Despite decades of research, we still lack a clear explanation for the emergence and persistence of inequality. Here we propose and evaluate a marginal utility of inequality hypothesis that nominates circumscription and environmental heterogeneity as independent, necessary conditions for the emergence of intragroup material inequality. After coupling the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample with newly generated data from remote sensing, we test predictions derived from this hypothesis using a multivariate generalized additive model that accounts for spatial and historical dependence as well as (...) subsistence mode. Our analyses show that the probability a society will be stratified increases significantly as a function of proxies of environmental heterogeneity and environmental circumscription. This supports the hypothesis that increasing environmental heterogeneity and circumscription drives the emergence and persistence of inequality among documented societies across the globe. We demonstrate how environmental heterogeneity and circumscription produce situations that limit individuals’ options so that some may find it in their best interest to give up some autonomy for material gain, while others may find it in their best interest to give up some material resources for another individual’s time or deference. These results support the marginal utility of inequality framework and enable future explorations of the ecological conditions that facilitate the emergence of intragroup inequality through time and across the globe. (shrink)

Henrich et al.'s nice cross-cultural experiments would benefit from models that specify the decision rules that humans use and the specific developmental pathways that allow cooperative norms to be internalized. Such models could help researchers to design further experiments to examine human social adaptations. We must also test whether the “same” experiments measure similar constructs in each culture, using additional methods and measures.

War and Border Crossings brings together renowned scholars to address some of the most pressing problems in public policy, international affairs, and the intercultural issues of our day. Contributors from widely varying disciplines discuss cross-cultural ethical issues and international topics ranging from American international policy and the invasion and occupation of Iraq to domestic topics such as immigration, the war on drugs, cross-cultural bioethics and ethical issues involving American Indian tribes. The culture clashes discussed in these essays raise serious questions (...) about what principles ought to inform the negotiating of conflicts in order to achieve, or at least approach, outcomes that are fundamentally just, fair, responsible, and ethical. (shrink)

Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is considered in its application to human beings in this book. Brian Baxter examines the various sociobiological approaches to the explanation of human behaviour which view the human brain, and so the human mind, as the product of evolution, and considers the main arguments for and against this claim. In so doing he defends the approaches against some common criticisms, such as the charge that they are reductionist and dehumanising. The implications of (...) these arguments for the social sciences and humanities are assessed, as is the naturalistic view of ethics to which they lead. A key issue examined in the book is the connection between this Darwinist perspective on human beings and modern environmental ethics, which also often assume that human beings are part of an evolved living world. The implications of these positions for the meaningfulness of human life are also examined.Throughout the discussion, the positions in sociobiology and environmental ethics developed by Edward O Wilson are taken as an exemplar of the characteristic features of a Darwinian worldview, and the arguments of Wilson and his chief critics are thoroughly examined. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of some ideas about narrow content owing to Horgan and Tienson and Brian Loar.

The contextual approach is a prominent framework for thinking about group selection. Here, I highlight ambiguity about what the contextual approach is. Then, I discuss problematic entailments the contextual approach has for what processes count as group selection—entailments more troublesome than typically noted. However, Sober and Wilson’s version of the Price approach, which is the main alternative to the contextual approach, is problematic too: it leads to an underappreciated paradox called the vanishing selection problem and thereby generates the wrong (...) qualitative account of whether group selection is occurring in a certain family of cases. In response, I develop an account of group selection that can deal with the counterexamples to both the contextual approach and the Price approach. I then discuss the role that contextual analysis can continue to play in the discussion of individual fitness and metapopulation evolution. (shrink)

This is a review of the biographic drama Love and Mercy. More than a story of the evolution of The Beach Boys, it is the story of the lead Beach Boy, Brian Wilson, and his struggle with substance abuse, mental illness, family stress, emerging love, and a controlling psychologist. Interwoven are many bioethics themes, including the doctor–patient relationship, conflict of interest, autonomy, and patient welfare. For those unaware of the sadness and torment running directly alongside the sunny, bubbly (...) life of The Beach Boys, this film is an eye-opener. It is also a great reminder of the importance of boundaries between clinicians and their patients. (shrink)

Prior to its publication, Gary Cox's MakingVotesCount was widely and eagerly anticipated. (Indeed, some years ago, I received a referee report dismissing my submission as unnecessary because superior analysis would eventually appear in Cox's then forthcoming manuscript.) Upon its release in 1998, the book was instantly lauded: it collected multiple awards, including the prestigious Woodrow Wilson prize for best book published on government, politics, or international affairs. This acclaim was scarcely surprising – Cox has been one of the foremost (...) scholars of elections and legislatures for the whole of his professional career. He is responsible for an impressive body of work spanning multiple research topics, nations, and methods of analysis. This book is testimony to his breadth, as it catalogs the key electoral features of virtually the whole set of modern democracies (more than 70), and makes frequent forays into diverse nations in search of empirical support for novel theoretical findings. In brief, Cox's project is to bring together a large formal, deductive literature on voting rules and social choice with an equally voluminous empirical, inductive literature on elections and party systems in the world's democracies. The prizes it garnered are one measure of the book's success at this merger; a large boost in Cox's swelling citation count will doubtless follow, reiterating the judgement that this is the major work on electoral law and voting to date. (shrink)

Ruth Leys raises a number of important questions about the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of the affect theories that have emerged in the critical humanities, sciences, and social sciences in the last decade. There are a variety of frameworks for thinking about what constitutes the affective realm , and there are different preferences for how such frameworks could be deployed. We would like to engage with just one part of that debate: the contributions of Silvan Tomkins's affect theory. We take (...) issue with Leys's formulation that Tomkins's work along with that of Brian Massumi, William Connolly, and Paul Ekman form a group of like-minded theorists. We do not believe this represents an accurate account of the conceptual and empirical commitments of these various authors. By bundling their work together, Leys misses much of what is compellingly critical in each of these writers, and she overlooks what is most invigorating in the debates amongst them. In addition, the specificities of Tomkins's work have been badly served in Leys's essay. In four volumes stretching from 1962 to 1992 Tomkins laid out a complex and captivating theory of the human affect system, in which mechanisms of neurological feedback, social scripts, and facial behavior coassemble as affective events. Our response to Leys's essay is motivated by a wish to see more detailed engagements with this theory—the distinctiveness of which we believe has yet to be fully explored in this new affective turn. (shrink)

In 1975 E. O. Wilson called for biologists to appropriate ethics.1 Few philosophers worried deeply about this potential usurpation because they felt firmly ensconced on the other side of the Humean wall from the biologists. Science can provide neither guidance nor values. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than in the crowning question of ethics; namely, what is the meaning of life? Since evolution proposes an ateleological account of the natural world, biologists can dismiss the question to which we (...) all desperately want an answer as a category mistake. If pressed to understand the question metaphorically, biologists begrudgingly reply that the meaning of life is to get as much of your genetic material. (shrink)

Storytellers and their audiences over many millennia have thought that we can learn from fiction. Philosopher Gregory Currie challenges that supposition. He doubts knowing can be founded on imagining, and claims that what we think we learn from fiction is not reli­able in the way science or philosophy is, because not tested through peerreview, experi­ment, and argument. He underrates the role of the imagination in understanding all hu­man language, in fictionality outside formal fictions, and in science. Science is not “reliabilist” (...) as Currie assumes: it aims at bold imaginative discoveries that often overturn what had previously been thought secure and may well be displaced by still newer discov­eries. Fiction may not have peer review, but it is tested on the highly developed intuitions of audiences, on the expertise of critics, and through the corrective competition and inno­vations of other storytellers, as Joyce challenges Homer, or David Sloan Wilson’s recent Atlas Hugged challenges Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. There are strong reasons for predicting that fiction has a prosocial bias from which humans over many millennia have learned to expand their sociality. That does not mean that all exposure to fiction is beneficial. (shrink)

A number of authors have combined a commitment to Darwinian evolution as a major source of insight into human nature with a strong commitment to environmentalist concerns. The most notable of these is perhaps Edward O. Wilson, in a series of books. Yet it may appear that there is a tension between Darwinism as a world-view – or least some major aspects of it – and a concern for non-human entities as worthy of concern in their own right. In (...) the present paper, I want to address some of the reasons for thinking there is such a tension. (shrink)

How does Sober-Wilson group selection explain the possibility of the evolution of altruism, as modeled by cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma? The essential point is that if the parameters of the model are just right, group structure can generate positive correlation of interactions between cooperators. If positive correlation is strong enough, cooperation can evolve; if not it cannot. This is true whether the positive correlation is generated by a group selection model or in some other way.

An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive culture In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the “proper” depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism (...) shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. Arguing against the need for “positive” representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation. (shrink)

This article discusses Jennifer Hornsby's account of action in her *Actions*, together with Brian O'Shaughnessy's in *The Will*.

How does Sober-Wilson group selection explain the possibility of the evolution of altruism, as modeled by cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma? The essential point is that if the parameters of the model are just right, group structure can generate positive correlation of interactions between cooperators. If positive correlation is strong enough, cooperation can evolve; if not it cannot. This is true whether the positive correlation is generated by a group selection model or in some other way.

A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a playful and emphatically practical elaboration of the major collaborative work of the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. When read along with its rigorous textual notes, the book also becomes the richest scholarly treatment of Deleuze's entire philosophical oeuvre available in any language. Finally, the dozens of explicit examples that Brian Massumi furnishes from contemporary artistic, scientific, and popular urban culture make the book an important, perhaps even central text (...) within current debates on postmodern culture and politics.Capitalism and Schizophrenia is the general title for two books published a decade apart. The first, Anti-Oedipus, was a reaction to the events of May/June 1968; it is a critique of "state-happy" Marxism and "school-building" strains of psychoanalysis. The second, A Thousand Plateaus, is an attempt at a positive statement of the sort of nomad philosophy Deleuze and Guattari propose as an alternative to state philosophy.Brian Massumi is Professor of Comparative Literature at McGill University. (shrink)

Can war ever be just? By what right do we charge people with war crimes? Can war itself be a crime? What is a good peace treaty? Since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, many wars have erupted, inflaming such areas as the Persian Gulf, Central Africa and Central Europe. Brutalities committed during these conflicts have sparked new interest in the ethics of war and peace. Brian Orend explores the ethics of war and peace from a Kantian (...) perspective, emphasizing human rights protection, the rule of international law and a fully global concept of justice. Contending that Kant’s just war doctrine has not been given its due, Orend displays Kant’s theory to its fullest, impressive effect. He then completely and clearly updates Kant’s perspective for application to our time. Along the way, he criticizes pacifism and realism, explores the nature of human rights protection during wartime, and defends a theory of just war. He also looks ahead to future developments in global institutional reform using cases from the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda to illustrate his argument. Controversial and timely, perhaps the most important contribution War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective makes is with regard to the question of justice after war. Orend offers a principled theory of war termination, making an urgent plea to reform current international law. (shrink)

David DeGrazia’s stated purposes for Taking Animals Seriously are to apply a coherentist methodology to animal ethics, to do the philosophical work necessary for discussing animal minds, and to fill in some of the gaps in the existing literature on animal ethics.

Four principal papers and a total of 43 peer commentaries on the evolutionary origins of morality. To what extent is human morality the outcome of a continuous development from motives, emotions and social behaviour found in nonhuman animals? Jerome Kagan, Hans Kummer, Peter Railton and others discuss the first principal paper by primatologists Jessica Flack and Frans de Waal. The second paper, by cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm, synthesizes social science and biological evidence to support his theory of how our hominid (...) ancestors became moral. In the third paper philosopher Elliott Sober and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argue that an evolutionary understanding of human nature allows sacrifice for others and ultimate desires for another's good. Finally Brian Skyrms argues that game theory based on adaptive dynamics must join the social scientist's use of rational choice and classical game theory to explain cooperation. (shrink)

“Our acts shall be misunderstood [falsch verstanden], as Epicurus is misunderstood! […] I want to be misunderstood for a long time”.1 So proclaims Nietzsche in a notebook passage from 1883, thereby making one of several positive claims for identification with the Hellenistic Greek philosopher from Samos.2 Epicurus, the full remark suggests, was untimely—misunderstood, unappreciated by his contemporaries—much as Nietzsche himself aims to be untimely; and this point is hardly the only moment of convergence between the two thinkers. Although he is (...) not quite the most discussed Greek philosopher in Nietzsche’s writing—Plato and Socrates appear more frequently— Epicurus is an undeniably persistent.. (shrink)

To provide rigour when preparing a research design, the researcher needs to carefully consider not only the methodology but also the philosophical intent of the study. This, however, is often absent from reported research and provides the reader with little evidence by which to judge the merits of the chosen methodology and its influence on the study. The purpose of this paper is to set out the case for critical realism as a framework to guide appropriate action in practice development (...) and realistic evaluation for understanding the consequences of those actions.It is evident that critical realism and critical social science share common ground. Emancipatory practice development (ePD) is based on the philosophy of critical social science and therefore by virtue is linked to the tenets of critical realism. Until now, the evaluation of ePD programme has been well served by 4th-generation evaluation. However, this paper outlines the need for a different approach to evaluation, one that is based on critical realism, that is concerned with emancipation, and that can be used in the ever-changing environment of clinical practice. Realistic evaluation not only links strongly to ePD programmes, but also serves as the basis for effective research questions that will test the outcomes of the research and inform the transferability of ePD mechanisms into differing contexts. (shrink)

This volume provides a lucid and distinct introduction to multiculturalism and the philosophy of social science.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Does God exist? Does time flow? What are we? Do we have free will? What is truth? Metaphysics is concerned with ourselves and reality, and the most fundamental questions regarding existence. This clear and accessible introduction covers the central topics in metaphysics in a concise but comprehensive way. Brian Garrett discusses the crucial concepts in a highly readable manner, easing the reader in with a look at some important philosophical problems. He addresses (...) key areas of metaphysics: God Existence Modality Universals and particulars Facts Paradoxes of material constitution Causation Time Free will Personal identity Truth. This second edition has been thoroughly revised. Most chapters include substantial amounts of new material, and there are additional chapters on Existence, Modality, Facts and Paradoxes of Material Constitution. _What is this thing called Metaphysics?_ contains many helpful student-friendly features. Each chapter concludes with a useful summary of the main ideas discussed, a glossary of important terms, study questions, annotated further reading, and a guide to web resources. Text boxes provide bite-sized summaries of key concepts and major philosophers, and clear and interesting examples are used throughout. (shrink)

This major new series in the philosophy of science aims to provide a new generation of textbooks for the subject. The series will not only offer fresh treatments of core topics in the theory and methodology of scientific knowledge, but also introductions to newer areas of the discipline. Furthermore, the series will cover topics in current science that raise significant foundational issues both for scientific theory and for philosophy more generally. Biology raises distinct questions of its own not only for (...) philosophy of science, but for metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. This comprehensive new textbook for a rapidly growing field of study provides students new to the subject with an up-to-date presentation of the key philosophical issues. Care is taken throughout to keep the technicalities accessible to the non-biologist but without sacrificing the philosophical subtleties. The first part of the book covers the philosophical challenges posed by evolution and evolutionary biology, beginning with Darwin's central argument in the Origin of the Species. Individual chapters cover natural selection, the selfish gene, alternative units of selection, developmental systems theory, adaptionism and issues in macroevolution. The second part of the book examines philosophical questions arising in connection with biological traits, function, nature and nurture, and biological kinds. The third part of the book examines metaphysical questions, biology's relation with the traditional concerns of philosophy of science, and how evolution has been introduced into epistemological debates. The final part considers the relevance of biology to questions about ethics, religion and human nature. (shrink)

If the rhetorical and economic investment of educators, policy makers and the popular press in the United States is any indication, then unbridled enthusiasm for the introduction of computer mediated communication (CMC) into the educational process is wide-spread. In large part this enthusiasm is rooted in the hope that through the use of Internet-based CMC we may create an expanded community of learners and educators not principally bounded by physical geography. The purpose of this paper is to reflect critically upon (...) whether students and teachers are truly linked together as a``community'' through the use of Internet-based CMC. The paper uses the writings of Kierkegaard, and Hubert Dreyfus's exploration of Kierkegaardian ideas, to look more closely at the prospects and problems embedded in the use of Internet-based CMC to create "distributed communities" of teachers and learners. It is argued that from Kierkegaard's perspective, technologically mediated communications run a serious risk of attenuating interpersonal connectivity. Insofar as interpersonal connectivity is an integral component of education, such attenuation bodes ill for some, and perhaps many instances of Internet-based CMC. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2014 Heft: 202 Seiten: 207-240.

This article examines the relation between counting, counts and accountability. It does so by comparing the responses of the British government to deaths associated with Covid-19 in 2020 to its responses to deaths associated with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Similarities and dissimilarities between the cases regarding what counted as data, what data were taken to count, what data counted for, and how data were counted provide the basis for considering how the bounds of democratic accountability are constituted. Based on (...) these two cases, the article sets out the metaphors of leaks and cascades as ways of characterising the data practices whereby counts, counting and accountability get configured. By situating deaths associated with Covid-19 against previous experience with deaths from war, the article also proposes how claims to truth and ignorance might figure in any future official inquiry into the handling of the pandemic. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with some limitations of the vignette methodology used in contemporary appraisal research and their implications for appraisal theory. We focus on two recent studies in which emotional manipulations were achieved using textual materials, and criticise the investigators' apparent implicit assumption that participation in everyday social reality is somehow comparable to reading a story. We take issue with three related aspects of this cognitive analogy between life and its narrative representation, by arguing that emotional reactions in real (...) life are not necessarily mediated by symbolic processes, that people are involved participants of real life rather than neutral observers, and that in real life people's evaluations and emotions are typically part of an ongoing dialogue rather than the expression of a soliloquy. Results from these studies of emotional vignettes therefore tend to overestimate the importance of constructive, abstract, and individualistic processes in the everyday causation of social emotions. In real life, people do not necessarily have to calculate, transform, or internally represent the meaning of the dynamic situation in order to make emotional sense of what is happening to them in the social world. (shrink)

Sadly, there are few restraints on the endings of wars. There has never been an international treaty to regulate war's final phase, and there are sharp disagreements regarding the nature of a just peace treaty. There are, by contrast, restraints aplenty on starting wars, and on conduct during war. These restraints include: political pressure from allies and enemies; the logistics of raising and deploying force; the United Nations, its Charter and Security Council; and international laws like the Hague and Geneva (...) Conventions. Indeed, in just war theory—which frames moral principles to regulate wartime actions—there is a robust set of rules for resorting to war (jus ad bellum) and for conduct during war (jus in bello) but not for the termination phase of war. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Tyranny of the BureaucratsSimon Wilson (bio) and Gwen Adshead (bio)Keywordsviolence, mental health, bureaucracyWe are grateful for the opportunity to respond to the two kind and thoughtful commentaries on our paper. Sadler suggests irrationality may be the key to distinguishing psychiatric from nonpsychiatric violence. We are not so sure that this is necessarily as helpful as it might at first seem. Who gets to decide what is rational? (...) Much “normal” violence, committed in the heat of the moment, impulsively, and drunkenly, may not appear that rational, even to the perpetrator, in the cold light of day. We are not sure one would wish to bring this sort of violence within the province of psychiatric explanations. Likewise, a point we made in our paper: Even delusionally driven violence often has its own internal coherence and rationality within an irrational framework.We found much to agree with in McCallum’s commentary, and perhaps his alternative approach is more helpful. He proposes a more sociological model of understanding what is going on in these complex cases, one that starts with societal dividing practices. Our present times have been described as the tyranny of the bureaucrats. Professional approaches are devalued. Diagnosis is only relevant in terms of its bureaucratic utility in moving people from one category to another. Since the writing of our paper, the criminal law has changed further in England and Wales. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 brought with it new sentences of indeterminate detention for public protection for those offenders categorized as “dangerous.” The presence or absence of psychiatric disorder being largely irrelevant for these purposes. This would seem to fit nicely with McCallum’s analysis, and in principle rather takes the wind out of our sails when we argued about the discrimination against psychiatric violence—now a diagnosis is not necessary for the state to intervene in a probabilistic fashion to prevent future violence. Deciding between what sort of violence counts as psychiatric and what does not, does not have quite the same drastic differential effect on the individual as perhaps it did. Its importance is now, as predicted by McCallum’s model, more to do with bureaucracy: Which government department will be paying for the individual’s preventive detention (Department of Health or Ministry of Justice)? [End Page 75]Related ArticlesFeature Article: When Violence Becomes a Psychiatric SymptomCommentary: The Contingent Object of PsychiatryCommentary: Reasons CountResponse: The Tyranny of the BureaucratsSimon Wilson Simon Wilson is a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK. He qualified at Leeds University and trained in psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital. He was previously Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at HM Prison, Brixton, UK. He has particular interests in prisons, philosophical, and ethico-legal issues in psychiatry. He can be contacted via e-mail at:[email protected] Adshead Gwen Adshead is a Forensic Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist. She works as a psychotherapist in a high-security hospital. She is a group analyst and researcher in attachment theory as it relates to offenders. She has a Master’s degree in Medical Law and Ethics, and is a founder member of the Philosophy Special Interest Group of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She can be contacted via e-mail at:[email protected] © 2009 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Fast and effective detection of the causative agent of malaria in humans, protozoan Plasmodium parasites, is of crucial importance for increasing the effectiveness of treatment and to control a devastating disease that affects millions of people living in endemic areas. The microscopic examination of Giemsa‐stained blood films still remains the gold‐standard in Plasmodium detection today. However, there is a high demand for alternative diagnostic methods that are simple, fast, highly sensitive, ideally do not rely on blood‐drawing and can potentially be (...) conducted by the patients themselves. Here, the history of Plasmodium detection is discussed, and advantages and disadvantages of diagnostic methods that are currently being applied are assessed. (shrink)

Problems and Paradigms is a feature series devoted to discussions of major problems in biology. Past contributions have dealt with the selector gene hypothesis, problems of pattern formation, the phenomenon of paramutation, theories of aging, and the origins of life. In this article, Brian C. Goodwin discusses the problem of morphogenesis, in terms of the idea of the genetic program and in the light of recent findings.

Insight problem solving is hindered by automated verbal–conceptual processes. Because mindfulness meditation training aims at “nonconceptual awareness” which involves a reduced influence of habitual verbal–conceptual processes on the interpretation of ongoing experience, mindfulness may facilitate insight problem solving. This hypothesis was examined across two studies . Participants in both studies completed a measure of trait mindfulness and a series of insight and noninsight problems. Further, participants in Study 2 completed measures of positive affect and a mindfulness or control training. The (...) results indicated that trait mindfulness predicts better insight but not noninsight problem solving , this relation is maintained when controlling for positive affect , mindfulness training improves insight but not noninsight problem solving and this improvement is partially mediated by state mindfulness . These findings are the first to document a direct relation between mindfulness and creativity. (shrink)

"Neuroreductionism" is the tendency to reduce complex mental phenomena to brain states, confusing correlation for physical causation. In this paper, we illustrate the dangers of this popular neuro-fallacy, by looking at an example drawn from the media: a story about "hypoactive sexual desire disorder" in women. We discuss the role of folk dualism in perpetuating such a confusion, and draw some conclusions about the role of "brain scans" in our understanding of romantic love.