Clatterbuck et al. (Biol Philos 28: 577–592, 2013) argue that there is no fact of the matter whether selection dominates drift or vice versa in any particular case of evolution. Their reasons are not empirically based; rather, they are purely conceptual. We show that their conceptual presuppositions are unmotivated, unnecessary and overly complex. We also show that their conclusion runs contrary to current biological practice. The solution is to recognize that evolution involves a probabilistic sampling process, and that drift is (...) a deviation from probabilistic expectation. We conclude that conceptually, there are no problems with distinguishing drift from selection, and empirically—as modern science illustrates—when drift does occur, there is a quantifiable fact of the matter to be discovered. (shrink)

The law of torts is concerned with the secondary obligations generated by the infringement of primary rights. This work seeks to show that this apparently simple proposition enables us to understand the law of torts as found in the common law. Using primarily English materials, but drawing heavily upon the law of other common law jurisdictions, Stevens seeks to give an account of the law of torts which relies upon the core material familiar to most students and practitioners with a (...) grasp of the law of torts. This material is drawn together in support of a single argument in a provocative and accessible style, and puts forward a new theoretical model for analysing the law of torts, providing an overarching framework for radically reconceiving the subject. (shrink)

The law of torts is concerned with the secondary obligations generated by the infringement of primary rights. This work seeks to show that this apparently simple proposition enables us to understand the law of torts as found in the common law. Using primarily English materials, but drawing heavily upon the law of other common law jurisdictions, Stevens seeks to give an account of the law of torts which relies upon the core material familiar to most students and practitioners with a (...) grasp of the law of torts. This material is drawn together in support of a single argument in a provocative and accessible style, and puts forward a new theoretical model for analysing the law of torts, providing an overarching framework for radically reconceiving the subject. (shrink)

It's often been said that Chomsky is to linguistics what Einstein is to physics. His 1957 treatise, Syntactic Structures, initiated the so-called Chomskyan Revolution; in that book, Chomsky proposed a new linguistic theory which defined language as an innate human faculty hard-wired into our brains. Consequently, in Chomsky's view, there is a kind of "universal grammar" underlying all languages. Imagine that an alien came to Earth and observed the way we humans communicate with each other. According to Chomsky, this alien (...) would perceive all languages on Earth as pretty much the same, with only superficial variations distinguishing, for example, English from Chinese. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a pilot study of differences in ethical evaluations between business faculty and students at a Southern university. Data were collected from 137 business students (46 freshmen and 67 seniors) and 34 business faculty members. Significant differences were found in 7 of the 30 situations between freshmen and faculty and four situations between seniors and faculty. When the combined means for each group were tested, there was no significant difference in the means at the 0.05 (...) level of significance. A trend was revealed, however, in that the majority of the time faculty members were the most ethically oriented followed by seniors and then freshmen. (shrink)

This study sought to identify whether or not differences exist between the ethical decisions of male and female managers; and, if they do exist, to identify the areas in which differences occurred. An additional evaluation was conducted to determine how each perceived their counterpart would respond to the same ethical decision making situations.Data were collected from 50 male managers and 50 female managers by means of a self-administered questionnaire. Distinctive demographic characteristics were noted among the segments.

The Cell Cycle Ontology (CCO) has the aim to provide a 'one stop shop' for scientists interested in the biology of the cell cycle that would like to ask questions from a molecular and/or systems perspective: what are the genes, proteins, and so on involved in the regulation of cell division? How do they interact to produce the effects observed in the regulation of the cell cycle? To answer these questions, the CCO must integrate a large amount of knowledge from (...) diverse sources; the irregularity and incompleteness of this information suggests an ontology can act as the means of this integration. The volatility and continued expansion of biological knowledge means the content and modelling of the CCO will have to be frequently changed and updated. The CCO is generated from the input data automatically once every two months. This makes it easy to change the representation to enable certain queries; incorporate new knowledge; and consistently apply design patterns across the CCO. The automatic process also allows the CCO to be delivered in a variety of representations that suit the needs of various CCO customers and the abilities of existing toolsets. In this paper we present the CCO and its characteristics of utility and flexibility, that, from our perspective, make it a beautiful ontology. (shrink)

This paper presents use cases for modular development of ontologies using the OWL imports mechanism. Many of the methods are inspired by work in modular development in software engineering. The approach is aimed at developers of large ontologies covering multiple subdomains that make use of OWL reasoners for inference. Such ontologies are common in biomedical sciences, but nothing in the paper is specific to biomedicine. There are four groups of use cases: (i) organisation and factoring of ontologies; (ii) maintaining stable (...) interfaces and bindings between ontologies and between ontologies and software; (iii) localization of ontologies to the requirements of specific sites and (iv) extension of ontologies and encapsulation of modifications. OWL's axiom-oriented import mechanism has many similarities with import mechanisms in object-oriented software but also important differences – in particular, the effects of OWL imports are global, and the order in which modules are imported is irrelevant. The advantages and disadvantages of OWL's axiom-oriented approach are discussed, and suggestions are made for extensions to allow axioms to be filtered out as well as added – a mechanism that we term “adaptation” to distinguish it from the standard import mechanism. Finally we discuss possible alternatives and practical experience with the approaches presented. (shrink)

When do descriptive regularities become prescriptive norms? We examined children's and adults' use of group regularities to make prescriptive judgments, employing novel groups that engaged in morally neutral behaviors. Participants were introduced to conforming or non-conforming individuals. Children negatively evaluated non-conformity, with negative evaluations declining with age. These effects were replicable across competitive and cooperative intergroup contexts and stemmed from reasoning about group regularities rather than reasoning about individual regularities. These data provide new insights into children's group concepts and have (...) important implications for understanding the development of stereotyping and norm enforcement. (shrink)

Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self‐assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two (...) stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self‐assessment scores reflect the stages of the process. (shrink)

Important features of the self-concept can be located outside of the individual and inside close or related others. The authors use this insight to reinterpret data previously said to support the empathy-altruism model of helping, which asserts that empathic concern for another results in selflessness and true altruism. That is, they argue that the conditions that lead to empathic concern also lead to a greater sense of self-other overlap, raising the possibility that helping under these conditions is not selfless but (...) is also directed toward the self. In 3 studies, the impact of empathic concern on willingness to help was eliminated when oneness--a measure of perceived self-other overlap--was considered. Path analyses revealed further that empathic concern increased helping only through its relation to perceived oneness, thereby throwing the empathy-altruism model into question. The authors suggest that empathic concern affects helping primarily as an emotional signal of oneness. (shrink)

The acceptability of sentences in natural language is constrained not only grammaticality, but also by the relationship between what is being conveyed and such factors as context and the beliefs of interlocutors. In many languages the critical element in a sentence (its focus) must be given grammatical prominence. There are different accounts of the nature of focus marking. Some researchers treat it as the grammatical realization of a potentially arbitrary feature of universal grammar and do not provide an explicit account (...) of its origins; others have argued, however, that focus marking is a (grammaticalized) functional solution to the problem of efficiently transmitting information via a noisy channel. By adding redundancy to highlight critical elements in particular, focus protects key parts of the message from noise. If this information‐theoretic account is true, then we should expect focus‐like behavior to emerge even in non‐linguistic communication systems given sufficient noise and pressures for efficiency. We tested this in an experiment in which participants played a simple communication game in which they had to click cells on a grid to communicate one of two line figures drawn across the grid. We manipulated the noise, available time, and required effort, and measured patterns of redundancy. Because the lines in many cases overlapped, meaning that only some parts of each line could be used to distinguish it from the other, we were able to compare the extent to which effort was expended on adding redundancy to critical (non‐overlapping) and non‐critical (overlapping) parts of the message. The results supported the information‐theoretic account of focus and shed light on the emergence of information structure in language. (shrink)

An important part of our Theory of Mind—the ability to reason about other people's unobservable mental states—is the ability to attribute false beliefs to others. We investigated whether processing these false beliefs, as well as similar but nonmental representations, is reliant on language. Participants watched videos in which a protagonist hides a gift and either takes a photo of it or writes a text about its location before a second person inadvertently moves the present to a different location, thereby rendering (...) the belief and either the photo or text false. At the same time, participants performed either a concurrent verbal interference task (rehearsing strings of digits) or a visual interference task (remembering a visual pattern). Results showed that performance on false belief trials did not decline under verbal interference relative to visual interference. We interpret these findings as further support for the view that language does not form an essential part of the process of reasoning online (“in the moment”) about false beliefs. (shrink)

The current investigation examines the incidence of clients telling their psychotherapists of committing violent crimes for which they have not been prosecuted. Thirteen percent of the psychologists surveyed indicated that on at least one occasion a client self-disclosed to them during a psychotherapy session that he/she had murdered someone, not including the killing of another person in the line of duty in the military or as a public peace officer. One third of the psychologists had clients self-disclose an unprosecuted incident (...) of a sexual assault, and more than two thirds had clients self-disclose an unprosecuted incident of a physical assault during a psychotherapy session. Data are reported on psychotherapists' views of the impact of such disclosures on the psychotherapy relationship, adequacy of being informed regarding legal obligations after hearing such reports of violence, and adequacy of graduate preparation to deal with these clinical situations. (shrink)

Empirical research pertaining to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), clinician behaviors related to do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders and substituted judgment suggests potential contributions to medical ethics. Research quantifying the likelihood of surviving CPR points to the need for further philosophical analysis of the limitations of the patient autonomy in decision making, the nature and definition of medical futility, and the relationship between futility and professional standards. Research on DNR orders has identified barriers to the goal of patient involvement in these life and death (...) discussions. The initial data on surrogate decision making also points to the need for a reexamination of the moral basis for substituted judgment, the moral authority of proxy decision making and the second-order status of the best interests standard. These examples of empirical research suggest that an interplay between empirical research, ethical analysis and policy development may represent a new form of interdisciplinary scholarship to improve clinical medicine. (shrink)

Jon Shields's finding—that certain evangelical pro‐life activist groups are more interested in deliberative discussions about abortion than are pro‐choice activists—is wrong on methodological, normative, and philosophical grounds. He generalizes about pro‐life civility from a small, trained sample group, and ignores possibly important variables that would explain pro‐choicers' incivility. Further, politeness is not necessarily a requirement of democratic deliberation—which entails not forcing one's own beliefs on the public, as pro‐lifers manifestly are trying to do, despite their calm demeanor. Conversely, some pro‐choicers' (...) refusal to engage in debates is not a deliberative failure, as Shields suggests, as deliberation includes such things as campaigning and canvassing. Lastly, Shields, and the pro‐lifers he has observed, use the weakest of the pro‐choice arguments, instead of focusing on the best academic work in the field. (shrink)

The concept of anxiety has long held a central place in psychoanalytic theories of mind and treatment. Yet, in recent years, data from the neurosciences and from pharmacological studies have posed a compelling challenge to psychoanalytic models of anxiety. One major outcome of these studies is the realization that anxiety both organizes and disorganizes, that it can be both symptom and signal. In _Anxiety as Symptom and Signal_, editors Steven Roose and Robert Glick have brought together distinguished contributors (...) to address these different dimensions of anxiety. A section of original papers on "Anxiety as Symptom" covers evolutionary, neuroanatomical, genetic, and developmental perspectives. A complementary section on "Anxiety as Signal" focuses on the meanings and functions of anxiety in the clinical process; contributions address anxiety in its ego-psychological, intersubjective, and relational dimensions. The illuminating, readable collection will broaden clinicians' awareness of the diverse research findings that now inform our understanding of anxiety. No less importantly, it will deepen their appreciation of the richly variegated ways that anxiety can shape, and be shaped by, the clinical process. (shrink)

The concept of anxiety has long held a central place in psychoanalytic theories of mind and treatment. Yet, in recent years, data from the neurosciences and from pharmacological studies have posed a compelling challenge to psychoanalytic models of anxiety. One major outcome of these studies is the realization that anxiety both organizes and disorganizes, that it can be both symptom and signal. In _Anxiety as Symptom and Signal_, editors Steven Roose and Robert Glick have brought together distinguished contributors (...) to address these different dimensions of anxiety. A section of original papers on "Anxiety as Symptom" covers evolutionary, neuroanatomical, genetic, and developmental perspectives. A complementary section on "Anxiety as Signal" focuses on the meanings and functions of anxiety in the clinical process; contributions address anxiety in its ego-psychological, intersubjective, and relational dimensions. The illuminating, readable collection will broaden clinicians' awareness of the diverse research findings that now inform our understanding of anxiety. No less importantly, it will deepen their appreciation of the richly variegated ways that anxiety can shape, and be shaped by, the clinical process. (shrink)

There is a worry that the ‘major transitions in evolution’ represent an arbitrary group of events. This worry is warranted, and we show why. We argue that the transition to a new level of hierarchy necessarily involves a nonselectionist chance process. Thus any unified theory of evolutionary transitions must be more like a general theory of fortuitous luck, rather than a rigid formulation of expected events. We provide a systematic account of evolutionary transitions based on a second-order regularity of chance (...) events, as stipulated by the ZFEL (Zero Force Evolutionary Law). And in doing so, we make evolutionary transitions explainable and predictable, and so not entirely contingent after all. (shrink)

100+ logical, both formal and informal, fallacies explained and illustrated by important and famous arguments made in the history of philosophy.

One of the tasks faced by young children is the segmentation of a continuous stream of speech into discrete linguistic units. Early in development, syllables emerge as perceptual primitives, and the wholesale storage of syllable chunks is one possible strategy for bootstrapping the segmentation process. Here, we investigate what types of chunks children store. Our method involves selecting syllabified utterances from corpora of child-directed speech, which we vary according to (a) their length in syllables, (b) the mutual predictability of their (...) syllables, and (c) their frequency. We then use the number of utterances within which words are contained to predict the time course of word learning, arguing that utterances which perform well at this task are also more likely to be stored, by young children, as undersegmented chunks. Our results show that short utterances are best-suited for predicting when children acquire the words contained within them, although the effect is rather small. Beyond this, we also find that short utterances are the most likely to correspond to words. Together, the two findings suggest that children may not store many complete utterances as undersegmented chunks, with most of the units that children store as hypothesized words corresponding to \textit{actual} words. However, dovetailing with an item-based account of language-acquisition, when children do store undersegmented chunks, these are likely to be short sequences -- not frequent or internally predictable multi-word chunks. We end by discussing implications for work on formulaic multi-word sequences. (shrink)

How should we evaluate the success of each person's life? Countering the prevalent philosophical perspective on the subject, Steven M. Cahn and Christine Vitrano defend the view that our well-being is dependent not on particular activities, accomplishments, or awards but on finding personal satisfaction while treating others with due concern. The authors suggest that moral behavior is not necessary for happiness and does not ensure it. Yet they also argue that morality and happiness are needed for living well, and (...) together suffice to achieve that goal. Cahn and Vitrano link their position to elements within both the Hellenistic and Hebraic traditions, in particular the views of Epicurus and lessons found in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Written in an accessible style and illustrated with incisive vignettes drawn from history, literature, films, and everyday life, _Happiness and Goodness_ is a compelling work of philosophy for anyone who seeks to understand the nature of a good life. (shrink)

In Neutrality and the Academic Ethic, distinguished philosopher Robert L. Simon explores the claim that universities can and should be politically neutral. He examines conceptual questions about the meaning of neutrality, distinguishes different conceptions of what neutrality involves, and considers in what sense, if any, institutional neutrality is both possible and desirable. In Part II, a collection of original and previously published essays provides different views on these and related issues.

This article presents the case of an HIV-positive client who reported having sexual relations with an unknowing partner. The issue raised is whether the therapist was required to warn the unknowing partner, similar to the Tarasoff mandate that is imposed on therapists. The case is analyzed from an ethical framework similar to that presented by Beauchamp and Childress. Two opinions are presented, each leading to different conclusions about whether the therapist should inform the unknowing partner. It is concluded that although (...) such analysis is valuable in aiding the therapist in his or her decision-making process, no clear professional standard for the management of the problem is evident. (shrink)

We argue that Nietzsche's interest in truth is more than merely a critical one. He criticizes one historically prominent conception of truth while proposing his own theory, called "perspectivism". However, Nietzsche's truth perspectivism appears to face a self-referential paradox, which is explored in detail. We argue that no commentator has yet solved this puzzle, and then provide our own solution. This solution, which depends upon distinguishing between weak and strong perspectivism while promoting the former, supplies Nietzsche with a consistent truth (...) theory that preserves the bulk of his claims. (shrink)