Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species, but there is substantial variation in the extent of cooperation across societies. Understanding the sources of this variability may provide insights about the forces that sustain cooperation. We examined the ontogeny of prosocial behavior by studying 326 children 3–14 y of age and 120 adults from six societies (age distributions varied across societies). These six societies span a wide range of extant human variation in culture, geography, and subsistence strategies, including foragers, herders, horticulturalists, and (...) urban dwellers across the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. When delivering benefits to others was personally costly, rates of prosocial behavior dropped across all six societies as children approached middle childhood and then rates of prosociality diverged as children tracked toward the behavior of adults in their own societies. When prosocial acts did not require personal sacrifice, prosocial responses increased steadily as children matured with little variation in behavior across societies. Our results are consistent with theories emphasizing the importance of acquired cultural norms in shaping costly forms of cooperation and creating cross-cultural diversity. (shrink)

A volume in Evaluation and Society Series Editors, Jennifer C. Greene, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Stewart I. Donaldson, Claremont Graduate University In this book, Ernie House reframes how we think about evaluation by reconsidering three key concepts of values, biases, and practical wisdom. The first part of the book reconstructs core evaluation concepts, with a focus on the origins of our values and biases. The second part explores how we handle values and biases in practice, and the (...) third shows how we learn practical wisdom and use it in evaluations. Value is the central concept in this volume, yet it's a fuzzy concept. In Part I, Ernie clarifies the concept of value by addressing basic questions: What are values? Where do they come from? Why do we have them? Why is our conception so confused? How do we handle values in evaluations? In Part II, another central concept is added, that of biases. Prominent evaluation frameworks have focused on biases, including Campbell and Stanley's (1963) framework for validating causal inferences and Scriven's (1972) conception of objectivity, which is achieved by correcting for biases in general. In addition, research on thought processes has made progress by focusing on cognitive biases (Kahneman, 2011). Even so, through a case example, Ernie demonstrates that the concept of biases is under-appreciated and not well engaged in evaluation practice. The third important concept, featured in Part III, is practical wisdom, which is the knowledge that evaluators acquire through experience. Practical wisdom informs what we do, possibly as much as theory. Experienced evaluators often conduct evaluations in similar ways, regardless of their theory, because practical wisdom determines much of what they do. Ernie provides concrete examples of practical wisdom and how we employ it. Throughout the book, he draws on the empirical research on thinking processes, especially Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow (2011). This book will be of interest and relevance to all evaluation scholars and practitioners, as it thoughtfully engages core constructs of the field. The book can also well serve as a supplementary text in multiple evaluation courses, as it offers valuable conceptual and practical perspectives on our craft. (shrink)

A ubiquitous assumption of the psychotherapy landscape is the axiom that theory is an indispensable accompaniment of psychotherapy praxis. Yet a range of leading philosophers and spiritual masters tell a very different story, which can give us incisive and productive purchase on some of the central lacunae of modern psychotherapy practice. At least some existentialist and kindred philosophers maintain that the embrace of theory and scientism necessarily constrains, and at worst determines, what we can perceive and experience of the world (...) . This paper offers an account as to why a ‘modernist’ view of the role of theory is not only unsustainable, but also fundamentally antithetical to psychotherapy practice at its best. On this view, what is termed a ‘post-existential’ therapy praxis is the very antithesis of the kind of scientism that still dominates much psychotherapeutic thinking. The paper concludes with some speculatively sketchy comments about the place of what is labelled ‘the subtle’ and ‘the mysterious’ in therapy work and in human experience more generally—comments which are couched within what is here termed a ‘trans-modern’, New Paradigm cosmology. As we pass through what are arguably the death throes of Late Modernity, such a ‘post-theoretical’ approach to therapy practice is tentatively labelled as ‘post-existential’, as while it shares many features in common with what is termed ‘existential-phenomenological psychotherapy’, at the same time it also moves crucially beyond the latter both in its due recognition of the importance of psychoanalytic and postmodern thinking in challenging a naïve existential conception of human agency, and in its explicit openness to the trans-modern, the spiritual and the ineffable. (shrink)

If stem cell-based therapies are developed, we will likely confront a difficult problem of justice: for biological reasons alone, the new therapies might benefit only a limited range of patients. In fact, they might benefit primarily white Americans, thereby exacerbating long-standing differences in health and health care.

This festschrift collects a number of insightful essays by a group of accomplished Christian scholars, all of who have either worked with or studied under Hendrik Hart during his 35-year tenure as Senior Member in Systematic Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada.

Thousands of youth suffering from acquired brain injury or other early-life neurological disease live, mature, and learn with only limited communication and interaction with their world. Such cognitively capable children are ideal candidates for brain-computer interfaces. While BCI systems are rapidly evolving, a fundamental gap exists between technological innovators and the patients and families who stand to benefit. Forays into translating BCI systems to children in recent years have revealed that kids can learn to operate simple BCI with proficiency akin (...) to adults. BCI could bring significant boons to the lives of many children with severe physical impairment, supporting their complex physical and social needs. However, children have been neglected in BCI research and a collaborative BCI research community is required to unite and push pediatric BCI development forward. To this end, the pediatric BCI Canada collaborative network was formed, under a unified goal to cooperatively drive forward pediatric BCI innovation and impact. This article reflects on the topics and discussions raised in the foundational BCI-CAN meeting held in Toronto, ON, Canada in November 2019 and suggests the next steps required to see BCI impact the lives of children with severe neurological disease and their families. (shrink)

Yemeni writer Ahmed Qāsim al-Arīqī, in addition to his profession as a pharmacist, is a writer who has made a name for himself in the country's literary field, especially in the last fifteen years. A prolific writer, al-Arīqī is the author of poetry collections as well as stories and novels that emphasise awareness of the traditional issues of the Yemeni people. He has published "Maḳāmāt al-'Arīḳī" (2006), "Ġalṭṭetu Ḳalem" (2012), "Qurāt al-S̱-S̱elj" (2017), "Ta'riyya" (2018), "Zurbet al-Yumnā" (2018), "Da'wat al-Ḥuḳūl" (2019), (...) "Zuhr al-Ġarām" and "Sīret al-Kūbī" (2022). His novel "Yawma Māta al-Shaytan" (The Day Satan Died) was published electronically by Hindāwī Publishing House in 2022. The novel, which is approximately 120 pages, is written in six chapters. There are eleven passages in the first and fourth chapters, thirteen in the second and sixth chapters, twelve in the third chapter, and eight in the fifth chapter. The novel is about the adventures of a member of the army named Marwan Naji, who was wounded in the war between the Houthi militia and the Yemeni army, and after nine months in a coma, opens his eyes in a perfect world dominated by biological and technological advances. Symbolising the treatment of selfishness and various narcissisms with advanced vaccines through the death of Satan, the author describes Marwan's adventures in his world, which he sometimes describes as the realm of the jinn, in a very simple language, while not failing to criticise reality in its various political, social and religious dimensions. In fact, Marwan's world of imagination and fantasy is the main story of the novel, but not the only one. The author also includes the stories of family members in Marwan's world of turmoil, destruction, massacre, war and victory, giving the reader the opportunity to compare both worlds. While his mother Gusoun, his wife Hamide and his daughter Fatma, who later got engaged in time after being widowed, are the female characters of his real world, Professor Mari and Mariana, one of his seven wives, are the other important characters of his imaginary world. Gusûn is a devoted mother who does not leave the bedside of her comatose son, prays for him day and night and tries to do everything she can for his recovery. Gusûn, who is listened to at home to a certain extent, scolds her grandchildren to prevent the breakup of her son's home because of inheritance, defends that the existing wealth still belongs to her son and reminds them that she will not hesitate to spend money for his recovery. Gusûn's daughter-in-law Hamide also takes care of her husband, who shows no signs of recovery. Hamide, who is not as patient as her mother-in-law, is also a jealous woman. On the other hand, although both of them display false religious tendencies that have no relation with real life, Gusûn is more prone to the superstitious approaches put forward and adopted in the name of religion. Fatma is also a widow who, although she has the will to take care of her children and live her life alone, has been engaged for a long time to her uncle's son Münir, who, like her, took part in anti-regime demonstrations and whose love she believes in. Fatma, who is more conscious than her grandmother and mother, is not alien to the issues that society complains about and often participates in women's movements organised against the government. Professor Mari, one of the two important characters belonging to Marwan's imaginary world, is a psychologist and the chief physician of a large hospital who treats jealousy, anger, lying and selfishness, which are considered dangerous viruses, with vaccines developed by scientists. Professor Mari, who is personally involved in Marwan's treatment, also chairs the committee that records his memory and projects all his memories on a giant screen. Mariana, on the other hand, monitors Marwan's behaviour and thoughts through a biological chip to control the effect of the vaccines given to him, criticises him through the tragic images projected on the screen and provides information that will facilitate his adaptation to his new world. In the article, in which the author's main published works are briefly introduced along with a broad summary of the novel, the social messages that an author, who is not indifferent to the realities of the geography he lives in, tries to give directly and indirectly with a language far from locality, are tried to be determined through the mentioned female characters. It is seen that the desire to become a single nation by making; love, brotherhood, friendship and peace dominant lies behind the author's novelisation of the dream of an ideal world symbolised by the death of Satan. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Every country's law permits medical experimentation on animals. While some countries protect particular kinds of animals from being subject to experimentation—notably great apes and endangered species—very few place concrete limitations on what researchers may cause animals to suffer, given sufficient scientific justification. What laws do, instead, is establish standards for the humane treatment and housing of animals in labs, and they encourage researchers to limit or seek alternatives to the use of animals, when doing that is consistent with the scientific (...) goals of their research.The system that has evolved in the United States combines elements of sometimes competing regulatory philosophies. The result is a complex, multilayered system that addresses the most important concerns, but, partly because of historical accident, also leaves some gaps. Even proponents of medical research on animals can see obvious ways in which the regulatory structure could be changed to benefit animals. Perhaps more important, though, is the fact that the existing regulatory structure, imperfect though it may be, is elastic enough to accommodate substantial changes that could reduce unnecessary animal suffering. (shrink)

Professor Card is not disposed to object to the main argument of my paper, which was intended to reply to Professor Lyons’ suggestion that a utilitarian cannot explain how legal rights have moral force, and at the same time to urge that the particular form of utilitarianism espoused by Professor Hare in his recent work does seem to be open to the difficulty Professor Lyons alleges. Professor Card says she is ‘not dissatisfied’ with this reasoning. I suspect that Card views (...) my criticism of Professors Lyons and Hare as part of an in-house squabble among philosophers all of whom have utilitarian leanings of one sort or another; and she is not disposed to intervene in this. She does, however, have serious reservations about utilitarian views of rights in general, and about mine in particular; her paper consists almost entirely of her statement of these reservations. I find her remarks very welcome, since they express some objections which may be widely felt, and a response to which may therefore contribute to philosophers’ thinking about these issues. (shrink)

A rule- utilitarian appraisal of criminal law requires that the total system, including punishments, is justified only if it will expectably maximize public benefit, including its stigmatizing some behaviors as "offenses" and its prescribed punishment of these, such as imprisonment, with (possible) deterrent effects. In view of the paucity of evidence about the deterrent effect of prison sentences, some changes seem to be in order: reduction in the length of incarceration, replacement of prison by fines or restrictions on the convicted (...) such as house arrest for many hours of a day, intensive supervision, required community service (say thirty hours in place of a month in prison), enrollment in a drug program or therapy in the case of sex offenses, and so on. An evaluation of such proposals should be based on statistics and the psychology of criminal behavior. (shrink)

In this chapter I consider the place of the topic of racial and ethnic urban residential segregation factors into political philosophy. I begin with a short history of residential segregation and the ghetto, and their role in systems of racial domination and oppression, and remarks on the general neglect of this topic in contemporary political philosophy, including in nonideal political philosophy, which proports to take on examples of real-world injustices and inequalities. I then examine, from the standpoint of liberal-egalitarian political (...) theory, what segregation, as a concept, entails, and its harms to individuals, communities, and societies. Segregation in all its forms (residential, educational, and employment, as well as in political and legal systems) is an instance of injustice and inequality and a major component of processes that maintain injustice and inequality, so it requires correction and rectification of some sort. Desegregation and integration are typically forwarded as solutions to the ills and injustices of segregation. They seem synonymous, but are they? To answer this question, I survey the prominent conceptualizations of both during the civil rights movement and the contemporary debate over those terms and political theoretical positions. In the conclusion I outline my partial defense of the idea of integration. (shrink)

This article reassesses the concept of a house from a non-human perspective. The two worlds that collide in this article are philosophical analyses that are “beyond the human” and sustainable engineering house design. By analyzing the houses of ten animal species for shelter/skin properties, life pedagogy, materials and resources, thermal dynamics, and structural elements, we speculate on the future of housing. The premise of this article is that “beyond the human” philosophy opens a new visage to comprehend and (...) conceptualize what a house could be. Beyond the human theorizing is defined by philosophy that has gone beyond framing an exploration internally to the benefit of themselves, as human subject. This article speculates that considering animal house construction is a way forward for thought in a changing climate. (shrink)

Of all the themes treated by the mimes, perhaps the one that gave the most delight to their audiences throughout the centuries was that of adultery. References to it, from various parts of the ancient world, are found from the first century before Christ to the sixth century of the Christian era, and in many cases it is spoken of as a theme typical of the mime as a whole. There does not seem to be satisfactory evidence of its existence (...) in a genuinely dramatic form at an earner date. It is reported that the μαγδoί, among other impersonations, mimicked the behaviour of μoιχoί, but their performance, so far as can be discovered, was purely a piece of imitative buffoonery. When the theme of adultery was treated by Greek mimes of a later date, the approach seems to have been rather a psychological study of the adulteress than an attempt to bring out the dramatic possibilities inherent in the situation. This is certainly the case with Herondas' fifth mime, which portrays a lady jealously in love with a slave. Evidence from sources bearing a close relationship to the mime is equally negative. Thus a well-known Egyptian papyrus contains a song, written perhaps in the third or second century B.C., in which Helen complains of Menelaus' indifference to her after bringing her back from Troy; but this is far from constituting a variant on the adultery theme. The wall-song in Marissa, which was composed in the middle of the second century B.C., does indicate a situation in which a woman is trying to keep her lover's presence outside the house from the knowledge of another man with whom she is consorting inside. (shrink)

The concepts of judicial independence and the separation of powers are used more as terms of political rhetoric than legal concepts in the British constitution. Responsible government significantly merges the executive and the legislative while parliamentary sovereignty has meant that judicial independence has had a peculiar British meaning, rarely unpacked. In practice, in England, (and presumably in the other UK jurisdictions), individual judges are accorded a high degree of independence, while there is no effective independence of the judiciary collectively as (...) a branch of government. This article then asks what impact current constitutional changes will have on this state of affairs. Adherence to the EU, the growth of judicial review and other factors have already had an important impact; devolution, the Human Rights Act and the reform of the House of Lords may have impacts that will be different in both quality and degree. Coupled with other political changes the end result may well be a more effective separation of powers and more real independence for the judges as a branch of government; but that in turn may call for more open and meaningful democratic control over the appointment of judges. (shrink)

In this paper, the ethical and legal issues raised by the deactivation of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in patients with terminal cancer is considered. It is argued that the ICD cannot be well described either as a treatment or as a non-treatment option, and thus raises complex questions regarding how rules governing deactivation should be framed. A new category called “integral devices” is proposed. Integral devices require their own special rules, reflecting their position as a “halfway house” between a form of (...) treatment and a part of the body. The practical problems faced by doctors working in palliative medicine with regard to the deactivation of ICDs are also considered. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to cast light upon the moral vision—the vision of what is good and what is obligatory —that governs many if not most of the motion pictures produced in the United States in recent years. I especially have in mind productions such as Pleasantville, Cider House Rules , and American Beauty , and will give special attention to these three movies in what follows. But the phenomenon in question extends far beyond these cases. The (...) basic idea governing these films is now a wide-spread and deep-lying conviction in the contemporary American soul. It is that moral rules and rigorous moral order in life, as traditionally understood, are meaningless or pointless at best, and really are repressive of the best aspects of human relationships, individuality and creativity . What would have traditionally been thought of as moral propriety and human goodness is now generally thought of as arbitrary and as harmful to life, if not downright vicious (at least in its effects), largely because they eliminate or repress feelings , the true elixir of life. (shrink)

In the Archaic Geek world of epic poetry, the causes of things are shrouded in divine mystery; the gods intervene in human affairs, and bring about events, in a cruel and capricious fashion, according to their whims; Apollo visits the devastating plague of Iliad 1 on the Greek host to avenge Agamemnon's ill-treatment of one of his priests; Poseidon shakes the earth and angers the sea, bringing to destruction those who have incurred his ire, as does Zeus himself with his (...) thunderbolts. The gods take on human shape and intervene in battle with devastating effect. In tragedy, the houses of Atreus and of Laius are brought low when men offend against the gods. This article focuses on the explorations of the fundamental concepts of reasons and causation, and the problems of explanation, and argues that it is indeed reasonable to see in Presocratic thought the foundations of Western scientific explanation. (shrink)

In the 11th chapter of the second book of Samuel, we read how King David saw Bathsheba in the evening: ‘v.2. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.’.

Stanislav Orikhovsky - one of the most prominent Latin-speaking Ukrainian-Polish humanists of the first half of the 16th century. For a long time he was known almost exclusively as a Polish figure. We now have every reason to include him in our culture, above all because he was a conscious Ukrainian - he invariably added the term "Ukrainian" to his last name. this is frankly stated ". In Western Europe it was called "Ukrainian Demosthenes" and "modern Cicero." His teachers were (...) famous figures of the time: the German humanist Melanchthon and the reformer Martin Luther - in the latter's house he even lived during his studies. Many prominent people of that time in Italy and Poland also had the honor of communicating with him. (shrink)

We address three issues regarding the relationship between political party affiliation and returns in the equities markets, as measured by the NYSE Composite Index and its sub-indexes. First, we find a tendency for returns to be greater during Democratic presidential administrations; however, this result is statistically insignificant. Second, we conclude that returns during the last two years of presidential administrations are greater than during the first two years. Third, we examine the relationship between the majority party in each house (...) of Congress and equity returns. We raise the possibility that party affiliation of Congress is a factor in explaining returns. (shrink)

In this paper I ask whether in Aristotle's metaphysical system the form of a non-living sensible substance, such as the form of this house, is or is not universal. I argue that his position as it stands is self-contradictory, and then try to give some account of the pressures that led to this central contradiction in Aristotle's metaphysical thought.