This article reformulates Stephan Helmreich´s the ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the historiality of otherness in the foundations of human microbiome science. Through the lens of my ethnographic fieldwork of a transnational community of microbiome scientists that conducted a landmark human microbiome research on indigenous microbes and its affiliated and first personalised microbiome initiative, the American Gut Project, I follow and trace the key actors, experimental systems and onto-epistemic claims in the emergence of human microbiome science a decade ago. In doing (...) so, I show the links between the reinscription of race, comparative research on the microbial genetic variation of human populations and the remining of bioprospected data for personalised medicine. In these unpredictable research movements, the microbiome of non-Western peoples and territories is much more than a side project or a specific approach within the field: it constitutes the nucleus of its experimental system, opening towards subsequent and cumulative research processes and knowledge production in human microbiome science. The article demonstrates that while human microbiome science is articulated upon the microbial ‘makeup’ of non-wester(nised) communities, societies, and locales, its results and therapeutics are only applicable to medical conditions affecting rich nations (i.e., inflammatory, autoimmune, and metabolic diseases). My reformulation of ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the condition of possibility of human microbiome science reveals that its individual dimension is sustained by microbial DNA data from human populations through bioprospecting practices and gains meaning through personalised medicine initiatives, informal online networks of pseudoscientific and commodified microbial-related evidence. (shrink)

The current pandemic could give several ape species the final push into extinction. Besides the direct harm the virus may cause to species that are very susceptible to human respiratory pathogens, the pandemic has also brought an economic crisis with lockdowns and absence from usual workplaces, resulting in increased poaching and habitat encroachment. The countries where the remaining apes live cannot shoulder alone the cost of conservation. Other countries with more resources have also contributed to ape extinction and are also (...) implicated in the current pandemic. Moreover, international cooperation is essential for the conservation efforts needed to avoid depriving other hominids of their habitats, their cultures, and their future. (shrink)

Essays discuss poetry, communication, television, form, aesthetics, bad taste, and art.

Journal Name: The Law & Ethics of Human Rights Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper discusses an earlier emendation to fr. 54 GRF Funaioli from Varro's De bibliothecis and argues that, while the text et citro refers to cedar oil, it should not be emended to et cedro. A comparison with a passage from Pliny the Elder (HN 13.86) is used to support the view presented in the article.

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 491-515, Winter 2021.

By a comparison between Maxwell's electrodynamics classically interpreted (MT) and relativistic electrodynamics (RED), this paper discusses whether the “asymmetries” in MT mentioned by A. Einstein in his 1905 relativity paper are only of a conceptual nature or rather involve specific empirical claims. It is shown that in fact MT predicts strongly asymmetric behaviour for very simple interactions, and an analysis is made of the extent of the “symmetry” achieved by means of relativistic postulates. A “low” velocity experiment is suggested which (...) could provide another test of the accuracy of RED with respect to MT. (shrink)

In preference aggregation a set of individuals express preferences over a set of alternatives, and these preferences have to be aggregated into a collective preference. When preferences are represented as orders, aggregation procedures are called social welfare functions. Classical results in social choice theory state that it is impossible to aggregate the preferences of a set of individuals under different natural sets of axiomatic conditions. We define a first-order language for social welfare functions and we give a complete axiomatisation for (...) this class, without having the number of individuals or alternatives specified in the language. We are able to express classical axiomatic requirements in our first-order language, giving formal axioms for three classical theorems of preference aggregation by Arrow, by Sen, and by Kirman and Sondermann. We explore to what extent such theorems can be formally derived from our axiomatisations, obtaining positive results for Sen’s Theorem and the Kirman-Sondermann Theorem. For the case of Arrow’s Theorem, which does not apply in the case of infinite societies, we have to resort to fixing the number of individuals with an additional axiom. In the long run, we hope that our approach to formalisation can serve as the basis for a fully automated proof of classical and new theorems in social choice theory. (shrink)

As the only book-length treatment of Aquinas's aesthetics available in English, this volume should interest philosophers, medievalists, historians, critics, and ...

Serendipities is a careful unraveling of the fabulous and the false, a brilliant exposition of how unanticipated truths often spring from false ideas. From Leibniz's belief that the I Ching illustrated the principles of calculus to Marco Polo's mistaking a rhinoceros for a unicorn, Umberto Eco offers a dazzling tour of intellectual history, illuminating the ways in which we project the familiar onto the strange to make sense of the world. Uncovering layers of mistakes that have shaped human history, (...) Eco offers with wit and clarity such instances as Columbus's voyage to the New World, the fictions that grew around the Rosicrucians and Knights Templar, and the linguistic endeavors to recreate the language of Babel, to show how serendipities can evolve out of mistakes. With erudition, anecdotes, and scholarly rigor, this new collection of essays is sure to entertain and enlighten any reader with a passion for the curious history of languages and ideas. (shrink)

This book is centrally concerned with crucial theoretical and practical aspects of teaching in the national and global borderlands of gender, race, and sexuality studies. The cross-cultural feminist focus of this anthology allows the contributors to consider the various ways in which global and national frameworks intersect in the classroom and in students' thinking, and also the ways in which power and authority are developed, directed, and deployed in the feminist classroom. This volume provides a critical elaboration of provocative, self-reflexive (...) questions for feminist cultural and intellectual practice for the 21st century. In doing so, the volume provides a site for engaged feminist self-criticism for the specific purpose of reinvigorating a critical pedagogical practice grounded in multicultural feminist identities. (shrink)

Individual decisions about how to exercise the legal right to procreative liberty may generate either positive or negative externalities. From within a resource egalitarian perspective, such as that of Ronald Dworkin, it can be argued that procreative justice is asymmetric in the following respect. Justice need not require that parents be subsidised if they produce a public good, yet its ideal achievement may require their activities be taxed if they threaten to produce a public bad.

This is the second of a series of papers that investigate fragments of quasi-Nelson logic (QNL) from an algebraic logic standpoint. QNL, recently introduced as a common generalization of intuitionistic and Nelson’s constructive logic with strong negation, is the axiomatic extension of the substructural logic |$FL_{ew}$| (full Lambek calculus with exchange and weakening) by the Nelson axiom. The algebraic counterpart of QNL (quasi-Nelson algebras) is a class of commutative integral residuated lattices (a.k.a. |$FL_{ew}$|-algebras) that includes both Heyting and Nelson algebras (...) and can be characterized algebraically in several alternative ways. The present paper focuses on the algebraic counterpart (a class we dub quasi-Nelson implication algebras, QNI-algebras) of the implication–negation fragment of QNL, corresponding to the connectives that witness the algebraizability of QNL. We recall the main known results on QNI-algebras and establish a number of new ones. Among these, we show that QNI-algebras form a congruence-distributive variety (Cor. 3.15) that enjoys equationally definable principal congruences and the strong congruence extension property (Prop. 3.16); we also characterize the subdirectly irreducible QNI-algebras in terms of the underlying poset structure (Thm. 4.23). Most of these results are obtained thanks to twist representations for QNI-algebras, which generalize the known ones for Nelson and quasi-Nelson algebras; we further introduce a Hilbert-style calculus that is algebraizable and has the variety of QNI-algebras as its equivalent algebraic semantics. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge's Global Resources Dividend relies on a flat tax on the use of natural resources to fund the eradication of world poverty. Hillel Steiner's Global Fund taxes the full rental value of owned natural resources and distributes the proceeds equally. The paper compares the Dividend and the Fund and defends the Global Share, a novel proposal that taxes either use or ownership, does so (when possible) progressively, and distributes the revenue according to a prioritarian rather than a sufficientarian or (...) egalitarian principle. (shrink)

We look at extensions (i.e., stronger logics in the same language) of the Belnap–Dunn four-valued logic. We prove the existence of a countable chain of logics that extend the Belnap–Dunn and do not coincide with any of the known extensions (Kleene’s logics, Priest’s logic of paradox). We characterise the reduced algebraic models of these new logics and prove a completeness result for the first and last element of the chain stating that both logics are determined by a single finite logical (...) matrix. We show that the last logic of the chain is not finitely axiomatisable. (shrink)

Although G. A. Cohen's work on Marx was flawed by a lack of gender-awareness, his work on Rawls owes much of its success to feminist inspiration. Cohen appeals effectively to feminism to rebut the basic structure objection to his egalitarian ethos, and could now appeal to feminism in response to Andrew Williams's publicity objection to this ethos. The article argues that Williams's objection is insufficient to rebut Cohen's ethos, inapplicable to variants of this ethos, and in conflict with plausible gender-egalitarian (...) ethoses. The article also advocates an understanding of basic structuralism and publicity consistent with feminism, and argues that Rawlsians need not reject plausible domestic egalitarian ethoses on either publicity or liberty grounds. To Michèle, G. A. Cohen's Harriet Taylor. (shrink)