Transmission of justification across inference is a valuable and indeed ubiquitous epistemic phenomenon in everyday life and science. It is thanks to the phenomenon of epistemic transmission that inferential reasoning is a means for substantiating predictions of future events and, more generally, for expanding the sphere of our justified beliefs or reinforcing the justification of beliefs that we already entertain. However, transmission of justification is not without exceptions. As a few epistemologists have come to realise, more or (...) less trivial forms of circularity can prevent justification from transmitting from p to q even if one has justification for p and one is aware of the inferential link from p to q. In interesting cases this happens because one can acquire justification for p only if one has independent justification for q. In this case the justification for q cannot depend on the justification for p and the inferential link from p to q, as genuine transmission would require. The phenomenon of transmission failure seems to shed light on philosophical puzzles, such as Moore's proof of a material world and McKinsey's paradox, and it plays a central role in various philosophical debates. For this reason it is being granted continued and increasing attention. (shrink)

Biologists rely heavily on the language of information, coding, and transmission that is commonplace in the field of information theory developed by Claude Shannon, but there is open debate about whether such language is anything more than facile metaphor. Philosophers of biology have argued that when biologists talk about information in genes and in evolution, they are not talking about the sort of information that Shannon’s theory addresses. First, philosophers have suggested that Shannon’s theory is only useful for developing (...) a shallow notion of correlation, the so-called causal sense of information. Second, they typically argue that in genetics and evolutionary biology, information language is used in a semantic sense, whereas semantics are deliberately omitted from Shannon’s theory. Neither critique is well-founded. Here we propose an alternative to the causal and semantic senses of information: a transmission sense of information, in which an object X conveys information if the function of X is to reduce, by virtue of its sequence properties, uncertainty on the part of an agent who observes X. The transmission sense not only captures much of what biologists intend when they talk about information in genes, but also brings Shannon’s theory back to the fore. By taking the viewpoint of a communications engineer and focusing on the decision problem of how information is to be packaged for transport, this approach resolves several problems that have plagued the information concept in biology, and highlights a number of important features of the way that information is encoded, stored, and transmitted as genetic sequence. (shrink)

This paper explains how the notion of justification transmission can be used to ground a notion of knowledge transmission. It then explains how transmission theories can characterise schoolteacher cases, which have prominently been presented as counterexamples to transmission theories.

Pour passer du domaine intrapsychique de l’identification à celui psychosocial de l’identité, il est nécessaire de se référer aux groupes d’appartenance dans l’espace transitionnel desquels s’effectuent la métabolisation de la réalité psychique et du monde extérieur, la différenciation du Moi et du non-Moi, du narcissisme et de l’investissement d’objets. Le groupe constitue ainsi le chaînon manquant pour saisir à la fois les rapports du singulier au collectif et leur imbrication réciproque et permet de rendre compte de l’histoire transgénérationnelle. Selon les (...) travaux de Nicolas Abraham et Maria Torok, le concept de fantôme postule que certaines personnes héritent de la substance psychique de secrets de leurs ancêtres. Les exemples cliniques de transmission cachée conduisent au postulat d’un lien entre la structure psychique du sujet endocryptique et de celle du groupe d’appartenance primaire. (shrink)

The Neo-Moorean Deduction (I have a hand, so I am not a brain-in-a-vat) and the Zebra Deduction (the creature is a zebra, so isn’t a cleverly disguised mule) are notorious. Crispin Wright, Martin Davies, Fred Dretske, and Brian McLaughlin, among others, argue that these deductions are instances of transmission failure. That is, they argue that these deductions cannot transmit justification to their conclusions. I contend, however, that the notoriety of these deductions is undeserved. My strategy is to clarify, attack, (...) defend, and apply. I clarify what transmission and transmission failure really are, thereby exposing two questionable but quotidian assumptions. I attack existing views of transmission failure, especially those of Crispin Wright. I defend a permissive view of transmission failure, one which holds that deductions of a certain kind fail to transmit only because of premise circularity. Finally, I apply this account to the Neo-Moorean and Zebra Deductions and show that, given my permissive view, these deductions transmit in an intuitively acceptable way—at least if either a certain type of circularity is benign or a certain view of perceptual justification is false. (shrink)

This encyclopedia entry provides an introduction to the literature on transmission failure.

Transmission arguments against closure of knowledge base the case against closure on the premise that a necessary condition for knowledge is not closed. Warfield argues that this kind of argument is fallacious whereas Brueckner, Murphy and Yan try to rescue it. According to them, the transmission argument is no longer fallacious once an implicit assumption is made explicit. I defend Warfield’s objection by arguing that the various proposals for the unstated assumption either do not avoid the fallacy or (...) turn the central premise of the transmission argument, namely that a necessary condition is not closed, into a redundant and superfluous premise. I conclude that Warfield’s advice is still to be heeded: Arguments against closure must not rely essentially on the premise that a necessary condition for knowledge is not closed. (shrink)

I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond to two cases for the view, and argue that the view is false. The first argument for the view neglects the distinction between believing a proposition on the basis of a justification and merely having a justification to believe a proposition. The second argument for the view neglects the position that one's justification for believing a conclusion can be one's premise for the conclusion, (...) rather than simply one's justification for the premise. Finally, the view is false since it is inconsistent with the closure of knowledge as closure is properly understood. (shrink)

Abstract: Pluralistic ignorance is a nasty informational phenomenon widely studied in social psychology and theoretical economics. It revolves around conditions under which it is "legitimate" for everyone to remain ignorant. In formal epistemology there is enough machinery to model and resolve situations in which pluralistic ignorance may arise. Here is a simple first stab at recovering from pluralistic ignorance by means of knowledge transmissibility.

Culture, defined as shared behavior or information within a community acquired through some form of social learning from conspecifics, is now suggested to act as a second inheritance system. Cultural processes are important in a wide variety of vertebrate species. Birdsong provides a classic example of cultural processes: cultural transmission, where changes in a shared song are learned from surrounding conspecifics, and cultural evolution, where the patterns of songs change through time. This form of cultural transmission of information (...) has features that are different in speed and form from genetic transmission. More recently, culture, vocal traditions and an extreme form of song evolution has been documented in cetaceans. Humpback whale song ‘revolutions’, where the single population-wide shared song type is rapidly replaced by a new, novel song type introduced from a neighbouring population, represents an extraordinary example of ocean basin-wide cultural transmission rivalled in its geographic extent only by humans. In this review, we examine the cultural evolutions and revolutions present in some birdsong and whale song, respectively. By taking a comparative approach to these cultural processes, we review the existing evidence to understand the similarities and differences for their patterns of expression and the underlying drivers, including anthropogenic influences, which may shape them. Finally, we encourage future studies to explore the role of innovation vs. production errors in song evolution, the fitness information present in song, and how human-induced changes in population sizes, trajectories and migratory connections facilitating cultural transmission may be driving song revolutions. (shrink)

Social transmission is at the core of cultural evolutionary theory. It occurs when a demonstrator uses mental representations to produce some public displays which in turn allow a learner to acquire similar mental representations. Although cultural evolutionists do not dispute this view of social transmission, they typically abstract away from the multistep nature of the process when they speak of cultural variants at large, thereby referring both to variation and evolutionary change in mental representations as well as in (...) their corresponding public displays. This conflation suggests that differentiating each step of the transmission process is redundant. In this paper, I examine different forms of interplay between the multistep nature of social transmission and the metric spaces used by cultural evolutionists to measure cultural variation and to model cultural change. I offer a conceptual analysis of what assumptions seem to be at work when cultural evolutionists conflate the complex causal sequence of social transmission as a single space of variation in which populations evolve. To this aim, I use the framework of variation spaces, a formal framework commonly used in evolutionary biology, and I develop two theoretical concepts, ‘technique’ and ‘technical space’, for addressing cases where the complexity of social transmission defies the handy assumption of a single variation space for cultural change. (shrink)

Humans have developed the capacity to approve or disapprove of the behavior of their children and of unrelated individuals. The ability to approve or disapprove transformed social learning into a system of cumulative cultural inheritance, because it increased the reliability of cultural transmission. Moreover, people can transmit their behavioral experiences (regarding what can and cannot be done) to their offspring, thereby avoiding the costs of a laborious, and sometimes dangerous, evaluation of different cultural alternatives. Our thesis is that, during (...) ontogeny, the evaluative communication (approval/disapproval) between parents and offspring is substituted by other evaluative communications among peers, like individuals of the same generation. Each person belongs to a reference social group with individuals that interact more intensively. Humans have developed psychological mechanisms that enable cultural transmission by being receptive to parental advice as well as their reference social group. The selective pressure that promoted these new evaluative interactions arose to facilitate the establishment of efficient cooperative relationships. In short, the social control of behavior is essential to understand human cultural transmission. (shrink)

According to a natural view of instrumental normativity, if you ought to do φ, and doing ψ is a necessary means for you to do φ, then you ought to do ψ. In “Instrumental Normativity: In Defense of the Transmission Principle,” Benjamin Kiesewetter defends this principle against certain actualist-inspired counterexamples. In this article I argue that Kiesewetter’s defense of the transmission principle fails. His arguments rely on certain principles—Joint Satisfiability and Reason Transmission—which we should not accept in (...) the unqualified forms needed to establish his conclusion. (shrink)

According to fitting-attitudes accounts of value, the valuable is what there is sufficient reason to value. Such accounts face the famous wrong kind of reason problem. For example, if an evil demon threatens to kill you unless you value him, it may appear that you have sufficient reason to value the demon, although he is not valuable. One solution to this problem is to deny that the demon’s threat is a reason to value him. It is instead a reason to (...) want to value the demon, and to bring it about that you value him. However, many proponents of the wrong kind of reason problem find this solution unmotivated. This paper thus offers a new argument for this solution. The argument turns on the ‘transmission’ of reasons – the familiar fact that there is often reason for one action or attitude because there is reason for another. I observe that putative reasons of the wrong kind transmit in a very different way to other reasons. I then argue that this difference is best explained by the hypothesis that putative reasons of the wrong kind are not reasons for the attitude in question, but are instead reasons to want and bring about that attitude. (shrink)

Against Transmission introduces the technical history and phenomenology of media, a field of study that explains the characteristics of contemporary life by looking to the technical properties of machines. By studying the engineering of signal processing, the book interrogates how the understanding of media-as-machine exposes us to a particular phenomenological relationship to the world, asking: what can the hardware of machines that segment information into very small elements tell us about experiences of time, memory and history? This book offers (...) both a detailed and radical investigation of the technical architecture of media such as television, computers, cameras, and cinematography. It achieves this through in-depth archive research into the history of the development of media technology, combined with innovative readings of key concepts from philosophers of media such as Harold A. Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler, Siegfried Zielinski and Wolfgang Ernst. Teaming philosophical inquiry with thorough technical and historical analysis, in a broad range of international case studies, from early experimental cinema and television to contemporary media art and innovative hardware developments, Barker shows how the technical discoveries made in these contexts have engineered the experiences of time in contemporary media culture. (shrink)

Transmissible cancers are elusive and understudied parasitic life forms caused by malignant clonal cells (nine lineages are known so far). They emerge by completing sequential steps that include breaking cell cooperation, evade anti‐cancer defences and shedding cells to infect new hosts. Transmissible cancers impair host fitness, and their importance as selective force is likely largely underestimated. It is, therefore, crucial to determine how common they might be in the wild. Here, we draw a parallel between the steps required for a (...) transmissible cancer to emerge and the steps required for an intelligent civilisation to emerge in the Milky Way using a modified Drake equation. Using numerical analyses, we estimate the potential number of extant marine and bivalve species in which transmissible cancers might exist. Our results suggest that transmissible cancers are more common than expected, and that new lineages can be found by screening a large number of species. (shrink)

In the process of psychical transmission from one generation to the next, who asks what of whom? The evocative expression of an ‘errand’ suggests that a subject is sent on a mission, sent in error, wanders away, and returns home, adversely changed. A vocative imperative is at the heart of a mission. When there is a call from an anterior Other, there must be a response. Before, there was an experience of a call and its response, then, there would (...) be an errand. Precisely, the subject is preceded by the self-same subject’s constituted and appropriated mandate from an anterior object. To upend an aberrant errand, a subject must reconfigure a posted imperative, ever altering, again and again, the call and summons of an alien and unwelcome guest turned host. Otherwise, the dissonant and unwelcome guest turned host may transform the naïve subject into a ghost, a revenant that disappears and returns to haunt the subject. Thanks to the new and public space in the clinical setting, the entity that listens to the sub-ject will come to know that reception and perception of an errand is communalised in ways where there is a constant alteration, revision and co-creation of meanings of the received and perceived phenomenon through reciprocal connection and reciprocal correction. When subject’s experiential acquisitions enter that clinical setting, a resolute upending of a retrogressive descent toward death may occur. Hence, the meaning of staying alive for an Other who is otherwise dislocated, thrown, posted into a transgenerational spiral, toward death. A toxic errand is thus potentially aborted in that new space where a new relationship for resubjectivising and sublimating the unwanted mandate happens. Resubjectivising the injected errand becomes the exit strategy so that positive change is now conceivable. (shrink)

Maswood and Rajaram examine the transmission of false memories across small and larger networks. While the spread of false memories is not inherently beneficial, Maswood & Rajaram argued that a better understanding of the formation and propagation of false memories has practical and societal implications. For example, by better understanding how false memories transmit across groups, we might be better equipped to prevent detrimental behaviors that arise as a result of “fake news.”.

In "Nozick on Scepticism", Graeme Forbes attempts to establish a Transmission Principle for knowledge which has been challenged by a number of anti-sceptical philosophers (such as Nozick). This principle (or something like it) seems to be required by Cartesian sceptical arguments, so if it could be refuted, this would apparently rid us of such scepticism. I do not believe that Nozick or anyone else has refuted the principle, yet I will argue that Forbes has certainly failed to establish it.

The pitfalls of the Wadding edition of John Duns Scotus illustrate a general feature of the study of medieval philosophy: the gap that separates the authentic words of the medieval thinker one wishes to study from the Latin words one sees on the pages of a printed edition — and further still from the English words one sees in a translation. The aim of this essay is to make clear both the nature and the size of that gap, not in (...) order to dismay prospective students of medieval philosophy, but in order to explain the hazards in such a way that students can equip themselves properly to meet them. I will begin by discussing in a general way the channels of transmission by which medieval philosophy has made its way down to us. I then turn to three specific cases by which I illustrate some of those general points as they apply to texts of different sorts and from different periods. Along the way I draw attention to the kinds of errors that are liable to be introduced at the various stages of transmission between a medieval lecturer’s spoken words and the text of a modern critical edition, and I outline the tools and techniques that the careful historian of medieval philosophy will use in order to minimize such errors, especially where no critical edition is available. In the second half of the essay I turn to problems of translation. I provide an example that shows how a reader can sometimes detect errors in a translation even without checking the Latin text, and another to illustrate how translations sometimes reflect controversial views about how a text is to be interpreted. I then conclude with a look at the translation of particular terms, discussing a number of standard translations that are apt to be misleading, and giving some idea of the range of translation of certain key terms. (shrink)

The most widely accepted and well worked out approaches to the foundations of meaning take facts about the meanings of linguistic expressions at a time to be derivative from the propositional attitudes of speakers of the language at that time. This mentalist strategy takes two principal forms, one which traces meaning to belief, and one which analyzes it in terms of communicative intentions. I argue that either form of mentalism fails, and conclude by suggesting that we can do better by (...) focusing on connections between linguistic meaning and the contents of perceptions (rather than beliefs or intentions), and by (following Kripke's approach to reference) replacing questions about the nature of meaning with questions about the nature of term introduction and meaning transmission. (shrink)

Kelvin Beckett; Transmission, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 17, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 201–205, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1983.tb000.

Cumulative cultural knowledge [CCK], the knowledge we acquire via social learning and has been refined by previous generations, is of central importance to our species’ flourishing. Considering its importance, we should expect that our best epistemological theories can account for how this happens. Perhaps surprisingly, CCK and how we acquire it via cultural learning has only received little attention from social epistemologists. Here, I focus on how we should epistemically evaluate how agents acquire CCK. After sampling some reasons why extant (...) theories cannot account for CCK, I suggest that things aren’t as bleak as they might look. I explain how agents deserve epistemic credit for how CCK is transmitted in cultural learning by promoting a central need of their social group: The efficient and safe transmission of CCK. A good initial fit exists between this observation and Greco’s knowledge-economy framework. Ultimately, however, Greco’s account doesn’t straightforwardly account for CCK because of its strict focus on testimony. I point out two issues in the framework due to this focus. The resulting view advocates giving epistemic credit to agents when they act to promote their communities’ epistemic needs in the right way and highlights the various ways in which agents come to do this. (shrink)

Cancer is an evolutionary and ecological process in which complex interactions between tumour cells and their environment share many similarities with organismal evolution. Tumour cells with highest adaptive potential have a selective advantage over less fit cells. Naturally occurring transmissible cancers provide an ideal model system for investigating the evolutionary arms race between cancer cells and their surrounding micro‐environment and macro‐environment. However, the evolutionary landscapes in which contagious cancers reside have not been subjected to comprehensive investigation. Here, we provide a (...) multifocal analysis of transmissible tumour progression and discuss the selection forces that shape it. We demonstrate that transmissible cancers adapt to both their micro‐environment and macro‐environment, and evolutionary theories applied to organisms are also relevant to these unique diseases. The three naturally occurring transmissible cancers, canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT) and Tasmanian devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) and the recently discovered clam leukaemia, exhibit different evolutionary phases: (i) CTVT, the oldest naturally occurring cell line is remarkably stable; (ii) DFTD exhibits the signs of stepwise cancer evolution; and (iii) clam leukaemia shows genetic instability. While all three contagious cancers carry the signature of ongoing and fairly recent adaptations to selective forces, CTVT appears to have reached an evolutionary stalemate with its host, while DFTD and the clam leukaemia appear to be still at a more dynamic phase of their evolution. Parallel investigation of contagious cancer genomes and transcriptomes and of their micro‐environment and macro‐environment could shed light on the selective forces shaping tumour development at different time points: during the progressive phase and at the endpoint. A greater understanding of transmissible cancers from an evolutionary ecology perspective will provide novel avenues for the prevention and treatment of both contagious and non‐communicable cancers. (shrink)

Singing is central in African life and among the many reasons provided is that traditionally it is believed that people who can sing have a very special connection with the spiritual world. Songs are celebratory and could convey the message of joy and happiness in context of freedom, culture, love, gospel, etc. and could convey joy and happiness that is unique and beautiful. However, the songs can equally be dangerous. Music has the potential and possibility to carry messages of oppression, (...) suppression, exclusion, abuse, rape, crime, xenophobia, among others. In this article, the author uses the hymn in Hosanna Hymn Book titled ‘Jehova Modimo wa Iseraele/Jehovah God of Israel’ to argue that what seems to be innocent and neutral carried the message (by and through education) and acceptance of colonisation. The transmission and reception thereof become dangerous for the unsuspecting colonised. The article deals with the history of colonialism relating to ‘Christian’ literature or hymns that carry with them a systematic theology aimed at oppressing others. The author does a minimum exegesis to express the worldview and language and content of the Hymn.Contribution: This study contributes to an ongoing liberation discourse and Hymn 11 is used as an example of oppressive language and negative transmission (through education). (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that Boghossian's explanation of how we can acquire a priori knowledge of logical principles through implicit definitions commits a transmission of warrant-failure. To this end, I will briefly outline Boghossian's account, followed by an explanation of what a transmission of warrant-failure consists in. I will also show that this charge is independent of the worry of rule-circularity which has been raised concerning the justification of logical principles and of which Boghossian is fully (...) aware. My argument comes in two steps: firstly, I will argue for the insufficiency of Boghossian's template which is meant to explain how a subject can acquire a warrant for logical principles. I will show however that this insufficiency of his template can be remedied by adopting what I call the Disquotational Step. Secondly, I will argue that incorporating this further step makes his template subject to a transmission of warrant-failure, assuming that certain rather basic and individually motivated principles hold. Thus, Boghossian's account faces a dilemma: either he adopts the Disquotational Step and subjects his account to the charge of a transmission of warrant-failure, or he drops this additional step leaving the account confronted with explaining the gap that has previously been highlighted. I will then suggest various rejoinders that Boghossian might adopt but none of which - I will argue - can resolve the dilemma. Lastly, I will raise and briefly discuss the question whether this worry generalizes to other accounts, such as Hale and Wright's that aim to explain our knowledge of logic and/or mathematics in virtue of implicit definitions. (shrink)

This book examines transmissibility to remind us why the vitality and epistemic significance of an artwork is anachronistic and futural. Transmissibility: Writing Aesthetic History performs a transdisciplinary philosophy of aesthetic history via the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Cy Twombly, Marina Abramović, Paul Celan, Cecil Taylor, Italo Calvino, Candida Höfer, and others by focusing on the artistic and historiographic labor that differentiates artworks from other modes of creation.

This article provides a discussion of the principle of transmission of evidential support across entailment from the perspective of belief revision theory in the AGM tradition. After outlining and briefly defending a small number of basic principles of belief change, which include a number of belief contraction analogues of the Darwiche-Pearl postulates for iterated revision, a proposal is then made concerning the connection between evidential beliefs and belief change policies in rational agents. This proposal is found to be suffcient (...) to establish the truth of a much-discussed intuition regarding transmission failure. (shrink)

How do we transmit or distribute knowledge, as distinct from generating or producing it? In this book John Greco examines the interpersonal relations and social structures which enable and inhibit the sharing of knowledge within and across epistemic communities. Drawing on resources from moral theory, the philosophy of language, action theory and the cognitive sciences, he considers the role of interpersonal trust in transmitting knowledge, and argues that sharing knowledge involves a kind of shared agency similar to giving a gift (...) or passing a ball. He also explains why transmitting knowledge is easy in some social contexts, such as those involving friendship or caregiving, but impossible in contexts characterized by suspicion and competition rather than by trust and cooperation. His book explores phenomena that have been undertheorized by traditional epistemology, and throws new light on existing problems in social epistemology and the epistemology of testimony. (shrink)

The ideas (i) that skill is a form of knowledge and (ii) that it can be taught are commonplace in both ancient philosophy and everyday life. I argue that contemporary epistemology lacks the resources to adequately accommodate them. Intellectualist and anti-intellectualist accounts of knowledge how struggle to represent the transmission of skill via teaching and learning (§II), in part because each adopts a fundamentally individualistic approach to the acquisition of skill that focuses on individual practice and experience; consequently, learning (...) from an expert’s teaching is rendered at best peripheral (§III). An account of the transmission of skill that focuses on guided practice is shown to be immanent in an anti-individualist account of skill (§IV) that takes seriously the Aristotelian ideas that skills are rational capacities and second natures by developing the thought that doing, teaching, and practising are three moments of an a priori unity: the life-cycle of a skill (§V). (shrink)

Recent research into cultural transmission suggests that humans are disposed to learn, remember, and transmit certain types of information more easily than others, and that any information that is passed between people will be subjected to cognitive selective pressures that alter the content and structure so as to make it maximally transmittable. This paper presents a review of emerging research on content biases in cultural evolution with relevance to the transmission of popular narratives. This is illustrated with content (...) analysis of urban legends, which found that most exploited at least one known content bias, with emotional information and social information being the most frequent. We argue that the narratives do not succeed because of the transmission of adaptively relevant information but because of their exploitation of content biases in human cognition. (shrink)

The application of phylogenetic methods to cultural variation raises questions about how cultural adaption works and how it is coupled to cultural transmission. Cultural group selection is of particular interest in this context because it depends on the same kinds of mechanisms that lead to tree-like patterns of cultural variation. Here, we review ideas about cultural group selection relevant to cultural phylogenetics. We discuss why group selection among multiple equilibria is not subject to the usual criticisms directed at group (...) selection, why multiple equilibria are a common phenomena, and why selection among multiple equilibria is not likely to be an important force in genetic evolution. We also discuss three forms of group competition and the processes that cause populations to shift from one equilibrium to another and create a mutation-like process at the group level. (shrink)

The subject is Sextus Empiricus, one the chief sources of information on ancient philosophy and one of the most influential authors in the history of skepticism. Sextus' works have had an extraordinary influence on western philosophy, and this book provides the first exhaustive and detailed study of their recovery, transmission, and intellectual influence through Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. This study deals with Sextus' biography, as well as the history of the availability and reception of his (...) works. It also contains an extensive bibliographical section, including editions, translations, and commentaries. (shrink)

Trois dossiers distincts, mais complémentaires, et rattachés à la ville d’Éphèse sont convoqués pour éclairer des cas concrets de transmission de pratiques, de savoirs ou de vocabulaire rituels. Tout d’abord, les associations dionysiaques d’Éphèse permettent d’aborder la question des référents à partir desquels se constitue un rituel, vu que chaque association est un cas unique, au profil cultuel particulier. Ensuite, l’examen de la Lettre aux Éphésiens d’Ignace d’Antioche souligne l’utilisation par un des premiers auteurs chrétiens d’un vocabulaire associatif et (...) mystérique pour véhiculer son message chrétien. Cela suppose une large diffusion et une connaissance partagée de pratiques rituelles. Enfin, une inscription d’Éphèse met en lumière le rôle du hiérophante public comme indispensable « passeur de tradition » dans l’exécution des rites publics par les magistrats et insiste sur la séparation des tâches et des savoirs en matière rituelle. La mise en parallèle de ces trois cas permet de remettre en question la distinction entre un savoir proprement cultuel et des connaissances fondées plus largement sur des références culturelles : dans un savoir religieux en action, c’est le rite effectif qui devient lui-même référence culturelle. (shrink)

Deontological internalism is the family of views where justification is a positive deontological appraisal of someone's epistemic agency: S is justified, that is, when S is blameless, praiseworthy, or responsible in believing that p. Brian Weatherson discusses very briefly how a plausible principle of ampliative transmission reveals a worry for versions of deontological internalism formulated in terms of epistemic blame. Weatherson denies, however, that similar principles reveal similar worries for other versions. I disagree. In this article, I argue that (...) plausible principles of ampliative transmission reveal a worry for deontological internalism in general. (shrink)

Marie-Therese d'Alverny devoted a large part of her research to discovering and describing manuscripts of scientific texts, especially those translated from Arabic. This volume contains those of d'Alverny's studies devoted to the Latin transmission of the works of other Greek and Arabic authors (Aristotle, Galen, Priscianus Lydus, al-Kindi, Albumasar, Algazel and Averroes), the authors responsible for this transmission (Scotus Eriugena, Raymond of Marseilles, Petrus Hispanus, Henri Bate of Malines and Pietro d'Abano), and some of the themes of the (...) transmitted texts (astrology and the planetary system of Herclides), as well as three articles summarizing the whole transmission process. (shrink)

This paper presents the hypothesis that linguistic capacity evolved through the action of natural selection as an instrument which increased the efficiency of the cultural transmission system of early hominids. We suggest that during the early stages of hominization, hominid social learning, based on indirect social learning mechanisms and true imitation, came to constitute cumulative cultural transmission based on true imitation and the approval or disapproval of the learned behaviour of offspring. A key factor for this transformation was (...) the development of a conceptual capacity for categorizing learned behaviour in value terms - positive or negative, good or bad. We believe that some hominids developed this capacity for categorizing behaviour, and such an ability allowed them to approve or disapprove of their offsprings- learned behaviour. With such an ability, hominids were favoured, as they could transmit to their offspring all their behavioural experience about what can and cannot be done. This capacity triggered a cultural transmission system similar to the human one, though pre-linguistic. We suggest that the adaptive advantage provided by this new system of social learning generated a selection pressure in favour of the development of a linguistic capacity allowing children to better understand the new kind of evaluative information received from parents. (shrink)

The Transmission of the Avesta. Edited by Alberto Cantera. Iranica, vol. 20. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. xx + 552, 34 illustrations, 48 tables, 18 diagrams. €116.

Application of evolutionary principles to epidemiological problems indicates that cultural characteristics influence the evolution of parasite virulence by influencing the success of disease transmission from immobilized, infected hosts. This hypothesis is supported by positive correlations between virulence and transmission by biological vectors, water, and institutional attendants. The general evolutionary argument is then applied to the causes and consequences of increased virulence for three diseases: cholera, influenza and AIDS.

This paper focuses on the phenomenology of symbolic transmissions.

ABSTRACTMother‐to‐child transmission of HIV represents a particularly dramatic aspect of the HIV epidemic with an estimated 600,000 newborns infected yearly, 90% of them living in sub‐Saharan Africa. Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, an estimated 5.1 million children worldwide have been infected with HIV. MTCT is responsible for 90% of these infections. Two‐thirds of the MTCT are believed to occur during pregnancy and delivery, and about one‐third through breastfeeding. As the number of women of child bearing age infected (...) with HIV rises, so does the number of infected children. It is apparent that voluntary testing in Botswana has made some valuable inroads in decreasing perinatal HIV transmission, but the statistics showing the increased rate of HIV infection among women 15–24 years of age are not very promising. After reviewing all the pertinent scientific data it is clear that mandatory HIV testing of all pregnant women in conjunction with the implementation of a full package of interventions would save thousands of lives – mothers, newborns and others who could be infected as a result of these women not being aware of their HIV status. If the protection and preservation of human life is a priority in Botswana, then it is time to allow for mandatory HIV testing of all pregnant women, before it is too late for those who are the most vulnerable. To do less would be medically inappropriate and ethically irresponsible. (shrink)

This paper clarifies, revises, and extends the account of the transmission of truthmakers by core proofs that was set out in chap. 9 of Tennant. Brauer provided two kinds of example making clear the need for this. Unlike Brouwer’s counterexamples to excluded middle, the examples of Brauer that we are dealing with here establish the need for appeals to excluded middle when applying, to the problem of truthmaker-transmission, the already classical metalinguistic theory of model-relative evaluations.

In this volume of conference papers originally presented at the University of Oklahoma, a distinguished group of scholars examines episodes in the transmission of premodern science and provides new insights into its cultural, philosophical and historical significance.

Atran's account of cultural transmission can be further refined by considering constraints from early-developed, domain-specific intuitive ontological understanding. These suggest specific predictions about the cultural survival of “memes,” depending on the way they activate intuitive understanding. There is no general dynamic of cultural inheritance; only complex predictions for domain-specific competencies that cut across cultural domains.

This paper considers whether existing law could potentially be used to criminalize the transmission of genetic disease. The paper argues that even if an offence could be made out, the criminal law should not be involved in this context for many reasons, including the need to protect reproductive liberty and pregnant women’s rights. The paper also examines whether there might be scope for civil claims between reproductive partners for a ‘failure to warn’ of potential genetic harm and argues there (...) are strong policy grounds for resisting such claims. If such a duty were to exist, there might, in the future, be scope for a child to bring a claim under the Congenital Disabilities 1976. Such a claim could be for the failure by the child’s father to warn her mother, which in turn led to the loss of opportunity to have treatment in utero which could have prevented the disability. It is suggested that the same arguments which supported granting maternal immunity under the Act would also support paternal immunity and that, therefore the issue of the lack of paternal immunity under the Act should be revisited. (shrink)

Supersaturated hcp f -Zr alloys containing 22-28 at.% N were prepared by nitriding sheets of Zr in an atmosphere of high-purity N 2 , followed by homogenization under high-purity Ar gas. Quenching and isothermal ageing of the alloys for various times between 500 and 650°C resulted in precipitation of a metastable phase, rather than the equilibrium phase ZrN. This investigation focused on determining the structure, orientation relationship, habit plane, morphology, growth kinetics and atomic growth mechanism of this non-equilibrium precipitate using (...) transmission electron microscopy imaging and diffraction techniques, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, electron-energy-loss spectroscopy and various simulation programs. The precipitate, which was arbitrarily designated the  phase, has a monoclinic Bravais lattice. Its lattice parameters are a = 0.32 nm, b = 0.60 nm, c = 0.56 nm, f = g = 90° and n = 121.5°. Its orientation relationship with the f matrix is $$ _alpha /mskip-2/ _xiquad adquad [01bar 10] _alpha /mskip-2/ [001]_xi, $$ and the average habit plane of lenticularly shaped precipitates is $_alpha$ . Determination of the structure and other aspects of the phase transformation are discussed. (shrink)

have extremely harmful impacts on an individual’s physical, social and mental health throughout their life-span. Recently, it has been reported that maternal ACEs increase the risk of developmental delay in the offspring across generations. This mini review focuses on the direct relationship between maternal ACEs and child developmental delay, and potential mediators/moderators that associate their relationship. Six studies were identified using three search engines. The results indicated that four out of six studies reported at least one significant direct association between (...) maternal ACEs and child development. Additionally, maternal biological, psychological, and social factors were identified as mediators or moderators. In summary, we identified that maternal ACEs increased the risk of developmental delay in children via biological and psychosocial pathways. Future research should examine potential buffering factors and identify when it is crucial to break the intergenerational transmission. (shrink)

The articles collected in this volume have their origin in an international workshop dedicated to “Experience and Knowledge Structures in Arabic and Latin Sciences.” Specialists from Great Britain, France, Denmark, Spain, Morocco, the United States, and Germany gathered in Berlin in 1996 in the context of an interdisciplinary research project on the history of mechanical thinking at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. The workshop initiated a process of discussion focused on problems of the intercultural transmission (...) and transformation of knowledge. The present double issue is an outcome of this ongoing discussion. (shrink)