Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and 'babysitting' calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and (...) goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species. (shrink)

The reproducibility movement in psychology has resulted in numerous highly publicized instances of replication failures. The goal of the present work was to investigate people’s reactions to a psychology replication failure vs. success, and to test whether a failure elicits harsher reactions when the researcher is a woman vs. a man. We examined these questions in a pre-registered experiment with a working adult sample, a conceptual replication of that experiment with a student sample, and an analysis of data compiled and (...) posted by a psychology researcher on their public weblog with the stated goal to improve research replicability by rank-ordering psychology researchers by their “estimated false discovery risk.” Participants in the experiments were randomly assigned to read a news article describing a successful vs. failed replication attempt of original work from a male vs. female psychological scientist, and then completed measures of researcher competence, likability, integrity, perceptions of the research, and behavioral intentions for future interactions with the researcher. In both working adult and student samples, analyses consistently yielded large main effects of replication outcome, but no interaction with researcher gender. Likewise, the coding of weblog data posted in July 2021 indicated that 66.3% of the researchers scrutinized were men and 33.8% were women, and their rank-ordering was not correlated with researcher gender. The lack of support for our pre-registered gender-replication hypothesis is, at first glance, encouraging for women researchers’ careers; however, the substantial effect sizes we observed for replication outcome underscore the tremendous negative impact the reproducibility movement can have on psychologists’ careers. We discuss the implications of such negative perceptions and the possible downstream consequences for women in the field that are essential for future study. (shrink)

Vaccinia virus, the world's oldest vaccine, was used originally for the eradication of smallpox. It is now being genetically engineered to create new live vaccines for use against other infectious agents of medical and veterinary importance. Genes coding for antigens of several pathogens have been linked to vaccinia virus transcriptional regulatory signals and inserted into the vaccinia virus genome. The resultant recombinant viruses are infectious, express the foreign gene, stimulate specific immune responses in vaccinated animals and can protect against disease (...) caused by the corresponding pathogen. (shrink)

Praise for 50 Fast Digital Camera Techniques "Applying the lively techniques in this book will make anyone's digital camera a more productive tool." -Al Francekevich, professional photographer, on the first edition Your digital camera is an amazing and versatile creative tool, with features and capabilities you probably haven't even explored-until now. Here are step-by-step instructions for 50 hot new techniques that take advantage of all the latest camera features, fully illustrated with stunning color photos taken by the author. No matter (...) what type of digital camera you have, this book will help you create more professional pictures. Your guide to amazing results with your digital camera * Select the right shooting mode and change critical settings in seconds * Use exposure and focal length to get sharper photos * Shoot fantastic candid, nature, and pet pictures * Learn the secrets of shooting dramatic skyscapes and urban landscapes * Plan shots for creative digital manipulation * Download and print your photos or share them on the Web * Create a photographic essay or convert color shots to artsyblack-and-white. (shrink)

Advanced Cell Technology's Ethics Advisory Board has been called window dressing for a corporate marketing plan. But the scientists and managers have paid attention, and the lawyers have gone along.

Why does Foucault's work continue to be of central importance in current debates in sociology, political science and philosophy? Why do we still read him as a guide to contemporary social and cultural life? Foucault's work presents a provocative challenge to orthodox, habitual forms of belief and practice. The Later Foucault, with an impressive interdisciplinary focus, argues that one of the keys to understanding Foucault is his political thought. It is this which he expressed clearly in his last writings and (...) which pulled together his earlier interests in power, agency and subjectivity. In this volume a distinguished array of Foucauldian scholars and commentators on politics explore the significance of these l. (shrink)

The concept of the gene has been the central organizing theme of 20th century biology. Biology has become increasingly influential both for philosophers seeking a naturalized basis for epistemology, ethics, and the understanding of the mind, as well as for the human sciences generally. The central task of this work is to get the story right about genes and in so doing provide a critical and enabling resourse for use in the further pursuit of human self-understanding. ;The work begins with (...) a wide-ranging historical reconstruction and conceptual analysis of the meaning of "the gene" that results in defining and distinguishing two different "genes". Each of these can be seen as an heir to one of the two major historical trends in explaining the source of biological order---preformationism and epigenesis. The preformationist gene predicts phenotypes but only on an instrumental basis where immediate medical and/or economic benefits can be had. The gene of epigenesis , by contrast, is a developmental resource that provides templates for RNA and protein synthesis but has in itself no determinate relationship to organismal phenotypes. The seemingly prevalent idea that genes constitute information for traits is based, I argue, upon an unwarranted conflation of these two senses which is in effect held together by rhetorical glue. Beyond this historical, conceptual, and rhetorical inquiry the bulk of the dissertation then concerns itself with an empirically up-to-date analysis of the cell and molecular basis of biological order and of the pathological loss of same. In each of these chapters I structure my analysis with the idea in mind that the "conflated" view can be held empirically accountable. Major touchpoints in this work include the ideas of I. Kant, J. Blumenbach, K. E. von Baer, J. Muller, R. Virchow, W. Johannsen, R. Falk, J. Sapp, E. Schrodinger, M. Delbruick, G. Gamow, R. Doyle, L. Kay, S. Kauffman, E. Jablonka, J. Rothman, K. Yamamoto, P. Rous, H. Temin, J. M. Bishop, H. Harris, E. Stanbridge, D. L. Smithers, B. Vogelstein, E. Farber and H. Rubin. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to expose the true nature and merit of Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric and to correct the views of previous scholars. The author accordingly provides a thorough analysis of the opinions of some of the foremost commentators on major issues in the translation and interpretation of the Rhetoric, and he offers at the same time his own carefully reasoned position. Although this study is primarily a product of scholarship of the mid-seventies, evidently written before the (...) recent surge of interest in the Rhetoric that produced the commentaries of W. M. A. Grimaldi and L. Arnhart, it is nevertheless a useful summary of earlier scholarship and a new and insightful interpretation. Ryan says that he developed this study because no one had attempted a thorough investigation of "the entire theory of argumentation" as it appears in the Rhetoric nor had they viewed the text in relation to other works of Aristotle that are closely related, such as the Ethics and the Politics. Scholars, instead, focused on one or another feature of the work, the enthymeme, in particular. (shrink)

Can philosophy offer reasonable grounds for the existence of a God possessing genuine religious significance and not proposed simply as the solution to a purely intellectual philosophical problem? Certainly many contemporary thinkers have insisted that no genuine religion could be based upon metaphysics. In this book, however, T. L. S. Sprigge examines sympathetically the most notable metaphysical systems of the last four centuries which purport to put religion on a rational footing and, after a thorough examination of their claims, considers (...) what kind of religious outlook they might support and how they actually affected the lives of their proponents. The thinkers studied include Spinoza, Hegel, T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, A. N. Whitehead, and Charles Hartshorne, concluding with an exposition of the author's own viewpoint and a general discussion on the relation between metaphysics and religion. There is also a chapter on Kierkegaard as the most important critic of metaphysical religion. (shrink)

Recent research on the metaethical beliefs of ordinary people appears to show that they are metaethical pluralists that adopt different metaethical standards for different moral judgments. Yet the methods used to evaluate folk metaethical belief rely on the assumption that participants interpret what they are asked in metaethical terms. We argue that most participants do not interpret questions designed to elicit metaethical beliefs in metaethical terms, or at least not in the way researchers intend. As a result, existing methods are (...) not reliable measures of metaethical belief. We end by discussing the implications of our account for the philosophical and practical implications of research on the psychology of metaethics. (shrink)

Part I: Consciousness and the metaphysics of experience. Orientations. What I believe. The privacy of experience. Final causes. The importance of subjectivity : an inaugural lecture. Is consciousness mysterious? Consciousness. The distinctiveness of American philosophy. The world of description and the world of acquaintance -- Part II: The metaphysics of time and the absolute. The unreality of time. Ideal immortality. Russell and Bradley on relations. The self and its world in Bradley and Husserl. Absolute idealism. Pantheism -- Part III: Ethics, (...) animal rights, and the environment. The greatest happiness principle. Is the esse of intrinsic value percipi? Pleasure, pain and value. Metaphysics, physicalism, and animal rights. Vivisection, morals, medicine : commentary from an antivivisectionist philosopher. Non-human rights : an idealist perspective. Are there intrinsic values in nature? An idealist's prayer for the world. (shrink)

Can moral judgements be true or false? Can rational methods be applied to ethics? In this landmark study, Sprigge gives an account of how philosophers have tackled these questions and puts forward his own theory on the matter.

Elephants show a rich social organization and display a number of unusual traits. In this paper, we analyse reports collected over a thirty-five year period, describing behaviour that has the potential to reveal signs of empathic understanding. These include coalition formation, the offering of protection and comfort to others, retrieving and 'babysitting' calves, aiding individuals that would otherwise have difficulty in moving, and removing foreign objects attached to others. These records demonstrate that an elephant is capable of diagnosing animacy and (...) goal directedness, and is able to understand the physical competence, emotional state and intentions of others, when they differ from its own. We argue that an empathic understanding of others is the simplest explanation of these abilities, and discuss reasons why elephants appear to show empathy more than other non-primate species. (shrink)

In the traditional form of canonical quantization, certain field components (not having “conjugate” momenta) must be regarded as noncanonical. This long-known distinction enters modern gauge theories, when they are canonically quantized as by Kugo and Ojima. We avoid that peculiarity by not using any conjugate “momenta” at all. In our formulation, canonical quantization can be related to Feynman's path integral.

It has been more than sixty years since R. D. Collison Black published his Economic Thought and the Irish Question, a book which ever since has been widely regarded as a classic in the history of e...

I defend the view that propositional knowledge can be defined as follows: A knows that p if and only if A believes that p because p. Spelling out the meaning of 'because' in this formula results in a causal-explanatory view of knowledge.

If skepticism is once again fashionable, then much of the credit must go to Peter Unger who gives a sustained defense of an ultra-pyrrhonian position in his book, Ignorance: A case for Skepticism. Starting with a version of the traditional argument that we know nothing about the external world, Unger plunges deeper into skeptical waters by next arguing that there is at most hardly anything which we know to be so; and he scarcely pauses before proceeding to defend the stronger (...) conclusion of ‘universal ignorance,’ the thesis that nobody ever knows anything to be the case. I view Unger's thesis and the arguments that led him to it as a challenge to be overcome, not by an appeal to dogmatism - which Unger sees as the only alternative to skepticism - but by recourse to hard-biting arguments of the sort in which Unger himself puts his faith. In what follows I shall attempt to restate Unger's three main skeptical arguments with a view to showing that their bite is not nearly so hard as he imagines. (shrink)

I argue that a modern gloss on Aristotle’s notions of Form and Matter not only allows us to escape a dualism of the psychological and the physical, but also results in a plausible sort of materialism. This is because Aristotle held that the essential nature of any psychological state, including perception and human thought, is to be some physical property. I also show that Hilary Putnam and Martha Nussbaum are mistaken in saying that Aristotle was not a materialist, but a (...) functionalist. His functionalism should instead be given a materialistic interpretation, since he holds that only the appropriate sort of matter can realize the human psyche. Aristotle’s functionalism is therefore best viewed as a “causal functionalism,” in which functional descriptions enable us to find the right sort of material embodiment. By sidestepping dualistic assumptions, Aristotle also avoids having to deal with any further notion of consciousness. (shrink)

I argue for the following analysis of a freely willed action: an act is done of one's own free will, if and only if, it is an intentional act performed by one acting as a rational agent from unobstructed reasons, and so situated that he or she has the capacity to forbear from performing it.

I answer objections to my article, "The Time-Gap Argument," made by C. Daniels in his "Seeing Through a Time Gap.".

In dynamic epistemic logic and other fields, it is natural to consider relativization as an operator taking sentences to sentences. When using the ideas and methods of dynamic logic, one would like to iterate operators. This leads to iterated relativization. We are also concerned with the transitive closure operation, due to its connection to common knowledge. We show that for three fragments of the logic of iterated relativization and transitive closure, the satisfiability problems are fi1 11–complete. Two of these fragments (...) do not include transitive closure. We also show that the question of whether a sentence in these fragments has a finite (tree) model is fi0 01–complete. These results go via reduction to problems concerning domino systems. (shrink)