Two studies investigated the development of infants' visual preferences for the human body shape. In Study 1, infants of 12,15 and 18 months were tested in a standard preferential looking experiment, in which they were shown paired line drawings of typical and scrambled bodies. Results indicated that the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes, while the younger infants did not show differential responding. In Study 2, 12- and 18-month-olds were tested with the (...) same procedure, except that the typical and scrambled body stimuli were photographic images. The results of Study 2 again indicated that only the 18-month-olds had a reliable preference for the scrambled body shapes. This finding contrasts sharply with infants' precocious preferences for human faces, suggesting that infants' learning about human faces and human bodies follow different developmental trajectories. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. (shrink)

This article describes the emerging bipartisan political coalition supporting commercial competitiveness as a rationale for research and development, points to selected changes in legal and funding structures in the 1980s that stem from the success of the new political coalition and suggests some of the connections between these changes and academic science and technology, and examines the consequences of these changes for universities. The study uses longitudinal secondary data on changes in business strategies and corporate structures that made business elites (...) in the defense and health industries consider supporting competitiveness R&D policies. The article identifies and assesses an array of national R&D legislation concerned with competitiveness that was passed in the 1980s and 1990s and that has implications for academic R&D. The effects of competitiveness R&D policies on universities and academic science and technology are appraised by analyzing changes in time-series data on science and technology indicators compiled by the National Science Foundation. (shrink)

How can dystopian futures help provide the motivation to change the ways we operate day to day? _Futures Beyond Dystopia_ takes the view that the dominant trends in the world suggest a long-term decline into unliveable Dystopian futures. The human prospect is therefore very challenging, yet the perception of dangers and dysfunctions is the first step towards dealing with them. The motivation to avoid future dangers is matched by the human need to create plans and move forward. These twin motivations (...) can be very powerful and help to stimulate the fields of Futures Studies and Applied Foresight. This analysis of current Futures practice is split into six sections: * The Case Against Hegemony * Expanding and Deepening a Futures Frame * Futures Studies and the Integral Agenda * Social Learning through Applied Foresight * Strategies and Outlooks * The Dialectic of Foresight and Experience. This fascinating book will stimulate anyone involved in Futures work around the world and will challenge practitioners and others to re-examine many of their assumptions, methodologies and practices. (shrink)

Three experiments demonstrate that biological movement facilitates young infants’ recognition of the whole human form. A body discrimination task was used in which 6-, 9-, and 12-month-old infants were habituated to typical human bodies and then shown scrambled human bodies at the test. Recovery of interest to the scrambled bodies was observed in 9- and 12-month-old infants in Experiment 1, but only when the body images were animated to move in a biologically possible way. In Experiment 2, nonbiological movement was (...) incorporated into the typical and scrambled body images, but this did not facilitate body recognition in 9- and 12-month-olds. A preferential looking paradigm was used in Experiment 3 to determine if infants had a spontaneous preference for the scrambled versus typical body stimuli when these were both animated. The results showed that 12-month-olds preferred the scrambled body stimuli, 9-month-olds preferred the typical body stimuli and the 6-month-olds showed no preference for either type of body stimuli. These findings suggest that human body recognition involves integrating form and movement, possibly in the superior temporal sulcus, from as early as 9 months of life. (shrink)

Between 1980 and 1985 representatives of academic science changed their policy positions, moving from veneration of basic or fundamental research to promotion of entrepreneurial science. This change is examined through research university presidents' testimony before the U.S. Congress. The presidents' move from "fruits of research" narratives that emphasize the benefits of basic science to narratives that celebrate technology based on fundamental research in "orders of magnitude more production from the efforts of orders of magnitude less workers. " This change reflects (...) presidents' endorsement of conservative policy initiatives that depend on privatization, deregulation, and commercialization of science. These policies will probably result in major realignments within research universities, with institutional managers, scientists, and graduate students in the physical sciences involved in entrepreneurial activity receiving privileges and rewards that other faculty and students do not. (shrink)

Because we engage with the world and each other through our bodies and bodily movements, being able to represent one's own and others' bodies is fundamental to human perception, cognition and behaviour. This edited book brings together, for the first time, developmental perspectives on the growth of body knowledge in infancy and early childhood and how it intersects with other aspects of perception and cognition. The book is organised into three sections addressing the bodily self, the bodies of others and (...) integrating self and other. Topics include perception and representation of the human form, infant imitation, understanding biological motion, self-representation, intention understanding, action production and perception and children's human figure drawings. Each section includes chapters from leading international scholars drawn together by an expert commentary that highlights open questions and directions for future research. (shrink)

We doubt that theory of mind can be sufficiently demonstrated without reliance on verbal tests. Where language is the major tool of social manipulation, an effective theory of mind must use language as an input. We suspect, therefore, that in this context, prelinguistic human and nonhuman minds are more alike than are human pre- and postlinguistic minds.

This article analyzes the National Science Study produced by the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s to see if the priorities of S&T policy were changing, if state agencies were being reorganized to achieve new priorities, and if universities were expected to work closely with industry in reconfigured agencies. Also analyzed was the economic composition of board members of eight S&T policy organizations that informed the National Science Study. It was found that, generally, Republican policy supported both basic science and (...) civilian technology policy but did not advocate reorganization of state administration of S&T. However, a number of the S&T policy groups pushed for the establishment of a separate mission agency for civilian technology. This suggests that conceptualization of a unitary social contract between science and society or iterated principal-agent relations expressing the interaction of science and society are insufficient because there may be multiple social contracts and many principals and agents. (shrink)

This study analyzes interview data from 37 science and engineering faculty involved in university-industry relations. Faculty are particularly concerned about how these relations affect their work with graduate students. Our analysis is guided by ritual exchange theory and network theory. First, we explore the ways faculty define and redefine what makes industrial or corporate research appropriate or inappropriate for training graduates. Second, we examine difficulties and tensions faculty face when they work with students on industrial or corporate projects. These difficulties (...) and tensions center on intellectual property and we look at how faculty negotiate with industry over restrictions on publication of graduate student and faculty research results, on faculty and graduate student involvement in start-up companies, and on faculty and graduate student ownership of intellectual property. (shrink)

One of the biggest ethical issues in animal agriculture is that of the welfare of animals at the end of their lives, during the process of slaughter. Much work in animal welfare science is focussed on finding humane ways to transport and slaughter animals, to minimise the harm done during this process. In this paper, we take a philosophical look at what it means to perform slaughter humanely, beyond simply reducing pain and suffering during the (...) class='Hi'>slaughter process. In particular, we will examine the issue of the harms of deprivation inflicted in ending life prematurely, as well as shape of life concerns and the ethical implications of inflicting these harms at the end of life, without the potential for future offsetting through positive experiences. We will argue that though these considerations may mean that no slaughter is in a deep sense truly ‘humane’, this should not undermine the importance of further research and development to ensure that while the practice continues, animal welfare harms are minimised as far as possible. (shrink)

Is the use of electrical stunners adequately discharging our moral obligations with respect to the humane slaughter of poultry? Below, three separate lines of investigation show that we cannot give an unequivocal answer to this question. First, five potentially humane methods of poultry slaughter are examined. Electrical stunning is found to be an acceptable method of rendering birds unconscious before slaughter. However, we lack sufficient evidence to claim that it is the most humane method (...) currently available. Second, surveys of poultry processing plants show that, with alarming frequency, a proper stun is not achieved. An investigation of the complexity of the electrical stun process shows the difficulties involved and suggests that under many on-the-floor slaughterhouse conditions, consistently proper stunning is likely to remain unachievable. Finally, the call to overcome inconsistent stun results by increasing current flow to levels that electrocute birds is investigated. Controversy surrounding the impact of electrocution on carcass quality and operator safety will continue to cause resistance to the adoption of this method of poultry slaughter. The conclusion offers four recommendations that follow from the cumulative results of these investigations. (shrink)

Some believe that it is immoral to harm animals, but it is not immoral to kill humanely raised domesticated animals. Implicit in this is the assumption that it is possible to raise and slaughter animals without harming them significantly. In recent years, a number of philosophers – DeGrazia, Harman, Bradley, and others – have claimed that slaughter harms an animal in proportion to the amount of valuable future life that an animal loses in dying, which seems to challenge (...) this assumption. But a question remains: how much are domesticated animals, particularly humanely raised ones, harmed by their slaughter? Here, I take up this question. My answer may be surprising: in ordinary circumstances, slaughter hardly deprives humanely raised animals of any good life, and so is not very harmful to them. This result may strengthen the case for humane slaughter – or it may give us reason to revise our understanding of the harmfulness of death. (shrink)

Slaughter sets the debate about what is acceptable to do to animals at an extremely low bar. Recently, there has been considerable investment in developing cell-based meat, an alternative meat production process that does not require the raising and slaughtering of animals, instead using muscle cells cultivated in a bioreactor. We discuss the animal ethics impacts of cell-based and plant-based meat on human-animal interactions from animal welfare and rights perspectives, focusing on industrial meat production scenarios. Our hypothesis is that (...) the insertion of cell-based meat in the global meat market may alleviate farm animal suffering and potentially restore resources for wild fauna. We employed a conservative estimation of the cell-based meat contribution to the global meat market in the year 2040 to analyze the consequences for human-animal relationships for both wild animals and farmed domesticated animals. We discuss possible effects of an animal cell domestication process, previously described as the second domestication, on human-animal relationships. We consider its potential to reduce the impact of human demographic changes and land use on animal life, in particular whether there would be increased biomass availability and free land for wild animals. We anticipate a major reduction in animal suffering due to the decrease in the number of individual animals involved in food production, which justifies the adoption of cell-based meat from a utilitarian perspective. For the conventional animal food production that remains, further consideration is needed to understand which systems, either high or low welfare, will be retained and the impact of the innovation on the average farm animal welfare. Additionally, it seems likely that there will be less acceptance of the necessity of animal suffering in farming systems when meat production is uncoupled from animal raising and slaughter, supported by a deontological perspective of animal ethics. Consequent to this is anticipated the mitigation of relevant barriers to animal protection and to the recognition of animals as subjects by legislation. Thus, the development of the alternative meats may be related to a significant change in our relationship with non-human animals, with greater benefits than the prima facie effects on farm animals. (shrink)

Humanely raised farm animals have lives worth living, and their existence is contingent upon human actions. Do these facts render the act of humanely slaughtering such animals permissible? I identify two ethical principles that may seem to connect these facts to the permissibility of humane animal slaughter. The first principle, inspired by the non-identity problem, exonerates some actions that maximize an individual’s well-being, but it is often inapplicable to animal slaughter. The second principle, which exonerates actions that (...) are part of a practice that makes the animal better off, does apply to animal slaughter; but this principle is false. (shrink)

I address the question: ‘Are acts of the ritual slaughter of animals, of the kind recently engaged in by the Yengeni family, morally justifiable?’ Using the Yengeni incident as a springboard for my discussion, I focus on the moral question of the relative weight of two competing ethical claims. I weigh the claim that we have an obligation not to cause animals pain without good reason against the claim by cultures that traditional practices, such as the one under discussion, (...) are morally justifiable on the basis of the moral goods obtained through cultural identification and participation. I attempt to show that claims justifying practices on the basis of culture are not strong enough to outweigh the prima facie wrong of causing non-human animals unnecessary pain. (shrink)

New methods of brain analysis show that in remaining conscious after their necks are cut, animals suffer extreme agony. In the United States, the Humane Slaughter Act mandates that animals be stunned before being cut in order to avoid that suffering, yet Orthodox Judaism mandates that animals remain conscious throughout. The Netherlands requires that animals be stunned if they are still conscious 40 seconds after being cut, mediating religious and animal-rights interests. The United States should reexamine religious exemptions (...) to humane slaughter laws given new brain analysis capabilities, and the Dutch government’s compromise could serve as a model. (shrink)

In a recent trial in the United States a physician was convicted of manslaughter during the performance of a hysterotomy on a woman pregnant from twenty to twenty eight weeks. Some members of the jury, in their deliberations, were much impressed by seeing a photograph of a fetus of about the same age. The experience apparently provided some jurors with reason to conclude that the fetus which did die during or immediately after the hysterotomy was a human being or a (...) person or, at least, was so like a child that the killing of it was prohibited by the law of homicide. If being a human being is not the same as being a pre-natal progeny of homo sapiens, it is difficult to understand how one could “tell by looking” whether the fetus is a human being. But the sight of a fetus of twenty weeks or longer does, I think, tempt us to think that from a moral standpoint we ought to extend the same treatment to such fetuses, or virtually the same, as we extend to newborn babies and young children. The visual similarities between middle or late stage fetuses and newborn babies is striking. (shrink)

Federico Zuolo | : Most contemporary Western laws regarding the treatment of animals in livestock farming and animal slaughter are primarily concerned with the principle that animal suffering during slaughter should be minimized, but that animal life may be taken for legitimate human purposes. This principle seems to be widely shared, intuitively appealing and capable of striking a good compromise between competing interests. But is this principle consistent? And how can it be normatively grounded? In this paper I (...) discuss critically this principle. I argue that this principle can be justified on the ground of respect for the value commitment toward animal welfare, which is held by many people. The advantage of this perspective is its inclusiveness: it can justify without contradiction the principle at stake and allow for the admissibility of religious slaughter while promoting animals’ interest in not suffering. This justification also has the advantage of being compatible with the cultural and religious pluralism of contemporary societies. | : La plupart des lois contemporaines portant sur le traitement des animaux, leur élevage et les techniques d’abattage en usage en Occident se préoccupent principalement du principe selon lequel la souffrance des animaux doit être minimisée durant l’abattage, mais reconnaissent que les animaux peuvent être tués à des fins humaines légitimes. Ce principe semble être largement accepté par la société, séduisant intuitivement et susceptible de constituer un bon compromis entre des intérêts concurrents. Mais ce principe est-il cohérent? Et quel peut être son fondement normatif? Dans cet article, j’aborde ce principe de manière critique. J’affirme que ce principe peut être justifié dans le cadre du respect de l’engagement envers le bien-être des animaux, lequel est soutenu par de nombreuses personnes. L’avantage de cette perspective est son caractère inclusif : elle permet de justifier de manière non contradictoire le principe en question et rend acceptable l’abattage rituel tout en faisant la promotion de l’intérêt des animaux à la non-souffrance. Cette justification présente également l’avantage d’être compatible avec le pluralisme culturel et religieux qui caractérise les sociétés contemporaines. (shrink)

Human beings have engaged in animal husbandry and have slaughtered animals for food for thousands of years. During the majority of that time most societies had no animal welfare regulations that governed the care or slaughter of animals. Judaism is a notable exception in that from its earliest days it has included such rules. Among the Jewish dietary laws is a prohibition to consume meat from an animal that dies in any manner other than through the rigorously defined method (...) of slaughter known as shechita. In recent decades more and more attempts have been initiated by governments around the world to either outright ban or to control and modify the practice of shechita. This paper presents the requisite background about shechita and then analyzes the ethics of some of the recent legislation. The analysis includes a rebuttal of the assertion that shechita is an inhumane method of slaughter. It further presents the consequences on the Jewish community of legislation to impose pre-slaughter stunning and explains why such legislation is unethical. The actual effect of labeling laws is discussed and it is shown why such laws are also un-ethical. (shrink)

This article examines Anna Joseph’s suggestion of introducing into United States law a requirement to stun an animal still found to be conscious after 40 seconds following initial cutting during religious slaughter. It is suggested that the proposed law fails to address significant ethical concerns based on scientific evidence. The conflict with human rights legislation, especially religious freedom, is discussed. A new consumers’ rights approach is proposed that highlights the life of the animal and may provide a universally applicable (...) legal framework for meat production. This may avoid the pitfalls of conflicting with human rights, thereby enabling the revision of practices through education, information, and changing consumer behavior. (shrink)

Global Democratic Theory is the first comprehensive introduction to the changing contours of democracy in today’s hyperconnected world. Accessibly written for readers new to the topic, it considers the impact of globalization and global forms of governance and activism on democratic politics and examines how democratic theory has responded to address these challenges, including calls for new forms of democracy to be developed beyond the nation-state and for greater public participation and accountability in existing global institutions. Divided into two parts, (...) the book shows how globalization provides both new obstacles and new opportunities for democracy. Part I explores the shifts underway at the national and international levels that are challenging democracy within nation-states around the world. In response, new proposals for global and transnational democracy have emerged. Part II critically analyses five main approaches of ‘global democratic theory’ Ð liberal internationalism, cosmopolitan democracy, deliberative democracy, social democracy and radical democracy, focusing on their specific interpretation of the problems facing democracy, their normative claims, and the feasibility of their proposed pathways of democratization. The book’s extensive account of the problems and possibilities facing democracy today will be essential reading for students and scholars of politics, political theory and political philosophy. (shrink)

This illuminating book is a republican critique of the current system of global governance and its failure to address key global problems. With a republican account of international political theory which transcends prevailing forms of global governance, it develops republican forms of leadership and citizenship to inform the creation of a stronger system of formal international organisations. Republican Global Constitutionalism focuses on the current challenges facing formal international organisations such as the UN, the growing reliance on opaque informal international organisations (...) like the G20, and the inconsistent nature of transnational civil society. As a unique contribution to the field of global constitutionalism, the book provides an account of republican international political theory that emphasises the importance of extending the activity of citizens and constitutionalism beyond the state, in order to support the operation of transnational civil society and create a formal system of international organisations. Providing a concise intervention into the field of global governance, this book will appeal to scholars and students in the disciplines of international relations, political theory, transnational activism studies, international law, and public policy. It will also benefit policymakers and activists looking for alternative forms of global cooperation. (shrink)

Sacred Rituals and Humane Death critically analyzes the civilizing nature of the underlying fundamental concept of "humaneness" in contemporary discourses around modern meat and animal ethics. As religious methods of animal slaughter, such as the halal method in Islam, as well as the practice of religious animal sacrifice, are sometimes categorized as barbaric in recent debates, the civilizing narrative of progress leads supposedly to more humane adaptation of methods and practices of animal curation and slaughter. This (...) volume argues that the shift toward modern meat does not constitute a shift toward less pain and suffering as purported by supporters of contemporary methods, particularly mass agriculture. Rather, it is a shift in what is considered as acceptable versus unacceptable pain and suffering. In this work, the author analyzes the concealment and distancing that characterize modern meat production, uncovering the "acceptable" pain and suffering involved in these procedures heralded as "progress" and advocating for a retrieval of earlier, tradition-bound practices rooted in religious, cultural, and ethical respect of animals and their important and sacred roles in sacrifice. (shrink)

This essay discusses how our traditional ethics may harbor assumptions that place humans in a position in which overt violence towards animals is an almost inevitable outcome since their formulation involves violence towards ourselves and our animal fellows in our cutting our embodied ties with them. The essay explores Derrida’s Animal that Therefore, I Am, in its detailing of the two discourses within European intellectual history of those who felt they were “above” animals and were not addressed by them versus (...) those who could acknowledge that animals do address us. Derrida also cites the “lyconomy” of this tradition that brandishes the image of the “wolf” within us as a streak of rapacious violence that we can only fight with violence, thus projecting onto the wolf a false identity to justify our own demons of violence. Merleau-Ponty’s notions of embodiment further this idea that we are enmeshed with animals in a basic affective, perceptual and visceral way and that to ignore this interweaving of lives is to do violence to ourselves as well as violence towards them. I then cite ethologists for evidence that wolves are one of the most social, non-violent animals on the planet and detail how two million were slaughtered in the name of eradicating an “evil” being. Such behavior on our part I call “speciocide,” as heinous as genocide. Finally, phenomenology, as one particular philosophical approach, may have a critical edge in helping us to see our animal fellows more clearly, to understand them better, and discern our truer moral obligations to them. (shrink)

The very idea of humanity seems to be in crisis. Born in the ashes of devastation after the slaughter of millions, the liberal conception of humanity imagined a suffering victim in need of salvation. Today, this figure appears less and less capable of galvanizing the political imagination. But without it, how are we to respond to the inhumane violence that overwhelms our political and philosophical registers? How can we make sense of the violence that was carried out in the (...) name of humanism? And how can we develop more ethical relations without becoming parasitic on the pain of others? Through a critical exploration of violence and the sacred, Ecce Humanitas recasts the fall of liberal humanism. Brad Evans offers a rich analysis of the changing nature of sacrificial violence, from its theological origins to the exhaustion of the victim in the contemporary world. He critiques the aestheticization that turns victims into sacred objects, sacrificial figures that demand response, perpetuating a cycle of violence that is seen as natural and inevitable. In novel readings of classic and contemporary works, Evans traces the sacralization of violence as well as art’s potential to incite resistance. Countering the continued annihilation of life, Ecce Humanitas calls for liberating the political imagination from the scene of sacrifice. A new aesthetics provides a form of transgressive witnessing that challenges the ubiquity of violence and allows us to go beyond humanism to imagine a truly liberated humanity. (shrink)

Conducting research with vulnerable populations involves careful attention to the interests of individuals. Although it is generally understood that informed consent is a necessary prerequisite to research participation, it is less clear how to proceed when potential research participants lack the capacity to provide this informed consent. The rationale for assessing the assent or dissent of vulnerable individuals and obtaining informed consent by authorized representatives is discussed. Practical guidelines for recruitment of and data collection from people in the middle or (...) late stage of dementia are proposed. These guidelines were used by research assistants in a minimal risk study. (shrink)

Eye movements during false-belief tasks can reveal an individual's capacity to implicitly monitor others' mental states (theory of mind - ToM). It has been suggested, based on the results of a single-trial-experiment, that this ability is impaired in those with a high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD), despite neurotypical-like performance on explicit ToM measures. However, given there are known attention differences and visual hypersensitivities in ASD it is important to establish whether such impairments are evident over time. In addition, investigating implicit (...) ToM using a repeated trial approach allows an assessment of whether learning processes can reduce the ASD impairment in this ability, as is the case with explicit ToM. Here we investigated the temporal profile of implicit ToM in individuals with ASD and a control group. Despite similar performance on explicit ToM measures, ASD-diagnosed individuals showed no evidence of implicit false-belief tracking even over a one-hour period and many trials, whereas control participants did. These findings demonstrate that the systems involved in implicit and explicit ToM are distinct and hint that impaired implicit false-belief tracking may play an important role in ASD. Further, they indicate that learning processes do not alleviate this impairment across the presentation of multiple trials. (shrink)

This article is an extended analysis of the historyand anomalies in the doctrine of American Indiantribal sovereignty. I explain that America gainedindependence, but took Indian land and colonized thetribes just as it had been colonized under theBritish. It asserted sovereignty for itself, butsubordinated the once independent tribes with aparadoxical semi-sovereign status as `dependentdomestic nations', all of this justified by the racialand cultural otherness of Indians. Using a Lacanianperspective, I show that America was founded on a`wound' or inconsistency at the heart (...) of itsideological and constitutional order. In order torectify the inconsistencies that the initial `wound'produces, the law and political order havecontinuously had to adopt fictions. American law and policy has never been able to settlethe ambiguous doctrine of Indian sovereignty. As aresult, the law circles round and round in trying todefine it, and asserting and denying it, all in anunsuccessful attempt to make the constitutional orderwhole. It cannot succeed, however, since the ultimatesolution is an American sovereignty which, like God,admits of no limitation. (shrink)

The Cove, a recent documentary on the harvesting and slaughter of dolphins in Taiji Japan, envisions this practice as a mode of blasphemy. While the reintroduction of a notion of blasphemy into the search for inter-species justice can illuminate the intensity of the evil one witnesses, one must be wary of this notion’s ethical, political and social implications. In place of a politics of outrage that is deployed by the film, an argument is made for a politics of expiation. (...) In a politics of expiation one begins one’s conversation with the alleged wrongdoer/blasphemer in penitential rather than accusatory witness. (shrink)

The Cove, a recent documentary on the harvesting and slaughter of dolphins in Taiji Japan, envisions this practice as a mode of blasphemy. While the reintroduction of a notion of blasphemy into the search for inter-species justice can illuminate the intensity of the evil one witnesses, one must be wary of this notion’s ethical, political and social implications. In place of a politics of outrage that is deployed by the film, an argument is made for a politics of expiation. (...) In a politics of expiation one begins one’s conversation with the alleged wrongdoer/blasphemer in penitential rather than accusatory witness. (shrink)

Derrida’s corpus explored the human animal/non-human animal (hereafter HA/NHA) binary. Indeed, in his writings, Western thought regarding the binary is examined, as well as its inherently anthropocentric framework. Derrida successfully, however, decon­structs its systems and highlights why the binary—largely—remains in place. In Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am, he belies the Western tradition that separates NHAs from HAs by excluding them from things thought to be only proper to mankind: that is, thinking, laughing, perceptible suffering, and verbalization. Animals have (...) traditionally been considered the absolute other of human beings, a view of otherness that has served as the rationale for their domi­nation, exploitation and slaughter. This type of “animal thinking” may help us to think of the world—or imagine the possibility of thinking about it—in a non-exclusively human fashion. Looking at a possible theoretical framework that draws on both Whitehead and Derrida, we may posit that it consists of six ideas, some which are more Whiteheadian than others. (shrink)

In 55 B.C. Pompey staged a combat between humans and elephants; the elephants were slaughtered en masse. Moved by their piteous trumpetings, the audience protested—feeling, says Cicero, that there was a certain community, between elephants and themselves. As Sorabji notes, this recognition of belonging is inconsistent with the Stoic thesis that our moral affiliations embrace only the human kind. Cicero as letter-writer allows himself a qualm that his philosophical stance refuses.

This article explores issues of what is seen and not seen, recorded and disregarded, as they relate to the author’s practical experimentations with alternate uses/forms of the camera. These alternates include the slit-scan camera and a little-known form called the cylinder pinhole camera, which was originally designed and tested by the photo historian Joel Snyder. What do these cameras tell us, the author asks, about the center and periphery of an image as it exists inside a camera before that image (...) is recorded on film? The prioritization of content at the center of an image, the article argues, is consistent with the West’s cultural bias toward making two-dimensional images on rectangular surfaces, such as drawings, paintings, and photographs. But we see something very different by looking into the black box of the camera, something not so rectangular. The figures included here, then, are meant to disrupt the center-periphery binary that has ruled photography in the West. These photos offer new insight into social expectations about the capacity of the camera, of panoramic images, and about strategies for analysis of art-making practices in general. (shrink)

_From a renowned foreign-policy expert, a new paradigm for strategy in the twenty-first century_ In 1961, Thomas Schelling’s _The Strategy of Conflict_ used game theory to radically reenvision the U.S.-Soviet relationship and establish the basis of international relations for the rest of the Cold War. Now, Anne-Marie Slaughter—one of _Foreign Policy’_s Top 100 Global Thinkers from 2009 to 2012, and the first woman to serve as director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning—applies network theory to develop a (...) new set of strategies for the post-Cold War world. While chessboard-style competitive relationships still exist—U.S.-Iranian relations, for example—many other situations demand that we look not at individual entities but at their links to one another. We must learn to understand, shape, and build on those connections. Concise and accessible, based on real-world situations, on a lucid understanding of network science, and on a clear taxonomy of strategies, this will be a go-to resource for anyone looking for a new way to think about strategy in politics or business. (shrink)

This commentary on K.D. Pimple’s “Six Domains of Research Ethics”, focuses on the area of institutional integrity and looks at “relationships between researchers, their sponsoring institutions, funding agencies, and the government,” considering the implications of institutional demands and support for research, and, in turn, demands and support on research priorities and public education.

Grush's emulator model appears to be consistent with the idea of a body schema, that is, a detailed mental representation of the body, its structure, and movement in relation to the environment. If the emulator is equivalent to a body schema, then the next step will be to specify how the emulator accounts for neuropsychological and developmental phenomena that have long been hypothesized to involve the body schema.