In their article, ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi’s paradox’, Sandberg et al. try to explain the Fermi paradox by claiming that Landauer’s principle implies that a civilization can in principle perform far more times more) irreversible logical operations if it conserves its resources until the distant future when the cosmic background temperature is very low. So perhaps aliens are out there, but quietly waiting. Sandberg et al. implicitly assume, however, that computer-generated (...) entropy can only be disposed of by transferring it to the cosmological background. In fact, while this assumption may apply in the distant future, our universe today contains vast reservoirs and other physical systems in non-maximal entropy states, and computer-generated entropy can be transferred to them at the adiabatic conversion rate of one bit of negentropy to erase one bit of error. This can be done at any time, and is not improved by waiting for a low cosmic background temperature. Thus aliens need not wait to be active. As Sandberg et al. do not provide a concrete model of the effect they assert, we construct one and show where their informal argument goes wrong. (shrink)

This paper examines an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant as the pressures of a warming planet, changing climate and changing ecosystems ramp up. The broad context for the paper is the intragenerational, intergenerational, and interspecies equity implications of changing the climate and the value orientations of adapting to such change. In addition, the need to stabilize the planetary climate by urgent mitigation of change factors is a foundational ethical assumption. In order to avoid further animal and plant extinctions, or (...) at the very least, their increased vulnerability to becoming rare and endangered; the systematic assisted colonization of “at risk” species is being seriously considered by scientists and managers of biodiversity. The more practical aspects of assisted colonization have been covered in the conservation biology literature; however, the ethical implications of such actions have not been extensively examined. Our discussion of the value issues, using a novel case study approach, will rectify the limited ethical analysis of the issue of assisted colonization of species in the face of climate change pressures. Beyond sustainability ethics, both animal and environmental ethical approaches will be used and intrinsic versus instrumental value orientations in the literature shall form the basis of our discussion. After the application of all the ethical approaches to the case studies, we conclude that without mitigation and the prospect of a future stable climate, assisted colonization will be involved in an inherently unethical process and a “move and lose it” outcome. With mitigation, there is wide-ranging ethical support for assisted colonization. (shrink)

Principles and the context, by J. C. Bennett.--Love monism, by J. M. Gustafson.--Responsibility in freedom, by E. C. Gardner.--The new morality, by G. Fackre.--When love becomes excarnate, by H. L. Smith.--Situational morality, by R. W. Gleason.--The nature of heresy, by G. Kennedy.--Situation ethics under fire, by J. Fletcher.

In the Spring of 1944, an informal discussion took place in Cambridge between Mr. R. S. Whipple, Professor Allan Ferguson and Mr. F. H. C. Butler, concerning the formation of a national Society for the History of Science. This is the opening sentence of the inaugural issue of the Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science, the Society's first official publication. Butler himself was the author of this outline account of the subsequent approach to the Royal Society, (...) the parallel moves to establish a National Committee of the International Academy of the History of Science, the formation of a provisional committee to prepare a draft constitution for a national society, and the proceedings of the first Annual General Meeting in May 1947. Whipple had been in Cambridge to discuss his offer to present his collection of old scientific instruments to the University and the possible foundation of a new museum, and Butler, as Secretary of the History of Science Committee in Cambridge, was the chief mover in both this development and an initiative coupled with it to establish a department of the history of science. (shrink)

Volume 11 Apollonius, or the Future of Psychical Research E N Bennett Originally published in 1927 "Admirably conceived, skilfully executed." Liverpool Post "His exposition of the case for psychic research is lucid and interesting." The Scotsman This volume summarizes the results secured by the scientific treatment of psychical phenomena, and to forecast the future developments of such research. 88pp ************** Socrates Or the Emancipation of Mankind H F Carlill Originally published in 1927 "One of the most brilliant and important (...) of a remarkable series." Westminster Gazette This volume examines the differences between humans and animals and discusses the freedom that a proper understanding of psychology will bring to the human race. The author argues that the whole psycho-physical organism will be regarded as what it is – a mechanism full of inherited tendencies and untapped energies which needs to be consciously adjusted and controlled. 90pp Morpheus or the Future of Sleep D F Fraser-Harris Originally published in 1928. "His arguments, clearly and ably presented, hold our interest." Clarion "Shows that the doctors do not as yet know much about the subject." Queen This volume discusses sleep and the part it plays in maintaining health. It contains suggestions for sufferers from insomnia, discusses dreams and their causes and suggests the probable line of investigation of sleep problems. 94pp Sisyphus or the Limits of Psychology M Jaeger Originally published in 1929. "Much acumen and knowledge. All students of psychology should read it." Manchester Guardian This volume argues that Psychology has just as an important role to play as Physics and Chemistry, because it affects the ordinary person and is not merely limited to the scientific community. The opportunities is provides, as well as its limits, are discussed. 88pp The Passing of The Phantoms A Study of Evolutionary Psychology and Morals C J Patten Originally published in 1924 "This bright and bracing little book." Literary Guide "Interesting and original." Medical Times This volume examines the evolution of the mental and moral faculties of animals. This knowledge, in the author’s opinion is critical for understanding the evolution of human mortality. 90pp. (shrink)

Following Moore, I use ‘P entails Q’ as a convenient shorthand for ‘Q can be deduced logically from P’, ‘From P, Q follows logically’, ‘There is a logically valid argument with P as sole premise and Q as conclusion’, and the like.1 Apart from a minor point to be raised in Section XVI, distinctions within this cluster do not matter for present purposes. An analysis of the concept of entailment is answerable to careful, educated uses of expressions such as those. (...) An analysis which condemned nearly everything we say about what follows from what simply would not be an analysis of the common concept of entailment. If the concept were inconsistent, some common uses of it would be condemned; but only by standards established by the others. C. I. Lewis maintained this: to say that P entails Q is to say that it is logically impossible that (P & ¬Q).2 If Quine is right, then ‘entails’ and ‘impossible’ are as suspect as all other intensional terms. So perhaps they are; but their uses are not wholly without structure, and there are wrong ways of interrelating them. Lewis’s contention is about the internal geography of the intensional area, not its relations to the surrounding conceptual territory: it is an attempted analysis of one intensional expression in terms of another. I shall argue that Lewis was right, and also - by implication - that his thesis is helpful and clarifying - that is, that it is a genuine analysis. As is well known, Lewis’s analysis implies that each impossible proposition entails every proposition. Accepting the analysis, I accept this result. For one thing, Lewis has an argument for it (I use ‘→’ to abbreviate ‘entails’): (1) P & ¬P.. (shrink)

Concepts We thank all three commentators for extremely constructive, insightful, and gracious commentaries. We cannot address all their valuable points. In this response, we elucidate and relate the concepts of addiction, disease, disability, autonomy, and well-being. We examine some of the implications of these relationships in the context of the helpful responses made by our commentators. We begin with the definitions of the relevant concepts which we employ: ¥? ? ? Addiction (Liberal Concept): An addiction is a strong appetite. ¥? (...) ? ? Appetites: An appetite is a disposition that generates desires that are urgent, oriented toward some rewarding behavior, periodically recurring, often in predictable circumstances, sated temporarily by their fulfillment, and generally provide pleasure. ¥? ? ? Disease (Naturalistic Concept): A disease is some biological or psychological state that results in subfunctioning of the organism in a given set of environmental and social circumstances, C. The reference class is a natural class of organisms of uniform functional design; specifically, an age group of a sex of a species. A normal function is a part or process within members of the reference class and is a statistically typical contribution by it to their individual survival and reproduction (Boorse 1977, 1997). ¥? ? ? Disability (Welfarist Concept): A disability is a relatively stable biological or psychological state that tends to reduce the amount of well-being that this person will enjoy in a given set of environmental and social circumstances (Savulescu and Kahane 2009; Kahane and Savulescu, 2009). ¥? ? ? Autonomy (Rationalist Concept): A person rationally desires or values some state of affairs if and only if he or she desires that state of affairs while (1) being in possession of all relevant. (shrink)

The last 20 years have seen the development of a new form of therapy, compassion focused therapy. Although CFT has a growing evidence base, there have been few studies of CFT outside of an Anglo-European cultural context. In this paper, we ask: Might a CFT-based approach be of value for Indigenous Australians? If so, what kind of cultural adaptations might be needed? We report the findings from a pilot study of an arts-based compassion skills training group, in which usual CFT (...) group processes were significantly adapted to meet the needs of Indigenous Australians. At face value, CFT appeared to be a promising approach to enhancing the social and emotional wellbeing of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. However, despite initial consultations with Indigenous health professionals, the first attempts to offer a more conventional group-based CFT to Indigenous clients were largely unsuccessful. Following a review and advice from two Indigenous clients, we combined elements of CFT with visual arts to develop a new approach, “arts-based compassion skills training”. This paper reports an evaluation of this pilot ABCST group. The group had 6 × 4 h sessions of ABCST, facilitated by two psychologists and two artists. There were 10 participants, who attended between 2 and 6 sessions: five were clients, five were health professionals. Between 1 and 3 months later, six of the participants were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of interview data identified that two key processes—creating a positive group atmosphere and channeling compassion skills training through the medium of visual arts—led to four positive outcomes for participants: planting the seeds of new understandings, embodying the skills of compassion, strengthening relationships with others, and evolving a more self-compassionate relationship. We suggest that the preliminary results are sufficiently encouraging to warrant further development of ABCST in Indigenous communities. (shrink)

DESCARTES was a dualist and Spinoza a monist. If this marks a contrast between them, there ought to be a question to which Descartes’s answer was “two” and Spinoza’s “one”. (a) How many substances are there? Spinoza: “One.” Descartes: “Strictly speaking, one; but if we relax the criteria for substantiality a little, millions.” On no interpretation of the question did Descartes answer, “Two.” (b) How many basic kinds of substance are there? Descartes: “Two.” Spinoza: “Two; though there is only one (...) substance, and it is of both kinds.” Descartes is usually called a dualist because he took thought and extension to be the two basic, logically independent ways of being; but in this sense Spinoza was a dualist, too. If we take seriously his talk of “infinite” attributes, we may call him a pluralist on this point, but certainly not a monist. (c) Of how many substances does an embodied person consist? Descartes (ignoring his views about the divisibility of matter): “Two: an embodied person is made up of a body and a mind, which are distinct substances.” Spinoza: “None: an embodied person is a mode (under two attributes) of the one and only substance, and is not made up of any number of substances.” Those are the questions which come most readily to mind, and none yields a dualist/monist contrast between Descartes and Spinoza. But: (d) Given that A and B are basic, logically independent attributes, what is the smallest number of substances needed to instantiate both A and B? To this Descartes does answer “Two” and Spinoza does answer “One.” I suspect that those who “contrast” Descartes and Spinoza as dualist and monist usually have in mind not the genuine contrast brought out by (d) but rather the fact that Descartes answered “Two” to (b) while Spinoza answered “One” to (a). Still, (d) is important in the thinking of both philosophers and in the philosophy of mind generally. Strawson's chapter, “Persons,” for example, is interesting partly for its Spinozist answer to (d): Strawson does not reduce mental predicates to physical or vice versa, but says that predicates of both kinds may apply to a single thing, namely a person.. (shrink)

It is traditionally believed that cerebral activation (the presence of low voltage fast electrical activity in the neocortex and rhythmical slow activity in the hippocampus) is correlated with arousal, while deactivation (the presence of large amplitude irregular slow waves or spindles in both the neocortex and the hippocampus) is correlated with sleep or coma. However, since there are many exceptions, these generalizations have only limited validity. Activated patterns occur in normal sleep (active or paradoxical sleep) and during states of anesthesia (...) and coma. Deactivated patterns occur, at times, during normal waking, or during behavior in awake animals treated with atropinic drugs. Also, the fact that patterns characteristic of sleep, arousal, and waking behavior continue in decorticate animals indicates that reticulo-cortical mechanisms are not essential for these aspects of behavior. (shrink)

Anecdotal evidence has long lamented the status of social studies in elementary classrooms as observed by preservice teachers. As standardized testing has risen for mathematics and language arts, social studies has been pushed aside. In the aftermath of accountability legislation such as No Child Left Behind, research indicates that social studies is less visible in elementary classrooms due to an instructional focus on tested content areas (e.g. math, language arts, reading). In this study, approximately 90 elementary preservice teachers enrolled in (...) a social studies methods course responded to a survey and indicated the frequency and quality of lessons they observed over the course of a single semester. Findings report that preservice elementary teachers witnessed few, if any, lessons in social studies in the elementary classroom. Implications for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

With the increasing prices of newly approved anti-cancer treatments contributing to rising healthcare costs, healthcare systems are facing complex economic and ethical dilemmas. Especially in countries with universal access and mandatory health insurance, including many European countries, the organizing of funding or reimbursement of expensive new treatments can be challenging. When expensive anti-cancer treatments are deemed safe and effective, but are not (yet) reimbursed, ethical dilemmas arise. In countries with universal healthcare systems, such as the Netherlands, this gives rise to (...) a rather new ethical dilemma: should patients be allowed to pay out of pocket, using private funds, for medical treatments? On the one hand, to allow patients to pay for treatments out of pocket would be in line with the medical-ethical principles of beneficence and autonomy. On the other hand, allowing patients to pay out of pocket for anti-cancer treatments may lead to unequal access to medical treatments and could be considered unfair to patients who are less well-off. Thus, it could undermine the values of equality and solidarity, on which the Dutch healthcare system is built. Furthermore, out-of-pocket payments could potentially lead to financial hardship and distress for patients, which would conflict with the principle of non-maleficence. Does this mean that patients can rightfully be denied access to approved but not (yet) reimbursed anti-cancer treatments? In this article, we will use the Dutch healthcare system, which is based on equal access and solidarity, as a case study to draw attention to this—currently relatively unknown and unresolved—dilemma and to clarify the values at stake. This article contributes to current discussions about the societal problem of rising healthcare costs by informing policymakers, healthcare professionals, and ethicists about the ethical dilemma of out-of-pocket payments in universal healthcare systems, and aims to support health authorities, policymakers and health professionals in developing policy for whether to allow out-of-pocket payment-based access to newly approved but (too) expensive anti-cancer treatments. (shrink)

Scholars are increasingly calling for the environmental issues of the industrial agricultural system to be addressed via eventual agroecological system-level transformation. It is critical to identify the barriers to this transition. Drawing from Henke’s theory of “repair,” we explore how farmers participate in the reproduction of the industrial system through “discursive repair,” or arguing for the continuation of the industrial agriculture system. Our empirical case relates to water pollution from nitrogen fertilizer and draws data from a sample of over 150 (...) interviews with row-crop farmers in the midwestern United States. We find that farmers defend this system by denying agriculture’s causal role and proposing the potential for within-system solutions. They perform these defenses by drawing on ideological positions and may be ultimately led to seek system maintenance because they are unable to envision an alternative to the industrial agriculture system. (shrink)

Computational models of learning provide an alternative technique for identifying the number and type of chunks used by a subject in a specific task. Results from applying CHREST to chess expertise support the theoretical framework of Cowan and a limit in visual short-term memory capacity of 3–4 looms. An application to learning from diagrams illustrates different identifiable forms of chunk.

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) has undergone dramatic transformations since its emergence as a distinct discipline. This paper aims to highlight the scope, power, and future promise of evo-devo to transform and unify diverse aspects of biology. We articulate key questions at the core of eleven biological disciplines—from Evolution, Development, Paleontology, and Neurobiology to Cellular and Molecular Biology, Quantitative Genetics, Human Diseases, Ecology, Agriculture and Science Education, and lastly, Evolutionary Developmental Biology itself—and discuss why evo-devo is uniquely situated to substantially improve (...) our ability to find meaningful answers to these fundamental questions. We posit that the tools, concepts, and ways of thinking developed by evo-devo have profound potential to advance, integrate, and unify biological sciences as well as inform policy decisions and illuminate science education. We look to the next generation of evolutionary developmental biologists to help shape this process as we confront the scientific challenges of the 21st century. (shrink)