Dietary restriction (DR) famously extends lifespan and reduces fecundity across a diverse range of species. A prominent hypothesis suggests that these life‐history responses evolved as a survival‐enhancing strategy whereby resources are redirected from reproduction to somatic maintenance, enabling organisms to weather periods of resource scarcity. We argue that this hypothesis is inconsistent with recent evidence and at odds with the ecology of natural populations. We consider a wealth of molecular, medical, and evolutionary research, and conclude that the lifespan extension effect (...) of DR is likely to be a laboratory artifact: in contrast with captivity, most animals living in natural environments may fail to achieve lifespan extension under DR. What, then, is the evolutionary significance of the suite of responses that extend lifespan in the laboratory? We suggest that these responses represent a highly conserved nutrient recycling mechanism that enables organisms to maximize immediate reproductive output under conditions of resource scarcity. (shrink)

This groundbreaking volume casts light on the long shadow of naturalistic monism in modern thought and culture. When monism's philosophical proposition - the unity of all matter and thought in a single, universal substance - fused with scientific empiricism and Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, it led to the formation of a powerful worldview articulated in the work of figures such as Ernst Haeckel. The compelling essays collected here, written by leading international scholars, investigate the articulation of monism in science, (...) philosophy, and religion and its impact on a range of social movements, from socialism and early feminism to imperialism and eugenics. The result is a broad and comprehensive chronological, disciplinary, and geographic map of a century of monism, as well as a bellwether for innovative new directions in the interdisciplinary study of science, religion, philosophy, and culture. (shrink)

Considering that much of human society is structured through its interaction with non-human animals, and since human society relies heavily on the exploitation of animals to serve human needs, human-animal studies has become a rapidly expanding field of research, featuring a number of distinct positions, perspectives, and theories that require nuanced explanation and contextualization. The first book to provide a full overview of human-animal studies, this volume focuses on the conceptual construction of animals in American culture and the way in (...) which it reinforces and perpetuates hierarchical human relationships rooted in racism, sexism, and class privilege. Margo DeMello considers interactions between humans and animals within the family, the law, the religious and political system, and other major social institutions, and she unpacks the different identities humans fashion for themselves and for others through animals. Essays also cover speciesism and evolutionary continuities; the role and preservation of animals in the wild; the debate over zoos and the use of animals in sports; domestication; agricultural practices such as factory farming; vivisection; animal cruelty; animal activism; the representation of animals in literature and film; and animal ethics. Sidebars highlight contemporary controversies and issues, with recommendations for additional reading, educational films, and related websites. DeMello concludes with an analysis of major philosophical positions on human social policy and the future of human-animal relations. (shrink)

The distinction between clinical practice and surgical research may seem trivial, but this distinction can become a complex issue when innovative surgeries are substituted for standard care without patient knowledge. Neither the novelty nor the risk of a new surgical procedure adequately defines surgical research. Some institutions tacitly allow the use of new surgical procedures in series of patients without informing individuals that they are participating in a scientific study, as long as no written protocol or hypothesis exists. Institutions can (...) justify this practice by viewing human research in narrow terms as an activity outlined in a formal protocol. Application of limited definitions, however, erodes patients' rights and risks losing public confidence in how biomedical research is conducted. I propose an operational definition of human research also be recognised. Enforcing more rigid and less ambiguous guidelines of human research may curtail enrolment into some studies, but it will also protect patients from being used as subjects without their knowledge. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: -/- 1. One’s blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent’s wrongdoing. 3. One must be warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the (...) wrongdoing. 4. The target’s wrongdoing must some of “one’s business”. -/- These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing.” Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone’s standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer’s action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non-hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our "moral fragility", the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the "equality of persons". (shrink)

In his book Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, Henry Giroux bemoans, “[H]igher education increasingly stands alone, even in its attenuated state, as a public arena where ideas can be debated, critical knowledge produced, and learning linked to important social issues.”1 Colleges of education, like public schools themselves, have become more fragmented and compartmentalized in recent years. Persistent at universities is “the view that students are basically consumers and faculty providers of a saleable commodity such as a credential or a set (...) of workplace skills.”2 Professors and teachers alike feel the impact of neoliberal policies aimed at efficiency and productivity, which further alienate and emphasize data... (shrink)

Reach into the heart and soul of people from every inhabited continent through sixty tour de force black-and-white portraits by Margo Davis. Under One Sky is a collection of nearly forty years of portrait making by one of the inheritors of California’s photographic legacy. Esthetically powerful and convincing were words used by Ansel Adams in 1968 to describe the work of Davis and her fellow students. Indeed, the same words can be used today in describing these portraits. As Davis (...) says in her accompanying essay, “A portrait that has the power to truly look inward can shake us up and make us question our assumptions. Like the finest literature, a powerful photographic portrait permits us to leap into the other’s mind and heart.”. (shrink)

Many or almost all writers about truth seem to agree that the entailment by a more or less formal account of truth of all the instances of the so-called disquotational schema - (DQ) <p> is true if and only if p - is at least a necessary condition for this account to count as an adequate account of truth. My first task in this paper is to show that the correctness of the observation (DQ) does not by itself imply that (...) truth lacks substance. My second task is to establish the instances of (DQ) as not only necessary but also sufficient for a characterisation of truth. Such a minimal theory of truth would seem to rob truth of all substance but going in for a more eloquent alternative as I shall attempt to show could result in an unwanted epistemisation of truth. (shrink)

Collective intelligence in organizational teams has been predominantly understood and explained in terms of the quality of the outcomes that the team produces. This manuscript aims to extend the understanding of CI in teams, by disentangling the core of actual collective intelligent team behavior that unfolds over time during a collaboration period. We posit that outcomes do support the presence of CI, but that collective intelligence itself resides in the interaction processes within the team. Teams behave collectively intelligent when the (...) collective behaviors during the collaboration period are in line with the requirements of the tasks the team is assigned to and the environment. This perspective results in a challenging, but promising research agenda armed with new research questions that call for unraveling longitudinal fine-grained interactional processes over time. We conclude with exploring methodological considerations that assist researchers to align concept and methodology. In sum, this manuscript proposes a more direct, thorough, and nuanced understanding of collective intelligence in teams, by disentangling micro-level team behaviors over the course of a collaboration period. With this in mind, the field of CI will get a more fine-grained understanding of what really happens at what point in time: when teams behave more or less intelligently. Additionally, when we understand collectively intelligent processes in teams, we can organize targeted interventions to improve or maintain collective intelligence in teams. (shrink)

In this article I will argue that there are two theories of distributive justice hidden in Walzer's Spheres of Justice. The first one emphasises the separation of distributive spheres. It tries to formulate distributive criteria by sticking faithfully to sphere‐specificity. I shall refer to this theory as ‘pure pluralism’. The second theory downplays the separation of spheres and emphasises ‘across spheres’ or ‘between spheres’ criteria instead. I shall call this theory ‘mitigated pluralism’. Mitigated pluralism has become popular among Walzer's friendly (...) critics who apparently do not want to charge him with a distributive theory as clear and rigid as pure pluralism. Although I consider myself another friendly critic, I shall argue in favour of pure pluralism. (shrink)

France and New Caledonia are currently involved in an ongoing debate surrounding the independence of the latter from the former that will lead to referenda in 2018–2022. The main stakeholders in the negotiation process are France, the Caldoche population of the island agglomeration and its Kanak inhabitants. Most critical discourse studies analyse texts as expressions of power entrenched in monologues. In this paper, however, the debate between the social actors is seen as a plurilogue. The study argues that the dominant (...) interactants propagate a rhetoric of unity and homogeneity, aiming to further marginalise the Kanak people and other minority groups in New Caledonian society by rendering them invisible. It further argues that the French political power aims to persuade the other groups to accept the reality of a common destiny as a given truth. The paper combines Systemic Functional Linguistics and Pragma-dialectics, and incorporates postcolonial and poststructuralist perspectives into a critical study of discourse samples, taken from a larger corpus of French data, across various genres and registers. The analysis reveals that the French rhetoric of unity is built upon Republican principles inherent to neo-colonialist ideology. It also shows that the French rhetoric is being reproduced by local settler interactants, based on values that pertain to Caldoche nationalist ideology. Both French and Caldoche ideologies are in discord with Kanak socialist ideology. By exposing the existing power inequalities the study does not only contribute to defending the Kanak minority discourse, but also emphasises the rights for recognition and self-determination of the Kanak indigenous people of New Caledonia. (shrink)

«Le droit et la science en action», ce titre est la parfaite illustration les domaines d’intérêts de l’auteure dont les textes ici présentés, Sheila Jasanoff, et ceux de l’auteur de la traduction et de la présentation des dits textes, Olivier Leclerc. Ce livre publié aux éditions Dalloz dans la collection Rivages du droit est une sélection et une traduction de cinq textes écrits par Sheila Jasanoff, sociologue des sciences américaine, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies au sein de la (...) très prestigieuse Université de Harvard. Ses travaux s’intéressent principalement au rôle de la science et des technologies au sein des sociétés contemporaines et notamment à leurs interactions avec le droit et la politique. Sheila Jasanoff n’est pas seulement sociologue, ce que rappelle à juste titre par Olivier Leclerc dans l’introduction de l’ouvrage. Titulaire d’un doctorat en linguistique, elle est avocate et a exercé dans le contentieux de l’environnement avant de se tourner vers .. (shrink)

Part of the debate on cost containment in healthcare systems may be characterized as applied political philosophy One might say that the current debate between competing theories of justice that started with Rawls' A Theory of Justice in 1971 has acquired a small sister debate in healthcare philosophy Major participants in the debate on social justice have become an important source of inspiration for bioethicists interested in a just distribution of healthcare resources. Thus Rawls' A Theory of Justice has been (...) remodeled for healthcare philosophy by Norman Daniels. Nozick's libertarian manifesto Anarchy, State, and Utopia has been used for bioethical purposes by H.T. Engelhardt. The books of Daniel Callahan evidently belong to a family of communitarian theories, though Callahan cannot be said to follow one or another communitarian thinker in particular. In the next two sections of this article I will give a very brief sketch of the debate on social justice in political philosophy and then discuss the sister debate on social justice in healthcare. (shrink)

Leech et al. present a connectionist algorithm as a model of (the development) of analogizing, but they do not specify the algorithm's associated computational-level theory, nor its computational complexity. We argue that doing so may be essential for connectionist cognitive models to have full explanatory power and transparency, as well as for assessing their scalability to real-world input domains.

Family members do not have an official position in the practice of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide in the Netherlands according to statutory regulations and related guidelines. However, recent empirical findings on the influence of family members on EAS decision-making raise practical and ethical questions. Therefore, the aim of this review is to explore how family members are involved in the Dutch practice of EAS according to empirical research, and to map out themes that could serve as a starting point (...) for further empirical and ethical inquiry. A systematic mixed studies review was performed. The databases Pubmed, Embase, PsycInfo, and Emcare were searched to identify empirical studies describing any aspect of the involvement of family members before, during and after EAS in the Netherlands from 1980 till 2018. Thematic analysis was chosen as method to synthesize the quantitative and qualitative studies. Sixty-six studies were identified. Only 14 studies had family members themselves as study participants. Four themes emerged from the thematic analysis. 1) Family-related reasons to request EAS. 2) Roles and responsibilities of family members during EAS decision-making and performance. 3) Families’ experiences and grief after EAS. 4) Family and ‘the good euthanasia death’ according to Dutch physicians. Family members seem to be active participants in EAS decision-making, which goes hand in hand with ambivalent feelings and experiences. Considerations about family members and the social context appear to be very important for patients and physicians when they request or grant a request for EAS. Although further empirical research is needed to assess the depth and generalizability of the results, this review provides a new perspective on EAS decision-making and challenges the Dutch ethical-legal framework of EAS. Euthanasia decision-making is typically framed in the patient-physician dyad, while a patient-physician-family triad seems more appropriate to describe what happens in clinical practice. This perspective raises questions about the interpretation of autonomy, the origins of suffering underlying requests for EAS, and the responsibilities of physicians during EAS decision-making. (shrink)

Part of the debate on cost containment in healthcare systems may be characterized as applied political philosophy One might say that the current debate between competing theories of justice that started with Rawls'A Theory of Justicein 1971 has acquired a small sister debate in healthcare philosophy Major participants in the debate on social justice have become an important source of inspiration for bioethicists interested in a just distribution of healthcare resources. Thus Rawls'A Theory of Justicehas been remodeled for healthcare philosophy (...) by Norman Daniels. Nozick's libertarian manifestoAnarchy, State, and Utopiahas been used for bioethical purposes by H.T. Engelhardt. The books of Daniel Callahan evidently belong to a family of communitarian theories, though Callahan cannot be said to follow one or another communitarian thinker (be it Christopher Lasch, Alisdair Maclntyre, or Amitai Etzioni) in particular. In the next two sections of this article I will give a very brief sketch of the debate on social justice in political philosophy and then discuss the sister debate on social justice in healthcare. (shrink)

In the 1970s policy making in the Netherlands took place in sectoral networks, consisting of professional interest groups and like minded civil servants, advisory councils, MPs and departmental ministers. In this article the author examines whether such a sectoral policy network still exists in Dutch health care by comparing past and present data on the background of civil servants, mp’s and departmental ministers. Next she describes the political fight against the health care sectoral network, which has gone on for decades. (...) She concludes that the health care sectoral network has been severely weakened, although it remains to be seen whether this will lead to a substantial reduction of health care costs, which was one of the main reasons why politicians fought against sectoral interests in the first place. (shrink)

Encompassing health care systems in modern welfarestates embody several forms of solidarity: between thesick and the healthy, the old and the young andbetween those who take good care of their health onthe one hand and fellow citizens who choose to risktheir lives by smoking or unsafe sex on the other. Thelatter form is called lifestyle solidarity. In theNetherlands this type of solidarity has become theobject of a debate between medical ethicists. Mostmedical ethicist seem to want to uphold lifestylesolidarity. Most Dutch (...) citizens agree with them. TheDutch government, however, embarked on a project tochange the health care system by transferring stateresponsibilities to other actors (employers, insurers,individuals). This changing policy may diminish ordestroy lifestyle solidarity despite the fact that noone intended this to happen. (shrink)

Inspired by Peter van Inwagen’s “simulacra model” of the resurrection, I investigate whether it could be reasonable to adopt an analogous approach to the problem of evil. Empirically Skeptical Theism, as I call it, is the hypothesis that God shields our lives from irredeemable evils surreptitiously (just as van Inwagen proposes that God shields our bodies from destruction surreptitiously). I argue that EST compares favorably with traditional skeptical theism and with eschatological theodicies, and that EST does not have the negative (...) moral consequences we might suppose. (shrink)

It is more or less uncontroversial that when we harm someone through wrongful conduct we incur an obligation to compensate her. But sometimes compensation is impossible: when the victim is killed, for example. Other times, only partial compensation is possible. In this article, I take some initial steps towards exploring this largely ignored issue. I argue that the perpetrator of a wrongful harm incurs a duty to promote the impartial good in proportion to the amount of harm that cannot be (...) made up for by compensating her victim. (shrink)

This paper argues that conceptualizing unity as "interconnection" (rather than reduction) provides a more fruitful and versatile framework for the philosophical study of scientific unification. Building on the work of Darden and Maull, Kitcher, and Kincaid, I treat unity as a relationship between fields: two fields become more integrated as the number and/or significance of interfield connections grow. Even when reduction fails, two theories or fields can be unified (integrated) in significant ways. I highlight two largely independent dimensions of unification. (...) Fields are theoretically unified to the extent that we understand how the ontologies, concepts, and generalizations of these fields are connected. (Reductionism is one form of theoretical unity, but not the only form). Fields are practically unified through heuristic connections (e.g., using the heuristics of one field to generate hypotheses in another field) and by the development of methods for integrating the qualitatively distinct bodies of data generated by the two fields. I discuss the relationship between paleontological and neontological systematics to illustrate the utility of conceptualizing unity as interconnection. (shrink)

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how does (...) the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

We obtain very strong coloring theorems at successors of singular cardinals from failures of certain instances of simultaneous reflection of stationary sets. In particular, the simplest of our results establishes that if μ is singular and , then there is a regular cardinal θ<μ such that any fewer than cf stationary subsets of must reflect simultaneously.

All articles in May 2019’s special issue of Bioethics offer profound insights into the issue of “being a burden to others” in relation to wishes to die, which are highly relevant for ethical debates about end‐of‐life care and physician‐assisted dying. In this reply, we wish to stress the importance of acknowledging and analyzing the sociopolitical context of the phenomenon “being a burden” in relation to wishes to die and we will show how this analysis could benefit from a care ethical (...) approach. As discussions in care ethics have made clear, caring practices are both social and political practices. An empirical and ethical analysis of “being a burden” therefore needs to take institutional and societal norms and structures into account, in addition to first‐person experiences and concepts such as caring needs, relational autonomy, and interdependency. Besides the relevance of the sociopolitical context for the phenomenon “being a burden” as such, the sociopolitical context also seems relevant for the investigation of the phenomenon, which we will illustrate by reflecting on “being a burden” in relation to the practice of physician‐assisted dying in the Netherlands. (shrink)