Maintaining and coordinating multiple task-sets is difficult and leads to costs, however task-switching training can reduce these deficits. A recent study in young adults demonstrated that this training effect occurs at an amodal processing level. Old age is associated with reduced cognitive plasticity and further increases the performance costs when mixing multiple tasks. Thus, cognitive aging might be a limiting factor for inducing cross-modal training effects in a task-switching environment. We trained participants, aged 62–83 years, with an auditory task-switching paradigm (...) over four sessions, to investigate whether training-related reductions in task-switching costs would also manifest in an untrained visual modality version of the task. Two control groups trained with single tasks or not trained allowed us to identify improvements specific to task-switching training. To make statistical evaluations of any age differences in training and cross-modal transfer, the data from the Kattner cohort were incorporated into the present analysis. Despite the tendency for older adults to respond more cautiously, task-switching training specifically led to a mixing cost reduction in both trained and untrained modalities, the magnitude of which was statistically similar regardless of age. In line with a growing body of research, we failed to observe any far transfer effects in measures of inhibition, working memory or fluid intelligence. Overall, we conclude that any apparent cognitive limitations associated with aging do not prevent cognitive control processes which support set-shifting from improving at an amodal level. (shrink)

The recent upsurge in “brain-training and perceptual-cognitive-training", proposing to improve isolated processes such as brain function, visual perception and decision-making, has created significant interest in elite sports practitioners, seeking to create an ‘edge’ for athletes. The claims of these related 'performance-enhancing industries' can be considered together as part of a process training approach proposing enhanced cognitive and perceptual skills and brain capacity, to support performance in everyday life activities, including sport. For example, the 'process-training industry' promotes the idea that playing (...) games not only makes you a better player, but also smarter, more alert, and a faster learner. In this position paper we critically evaluate the effectiveness of both types of process-training programmes in generalizing transfer to sport performance. These issues are addressed in three stages. First, we evaluate empirical evidence in support of perceptual-cognitive process training, and its application to enhancing sport performance. Second, we critically review putative modularised mechanisms underpinning this kind of training, addressing limitations and subsequent problems. Specifically, we consider merits of this highly specific form of training, which focuses on training of isolated processes such as cognitive processes (attention, memory, thinking) and visual perception processes, separately from performance behaviors and actions. We conclude that these approaches may, at best, may provide some 'general transfer' of underlying processes to specific sport environments, but lack 'specificity of transfer' to contextualize actual performance behaviors. A major weakness of process training methods is their focus on enhancing performance in body “modules” (e.g., eye, brain, memory, anticipatory sub-systems). What is lacking is evidence on how these isolated components are modified and subsequently interact with other process “modules”, which are considered to underlie sport performance. Finally, we propose how an ecological dynamics approach, aligned with an embodied framework of cognition undermines the rationale that modularised processes can enhance performance in competitive sport. An ecological dynamics perspective proposes that the body is a complex adaptive system, interacting with performance environments in a functionally integrated manner, emphasising that the inter-relation between motor processes, cognitive and perceptual functions and the constraints of a sport task is best understood at the performer-environment scale of analysis. (shrink)

War After September 11 considers the just aims and legitimate limits of the United States' response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Common arguments for truth in religious pluralism absolutize an ultimate or lived component of religion, reducing a positive affirmation of plurality to deeper unity or exclusion. The arguments of John Hick, William Connolly, Nicholas Rescher, and S. Mark Heim fall into such a trap. By considering how an indeterminate concept of ultimacy, proposed by Robert C. Neville, fares against the problems their arguments raise, it will be shown that such a concept of ultimacy can both give rise to (...) and grow out of communal experiences and the nature of the world. The indeterminate ultimate, communal experiences, and the world pluralize themselves once understood in mutual relation. (shrink)

The twentieth century began with the deconstruction of the image, as it is ending with the effort to restore it. Cubism, dada, and abstract expressionism took apart what, in their various ways, pop art, magic realism, and neoexpressionism have tried to put back together. Tonality in music and narrative in literature have undergone similar change.1 What has been at stake in each case has been the redefinition of a center, a normative or ordering principle as such. Yeats intuited this general (...) phenomenon in his famous observation that “the center cannot hold,” and though whether one applauds or, with Yeats, condemns the result, it is undeniable that the crisis of contemporary culture has been in large part experienced as a deprivation of norms.This sense of deprivation has been most apparent in the plastic arts. The fashioning of images has been one of the primary impulses of human art. It has been the basis of most systems of visual representation and constitutes the earliest record we have off art itself. Its loss or abandonment has been in good part responsible for the bewilderment and hostility much of the general public continues to express toward modern art.The experience of this loss, however, has not been confined to the public alone. For many artists, the sense of modern art’s expressive potential has been tempered by an anxiety about its ultimate direction.2 For these artists, the image had not been transcended but rather rendered inaccessible, and implicitly or explicitly they sought its restoration. At the same time, they were keenly aware that there could be no return to exhausted modes of representation, no looking back except as parody or quotation.3 1. Among the studies comparing changes across the arts in the early twentieth century are Georges Edouard Lemaître, From Cubism to Surrealism in French Literature , and Bram Dijkstra, The Hieroglyphics of a New Speech: Cubism, Stieglitz, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams . More recently, visualization in cubist art and relativity theory has been compared in Linda Dalrymple Henderson, The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art . For a general overview, see Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 . Marxist critics, notably Walter Benjamin, have long insisted on the relationship between modernism in the arts and the crisis of the traditional order.2. This is clearly visible in the work and writing of pioneers such as Kandinsky and Klee or, to take a later case, Adolph Gottlieb. The correspondence between Kandinsky and Schönberg is illuminating as well.3. Much of the neoimagistic art of the past twenty-five years falls into these categories, and thus signals a prolongation rather than a resolution of the crisis. Pop art was clearly an art of parody, while work of an artist such as Malcolm Morley might almost be taken as an illustration of Benjamin’s thesis about the work of art in an age of mechanical reproduction. His “imitations,” like those of Robert Lowell in verse, betray a deep anxiety about mastery and tradition. Much the same can be said for such musical compositions as Lukas Foss’ “Baroque Variations” and “Phorion” or Luciano Berio’s “Sinfonia,” to name but a random few among many. Robert Zaller is professor of history and head of the department of history and politics at Drexel University. He was formerly on the faculties of Queens College , the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Miami. His books include The Parliament of 1621: A Study in Constitutional Conflict and The Cliffs of Solitude: A Reading of Robinson Jeffers. (shrink)

A revised edition of an undergraduate text for students in history of psychology courses. Designed for one semester, covers: the history of psychology in ancient philosophy, structuralism, neurophysiology, functionalism, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and gestalt theories. The new edition has expanded.

In many fields of biology, both the phenomena to be explained and the mechanisms proposed to explain them are commonly presented in diagrams. Our interest is in how scientists construct such diagrams. Researchers begin with evidence, typically developed experimentally and presented in data graphs. To arrive at a robust diagram of the phenomenon or the mechanism, they must integrate a variety of data to construct a single, coherent representation. This process often begins as the researchers create a first sketch, and (...) it continues over an extended period as they revise the sketch until they arrive at a diagram they find acceptable. We illustrate this process by examining the sketches developed in the course of two research projects directed at understanding the generation of circadian rhythms in cyanobacteria. One identified a new aspect of the phenomenon itself, whereas the other aimed to develop a new mechanistic account. In both cases, the research resulted in a paper in which the conclusion was presented in a diagram that the authors deemed adequate to convey it. These diagrams violate some of the normative “cognitive design principles” advanced by cognitive scientists as constraints on successful visual communication. We suggest that scientists’ sketching is instead governed by norms of success that are broadly explanatory: conveying the phenomenon or mechanism. (shrink)

This paper evaluates and critiques a recent restructuring initiative for a college at a Midwestern university in the United States in which three academic departments were reduced down to two departments. The case study presents the experiences and perspectives of three faculty members– one from each of those departments–who participated in the restructuring process. The paper first introduces the current challenges and complexities in Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) which initiate and influence restructuring efforts After laying out the context of (...) our case study, we examine faculty perceptions of the purpose, the plan, and the process of restructuring through an interpretive phenomenological case study analysis using Putnam and Nicotera’s ( 2009 ) Communicative Constitution of Organization (CCO) as a theoretical framework. The findings are presented as three integrated themes including the importance of a clear and purposeful rationale, maintenance of consistent communication and organization, and an ethical commitment to faculty voice and choice. The ethical implications for each theme are discussed and recommendations for restructuring initiatives are offered. The results of this study will help inform restructuring initiatives in colleges and universities with a particular emphasis on characteristics of effective, ethical leadership and the value of strong communicative elements when engaging in restructuring. (shrink)

At many slaughterhouses, if a pregnant cow is killed, then medical companies pay to harvest the fetus's blood. When you communicate the details of this process to people, many of them are disgusted. I submit that those who are repulsed thereby acquire a reason to believe that this practice is morally wrong. However, it is controversial to maintain that disgust can provide moral guidance. So, I develop a theory of disgust’s moral salience that fits with the empirical work that’s been (...) done on it, and I apply it to the collection of bovine fetal blood. I conclude by suggesting how this theory may be of use in animal ethics generally. (shrink)

A potential explanation of a fact is a hypothesis such that, if it were true, it would explain the fact in question. Let’s suppose that we become aware of a fact and some potential explanations thereof. Let’s also suppose that we would like to believe the truth. Given this aim, we can ask two questions. First, is it likely that one of these hypotheses is true? Second, given an affirmative answer to the first question, which one is it likely to (...) be? Inference to the best explanation (IBE) offers answers to both questions. To the first, it says ‘Yes’—assuming that at least one of the hypotheses would, if true, provide a satisfactory explanation of the fact under consideration. To the second, it says that the hypothesis most likely to be true is the one that scores best on the explanatory virtues: conservatism, modesty, simplicity, generality, and predictive power. Many philosophers have argued against IBE’s answer to the first question. I am interested in an objection to its answer to the second. Many philosophers seem to think that it is unsustainable: they seem to think that even if we assume that one of the competing hypotheses is true, we should not think that IBE will help us to identify it. Or, more carefully, if these philosophers are doing what they appear to be doing—namely, offering critiques of IBE that don’t depend on assumptions about the field of competing hypotheses—then their claim is that IBE will not help us to identify the truth. I believe that this is mistaken: the argument for believing it assumes a model of IBE that we have no reason to accept. (shrink)

In the De Anima, Aristotle claims that the five senses are infallible about their proper objects. I contend that this claim means that sight is infallible about its proper object in its most specific form, i. e. sight is infallible about red or green and not merely about color in general. This robust claim is justified by Aristotle’s teleological principle that nature does nothing in vain. Additionally, drawing on Aristotle’s comparison of perception and one’s understanding of the essences, I defend (...) a conception of the senses in which the structure of their contents is simple rather than predicative and show how this coheres better with the rest of my interpretation. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

According to proponents of the extended mind, bio-external resources, such as a notebook or a smartphone, are candidate parts of the cognitive and mental machinery that realises cognitive states and processes. The present chapter discusses three areas of ethical concern associated with the extended mind, namely mental privacy, mental manipulation, and agency. We also examine the ethics of the extended mind from the standpoint of three general normative frameworks, namely, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.

Marx’s Inferno reconstructs the major arguments of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading of a seminal classic. Rather than simply a critique of classical political economy, William Roberts argues that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement. Understood in this light, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. Placing Marx against the background of nineteenth-century socialism, Roberts shows how Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno, and (...) how Marx, playing the role of Virgil for the proletariat, introduced partisans of workers’ emancipation to the secret depths of the modern “social Hell.” In this manner, Marx revised republican ideas of freedom in response to the rise of capitalism. Combining research on Marx’s interlocutors, textual scholarship, and forays into recent debates, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce, the experience of labor, the power of bosses and managers, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. (shrink)

The ongoing critical redeployment of primitive accumulation proceeds under two premises. First, it is argued that Marx, erroneously, confined primitive accumulation to the earliest history of capit...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato's Political Analogy: Fallacy or Analogy? ROBERT W. HALL THE INTERPRETATIONOf the familiar political analogy between the state and the soul is crucial to a proper understanding of Plato's conception of the individual and his relation to the polls. Interpretations which, consciously or not, tend to identify the justice of the individual with that of the state result either in a subordination of justice of the individual to (...) that of the state, or in endowing the ordinary citizen with an inferior justice. These interpretations of the political analogy have beert adequately dealt with? Recently, Vlastos has stressed what he considers to be the logical or deductive character of the analogy." He finds defects or fallacies in Plato's logic, which, while not necessarily fatal to the significance of the analogy, seriously impair its cogency. What is of particular interest is Vlastos' claim that the primary goal of the analogy is a demonstration, unknown to most scholars, albeit an unsuccessful one, that the justice of the individual necessarily instantiates or entails ordinary acts of justice,a Vlastos has thus raised the question of what kind of approach is most fruitful in unlocking the meaning of the political analogy. My own conviction is that the political analogy can best be understood through a careful examination or observation of the two wholes, the state and the individual, and the character of their relationship. A consideration of the essentials of Vlastos' outlook on the analogy will be a useful introduction to what may be termed a "phenomenological" approach. Such a perspective may provide a better understanding of what Plato is attempting to establish in the analogy, and of how he goes about it. Vlastos' interpretation of the political analogy is strongly colored by his assessment of the central concern of the Republic, the proof that justice "pays." By this Vlastos means that what he terms "psychological justice," the correct, hierarchical arrangement of the three parts or aspects of the soul, must be proven to result in acts of external justice. It is this relationship between psychological justice and ordinary or social justice which sets the problem of logical consistency in Vlastos' account of the political analogy. As the definition of justice of the individual or psychological justice, Vlastos offers Socrates' statement, "In the case of each one of us, whoever is such that each of the three [psychic elements] in him does its own, he is a just man." The social description of justice is: What we laid down at the start as a general requirement when we were founding the polls this, or some form of it, is justice. We did lay down, and often stated, if you recall, that every single person ought to engage in the social function.., for which his own nature is I For exponents of these positions and their critics, cf. my "Plato's Theory of Justice in the Republic," Bucknell Review, XV, 2 (May, 1967), 60, n. I. G. Vlastos, "Justice and Psychic Harmony in the Republic," The 1ournal of Philosophy, LXVI, 16 (August 21, 1969), 505-521. All further references to this article will be by page number. s 506, 515. [419] 420 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY best fitted.uWe did say this.--And indeed that to do one's own and not to be meddlesome is justice, this we have often heard from many others, and have often said ourselves.-Wc have said it.--This, then, my friend, if taken in a certain way, appears to be justice: to do one's own. (433A-B) 4 Vlastos admits that this social description is not really a definition of the justice of the individual, "that 'doing one's own' was not meant to constitute a definition of the justice of an individual person.''~ Nonetheless, this social description functions for him as a definition of the individual's justice, and plays a prominent role in the supposed fallacy of equivocation in the meaning of justice. Vlastos argues for this social description on the grounds that "/or Plato every just man must have the disposition named by the 'doing one's own' formula.''e The basis for this claim is Socrates' declaration that "the same (moral) characters... (shrink)

_Presents new ways of thinking about the human and the humanities through a rethinking of Antigone._.

Some philosophers think that a person can justifi ably believe that p is possible even though she has no theory according to which p is possible. They think, for example, that she can justifiably believe that there could be naturally purple elephants even though she lacks (inter alia) a theory about the factors germane to elephant pigmentation. There is a certain optimism about this view: it seems to assume that people are fairly good at ferreting out problems with proposed modal (...) claims; so, if a person doesn’t detect one, then she’s within her rights to assume that there is no problem to be found. I am suspicious of this optimism, but I do not have space to challenge it here. Instead, I want to outline the more pessimistic alternative. Suppose that a person is not justified in believing that p is possible unless she has a theory according to which p is possible. How might such an account be developed? My aim is to map out this neglected option. (shrink)

Cost effectiveness. Economics. This is an introduction, accessible to non-economists as well as to economists, to the practice of cost benifit analysis. It begins from a discussion of financial appraisal. The distinguishing features of cost benifit analysis are then introduced progressively. Practical examples are used whenever possible to aid the exposition. Economic theory is introduced only where it is immediately relevant to practice. Nonetheless the approach is firmly grounded in economic principles and considerable space is devoted to those ideas that (...) are central to practical cost benefit analysis - shadow prices, consumers' surplus, and valuation of unmarked goods. The additional needs of economically trained readers are catered for by a number of appendices which relate the ideas expounded in the book to mainstream economic theory. (shrink)

This work is an investigation into part of the human sentence parsing mechanism (HSPM). The major test of the psychological validity of any model of the HSPM is that it fail on precisely those sentences that humans find to be garden paths. It is hypothesized that the HSPM consists of at least two processes. We call the first process the syntactic processor, and the second will be known as the semantic processor.It is hypothesized that the syntactic processor is unconscious, deterministic (...) and fast, but limited. While most ambiguities are resolved on the basis of syntactic information, when the syntactic processor can no longer guarantee a correct analysis, semantic information is used to help resolve the ambiguity. This model leads to a better prediction and explanation of which sentences will cause people to garden path. (shrink)

There is something amiss about post-Rawlsian efforts to bring political theory down to earth by insisting upon the political primacy of the question of legitimacy, peace, or order. The intuition driving much realism seems to be that we must first agree to get along, and only then can we get down to the business of pursuing justice. I argue that the ideological narratives of the powerful pose a political problem for this primacy of legitimacy thesis. To prioritize the achievement of (...) democratic legitimacy seems to make sense only to the extent that we already live in a world in which systematic domination—and its ideological baggage—has been stamped out. I draw on the social study of domination for the sake of combatting in political theory the temptation to focus on the static design of the constitutional state at the expense of ignoring or even condemning the social processes that motivate legal and constitutional changes. (shrink)

Initiated by Robert Wesson, Evolution and Human Values is a collection of newly written essays designed to bring interdisciplinary insight to that area of thought where human evolution intersects with human values. The disciplines brought to bear on the subject are diverse - philosophy, psychiatry, behavioral science, biology, anthropology, psychology, biochemistry, and sociology. Yet, as organized by co-editor Patricia A. Williams, the volume falls coherently into three related sections. Entitled Evolutionary Ethics, the first section brings contemporary research to an (...) area first explored by Herbert Spencer. Evolutionary ethics looks to the theory of evolution by natural selection to find values for human living. The second section, Evolved Ethics, discusses the evolution of language and religion and their impact on moral thought and feeling. Evolved ethics was partly Charles Darwin's subject in The Descent of Man. The last section bears the title Scientific Ethics. A nascent field, scientific ethics asks about the evolution of human nature and the implications of that nature for ethical theory and social policy. Together, the essays collected here provide important contemporary insights into what it is - and what it may be - to be human. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1923 edition.

AI systems play an increasingly important role in shaping and regulating the lives of millions of human beings across the world. Calls for greater _transparency_ from such systems have been widespread. However, there is considerable ambiguity concerning what “transparency” actually means, and therefore, what greater transparency might entail. While, according to some debates, transparency requires _seeing through_ the artefact or device, widespread calls for transparency imply _seeing into_ different aspects of AI systems. These two notions are in apparent tension with (...) each other, and they are present in two lively but largely disconnected debates. In this paper, we aim to further analyse what these calls for transparency entail, and in so doing, clarify the sorts of transparency that we should want from AI systems. We do so by offering a taxonomy that classifies different notions of transparency. After a careful exploration of the different varieties of transparency, we show how this taxonomy can help us to navigate various domains of human–technology interactions, and more usefully discuss the relationship between technological transparency and human agency. We conclude by arguing that all of these different notions of transparency should be taken into account when designing more ethically adequate AI systems. (shrink)

Impossible love -- Between nature and culture -- Surviving, forever foreign -- Cryptic crossing -- Touching transcendence, in the flesh -- The tragedy of Christianity.

This essay seeks to bring into focus the latent political theory of CLR James’s World Revolution, 1917-1936, and to show, on this basis, how World Revolution explains certain difficult aspects of The Black Jacobins. The core of James’s theory is the thesis that social classes are organically and internally identified, and that each has a preformed and unitary interest, which can be articulated as a set of political principles. A class is called to act by the voice that expresses the (...) class’s interest in the terms of its political principles. Once these points are made clear, several problems regarding the interpretation of The Black Jacobins disappear. First, James’s claim that the slaves of San Domingo were “closer to a modern proletariat than any group of workers in existence at the time” follows from his organic concept of the proletariat. Second, James’s revision of his account of the Haitian Revolution over the decades does not signify a move in the direction of “history from below” but a changed estimation of the conditions under which the mirroring operation he assigned to political leadership might take place. What seems to be James’s inordinate interest in the individual leader, finally, is more properly understood to be his antipathy to institutions and organizations. (shrink)

Biologists often hypothesize mechanisms to explai phenomena. Our interest is how their understanding of the phenomena and mechanisms develops as they construct diagrams to communicate their claims. We present two case studies in which scientists integrate various data to create a single diagram to communicate their major conclusions in a research publication. In both cases, the history of revisions suggests that scientists' initial drafts encode biases and oversights that are only gradually overcome through prolonged, reflective re-design. To account for this, (...) we suggest that scientists only develop a unitary understanding of their results through their attempts to communicate them. (shrink)

Extending Alvin Plantinga’s model of warranted belief to the beliefs of groups as a whole, I argue that if the dogmatic beliefs of the Catholic Church are true, they are also warranted. Catholic dogmas are warranted because they meet the three conditions of my model: they are formed (1) by ministers functioning properly (2) in accordance with a design plan that is oriented towards truth and reliable (3) in a social environment sufficiently similar to that for which they were designed. (...) I show that according to Catholic doctrine the authoritative spokespersons of the Church—ecumenical councils and popes—meet these conditions when defining dogmas. I also respond to the objection that the warrant of Catholic dogmas is defeated by the plurality of non-Catholic Christian sects that deny Catholic dogmas. (shrink)

When processing of stimuli occurs without attention, phenomenal experience, as well as cognitive access, may be lost. Sensory representations are, however, constructed by neural machinery extending far beyond sensory receptors. In conditions such as cerebral achromatopsia incomplete sensory representations may still elicit phenomenal experience but these representations might be too aberrant to be integrated into the wider cognitive workspace.

Meat-eating has been the norm in most human societies. Historically, it has not had many defenders, but this is probably because few thought that it was in need of defense. In the contemporary philosophical literature, however, the pro-vegetarian arguments are usually taken to be quite strong, and omnivores have assumed the burden of proof. The purpose of this entry is to explain this shift by surveying the various frameworks that offer neutral or positive moral assessments of meat-eating. After briefly tracing (...) the evolution of these frameworks from the ancient to modern period, the entry outlines the three most prominent contemporary approaches. It closes by considering possibilities for future research. (shrink)

Suppose that disgust can provide evidence of moral wrongdoing. What account of disgust might make sense of this? A recent and promising theory is the social contagion view, proposed by Alexandra Plakias. After criticizing both its descriptive and normative claims, I draw two conclusions. First, we should question the wisdom of drawing so straight a line from biological poisons and pathogens to social counterparts. Second, we don’t need to explain the evidential value of disgust by appealing to what the response (...) tracks. These lessons point toward an alternative: namely, that disgust is a moral heuristic. On the heuristic view, disgust is a trigger for the subconscious use of a particular rule: I show how this view fits with a plausible hypothesis about the social function of disgust, and then apply it to Leon Kass’s famous use of repugnance to criticize cloning. (shrink)