Why are humans so clever? This book explores the idea that this cleverness has evolved through the increasing complexity of social groups. It brings together contributions from leaders in the field, examining social intelligence in different animal species and exploring its development, evolution and the brain systems upon which it depends.

We address the claim that nonhuman animals do not represent unobservable states, based on studies of physical cognition by rooks and social cognition by scrub-jays. In both cases, the most parsimonious explanation for the results is counter to the reinterpretation hypothesis. We suggest that imagination and prospection can be investigated in animals and included in models of cognitive architecture.

Knowing the individual skills and competences of one's group members may be important for deciding from whom to learn (social learning), with whom to collaborate and whom to follow. We investigated whether 12 jackdaws could select conspecifics based on their helping skills, which had been exhibited in a previous context. The birds were tested in a blocked-exit-situation, where they could choose between two conspecifics, one of which could be recruited inside. One conspecific had previously displayed the ability to open the (...) exit door whilst the other individual lacked the skill. The subjects showed a significant preference for the skilled conspecific if they had previously directly benefited from this skill. If they had merely observed the skilled (and non-skilled) individual opening (or failing to open) the exit door, they did not preferably choose the skilled conspecific. Taken together, these results suggest that jackdaws are capable of assessing other individuals' competence under certain circumstances. (shrink)

During his celebrated 1922 debate with Bergson, Einstein famously proclaimed: “the time of the philosopher does not exist, there remains only a psychological time that differs from the physicist’s.” Einstein’s dictum, I maintain, has been metabolized by the natural sciences, which typically presuppose, more or less explicitly, the existence of a single, univocal, temporal substratum, ultimately determined by physics. This reductionistic assumption pervades much biological and biomedical practice. The chronological age allotted to individuals is conceived as an objective quantity, allowing (...) one to straightforwardly assign and compare the biological age of organisms. This essay argues that the standard practice of assessing the age and aging of organisms against the backdrop of a physical conception of time is problematic. This becomes especially evident in light of recent discoveries of various levels of senescence underlying the development of individual organisms—a phenomenon known as ‘age mosaicism.’ The bottom line is that the study of age and aging requires a biological conception of time, as opposed to a physical one. Einstein clearly wasn’t wrong about his operationalization of time in relativity theory. Still time may be less monolithic than he surmised. (shrink)

Short-term international medical outreach experiences are becoming more popular among medical students. As the popularity of these trips grows, participants, scholars, and institutions have become more aware of the potential pitfalls of such experiences. Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine has an approximately 20-year international service immersion program that has sent more than 1,400 participants to more than 30 countries. Recently, ISI programming has been adjusted to provide students more formal sessions exploring the ethics of the ISI trips. Students (...) are required to attend both pre- and post-trip educational sessions covering a wide range of relevant global health topics as well as participating in in-country reflections and post-trip debriefings. This recent adjustment has evolved further to become the foundation for the SSOM’s four-year Global Health Honors program that not only encourages an ethical foundation for the student’s ISI experience but also hopes to provide a foundation for students as they look toward a future career in global health. (shrink)

Bernard Charbonneau’s The Green Light is a classic text of French environmentalism, first published in 1980 but unavailable in English until now. Philosophically, I found the book to be underwhelming, but Charbonneau makes no apologies for this:The author’s viewpoint is...not that of a specialist,...of a bona fide philosopher or poet, but that of a man who needs air to breathe, water to drink and dive in, time and space to play, silence to sleep or reflect...who has felt in his bones (...) and his eye each of the blows the land has endured.Charbonneau’s motivations for writing are personal, but not private; the introduction which chronicles his own background, struggles, and heartbreak might be the most compelling part... (shrink)

It is increasingly common for universities to provide cross-curricular education in bioethics as part of contemporary attempts to produce 'global citizens.' In this article I examine three perspectives drawn from research into pedagogy that has been conducted from the perspective of cognitive anthropology and consider its relevance to bioethics education. I focus on: two metaphors of learning, participation and acquisition, identified by Sfard; the psychological notion of moral development; and the distinction between socialization and enculturation. Two of these perspectives have (...) been particularly fruitful in understanding the processes of teaching and learning in a variety of domains. The third perspective has been developed in relation to the formal ethical education of medical students. I examine their relevance for 'non-professional' bioethics education suggesting that if we take seriously the idea that it is part of 'educating for citizenship' then the distinction between 'ethics' and 'politics' is blurred as such programmes aim at the development of student's political subjectivity. (shrink)

We sometimes seek expert guidance when we don’t know what to think or do about a problem. In challenging cases concerning medical ethics, we may seek a clinical ethics consultation for guidance. The assumption is that the bioethicist, as an expert on ethical issues, has knowledge and skills that can help us better think about the problem and improve our understanding of what to do regarding the issue.The widespread practice of ethics consultations raises these questions and more:What would it take (...) to be a moral expert?Is anyone a moral expert, and if so, how could a non-expert identify one?Is it in any way problematic to accept and follow the advice of a moral expert as opposed to coming to moral conclusions on your own?What should we think and do when moral experts disagree about a practical ethical issue?In what follows, we address these theoretical and practical questions about moral expertise. (shrink)

Economists have long treated technological phenomena as events transpiring inside a black box and, on the whole, have adhered rather strictly to a self-imposed ordinance not to inquire too seriously into what transpires inside that box. The purpose of Professor Rosenberg's work is to break open and examine the contents of the black box. In so doing, a number of important economic problems be powerfully illuminated. The author clearly shows how specific features of individual technologies have shaped a number of (...) variables of great concern to economists: the rate of productivity improvement, the nature of learning processes underlying technological change itself, the speed of technology transfer, and the effectiveness of government policies that are intended to influence technologies in particular ways. The separate chapters of this book reflect a primary concern with some of the distinctive aspects of industrial technologies in the twentieth century, such as the increasing reliance upon science, but also the considerable subtlety and complexity of the dialectic between science and technology. Other concerns include the rapid growth in the development of costs associated with new technologies as well as the difficulty of predicting the eventual performance characteristics of newly emerging technologies. (shrink)

This paper is designed to help people rationally engage moral issues regarding the treatment of animals, specifically uses of animals in medical and psychological experimentation, basic research, drug development, education and training, consumer product testing and other areas.

A critique of ‘beyond left and right’ ideologies, from red Toryism to techno-libertarianism.

It is proposed to remove the difficulty of nonitegrability of length in the Weyl geometry by modifying the law of parallel displacement and using “standard” vectors. The field equations are derived from a variational principle slightly different from that of Dirac and involving a parameter σ. For σ=0 one has the electromagnetic field. For σ<0 there is a vector meson field. This could be the electromagnetic field with finite-mass photons, or it could be a meson field providing the “missing mass” (...) of the universe. In cosmological models the two natural gauges are the Einstein gauge and the cosmic gauge. With the latter the universe has a fixed size, but the sizes of small systems decrease with time and their masses and energies increase, thus producing the Hubble effect. The field of a particle in this gauge is investigated, and it leads to an interesting solution of the Einstein equations that raises a question about the Schwarzschild solution. (shrink)

Although actual human omniscience is unimaginable, it is not obvious what it means to be limited with regard to thought. One of Kant's significant contributions to epistemology was his redefinition of the limits of thought. He is explicit about this when he contrasts human, receptive intuition, and the creative intuition that an infinite being would have. Importantly, judging and reasoning are only necessary for a mind that is first affected by an object through sensibility, which is not the case for (...) a being with creative intuition, since this kind of intuition creates its own object. This means that the intellect of Kant's God is distinct from the human intellect in kind, since judging and reasoning are essentially finite activities; they are already evidence of a finite, human cognition. In contrast, Aristotle argues that human cognition - beyond its capacity for discursivity - is able to contemplate; as we will see, Aristotle argues that contemplation is divine, and so a limited intellect can become more or less like an omniscient intellect depending on the quality of one's contemplative life. In this work, I want to 1) establish that Kant and Aristotle have incompatible conceptions of non-omniscience, 2) trace the epistemological commitments that motivate their rival positions on non-omniscience, 3) show that their particular views on the legitimacy of metaphysical judgments presuppose their particular interpretations of non-omniscience, and 4) argue that Kant provides a superior analysis of non-omniscience. (shrink)

This edited collection of original essays explores the irreducible role of aesthetic forms of experience and activity in the philosophies of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno.

_Discourses on Livy_ is the founding document of modern republicanism, and Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov have provided the definitive English translation of this classic work. Faithful to the original Italian text, properly attentive to Machiavelli's idiom and subtlety of thought, it is eminently readable. With a substantial introduction, extensive explanatory notes, a glossary of key words, and an annotated index, the _Discourses_ reveals Machiavelli's radical vision of a new science of politics, a vision of "new modes and (...) orders" that continue to shape the modern ethos. "[Machiavelli] found in Livy the means to inspire scholars for five centuries. Within the _Discourses_, often hidden and sometimes unintended by their author, lie the seeds of modern political thought.... [Mansfield and Tarcov's] translation is careful and idiomatic."—Peter Stothard, _The Times_ "Translated with painstaking accuracy—but also great readability."—_Weekly Standard_ "A model of contemporary scholarship and a brave effort at Machiavelli translation that allows the great Florentine to speak in his own voice."—_Choice_. (shrink)

This essay argues for the philosophical standing of Walter Benjamin’s early work and posits a deeper continuity between this early work as a philosopher and the subsequent development of his work as a writer. When these fragments are read in proper relation to each other, they reveal for the first time many of the key innovations of Benjamin as a philosopher, as well as his points of influence on Horkheimer and Adorno. His early ‘Program’ critiques the Enlightenment conception of experience (...) as a means for gaining empirical knowledge, and announces the need for a new concept of experience. Benjamin follows through on this program with a method of philosophical enquiry that is by turns fragmentary and constellational, developing a series of provisional notions of experience, which form a constellation with one another: perception, mimesis, language as a medium of experience, observation and memory. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 4, May 2020, Page 100-101.

There is a modern movement to grow artificial meat in laboratories in order to counter the ills of industrial animal agriculture. This article investigates whether lab-grown meat constitutes animal liberation by critically examining its proposed ethical superiority over traditional meat. These considerations are balanced with reflections on the ethical unknowns and shortcomings of the use of technology to solve human-caused problems. We examine a range of meanings attributed to “animal liberation” and consider how various forms of violence are potentially left (...) unchallenged, with a particular focus on gender relations. (shrink)

To be a prisoner either in Plato's cave or in the Beast's castle is a form of existence no one would desire. And yet the story of Disney's Beauty and the Beast – in particular, the spell that imprisoned the Beast and his servants – is a tale as old as time. It is one's common human experience: one's recognition that he/she is shackled by ignorance and unfulfilled potential, and his/her desperate desire to escape. Unfortunately, however, breaking the chains and (...) ending the spell is no easy feat. For just as the Beast and his household companions represent a cave‐like imprisonment, Belle represents in her person the two ideals necessary to break the spell: love (which drew her to the castle to find her father) and beauty (which can compel the love of another). Love never happens without an encounter with beauty. (shrink)

In _The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought,_ Chris L. Firestone, Nathan A. Jacobs, and thirteen other contributors examine the role of God in the thought of major European philosophers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The philosophers considered are, by and large, not orthodox theists; they are highly influential freethinkers, emancipated by an age no longer tethered to the authority of church and state. While acknowledging this fact, the contributors are united in arguing that this is (...) only one side of a complex story. To redress the imbalance of attention to secularism among crucial modern thinkers and to consolidate a more theologically informed view of modernity, they focus on the centrality of the sacred in the thought of these philosophers. The essays, each in its own way, argue that the major figures in modernity are theologically astute, bent not on removing God from philosophy but on putting faith and reason on a more sure footing in light of advancements in science and a perceived need to rethink the relationship between God and world. By highlighting and defending the theologically affirmative dimensions of thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, and others, the essayists present a forceful and timely correction of widely accepted interpretations of these philosophers. To ignore or downplay the theological dimensions of the philosophical works they address, they argue, distorts our understanding of modern thought. "Over the past twenty-five years there has been a gradual change in the study of modern philosophy toward recognizing the centrality of our relation to God in the work of most of the major modern thinkers of the period. _The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought_ is a timely and useful collection that has the potential to crystallize this important development in the study of modern philosophy." —_John E. Hare, Yale Divinity School_. (shrink)

This article develops an analysis of disability according to which disabling conditions are properties of organisms embedded in sets of environments. We begin by presenting the three mainstream accounts of disability—the medical, social, and interactionist models—and rehearsing some known limitations. We argue that, because of their primary focus on etiology, all three models share, more or less implicitly, a problematic assumption. This is the tenet that disabilities are individual properties. The second part of the essay presents an “ecological” interpretation of (...) disability, inspired by classic and contemporary research on biological niches. Our proposal preserves many insights underlying extant approaches, while allowing a more accurate characterization of the nature and experience of disability. We conclude by drawing some general implications of our analysis. (shrink)

Objective To assess parental permission for a neonate's research participation using the MacArthur competence assessment tool for clinical research (MacCAT-CR), specifically testing the components of understanding, appreciation, reasoning and choice. Study Design Quantitative interviews using study-specific MacCAT-CR tools. Hypothesis Parents of critically ill newborns would produce comparable MacCAT-CR scores to healthy adult controls despite the emotional stress of an infant with critical heart disease or the urgency of surgery. Parents of infants diagnosed prenatally would have higher MacCAT-CR scores than parents (...) of infants diagnosed postnatally. There would be no difference in MacCAT-CR scores between parents with respect to gender or whether they did or did not permit research participation. Participants Parents of neonates undergoing cardiac surgery who had made decisions about research participation before their neonate's surgery. Methods The MacCAT-CR. Results 35 parents (18 mothers; 17 fathers) of 24 neonates completed 55 interviews for one or more of three studies. Total scores: magnetic resonance imaging (mean 36.6, SD 7.71), genetics (mean 38.8, SD 3.44), heart rate variability (mean 37.7, SD 3.30). Parents generally scored higher than published subject populations and were comparable to published control populations with some exceptions. Conclusions The MacCAT-CR can be used to assess parental permission for neonatal research participation. Despite the stress of a critically ill neonate requiring surgery, parents were able to understand study-specific information and make informed decisions to permit their neonate's participation. (shrink)

The aim of this dissertation is to provide an analysis of central concepts in philosophy of science from the perspective of current molecular and developmental research. Each chapter explores the ways in which particular phenomena or discoveries in molecular biology influences our philosophical understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge. The introductory prologue draws some general connections between the various threads, which revolve around two central themes: causation and explanation. Chapter Two identifies a particular type of causal relation which is (...) widespread across the sciences, but cannot be straightforwardly accommodated by extant accounts of causation and causal explanation. Chapter Three explores how the form of redundant causality identified in the previous chapter plays an important role in causal explanation, by making the effect stable and robust. Chapter Four offers a novel perspective on the debate over biological reductionism by distinguishing between different paradigms of molecular explanation. Chapter Five provides a philosophical analysis of the so-called "Developmental Synthesis" of evolutionary and developmental biology, and suggests a general account of scientific unification grounded in the notion of explanatory relevance. Chapter Six offers an account of dispositional properties inspired by mechanisms of gene regulation, according to which dispositions are not properties of entities, but properties that describe the behavior of abstract idealized models. Finally, Chapter Seven scrutinizes the concept of the molecular ecosystem, a metaphor frequently employed by biologists to describe cellular interactions, but seldom articulated in detail. (shrink)

Zagzebski’s paper ends with a passage from Iris Murdoch. While the character in the passage is Kant, who recognizes the sounds of the moral law as coming from “the voice of his own reason,” (p. 22) Murdoch’s message seems to be directed to anyone who accepts a “secular” ethic. We can understand her message as a warning: DO NOT reject theistic or Christian ethics; DO NOT fail to view Christ as the source of the moral law, for this rejection is (...) (if I understand Murdoch correctly) one of the first steps down the road to Hell. I will argue that Christians should take these first steps down this road (and, if fact, ride the slippery slope all the way down), but that this road is not the road to Hell. It’s the moral road that Christians should want to be on. (shrink)