Politische Strukturen im Guptareich. By Fred Virkus. Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, vol. 18. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004. Pp. x + 319. €78. The Archaeology of Hindu Ritual: Temples and the Establishment of the Gods. By Michael Willis. Pp. xiv + 375. Cambridge: caMBridge university Press, 2009. £50.

Văn khắ c Chămpa tại Ba̓ o tàng ̃ Điêu khắ c Chăm–Đà Nă ̃ ng. The Inscriptions of Campā at the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Đà Năng. By Arlo Griffiths, Amandine Lepoutre, William A. Southworth, and Thành Phn. Published in collaboration between École française d’Extrême-Orient, Hanoi, and Center for Vietnamese and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University H̀ô Chí Minh City. H̀ô Chí Minh: VNUHCM Publishing House, 2012. Pp. 288, 67 (...) pl., 38 photos. VND 170.000. (shrink)

Domestic Rituals of the Atharvaveda in the Paippalāda Tradition of Orissa: Śrīdhara’s Vivāhādikarmapañjikā, vol. 1: Book One, Part One, General Prescriptions. Edited with an introduction by Arlo Griffiths and Shilpa Sumant. Collection Indologie, vol. 135. Pondicherry: institut français de pondichéry, École française d’extrême-orient, 2018. Pp. cxxxiv + 172.

The Paippalādasaṃhitā of the Atharvaveda: Kāṇḍas 6 and 7. A New Edition with Translation and Commentary. By Arlo Griffiths. Groningen Oriental Studies, vol. 22. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2009. Pp. lxxxvi + 540.

We assess the arguments for recognising functionally integrated multispecies consortia as genuine biological individuals, including cases of so-called ‘holobionts’. We provide two examples in which the same core biochemical processes that sustain life are distributed across a consortium of individuals of different species. Although the same chemistry features in both examples, proponents of the holobiont as unit of evolution would recognize one of the two cases as a multispecies individual whilst they would consider the other as a compelling case of (...) ecological dependence between separate individuals. Some widely used arguments in support of the ‘holobiont’ concept apply equally to both cases, suggesting that those arguments have misidentified what is at stake when seeking to identify a new level of biological individuality. One important aspect of biological individuality is evolutionary individuality. In line with other work on the evolution of individuality, we show that our cases can be distinguished by focusing on the fitness alignment between the partners of the consortia. We conclude that much of the evidence currently presented for the ubiquity and importance of multi-species individuals is simply not to the point, at least unless the issue of biological individuality is firmly divorced from the question of evolutionary individuality. (shrink)

Shepard has argued that a universal law should govern generalization across different domains of perception and cognition, as well as across organisms from different species or even different planets. Starting with some basic assumptions about natural kinds, he derived an exponential decay function as the form of the universal generalization gradient, which accords strikingly well with a wide range of empirical data. However, his original formulation applied only to the ideal case of generalization from a single encountered stimulus to a (...) single novel stimulus, and for stimuli that can be represented as points in a continuous metric psychological space. Here we recast Shepard's theory in a more general Bayesian framework and show how this naturally extends his approach to the more realistic situation of generalizing from multiple consequential stimuli with arbitrary representational structure. Our framework also subsumes a version of Tversky's set-theoretic model of similarity, which is conventionally thought of as the primary alternative to Shepard's continuous metric space model of similarity and generalization. This unification allows us not only to draw deep parallels between the set-theoretic and spatial approaches, but also to significantly advance the explanatory power of set-theoretic models. Key Words: additive clustering; Bayesian inference; categorization; concept learning; contrast model; features; generalization; psychological space; similarity. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 188-198, September 2021.

We defend a view of the distinction between the normal and the pathological according to which that distinction has an objective, biological component. We accept that there is a normative component to the concept of disease, especially as applied to human beings. Nevertheless, an organism cannot be in a pathological state unless something has gone wrong for that organism from a purely biological point of view. Biology, we argue, recognises two sources of biological normativity, which jointly generate four “ways of (...) going wrong” from a biological perspective. These findings show why previous attempts to provide objective criteria for pathology have fallen short: Biological science recognizes a broader range of ways in which living things can do better or worse than has previously been recognized in the philosophy of medicine. (shrink)

This paper will reflect on the possibility of epistemic decolonization, particularly in terms of curriculum, as a transformative educational process in the context of the South African university, and with respect to my own positionality. The argument will centre around two difficult interdependent positions. On the one hand I will argue for the university’s task as transformational, even offering, via Cornel West, the ‘salvific’ possibility that knowledge offers those who seek it. To develop this claim, I will draw on and (...) develop the notion of paideia though the work of Plato and Heidegger.On the other hand, within the postcolonial African university, the question of decolonization in the tertiary space cannot be elided, particularly since the 2015 #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall movements. The university is a powerful colonial relic, and it can be used to reinforce and perpetuate epistemic violence through unreflective or unconscious pedagogical and curriculum decisions. Here I draw on decolonial thinkers such as Santos, Mignolo, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe: I argue for a reckoning with the forces of coloniality, and advocate for epistemic justice and criticality, as part of the decolonizing project. In conclusion, working with ideas from Cornel West, I argue to reconcile paideia, as the ‘turning of the soul’, with the decolonizing African university. (shrink)

Editors' introduction to the special issue on homology (Biology and Philosophy Vol. 22, Issue 5, 2007).

We argue that there are three coherent, nontrivial notions of basic-ness: conceptual basic-ness, biological basic-ness, and psychological basic-ness. There is considerable evidence for conceptually basic emotion categories (e.g., “anger,” “fear”). These categories do not designate biologically basic emotions, but some forms of anger, fear, and so on that are biologically basic in a sense we will specify. Finally, two notions of psychological basic-ness are distinguished, and the evidence for them is evaluated. The framework we offer acknowledges the force of some (...) of the objections to basic emotion theory whilst demonstrating that the notion of a basic emotion, once properly reformulated, is still of scientific value. (shrink)

Philosophers and historians of biology have argued that genes are conceptualized differently in different fields of biology and that these differences influence both the conduct of research and the interpretation of research by audiences outside the field in which the research was conducted. In this paper we report the results of a questionnaire study of how genes are conceptualized by biological scientists at the University of Sydney, Australia. The results provide tentative support for some hypotheses about conceptual differences between different (...) fields of biological research. (shrink)

In this article the extent to which stories and personal narratives can and should be used to inform education policy is examined. A range of studies describable as story or personal narrative is investigated. They include life-studies, life-writing, life history, narrative analysis, and the representation of lives. We use 'auto/biography' as a convenient way of grouping this range under one term. It points to the many and varied ways that accounts of self interrelate and intertwine with accounts of others. That (...) is, auto/biography illuminates the social context of individual lives. At the same time it allows room for unique, personal stories to be told. We do not explicitly discuss all the different forms of auto/biography. Rather, we investigate the epistemology underlying the personal story in the context of social action. We discuss the circumstances in which a story may validly be used by educational policy makers and give some examples of how they have done so in the past. (shrink)

Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences during the first (...) semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

Elliott Sober''s selection for/selection of distinction has been widely used to clarify the idea that some properties of organisms are side-effects of selection processes. It has also been used, however, to choose between different descriptions of an evolutionary product when assigning biological functions to that product. We suggest that there is a characteristic error in these uses of the distinction. Complementary descriptions of function are misrepresented as mutually excluding one another. This error arises from a failure to appreciate that selection (...) processes can be described at several different theoretical levels. (shrink)

Humans can learn complex functional relationships between variables from small amounts of data. In doing so, they draw on prior expectations about the form of these relationships. In three experiments, we show that people learn to adjust these expectations through experience, learning about the likely forms of the functions they will encounter. Previous work has used Gaussian processes—a statistical framework that extends Bayesian nonparametric approaches to regression—to model human function learning. We build on this work, modeling the process of learning (...) to learn functions as a form of hierarchical Bayesian inference about the Gaussian process hyperparameters. (shrink)

Current knowledge about the variety and complexity of the processes that allow regulated gene expression in living organisms calls for a new understanding of genes. A ‘postgenomic’ understanding of genes as entities constituted during genome expression is outlined and illustrated with specific examples that formed part of a survey research instrument developed by two of the authors for an ongoing empirical study of conceptual change in contemporary biology.

Ever since Darwin people have worried about the sceptical implications of evolution. If our minds are products of evolution like those of other animals, why suppose that the beliefs they produce are true, rather than merely useful? We consider this problem for beliefs in three different domains: religion, morality, and commonsense and scientific claims about matters of empirical fact. We identify replies to evolutionary scepticism that work in some domains but not in others. One reply is that evolution can be (...) expected to design systems that produce true beliefs in some domain. This reply works for commonsense beliefs and can be extended to scientific beliefs. But it does not work for moral or religious beliefs. An alternative reply which has been used defend moral beliefs is that their truth does not consist in their tracking some external state of affairs. Whether or not it is successful in the case of moral beliefs, this reply is less plausible for religious beliefs. So religious beliefs emerge as particularly vulnerable to evolutionary debunking. (shrink)

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants’ knowledge is a particularly important cue for evaluating advice from multiple informants; if the informants share the source of their information or have obtained their information from each other, then their testimony is statistically (...) dependent and may be less reliable than testimony from informants who do not share information. In this study, we use a Bayesian model to determine how rational learners should incorporate the effects of shared information when learning from other people, conducting three experiments that examine whether human learners behave similarly. We find that people are sensitive to a number of different patterns of dependency, supporting the use of a sophisticated strategy for social learning that goes beyond copying the majority, and broadening the situations in which social learning is likely to be an adaptive strategy. (shrink)

The Narrow Evolutionary Psychology Movement represents itself as a major reorientation of the social/behavioral sciences, a group of sciences previously dominated by something called the ‘Standard Social Science Model’. Narrow Evolutionary Psychology alleges that the SSSM treated the mind, and particularly those aspects of the mind that exhibit cultural variation, as devoid of any marks of its evolutionary history. Adherents of Narrow Evolutionary Psychology often suggest that the SSSM owed more to ideology than to evidence. It was the child of (...) the 1960s, representing a politically motivated insistence on the possibility of changing social arrangements such as gender roles: " ‘Not so long ago jealousy was considered a pointless, archaic institution in need of reform. But like other denials of human nature from the 1960s, this bromide has not aged well.’ ) " This view of history does not ring true to those, like the authors, who have worked in traditions of evolutionary theorizing about the mind that have a continuous history through the 1960s and beyond: traditions such as evolutionary epistemology and psychoevolutionary research into emotion (Griffiths. (shrink)

Background: Although inclusive education is widely discussed, its implementation has not, arguably, been far-reaching. There remains a lack of specific, targeted approaches towards fully including learners with physical and mental impairments in the educational space. Objectives: This study investigated the extent of the inclusion of learners with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in three schools in Johannesburg. Method: A qualitative interpretivist design was adopted. Teachers who work with learners with ASD were interviewed using open-ended questions. The sampled data were analysed using (...) thematic analysis, making use of both a priori codes and emergent codes that arose from the open-ended questions. Results: The findings reveal numerous pedagogic strategies such as differentiation, scaffolding, use of visual cues, group work and collaboration that can include learners with ASD in the classroom space. Conclusion: Teacher collaboration and teacher training are vital in ensuring that learners with ASD are fully included in the classroom space. (shrink)

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated drastic changes to undergraduate medical training at the University of Botswana (UB). To save the academic year when campus was locked down, the Department of Medical Education conducted a needs assessment to determine the readiness for emergency remote teaching (ERT) of the Faculty of Medicine, UB. Objectives. To report on the findings of needs assessment surveys to assess learner and teaching staff preparedness for fair and just ERT, as defined by philosopher John Rawls. Methods. Needs (...) assessment surveys were conducted using Office 365 Forms distributed via WhatsApp, targeting medical students and teaching staff during the 5 undergraduate years. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results. Ninety-two percent (266/289) of students and 73.5% (62/84) of teaching staff responded. Surveys revealed a high penetration of smartphones among students, but poor internet accessibility and affordability in homes. Some teaching staff also reported internet and device insufficiencies. Only WhatsApp was accessible to students and teaching staff. Conclusions. For equitable access to ERT in the future, the surveys revealed infrastructural improvement needs, including wider, stronger, affordable WiFi coverage within Botswana and enhanced digital infrastructures in educational institutions, with increased support for students. (shrink)

Inferring an individual's preferences from their observable behavior is a key step in the development of assistive decision-making technology. Although machine learning models such as neural networks could in principle be deployed toward this inference, a large amount of data is required to train such models. Here, we present an approach in which a cognitive model generates simulated data to augment limited human data. Using these data, we train a neural network to invert the model, making it possible to infer (...) preferences from behavior. We show how this approach can be used to infer the value that people assign to food items from their eye movements when choosing between those items. We demonstrate first that neural networks can infer the latent preferences used by the model to generate simulated fixations, and second that simulated data can be beneficial in pretraining a network for predicting human-reported preferences from real fixations. Compared to inferring preferences from choice alone, this approach confers a slight improvement in predicting preferences and also allows prediction to take place prior to the choice being made. Overall, our results suggest that using a combination of neural networks and model-simulated training data is a promising approach for developing technology that infers human preferences. (shrink)

Pv~P: Cambridge Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy, Issue 1, 1982.

If Bayesian Fundamentalism existed, Jones & Love's (J&L's) arguments would provide a necessary corrective. But it does not. Bayesian cognitive science is deeply concerned with characterizing algorithms and representations, and, ultimately, implementations in neural circuits; it pays close attention to environmental structure and the constraints of behavioral data, when available; and it rigorously compares multiple models, both within and across papers. J&L's recommendation of Bayesian Enlightenment corresponds to past, present, and, we hope, future practice in Bayesian cognitive science.

Since its founding in 1943, Medievalia et Humanistica has won worldwide recognition as the first scholarly publication in America to devote itself entirely to medieval and Renaissance studies. Since 1970, a new series, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America and edited by an international board of distinguished scholars and critics, has published interdisciplinary articles. In yearly hardbound volumes, the new series publishes significant scholarship, criticism, and reviews treating all facets of medieval and Renaissance culture: history, art, literature, music, (...) science, law, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

Spontaneous mutations that perturb myelination occur in a range of species including man, and together with engineered mutations have been used to study disease, normal myelination and axon/glial inter‐relationships. Only a minority of the currently defined mutations have an apparently simple pathogenesis due to lack of a functional protein. Mutations in the myelin basic protein gene lead to a lack of protein, resulting in changes in the structure of myelin, which can be rescued by transgenic complementation. The pathogenesis of autosomal (...) dominant and X‐linked mutations affecting either oligodendrocytes or Schwann cells is more complex. Point mutations may act in a dominant negative manner and gene dosage is clearly linked to phenotypic change. Mutations in regulatory genes, such as those encoding transcription factors, can also disturb myelination by selected cell types. Other less‐well studied and unexpected consequences of myelin mutations, such as seizures in mutations affecting genes expressed in Schwann cells and axonal changes associated with dysmyelination, are also considered. With the major developments in gene mapping and cloning it is now relevant to study mutations in a variety of species with the real prospect of defining their molecular basis. Examples are given of unusual, but potentially useful, uncharacterised mutations in dog and bovine. (shrink)

Both the distinction between de re and de dicto beliefs, and the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions have seemed, to some philosophers, to be of somewhat dubious status. While admitting that there is, in each case, some sort of distinction to be drawn, they have been inclined to think that these distinctions are not relevant to the philosophical questions being asked about beliefs and descriptions. Philosophers have, for example, been concerned with the structure of beliefs, where (...) this can be understood to mean the structure of believed propositions; and they have been concerned with the analysis of sentences containing definite descriptions. But, it is thought, these two distinctions have no bearing on propositional structure or on sentence meaning. They have, in short, no semantic significance. (shrink)

This brief but comprehensive introduction to French author Blaise Pascal provides an overview of his life and works and examines the major themes in his writings.