Dewey scholar Michael Eldridge provides a thorough and well-researched interpretation of Dewey's philosophy that focuses on the role of intelligence in human ...

This article explores how economic inequality in the United States has led to growing levels of poverty, food insecurity, and obesity for the bottom segments of the economy. It takes the position that access to nutritious food is a requirement for living and for participating fully in the workplace and society. Because of increasing economic inequality in the United States, growing segments of the U.S. economy have become more food insecure and obese, eating unhealthy food for survival and suffering an (...) erosion of “equality of capabilities” that undermines their ability to play a “full and active part in the functioning of community.” Unequal access to nutritious foods in the United States is attributable in part to an industrial food system that is designed to produce short-term profits for industrial food producers, processors, and distributors that extract surplus labor value through market concentration and opportunistic behavior at the expense of the long-term benefits for consumers, food workers, and ecosystems. Economic inequality, food insecurity, and the erosion of equality of capabilities in the United States have given rise to protest movements, social movements, social innovations, and some modest strengthening of regulations to make access to and consumption of healthy food a right for every person. Implications for business and society research are explored. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly clear that most, if not all, animals and plants are associated with a diverse array of resident gut microbiota. This symbiosis is regulated by host-microbiome interactions which influence the development, homeostasis, adaptation and evolution of the host. Recent evidence indicated that these interactions can also affect the host germline and have a potential of supporting transgenerational effects, including inheritance of acquired characteristics. Taken together, the influence of gut bacteria on the host soma and germline could potentially (...) give rise to emergent phenotypes, which may be partially inherited by three distinguishable modes of transgenerational influence of gut bacteria: 1) “soma-to-soma” 2) “soma-to-germline” and 3) “soma-germline-soma”. Here, we discuss these possibilities in light of evidence supporting bacterial-mediated modes of transgenerational inheritance. All animals are consortiums of hosts and microbiota. Their interactions influence many aspects of the adaptation and evolution of the Holobiont. The host germline can also be affected which can give rise to new modes of transgenerational influence of gut bacteria: 1) “soma-to-soma” 2) “soma-to-germline,” and 3) “soma-germline-soma.”. (shrink)

The science underlying global warming, climate change, and the connections between these phenomena are reviewed. Projected future climate changes under various plausible scenarios of future human behavior are explored, as are the potential impacts of projected climate changes on society, ecosystems, and our environment. The economic, security, and ethical considerations relevant to determining the threat posed by climate change are subsequently assessed. The article then discusses the various means available for climate change mitigation, focusing on the relative strengths and weaknesses (...) of various societal alternatives including ‘geoengineering’ and transitioning to less carbon intensive energy sources. The article concludes with the author's views as to what steps might most profitably be taken to avert dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate, and the ramifications if such steps are not taken. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Santayana: American Naturalism's Early Role Model Some Episodes in the History of the New Naturalism Naturalism in the Last Half of the Twentieth Century.

The Many-Interacting-Worlds (MIW) approach to a quantum theory without wave functions proposed in [8] leads naturally to numerical integrators of the Schrödinger equation on comoving grids. As yet, little is known about concrete MIW models for more than one spatial dimension and/or more than one particle. In honour of Detlef Dürr, we report on a further development of the MIW approach to treat arbitrary degrees of freedom and provide a numerical proof of concept for ground states in 2d. The latter (...) is part of a systematic numerical study [22] that includes also 1d ground and excited states. With this step towards the treatment of higher degrees of freedom we hope to stimulate their further study. (shrink)

The question “How can humans learn efficiently to make decisions in a complex, dynamic, and uncertain environment” is still a very open question. We investigate what effects arise when feedback is given in a computer-simulated microworld that is controlled by participants. This has a direct impact on training simulators that are already in standard use in many professions, e.g., for flight simulators for pilots, and a potential impact on a better understanding of human decision making in general. Our study is (...) based on a benchmark microworld with an economic framing, the IWR Tailorshop. N=94 participants played four rounds of the microworld, each 10 months, via a web interface. We propose a new approach to quantify performance and learning, which is based on a mathematical model of the microworld and optimization. Six participant groups receive different kinds of feedback in a training phase, then results in a performance phase without feedback are analyzed. As a main result, feedback of optimal solutions in training rounds improved model knowledge, early learning, and performance, especially when this information is encoded in a graphical representation. (shrink)

Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation.

The evangelical doctor, John Wyclif (1320-1384), a prominent, if controversial, Oxford master, is commonly identified as the evening star of scholasticism and the morning star of the Reformation. That Wyclif was a bold thinker is reflected in his philosophical system and in his theological and political views. Our interest here is in Wyclif's now little known natural philosophy. What I wish to examine is whether he can, with any justice, be dubbed the morning star of a reformation in science as (...) well as religion, for his contribution anticipates some developments of early modern natural philosophy. (shrink)

Michael T. Ferejohn presents a new analysis of Aristotle's theory of explanation and scientific knowledge, in the context of its Socratic roots. Ferejohn shows how Aristotle resolves the tension between his commitment to the formal-case model of explanation and his recognition of the role of efficient causes in explaining natural phenomena.

In this book, Michael Strevens aims to explain how simplicity can coexist with, indeed be caused by, the tangled interconnections between a complex system's ...

How are core social phenomena to be understood as modes of being? This book offers an alternative approach to social ontology. Recent interest in social ontology on the part of mainstream philosophy and the social sciences presupposes from the outset that the human being can be cast as a conscious subject whose intentionality can be collective. By contrast, the present study insistently poses the crucial question of who the human being is and how they sociate as whos. Such whoness is (...) a clean-cut departure from the venerable tradition of questioning whatness in philosophical thinking. Casting human being hermeneutically as whoness opens up new insights into how human beings sociate in interplays of mutual estimation that are simultaneously social power plays. Hitherto, the ontology of social power in all its various guises, has only ever been implicit. This book makes it explicit. The kind of social power prevalent in capitalist societies is that of the reified value embodied in commodities, money, capital, & co. Reified value itself is constituted through an interplay of mutual estimation among things that reflects back on the power interplay among whos. In this way a new critique of capitalism becomes possible. (shrink)

Developments in medical science have afforded us the opportunity to improve and enhance the human species in ways unthinkable to previous generations. Whether it's making changes to mitochondrial DNA in a human egg, being prescribed Prozac, or having a facelift, our desire to live longer, feel better and look good has presented philosophers, medical practitioners and policy-makers with considerable ethical challenges. But what exactly constitutes human improvement? What do we mean when we talk of making "better" humans? In this book (...) Michael Hauskeller explores these questions and the ideas of human good that underpin them. Posing some challenging questions about the nature of human enhancement, he interrogates the logic behind its processes and examines the justifications behind its criteria. Questioning common assumptions about what constitutes human improvement, Hauskeller asks whether the criteria proposed by its advocates are convincing. The book draws on recent research as well as popular representations of human enhancement from advertising to the internet, and provides a non-technical and accessible survey of the issues for readers and students interested in the ethics and politics of human enhancement. (shrink)

Historical and philosophical background -- Del Medigo on the material intellect -- Del Medigo on the agent intellect -- Del Medigo on conceptualisation -- Hic homo intelligit?

Management involves change. The aim of this paper is to introduce a threefold classification of change with the purpose of making clear how the third type, creational change, is distinctive compared to the other two types. Four types of management situation are introduced, based on the type of change involved in the managed domain and in the management system. The role of creational change in management is discussed and a number of guidelines or suggestions relevant to this sort of management (...) are outlined. One feature of the notion of creational change is the conjecture that such change is not amenable to scientific investigation and understanding. Once creational change has produced whatever it does produce then the product may be amenable to scientific investigation and understanding but the actual unique and open process of its production will not be. One of the aims of this paper is to heighten our general awareness of creational change as different from other sorts of change. (shrink)

This book puts forward a much-needed reappraisal of Immanuel Kant's conception of and response to skepticism, as set forth principally in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is widely recognized that Kant's theoretical philosophy aims to answer skepticism and reform metaphysics--Michael Forster makes the controversial argument that those aims are closely linked. He distinguishes among three types of skepticism: "veil of perception" skepticism, which concerns the external world; Humean skepticism, which concerns the existence of a priori concepts and synthetic (...) a priori knowledge; and Pyrrhonian skepticism, which concerns the equal balance of opposing arguments. Forster overturns conventional views by showing how the first of these types was of little importance for Kant, but how the second and third held very special importance for him, namely because of their bearing on the fate of metaphysics. He argues that Kant undertook his reform of metaphysics primarily in order to render it defensible against these types of skepticism. Finally, in a critical appraisal of Kant's project, Forster argues that, despite its strengths, it ultimately fails, for reasons that carry interesting broader philosophical lessons. These reasons include inadequate self-reflection and an underestimation of the resources of Pyrrhonian skepticism. (shrink)

The experience of a reward appears to enhance memory for recent prior events, adaptively making that information more available to guide future decision-making. Here, we tested whether reward enhances memory for associative item-location information and also whether the effect of reward spreads to other categorically-related but unrewarded items. Participants earned either points (Experiment 1) or money (Experiment 2) through a time-estimation reward task, during which stimuli-location pairings around a 2D-ring were shown followed by either high-value or low-value rewards. All stimuli (...) were then tested for location memory or recognition (yes/no), immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Across both experiments (combined analysis), there was a robust improvement in location memory following high-value rewards, even though evidence supporting this effect was reliable in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. The memory-enhancing effect of reward was observed on both the immediate and delayed location-memory tests. Reward-enhanced memory for both directly rewarded stimuli and categorically related stimuli that were not directly rewarded. No reliable effect of reward value on yes/no recognition-memory performance was observed in either experiment. We hypothesise that reward enhances the consolidation of recent experience and conceptually related memories to make these more available for future decisions. (shrink)

In Hegel's Idea of a Phenomenology of Spirit, Michael N. Forster advances an original reading of the work.

Beginning with the idea that digital storytelling can be a useful tool for moral sensemaking and development for undergraduates, the paper reviews the process of digital storytelling and details how the lead author incorporated a digital storytelling project into a course on leadership ethics. The paper provides a theoretical basis for the project in Gentile’s (2010, 2011) work on Giving Voice to Values, and in perspectives from aesthetics, phenomenology, and personal narrative. This is followed by two autoethnographic narratives of the (...) experience: one from the course designer and professor who discusses his motivation for the project and the moral dilemma he faced in assigning it, and another from one of the students in the class who investigates the challenges she faced in engaging a deeply-felt moral dilemma in a public way. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for this approach with respect to leadership development and research. (shrink)

Beginning with the idea that digital storytelling can be a useful tool for moral sensemaking and development for undergraduates, the paper reviews the process of digital storytelling and details how the lead author incorporated a digital storytelling project into a course on leadership ethics. The paper provides a theoretical basis for the project in Gentile’s (2010, 2011) work on Giving Voice to Values, and in perspectives from aesthetics, phenomenology, and personal narrative. This is followed by two autoethnographic narratives of the (...) experience: one from the course designer and professor who discusses his motivation for the project and the moral dilemma he faced in assigning it, and another from one of the students in the class who investigates the challenges she faced in engaging a deeply-felt moral dilemma in a public way. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for this approach with respect to leadership development and research. (shrink)

Transversality occupies a central place in Guattari's thought, appearing in his early writings on institutional analysis and on through to his final work, Chaosmosis. Transversality is thus particularly pertinent to understanding Guattari's critique of semiocapitalism and his goal of re-imagining forms of institutional subjectivisation as a way to free the unconscious from structures of lack and the desire for punishment, the very structures upon which capitalism relies for its reproduction. If there is one institution that has taken advantage of semiocapitalism's (...) ability to mask its role in the reproduction of capitalist subjectivity, however, it is the contemporary neoliberal University. This essay thus brings transversality to bear upon the question of the University in semiocapitalism, focusing on the discourses that speak in defence of the humanities. Though defences of the humanities are intended to argue for the humanities’ usefulness in contemporary society, transversality exposes such discourses as the speech of a ‘subjugated group’ whose only effect is to reinforce existing structures of lack and punishment. (shrink)

In Australia young people have emerged as a popular target for social enterprises and enterprising activities (Barraket, Mason and Blain, 2016). The reasons for engaging young people in enterprise-based projects include claims that they help address young people's deficits in entrepreneurialism and risk-taking as well as prepare young people to thrive in risky futures characterised by uncertain labour markets and precarious work (Foundation for Young Australians, 2015, 2016a, 2017a). The risk category is also central to a good deal of policy (...) concerning young people and underpins many agendas and programmes that aim to govern what many people claim to be young people's 'natural' tendencies to experiment and take risks (Bessant, 2008). This article explores how differing and arbitrary accounts of the relationships between young people and risk help to justify enterprise-based initiatives into young lives that might not serve young people's best interests. (shrink)

There is a critique of capitalist market economy that consists in claiming not only that capitalist social relations are uncaring and alienating, nor only exploitative of the working class, but that the process of capitalist economy as a whole is a way of living, today globalized, that has gotten out of hand. Its essential nature is unmasked as a senseless circular movement that, besides ruthlessly exploiting natural resources, demeans human being itself and alienates it from the historical alternative of a (...) purportedly authentic mode of human being rooted in collective, solidaric subjectivity. The present article offers an alternative hermeneutic cast for understanding capitalism as the gainful game that can serve as philosophical orientation in fighting for a free and fair social interplay in which the powers and abilities of free individuals are appropriately and reciprocally estimated and esteemed. This requires, first and foremost, seeing through the fetishisms inherent in the valorization of reified value that the mature Marx identified in his critiques of political economy as the essential nature of capitalism. Such critical insight is necessary for orientation also in today’s predicament of the ever more encroaching and ensnaring cyberworld. (shrink)

I make the case for thinking of Obama as a pragmatist, talk about the influence of his community organizing experience, and then reflect on some difficulties of implementing those "pragmatic democratic" values as president. I call attention to some arguably pragmatic but undemocratic features of his presidency, notably, a tendency to technocratic and top-down management. In response to complaints about Obama from a politically liberal orientation, I will defend his actions as pragmatic.

The cyberworld fast rolling in and impacting every aspect of human living on the globe today presents an enormous challenge to humankind. It is taken up by the media following current events through to all kinds of natural- and social-scientific discourses. Digitized technoscience develops at a breakneck pace in all areas accompanied by sociological analysis. What is missing is a philosophical response genuinely posing the basic ontological question: What is a digital being's peculiar mode of being? The present study offers (...) a digital ontology that analyzes the dissolution of beings into bit-strings, driven by mathematized science. The mathematization of knowledge reaches back to Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle, and continues with Descartes, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz. Western knowledge from its inception has always been driven by an unbridled will to efficient-causal power over all kinds of movement and change. This historical trajectory culminates in the universal Turing machine that enables efficient, automated, algorithmic control over the movement of digital beings through the cyberworld. The book fills in the ontological foundations underpinning this brave new cyberworld and interrogates them, especially by questioning the millennia-old conception of 1D-linear time. An alternative ontology of movement arises, based on a radically alternative conception of 3D-time. (shrink)

Eldred offers a remedy to the consequences of ancient Greek misconceptions of time that are also entrenched in today’s mathematized physics. Here time is spatialized as the one-dimensionally linear ‘arrow of time’ for the sake of predicting and controlling movement. But such spatialized time distorts the phenomenon of time itself. An alternative, hermeneutic-phenomenological path begins with a pre-spatial concept of time that is genuinely three-dimensional. This paves the way for recasting who we are as humans in belonging, first of all, (...) to the free openness of 3D-temporality. This belonging enables temporally 3D-vision of the psyche that empowers us to see movement at all and reconcile its inherent contradictoriness. We are then also able to conceive ourselves no longer merely as internally cogitating, self-conscious subjects, but as engaged existentially in temporally 3D-interplay, mutually estimating and esteeming who we are. This unpredictable interplay is constrained, however, by being played out in the sociating medium of thingified value, the accumulative movement of thingified value having gained the upper hand in dictating our life-movements as well as our interplay with the earth. (shrink)