Are risk behaviours in adolescence differentiated according to same-sex vs opposite-sex interest? For all respondents a five-point scale of interest in each sex used information from both of the first two in-home waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Logistic regression predicted the probability of experiencing each risk behaviour from the same-sex and opposite-sex interest scores. Same-sex interests have more effect on emotional risk, and opposite-sex interests have more effect on substance use. Nevertheless, all risk variables (...) except boys’ depression are responsive to both same-sex and opposite-sex interest. The same-sex interest component of risk is attributed to the emotional strain of living with an anomalous sex interest in a heterosexual society. (shrink)

This paper argues that democratic collectives have reason to increase the voting power of their younger members. It first presents an intuitive case for weighted voting in general, before drawing support from a prominent principle of democratic inclusion – the all-affected principle. On a plausible understanding of that principle, a decision may affect people to varying degrees, and this variation should be reflected in the strength of their say. The paper then argues that exposure time to a decision’s effects is (...) typically a good proxy for tracking such variation, such that collectives have reason to gradually reduce their members’ voting power as they grow older. This holds, for example, in the ordinary parliamentary elections in representative democracies. It is then argued that we may build a similar case for age-weighting on a plausible version of the all-affected principle’s main rival, the all-subjected principle. The paper ends by addressing various objections. It argues that none of them undermine the case for age-weighting, and that some might even support age-weighting over its non-weighted (‘one person, one vote’) alternative. (shrink)

(From the Press's Website) -/- Winner of the 2004 Lakatos Prize, Thought in a Hostile World is an exploration of the evolution of cognition, especially human cognition, by one of today's foremost philosophers of biology and of mind. Features an exploration of the evolution of human cognition. Written by one of today’s foremost philosophers of mind and language. Presents a set of analytic tools for thinking about cognition and its evolution. Offers a critique of nativist, modular versions of evolutionary psychology, (...) rejecting the example of language as a model for thinking about human cognitive capacities. Applies to the areas of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and evolutionary psychology. -/- . (shrink)

The capacities required for both peace and war predate 100,000 years ago in the genus Homo are deeply entangled in the modes by which humans physically and perceptually construct their worlds and communities, and may not be sufficiently captured by economic models.

Scholars are becoming increasingly interested in whether and how government use of Big Data will affect public policy outcomes. Despite such growing scholarly interests, however, little evidence exists on the role Big Data can play in improving government service. We undertake one of the first quantitative studies revealing the potential utility and limitations of “Big Data-based policymaking” by exploring its recent use by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. In 2013, the government introduced the “Owl Bus”—a late-night bus system—the routes of which (...) were selected based on government analyses of Big Data relating to citizens’ late-night taxi and mobile phone use. The findings suggest that the average number of passengers utilizing the Owl Bus routes was significantly greater than that on other daytime bus routes with comparable characteristics. That said, we also present the potential limitations of evidence-based policymaking in general, especially when politics and equity considerations are factored in. (shrink)

Infallibilism leads to skepticism, and fallibilism is plagued by the threshold problem. Within this narrative, the pragmatic turn in epistemology has been marketed as a way for fallibilists to address the threshold problem. In contrast, pragmatic versions of infallibilism have been left unexplored. However, I propose that going pragmatic offers the infallibilist a way to address its main problem, the skeptical problem. Pragmatic infallibilism, however, is committed to a shifty view of epistemic certainty, where the strength of a subject’s epistemic (...) state can vary depending upon the practical context. Pragmatic views of epistemic strength are quite radical so the argumentative goal of my discussion is to argue for its plausibility, thereby arguing for the plausibility of pragmatic infallibilism. To do so, I discuss the role that the framing of decision problems and the construction of our deliberative attitudes have in our theories of rational choice. And I explore a way in which these necessary components of a normative theory of rationality can be used to motivate pragmatic views of evidential support. Finally, since the plausibility of our pragmatic account will depend upon the plausibility of a constructive account of rational choice, I conclude by comparing the adequacy of the constructive account with orthodox Bayesian and knowledge-based accounts. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, first, that human lifeways depend on cognitive capital that has typically been built over many generations. This process of gradual accumulation produces an adaptive fit between human agents and their environments; an adaptive fit that is the result of hidden‐hand, evolutionary mechanisms. To explain distinctive features of human life, we need to understand how cultures evolve. Second, I distinguish a range of different evolutionary models of culture. Third, I argue that none of meme‐based models, dual (...) inheritance models, nor Boyd and Richerson's models fully succeed in explaining this adaptive fit between agent and the world. I then briefly develop an alternative. Finally, I explore (in a preliminary way) constraints on cultural adaptation. The processes of cultural evolution sometimes built a fit between agents and their environment, but they do not always do so. Why is folk medicine, for example, so much less reliable than folk natural history? (shrink)

The standard view of the function of reason is that it emerged to enable individuals to make better judgements and choices. Once individuals could think better, and once we had suitable communicative tools, individual reasoning acquired a public face; we reasoned together as well as privately, in our own mind. Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue that this gets the story the wrong way around: reasoning evolved for public purposes: to persuade, negotiate, assess. Once it was established publically, perhaps it (...) acquired a private function too. With the exception of a few minor complaints, this evolutionary case is well made. However, Mercier and Sperber embed their evolutionary case within a modular view of the mind and suggest a modular view of public reasoning itself. While I find the evolutionary case persuasive, I am sceptical of the cognitive science framework. (shrink)

Computerized relaxation training has been suggested as an effective and easily accessible intervention for individuals with psychological distress. To better elucidate the neural mechanism that underpins the effects of relaxation training, we investigated whether a 10-session computerized relaxation training program changed prefrontal gamma-aminobutyric acid levels and cerebral blood flow in women with psychological distress. We specifically focused on women since they were reported to be more vulnerable to develop stress-related disorders than men. Nineteen women with psychological distress but without a (...) diagnosis of psychiatric disorders received the 10-day computerized relaxation training program that consisted of 30-min cognitive-relaxation training and 10-min breathing-relaxation training per day. At baseline and post-intervention, perceived stress levels, anxiety, fatigue, and sleep quality were assessed by self-report questionnaires. Brain magnetic resonance spectroscopy and arterial spin labeling scans were also performed before and after the intervention to evaluate GABA levels and relative CBF in the prefrontal region. Levels of perceived stress, anxiety, fatigue, and sleep quality improved following 10 sessions of computerized relaxation training, resulting in a significant relief in composite scores of stress-related symptoms. The prefrontal GABA levels decreased, while relative CBF increased after the intervention. In addition, a greater increase in relative prefrontal CBF was associated with better composite scores of stress-related symptoms following the intervention. The current findings suggest that computerized relaxation training may improve stress-related symptoms through modulating the prefrontal GABA levels and CBF in women with psychological distress. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between inheritance systems, evolvability and modularity. I argue that the transmission of symbiotic micro-organisms is an inheritance system, and one that is evolutionarily significant because symbionts generate biologically crucial aspects of their hosts’ organisation through modular developmental pathways. More specifically, I develop and defend five theses.

There is a very striking difference between even the simplest ethnographically known human societies and those of the chimps and bonobos. Chimp and bonobo societies are closed societies: with the exception of adolescent females who disperse from their natal group and join a nearby group (never to return to their group of origin), a pan residential group is the whole social world of the agents who make it up. That is not true of forager bands, which have fluid memberships, and (...) regular associations with neighbouring bands. They are components of a larger social world. The open and fluid character of forager bands brings with it many advantages, so the stability of this more vertically complex form of social life is not difficult to explain, once it establishes. But how did it establish, if, as is likely, earlier hominin social worlds resemble those of our close pan relatives in the suspicion (even hostility) of one band to another? How did hominin social organisation transition from life in closed bands, each distrustful of its neighbours, to the much more open social lives of foragers? I will discuss and synthesise two approaches to this problem, one ecological, based on the work of Robert Layton and his colleagues, and another that is organised around an expansion of kin recognition, an idea primarily driven by Bernard Chapais. The paper closes by discussing potential archaeological signatures both of more open social worlds, and of the supposed causal drivers of such worlds. (shrink)

This article has both substantive and methodological goals. Methodologically, it shows that rational choice theory is an especially important tool for guiding research in contexts in which agents appear to be acting against their best interests. The Neolithic transition is one such case, and the article develops a substantive conception of that transition, illustrating the heuristic power of behavioral ecology.

In his 21st-century explorer’s uniform, Nordiclooking Spencer Wells kneels alongside nearly naked, smaller, African hunters who sport bows and arrows. Featured on the National Geographic Web site, “Explorer-in-Residence” Wells hold a bachelor’s and doctorate degree in biology. He is also a filmmaker who both masterminded and hosted National Geographic’s 2002 documentary, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, which explains to non-scientists a molecular anthropology narrative of how humans left Africa 60,000 years ago to populate the rest of the globe.In (...) his latest exploratory adventure, Wells is the project leader and spokesperson for the recently announced “Genographic Project,” a “landmark study of the human journey.” In April 2005, National Geographic and IBM, with funding from the Waitt Family Foundation, launched the Genographic Project as a five-year “research partnership” that aims to “trace the migratory history of the human species” and “map how the Earth was populated.”. (shrink)

The ways in which people conceptualize the human–nature relationship have significant implications for proenvironmental values and attitudes, sustainable behavior, and environmental policy measures. Human exceptionalism (HE) is one such conceptual framework, involving the belief that humans and human societies exist independently of the ecosystems in which they are embedded, promoting a sharp ontological boundary between humans and the rest of the natural world. In this paper, we introduce HE in more depth, exploring the impact of HE on perceptions of the (...) human–nature relationship, the role of culture in HE, and speculating on the origins of HE. We consider potential implications for environmental decision-making, conservation and environmental science, and promoting proenvironmental behavior. We present empirical evidence on the pervasiveness and consequences of HE in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) populations, and potential interventions. Finally, we close with implications of human-exceptionalist thinking on other sustainability-related fields, including conservation practices, nature management, climate change adaptation, and environmental science. Understanding the cognitive and social drivers of this disconnect is vital on a planet now dominated by environmental change, as not only are humans increasingly impacted by natural disasters, but the choices they make can have ever more dire consequences for the sustainability of ecosystems. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics ix 9, Aristotle answers the question of why the happy person needs friends. I argue that interpretatively, we must understand ix 9 in instrumental terms. I begin with ix 9’s opening sections, arguing that Aristotle understands the question of why the happy person needs friends, and his answer, in instrumental terms. Aristotle’s first major argument suggests that the instrumental role friends play has to do with one’s own activity, specifically self-contemplation. This argument, however, does not clearly show (...) why friends over and above just any other people are needed. To address this, I attend to NE’s longest sustained argument and show that it makes headway on this question, and in a way that again presents an instrumental account for why the happy person needs friends: facilitation of one’s own activity. (shrink)

This paper is an exposition and defense of Kant’s philosophy of geometry. The main thesis is that Euclidean geometry investigates the properties of geometrical objects in an inner space that is given to us a priori (pure space) and hence is a priori and synthetic. This thesis is supported by arguing that Euclidean geometry requires certain intuitive objects (Sect. 1), that these objects are a priori constructions in pure space (Sect. 2), and finally that the role of geometrical construction is (...) to provide geometrical objects, not concepts, as some have claimed (Sect. 3). (shrink)

This article explores the philosophy of Alain Badiou from the vantage point of the concepts of the localization, delocalization, and relocalization of the void as thematized through literary arts, religion, emancipatory politics, and the subject of psychoanalysis. In short, these moments around the void characterize the processes through which truth is processed and seen through their full realization by a philosophical engagement across the various conditions in which these truths occur. The localization of a void is the naming of an (...) indiscernible element that is incommensurable to the rubric of constructible knowledge, sense and meaning which could saturate the space of truth. Thus, the naming that localizes the void acts as a subtraction of the invariant in the variance of situation such that across various points in space and time, we are still able to subtract the universal as the invariant not just as the fidelity to the localized truth but also as the resurrection of truth upon its relocalization at a different place and a different time. At its core, this article is concerned with truth, why truth is persistent, and why we have to struggle to articulate the truth that we are trying to be faithful to again and again with each instance that truth risks being covered-over and obscured. (shrink)

Some commentators hold that Xunzi's criticism of Mencius' thesis that human nature is good depends more on Xunzi's definition of xing or nature than on substantive argument. Some also claim that Xunzi is committed to accepting Mencius' thesis. A more precise account of Xunzi's critique is offered here, based on an elaboration of his distinction in the "Xing e pian" between ke yi (capacity) and neng (ability). Others have noted this distinction, but no one has sufficiently appreciated its role in (...) making Xunzi's critique more systematic and substantive than it is usually thought to be. (shrink)