The growing interest in dual‐inheritance models of human evolution has focused attention on culture as a means by which ancestors transmitted acquired phenotypic characteristics to their descendants. The ability of cultural behaviors to be repeatedly transmitted from ancestors to descendants enables individuals to influence their descendant‐leaving success over many more generations than are usually coclusive fitness. This essay proposes that traditional stories, or myths, can be seen as a way in which ancestors influence their descendant‐leaving success by influencing the behavior (...) of many generations of their descendants. The myth of Oedipus is used as an example of a traditional story aimed at promoting proper behavior and cooperation among kin. This interpretation of the Oedipus myth is contrasted with Freudian and structuralist interpretations. (shrink)

Many anthropological explanations of magical practices are based on the assumption that the immediate cause of performing an act of magic is the belief that the magic will work as claimed. Such explanations typically attempt to show why people come to believe that magical acts work as claimed when such acts do not identifiably have such effects. We suggest an alternative approach to the explanation of magic that views magic as a form of religious behavior, a form of communication that (...) promotes or protects cooperative social relationships. We suggest that all forms of religious behavior involve persons communicating acceptance of a supernatural claim and that this act communicates a willingness to accept nonskeptically the influence of the person making such a claim. Thus, religious behavior communicates a willingness to cooperate with the claim maker and others who accept his or her influence. We suggest that magic, which can be distinguished by the communicated acceptance of the claim that certain techniques have supernatural effects, also promotes cooperation. Different types of magic, including sorcery, love magic, and curing magic, can be shown to communicate different types of messages, such as a threat to use violence to punish unsocial behavior, sexual desire, or concern for a person's well-being. Ethnographic examples are used to support this hypothesis. This approach requires no assumptions about whether the practitioners of magic do or do not believe that the magical acts work as claimed. It attempts only to account for the identifiable talk and behavior that constitute magical acts by examining the identifiable, and often important, effects of these acts on the behavior of others. (shrink)

Totemism, a topic that fascinated and then was summarily dismissed by anthropologists, has been resurrected by evolutionary psychologists' recent attempts to explain religion. New approaches to religion are all based on the assumption that religious behavior is the result of evolved psychological mechanisms. We focus on two aspects of Totemism that may present challenges to this view. First, if religious behavior is simply the result of evolved psychological mechanisms, would it not spring forth anew each generation from an individual's psychological (...) mechanisms? Yet, Australian Totemism, like other forms of Totemism, is profoundly traditional, copied by one generation from the prior ones for hundreds of generations. Regardless of personal inclinations, individuals are obligated to participate. Second, it is problematic to assume that all practitioners of Totemism actually believe their religious claims. We propose an alternative explanation that accounts for the persistence of Totemism and that does not rely on an assumption that its practitioners are preliterate or naive because they have strange beliefs. We focus on Totemism as a cultural mechanism aimed at building and sustaining social relationships among close and distant kinsmen. (shrink)

This paper, using modern Darwinian theory, proposes an explanation for the increasingly high incidence of breast cancer found among pre-and post-menopausal women living today in westernized countries. A number of factors have been said to be responsible: genetic inheritance (BRCA-1), diet (specifically the increased consumption of dietary fat), exposure to carcinogenic agents, lifetime menstrual activity, and reproductive factors. The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate the value of a perspective based on Darwinian theory. In this paper, Darwinian theory (...) is used to explore the possibility that the increased incidence of breast cancer is due primarily to the failure to complete in a timely manner the reproductive developmental cycle, beginning at menarche and continuing through a series of pregnancies and lactation. On the basis of comparative data, we assume that most women in ancestral populations began having children before age 20 or so and tended to remain either pregnant or nursing for most of their adult lives. If a woman did not have a child by age 25 or so, she probably would never have one. Therefore, selection would probably not have acted against deleterious traits, such as cancer, that appeared after that age, just as it does not act against such traits in old age. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Al Mele (2003) suggests that the Simple View of intentional action is “fiction” because it is “wholly unconstrained” by a widely shared (folk) concept of intentional action. The Simple View (Adams, 1986, McCann, 1986) states that an action is intentional only if intended. As evidence that the Simple View is not in accord with the folk notion of intentional action, Mele appeals to recent surveys of folk judgments by Joshua Knobe (2003, 2004a, 2004b). Knobe’s surveys appear (...) to show that the folk judge unintended but known side effects of actions to be performed intentionally. In this paper we will reject Mele’s suggestion that the Simple View is “fiction.” We will also discuss the relationship between surveys and philosophical theories, and the abilities of surveys to access folk core concepts. We will argue that considerations of both fail to support Mele’s suggestion. (shrink)

The representation theorems of expected utility theory show that having certain types of preferences is both necessary and sufficient for being representable as having subjective probabilities. However, unless the expected utility framework is simply assumed, such preferences are also consistent with being representable as having degrees of belief that do not obey the laws of probability. This fact shows that being representable as having subjective probabilities is not necessarily the same as having subjective probabilities. Probabilism can be defended on the (...) basis of the representation theorems only if attributions of degrees of belief are understood either antirealistically or purely qualitatively, or if the representation theorems are supplemented by arguments based on other considerations (simplicity, consilience, and so on) that single out the representation of a person as having subjective probabilities as the only true representation of the mental state of any person whose preferences conform to the axioms of expected utility theory. (shrink)

Australia's Coalition Against Duck Shooting sees duck-shooting as a social problem and as an injustice with moral, legal and environmental consequences. The small animal liberationist group has succeeded in dramatically reducing the numbers of duck shooters in Victoria, which is the home of duck-shooting in Australia. The Coalition's framing work with the public via the electronic media involves three parts: a diagnosis , a prognosis and a motivational frame , all of which construct hunting as a cruel, antisocial blood sport (...) that ought to be banned. In this article, television news bulletins and feature stories from the 1993 and 1994 campaigns are analyzed to show how CADS makes and sustains its claims. In addition to 90 pages of transcripts of news commentaries and descriptive accounts of the visuals, the data include tape-recorded interviews with some of the duck liberationists involved in the campaign. (shrink)

Within the context of the study of the genetics of language, Chomskian laws of grammar, such as theStructure-dependence Condition and theA over A Condition, may be usefully regarded to have a status similar to that of Mendelian Laws in classical genetics. In both the case of Chomsky's Laws and Mendel's Laws, formal genetic principles are postulated which abstract away from the physical mechanisms involved and in both cases certain apparent counterexamples mirror a more complex underlying genetic organisation.

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the principles which should be considered by planners, legislative drafters, and policy-makers as they work to develop legal frameworks on access to genetic resources in their countries. Contextual information on the Convention on Biological Diversity and examples of how countries have approached the issue to date are provided.

Probabilistic coherence is not an absolute requirement of rationality; nevertheless, it is an ideal of rationality with substantive normative import. An idealized rational agent who avoided making implicit logical errors in forming his preferences would be coherent. In response to the challenge, recently made by epistemologists such as Foley and Plantinga, that appeals to ideal rationality render probabilism either irrelevant or implausible, I argue that idealized requirements can be normatively relevant even when the ideals are unattainable, so long as they (...) define a structure that links imperfect and perfect rationality in a way that enables us to make sense of the notion of better approximations to the ideal. I then analyze the notion of approximation to the ideal of coherence by developing a generalized theory of belief functions that allows for incoherence, and showing how such belief functions can be ordered with regard to greater or lesser coherence. (shrink)

This article addresses a countermovement to the animal liberation movement and its campaigns against vivisection, factory farming, and recreational hunting in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As moderate welfarists, pragmatic animal liberationists , and radical abolitionists who advocate animal rights, animal protectionists campaign for animals. The countermovement defends acts that animal protectionists decry. Meanwhile, sociologists accord little study to interplay between the movements . In Buechler's and Cylke's collection of 34 papers on social movements , only one (...) paper focused on countermovements, describing the connection between social movement and countermovement as "a continuous dialect of social change" . Although extensive writings exist on the main campaigns of the animal liberation movement, little scholarly material exists on the defenses mounted by the countermovement. This article examines key elements of a values war, a struggle over moral capital waged by animal protectionists and their countermovement opponents. (shrink)

Using the results of a survey of animal rights activists, advocates, and supporters, the paper reveals much more convergence than divergence of attitudes and actions by male and female animal protectionists. Analysis of the divergence suggests that the differences between men and women in the movement are contingent upon such things as early socialization, gendered work and leisure patterns, affinity with companion animals, ambivalence about science, and a history of opposition to nonhuman animal abuse by generations of female activists and (...) animal advocates. Aside from the feminist and women's movements and groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, it is rare to find a social movement in which the standing of women eclipses those of their male colleagues. The paper suggests that animal protection remains a bastion of female activism and advocacy because women care about blood, flesh, and pain and, unlike earlier generations of animal activists, no longer are seen as a liability to the success of the movement. (shrink)

This paper profiles the animal activism of the late American animal activist Henry Spira, whose campaign strategies and tactics suggest a number of links with the nineteenth century pioneers of animal protection as well as with approaches favored by contemporary animal activists. However, the article argues that Spira's style of animal advocacy differed from conventional approaches in the mainstream animal movement in that he preferred to work with, rather than against, animal user industries. To this end, he pioneered the use (...) of "reintegrative shaming" in animal protection, an accommodation strategy that relied on moralizing with opponents as opposed to the more common approach in animal advocacy of adversarial vilification, and hence, disintegrative shaming. The article describes the framing of some of Spira's best-known anti-cruelty campaigns and his use of reintegrative shaming to induce animal users to change their ways. (shrink)

Critics of the proposal that the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer used the camera obscura extensively in making his pictures of domestic scenes have argued that this cannot be the case, since his compositions are not 'photographic snapshots' but are very finely judged and balanced; his subject matter draws on the traditional motifs of Dutch genre painting; and the pictures are filled with complex allegorical and symbolic meaning. In this paper it is argued that all these are indeed characteristics of Vermeer's (...) oeuvre, but that the artist produced them through the transcription of optical images of tableaux, set up by arranging real furniture and other 'props' with extreme care, in an actual room in his mother-in-law's house. (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis claims that the whole observable universe, including us, is a computer simulation implemented by technologically advanced beings for an unknown purpose. The simulation argument (as I reconstruct it) is an argument for this hypothesis with moderately plausible premises. I develop two lines of objection to the simulation argument. The first takes the form of a structurally similar argument for a conflicting conclusion, the claim that I am a so-called freak observer, formed spontaneously in a quantum or thermodynamic (...) fluctuation rather than through ordinary processes of evolution and growth. The second rejects the basic line of reasoning of both arguments: the sort of evidence they cite is not capable of supporting either the claim that I am a simulant or the claim that I am a freak observer. The evidence that simulants or freak observers exist is not a reason to think that I am one of them. (shrink)

Centralised, compliance-focused approaches to research ethics have been normalised in practice. In this paper, we argue that the dominance of such systems has been driven by neoliberal approaches to governance, where the focus on controlling and individualising risk has led to an overemphasis of decontextualised ethical principles and the conflation of ethical requirements with the documentation of ‘informed consent’. Using a UK-based case study, involving a point-of-care-genetic test as an illustration, we argue that rather than ensuring ethical practice such compliance-focused (...) approaches may obstruct valuable research. We call for an approach that encourages researchers and research communities—including regulators, ethics committees, funders and publishers of academic research—to acquire skills to make morally appropriate decisions, and not base decision-making solely on compliance with prescriptive regulations. We call this ‘ethical preparedness’ and outline how a research ethics system might make space for this approach. (shrink)

Among philosophers, there are at least two prevalent views about the core concept of intentional action. View I (Adams 1986, 1997; McCann 1986) holds that an agent S intentionally does an action A only if S intends to do A. View II (Bratman 1987; Harman 1976; and Mele 1992) holds that there are cases where S intentionally does A without intending to do A, as long as doing A is foreseen and S is willing to accept A as a consequence (...) of S’s action. Joshua Knobe (2003a) presents intriguing data that may be taken to support the second view.1 Knobe’s data show an asymmetry in folk judgements. People are more inclined to judge that S did A intentionally, even when not intended, if A was perceived as causing a harm (e.g. harming the environment). There is an asymmetry because people are not inclined to see S’s action as intentional, when not intended, if A is perceived as causing a benefit (e.g. helping the environment). In this paper we will discuss Knobe’s results in detail. We will raise the question of whether his ordinary language surveys of folk judgments have accessed core concepts of intentional action. We suspect that instead Knobe’s surveys are tapping into pragmatic aspects of intentional language and its role in moral praise and blame. We will suggest alternative surveys that we plan to conduct to get at this difference, and we will attempt to explain the pragmatic usage of intentional language. (shrink)

Bridging the gap between the world of science and the realm of the spiritual, B. Alan Wallace introduces a natural theory of human consciousness that has its roots in contemporary physics and Buddhism. Wallace's "special theory of ontological relativity" suggests that mental phenomena are _conditioned_ by the brain, but do not _emerge_ from it. Rather, the entire natural world of mind and matter, subjects and objects, arises from a unitary dimension of reality that is more fundamental than these dualities, as (...) proposed by Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. To test his hypothesis, Wallace employs the Buddhist meditative practice of _samatha_, refining one's attention and metacognition, to create a kind of telescope to examine the space of the mind. Drawing on the work of the physicist John Wheeler, he then proposes a more general theory in which the participatory nature of reality is envisioned as a self-excited circuit. In comparing these ideas to the Buddhist theory known as the Middle Way philosophy, Wallace explores further aspects of his "general theory of ontological relativity," which can be investigated by means of _vipasyana_, or insight, meditation. Wallace then focuses on the theme of symmetry in reference to quantum cosmology and the "problem of frozen time," relating these issues to the theory and practices of the Great Perfection school of Tibetan Buddhism. He concludes with a discussion of the general theme of complementarity as it relates to science and religion. The theories of relativity and quantum mechanics were major achievements in the physical sciences, and the theory of evolution has had an equally deep impact on the life sciences. However, rigorous scientific methods do not yet exist to observe mental phenomena, and naturalism has its limits for shedding light on the workings of the mind. A pioneer of modern consciousness research, Wallace offers a practical and revolutionary method for exploring the mind that combines the keenest insights of contemporary physicists and philosophers with the time-honored meditative traditions of Buddhism. (shrink)

Though the literature on the topic has been slim, several recent commentators have identified a close affinity between the philosophical project of Giorgio Agamben, as articulated in his Homo Sacer series, and René Girard's theory of mimetic rivalry with its resolution through sacrificial scapegoating.1 Both are theories of social unity made possible through highly ritualized forms of exclusion. Girard's work posits desire and its conflictual consequences as the ultimate ground for all social systems, while Agamben views the same systems with (...) an eye toward the maintenance of sovereign power. Agamben begins his study with an obscure figure of Roman law, the "sacred man," who is excluded from the laws of both the... (shrink)

In the completely unregulated microcomputer industry, ethical restrictions to business are often self imposed or put in place by the suppliers of product. This article addresses the problems which can arise from the implementation of authorization programs. It is the history of one product's success in the Canadian marketplace, from the U.S. vendor, to the Canadian distributor, to computer dealers, to the end-user. The focus is on an authorization program, applied after the fact, to a local market which was unwilling (...) to abide by the program's good intent. (shrink)