethical sincerity in the convictions of business scholars to entrust capitalism and capitalists with the mammoth (...) task of reversing, the terrifying reality of ecological devastation. Yet, the very illusory nature of this belief in capitalism’s captains to save us from the environmentally devastating effects of capitalism gives this ethical stance a tragic beauty. While sincere and authentic, it nevertheless is an ethical stance that relies on an “exclusionary gesture of refusing to see”, what in psychoanalysis is referred to as a fetishist disavowal of reality. We submit that this disavowal is fetishistic because the act is not simply one of repressing the real. If it was, we would rightly expect that we could all see the truth if we only provide more or better information to fill the subject’s lack of knowledge. The problem is that the fetishist transfers a fantasy of the real as the real. In the case of destructive capitalism, the fetishist disavows that particular reality by believing in another, thus subjectively negating the lack. Therefore, from the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, we submit that the gap between attitude and behaviour is best understood not only as an ethical flaw, but also as an essential component of an ethics that makes possible the field of business sustainability. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a concept of behavioural ecological individuality. Using findings from a case study which employed qualitative methods, I argue that individuality in behavioural ecology should be defined as phenotypic and ecological uniqueness, a concept that is operationalised in terms of individual differences such as animal personality and individual specialisation. This account make sense of how the term “individuality” is used in relation to intrapopulation variation in behavioural ecology. The concept of behavioural ecological individuality can sometimes be (...) used to identify individuals. It also shapes research agendas and methodological choices in behavioural ecology, leading researchers to account for individuals as sources of variation. Overall, this paper draws attention to a field that has been largely overlooked in philosophical discussions of biological individuality and highlights the importance of individual differences and uniqueness for individuality in behavioural ecology. (shrink)

In June 2008 the UK government, supported by the Royal College of Nursing, stated that nursing care would be measured for compassion. This paper considers the implications of this statement by critically examining the relationship of compassion to care from a variety of perspectives. It is argued that the current market-driven approaches to healthcare involve redefining care as a pale imitation, even parody, of the traditional approach of the nurse as “my brother’s keeper”. Attempts to measure such parody can only (...) measure artificial techniques and give rise to a McDonald’s-type nursing care rather than heartfelt care. The arguments of this paper, although applied to nursing, also apply to medicine and healthcare generally. (shrink)

Generic statements, such as "Bees are striped" are thought to be a central vehicle by which essentialist beliefs are transmitted. But work on generics and essentialism almost never focuses on the type of properties mentioned in generic statements. We test the hypothesis that teleological properties, what something is for, affect categorization judgments more strongly than behavioral, biological, or social properties. In Experiment 1, participants categorized properties as being either behavioral, biological, social, or teleological. In Experiment 2, we used the top (...) four properties from each group to describe a generic noun or a specific individual. Participants then categorized creatures that had one of their properties transformed. We found that changes to teleological properties had the strongest impact on categorization judgments. In Experiment 3, we also found that teleological properties mattered more in an induction task. We suggest that teleological properties play this privileged role in categorization because they are treated as essential properties. (shrink)

This note addresses the issue as to which ceers can be realized by word problems of computably enumerable (or, simply, c.e.) structures (such as c.e. semigroups, groups, and rings), where being realized means to fall in the same reducibility degree (under the notion of reducibility for equivalence relations usually called “computable reducibility”), or in the same isomorphism type (with the isomorphism induced by a computable function), or in the same strong isomorphism type (with the isomorphism induced by a computable permutation (...) of the natural numbers). We observe, e.g., that every ceer is isomorphic to the word problem of some c.e. semigroup, but (answering a question of Gao and Gerdes) not every ceer is in the same reducibility degree of the word problem of some finitely presented semigroup, nor is it in the same reducibility degree of some non‐periodic semigroup. We also show that the ceer provided by provable equivalence of Peano Arithmetic is in the same strong isomorphism type as the word problem of some non‐commutative and non‐Boolean c.e. ring. (shrink)

Although the popularity of Humane Education Programs as a method of teaching compassion and caring for all living beings is increasing, there is a need for rigorous, methodologically sound research evaluating the efficacy of HEP. Recent calls for the inclusion of HEP within broader humanistic, environmental, and social justice frameworks underline the importance of HEP beyond a simple “treatment of animals” model. Lack of methodological rigor in the majority of published HEP studies and dispersal across disparate fields , however, means (...) that there is a potential for the popular use of HEP to outstrip our understanding of the variables that impact efficacy. The current study discusses some of these issues and presents a pilot study of a literature-only HEP intervention. Comparisons with an age-matched control group indicated that the four-week HEP resulted in an increase in measures of empathy and treatment of animals, although only the increase in empathy levels was significant. This paper discusses the implications of the current results and areas in need of future consideration. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Peter Allmark's thesis that 'there can be no "caring" ethics'. It argues that the current preoccupation in nursing to define an ethics of care is a direct result of breaking nursing tradition. Subsequent attempts to find a moral basis for care, whether from subjective experimental perspectives such as described by Noddings, or from rational and detached approaches derived from Kant, are inevitably flawed. Writers may still implicitly presuppose a concept of care drawn from the (...) Judaeo-Christian tradition but without explicit recourse to its moral basis nursing is left rudderless and potentially without purpose. The very concept of 'care' cut off from its roots becomes a meaningless term without either normative or descriptive content. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen faced with hardship, how do we emotionally appraise the situation? Although many factors contribute to our reasoning about hardships, in this article we focus on the role of linguistic metaphor in shaping how we cope. In five experiments, we find that framing a person’s cancer situation as a “battle” encourages people to believe that that person is more likely to feel guilty if they do not recover than framing the same situation as a “journey” does. Conversely, the “journey” frame (...) is more likely to encourage the inference that the person can make peace with their situation than the “battle” frame. We rule out lexical priming as an explanation for this effect and examine the generalizability of these findings to individual differences across participants and to a different type of hardship—namely, an experience with depression. Finally, we examine the language participants produced after encountering one of these metaphors, and we find tendencies to repeat and extend the metaphors encountered.... (shrink)

In 2012, chief nursing officers (CNO) in England published a policy on compassion in response to serious criticisms of patients’ care. Because their objective is fundamentally to shape nursing, this study argues, following Popper, that the policy should be analysed. An appraisal tool, developed from Popper, Gadamer, Jauss and Thiselton, is the framework for this analysis. The CNO policy document identified six values and behaviours, termed ‘6Cs’, required by all nurses, midwives and care staff. The document contains no data, references (...) or acknowledgements, but is similar to the 6Cs defined by the Canadian nursing nun, Sister M. Simone Roach, in her theory of caring published 30 years earlier. Roach considered caring and the components of it, including compassion, to be moral virtues, an inner motivation to care. This study suggests that without explicit reference to Roach's ideas, and her underlying theoretical base, the CNO requirement has the effect of turning virtues into commodities and a form of external control, described by Ritzer as a McDonaldized dehumanization. This study, which has international relevance beyond England and the UK, suggests that the CNO revise their policy by acknowledging Roach's 6Cs and openly discuss the implications of her work for their policy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Look at the Prime MoverDavid BradshawThe last twenty years have seen a notable shift in scholarly views on the Prime Mover. Once widely dismissed as a relic of Aristotle's early Platonism, the Prime Mover is coming increasingly to be seen as a key—perhaps the key—to Aristotle's mature metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Perhaps the best example of the revisionist view is Jonathan Lear's Aristotle: The Desire to (...) Understand. Lear describes Aristotle's position as a form of "objective idealism." It is idealism because Aristotle believes that the fundamental nature of reality conforms to the mind, rather than vice versa; it is objective because the mind to which reality conforms is not that of any particular thinking being, but the divine mind—that is, in a sense, mind itself. "Objects must conform to knowledge, but that does not in the least reveal them to be constituted by any contribution from us... Since, for Aristotle, there is nothing distinctively human about the mind to which objects are conforming, there is no basis for saying that the essences we contemplate are mere appearances."1 Although it may seem strange to think of Aristotle as an idealist, Lear makes a plausible case for his interpretation based on the relevant texts (primarily De Anima III.4 and Metaphysics XII.6-10), and he successfully integrates it into his treatment of other important themes in Aristotle's philosophy.Attempts such as Lear's to tease out the significance of divine thinking are not the only new development afoot. Whereas Lear seems to accept the traditional view that the Prime Mover is a final but not an efficient cause, others such as Thomas de Koninck and Sarah Broadie have challenged that view.2 They have successfully shown, in my opinion, that Aristotle's position requires [End Page 1] that the Prime Mover be in some fashion an efficient cause. But they have not successfully elucidated the nature of this causality, nor have they explained how it is related to the theme rightly given prominence by Lear, the creative character of divine thought.My purpose here is to bring these two strands together—to use an interpretation of divine thinking much like Lear's to illuminate Aristotle's otherwise vexing and obscure remarks about the Prime Mover's causality. Rather than follow the time-honored route of commenting upon the commentators, I will examine the whole issue afresh, working in roughly the order dictated by Aristotle's text. My hope is to present a comprehensive interpretation of the Prime Mover that is more compelling than any yet offered by either the revisionists or their critics.1. Activity and Actuality in Metaphysics XIIMetaphysics XII.6 begins with a terse argument for the existence of a first unmoved mover. In the course of this argument Aristotle drops some important clues about the nature of the Prime Mover and its relation to the cosmos.The argument runs as follows: (1) Time cannot come into being or pass away, for that would involve the paradox of a moment before time or a moment after time. (2) Given Aristotle's own definition of time as "the number of motion in respect of before and after," or any other definition linking time inseparably to motion, motion also cannot come into being or pass away, and so must be continuous. (3) There must be a mover to cause this continuous motion. (4) The mover cannot merely be something capable of causing the motion, but must actively do so (, 1071b17). (5) Even for the mover to act continually is not sufficient if its substance includes potency or is potency (, 1071b18), for then the mover could possibly not be, and so could not guarantee an eternal motion. (6) Therefore the very substance of the mover must be actuality (, 1071b20). In the next sentence Aristotle goes on to speak as if there might be more than one mover, noting that "these substances must be without matter, for they must be eternal, if anything is eternal" (1071b20-22). After this nothing more is said about the possibility of more than one mover until chapter XII.8.There is an... (shrink)

Promoting the use of contact tracing technology will be an important step in global recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Across two studies, we assessed two messaging strategies as motivators of intended contact tracing uptake. In one sample of 1117 Australian adults and one sample of 888 American adults, we examined autonomy-supportive and controlling message framing and the presence or absence of information safety as predictors of intended contact tracing application uptake, using an online randomized 2 × 2 experimental design. The (...) results suggested that the provision of data safety assurances may be key in affecting people’s intentions to use contact tracing technology, an effect we found in both samples regardless of whether messages were framed as autonomy-supportive or controlling. Those in high information safety conditions consistently reported higher intended uptake and more positive perceptions of the application than those in low information safety conditions. In Study 2, we also found that perceptions of government legitimacy related positively to intended application uptake, as did political affiliation. In sum, individuals appeared more willing to assent to authority regarding contact tracing insofar as their data safety can be assured. Yet, public messaging strategies alone may be insufficient to initiate intentions to change behavior, even in these unprecedented circumstances. (shrink)

A-LOGIC is a full-length book (600+ pg). It functions as a system of logic designed to: 1) solve the standard paradoxes and major problems of standard mathematical logic; 2) minimize that logic's anomalies with respect to ordinary language, yet; 3) prove that all theorems in mathematical logic are tautologies. It covers lst order logic the logic of the words "and", "or", "not", "all" and "some". But it also has a non truth functional "if...then" and differs in its definition of validity, (...) its semantics and its theorems. In the book A-logic is contrasted step by step with standard mathematical logic as presented and defended by Quine. All of standard logic's theorems are proven tautologies in A-logic. But some argument-forms called "valid" in standard logic are not valid in A-logic -- notably non-sequiturs like "(P and not-P), therefore Q". In addition A-logic has many tautologies with its non-truthfunctional "if ... then" that standard logic can not derive -- e.g., "Not-(if P&Q then not-P)." A-logic's semantics is based on syntactically defined concepts of logical synonymy and containment of meanings rather than on truth-values and truth-functions. Its "if...then" sentences (called "C-conditionals") are valid if and only if (i) the meaning of the consequent is logically contained in that of the antecedent, and (ii) the antecedent and consequent are jointly consistent. The predicate "valid" holds only of C-conditionals and arguments. No valid C-conditionals are translatable into standard logic though all of them imply tautologies of standard logic. (shrink)

The purpose of cognitive diagnostic modeling is to classify students' latent attribute profiles using their responses to the diagnostic assessment. In recent years, each diagnostic classification model makes different assumptions about the relationship between a student's response pattern and attribute profile. The previous research studies showed that the inappropriate DCMs and inaccurate Q-matrix impact diagnostic classification accuracy. Artificial Neural Networks have been proposed as a promising approach to convert a pattern of item responses into a diagnostic classification in some research (...) studies. However, the ANNs methods produced very unstable and unappreciated estimation unless a great deal of care was taken. In this research, we combined ANNs with two typical DCMs, the deterministic-input, noisy, “and” gate model and the deterministic-inputs, noisy, “or” gate model, within a semi-supervised learning framework to achieve a robust and accurate classification. In both simulated study and real data study, the experimental results showed that the proposed method could achieve appreciated performance across different test conditions, especially when the diagnostic quality of assessment was not high and the Q-matrix contained misspecified elements. This research study is the first time of applying the thinking of semi-supervised learning into CDM. Also, we used the validating test to choose the appropriate parameters for the ANNs instead of using typical statistical criteria. (shrink)

The history of biology is mottled with disputes between two distinct approaches to the organic world: structuralism and functionalism. Their persistence across radical theory change makes them difficult to characterize: the characterization must be abstract enough to capture biologists with diverse theoretical commitments, yet not so abstract as to be vacuous. This Element develops a novel account of structuralism and functionalism in terms of explanatory strategies (Section 2). This reveals the possibility of integrating the two strategies; the explanatory successes of (...) evolutionary-developmental biology essentially depend on such integration (Section 3). Neither explanatory strategy is universally subordinate to the other, though subordination with respect to particular explanatory tasks is possible (Section 4). Beyond structuralism and functionalism, philosophical analysis that centers explanatory strategies can illuminate conflicts within evolutionary theory more generally (Section 5). (shrink)

The transhumanist literature encompasses diverse nonnovel positions on questions of disability and obligation reflecting long-running political philosophical debates on freedom and value choice, complicated by the difficulty of projecting values to enhanced beings. These older questions take on a more concrete form given transhumanist uses of biotechnologies. This paper will contrast the views of Hughes and Sandberg on the obligations persons with "disabilities" have to enhance and suggest a new model. The paper will finish by introducing a distinction between the (...) responsibility society has in respect of the presence of impairments and the responsibility society has not to abandon disadvantaged members, concluding that questions of freedom and responsibility have renewed political importance in the context of enhancement technologies. (shrink)

The existence of consciousness in animals may have been overlooked. Continuity in consciousness between humans and animals is predicted by evolutionary theory. However, there are specific methodological difficulties associated with investigating such a phenomenon: it cannot be directly measured; animals, unlike humans, cannot directly tell us about their conscious experience; experiments which have made comparisons to human consciousness cannot detect consciousness of a different form; application of the law of parsimony in science has traditionally led to the conclusion that it (...) does not exist. (shrink)

Background: Few robust autism-specific outcome assessments have been developed specifically for use by teachers in special schools. The Assessment of Barriers to Learning in Education – Autism is a newly developed teacher assessment to identify and show progress in barriers to learning for pupils on the autism spectrum with coexisting intellectual disabilities. Aims: This study aimed to conduct a preliminary validity and reliability evaluation of the ABLE-Autism. Methods and procedures: Forty-eight autistic pupils attending special schools were assessed using the ABLE-Autism. (...) Multi-level modelling was used to evaluate test-retest reliability, internal consistency and convergent validity with the Teacher Autism Progress Scale. Outcomes and results: Results showed excellent test-retest reliability and internal consistency. A large effect size suggested that the ABLE-Autism is strongly correlated with the Teacher Autism Progress Scale. Teacher feedback was positive and suggested that the ABLE-Autism is easily understood by teachers, relevant to autistic pupils in special schools, and adequately covers the skills and behaviours that teachers believe are important to assess for these pupils. Conclusions and implications: Although further validation is recommended, the preliminary evaluation of the ABLE-Autism suggests that it is a useful and has the potential to be an effective outcome assessment for autistic pupils in special schools. (shrink)

Cet article soutient que les voitures autonomes sont des robots sociaux qui doivent agir comme des tenants-lieux de leurs propriétaires humains. Pour ne pas esquiver les choix moraux incombant aux utilisateurs humains de ces technologies, on pourrait programmer les véhicules de façon à ce qu’ils puissent se comporter selon différentes théories morales, en permettant aux propriétaires de choisir celle qui a leur préférence. L’article envisage également les implications éthiques d’autres problèmes pratiques liés à la technologie des voitures autonomes.

Early intervention aims to identify children or families at risk of poor health, and take preventative measures at an early stage, when intervention is more likely to succeed. EI is concerned with the just distribution of “life chances,” so that all children are given fair opportunity to realize their potential and lead a good life; EI policy design, therefore, invokes ethical questions about the balance of responsibilities between the state, society, and individuals in addressing inequalities. We analyze a corpus of (...) EI policy guidance to investigate explicit and implicit ethical arguments about who should be held morally responsible for safeguarding child health and well-being. We examine the implications of these claims and explore what it would mean to put the proposed policies into practice. We conclude with some remarks about the useful role that philosophical analysis can play in EI policy development. (shrink)