The notion that eukaryotes are ancestrally sexual has been gaining attention. This idea comes in part from the discovery of sets of “meiosis‐specific genes” in the genomes of protists. The existence of these genes has persuaded many that these organisms may be engaging in sex, even though this has gone undetected. The involvement of sex in protists is supported by the view that asexual reproduction results in the accumulation of mutations that would inevitably result in the decline and extinction of (...) such lineages. It is argued that this phenomenon can be obviated by polyploidy and that the “meiosis‐specific genes” are used in other processes, including polyploidy control and homologous recombination, independent of meiosis. These phenomena account for the finding that these genes are expressed in cultures devoid of apparent cell fusion events. Hence, it is also proposed that asexual, and not sexual, reproduction is the ancestral condition. (shrink)

Kant's Mathematical World aims to transform our understanding of Kant's philosophy of mathematics and his account of the mathematical character of the world. Daniel Sutherland reconstructs Kant's project of explaining both mathematical cognition and our cognition of the world in terms of our most basic cognitive capacities. He situates Kant in a long mathematical tradition with roots in Euclid's Elements, and thereby recovers the very different way of thinking about mathematics which existed prior to its 'arithmetization' in the nineteenth (...) century. He shows that Kant thought of mathematics as a science of magnitudes and their measurement, and all objects of experience as extensive magnitudes whose real properties have intensive magnitudes, thus tying mathematics directly to the world. His book will appeal to anyone interested in Kant's critical philosophy -- either his account of the world of experience, or his philosophy of mathematics, or how the two inform each other. (shrink)

The rapid development of machine-learning algorithms, which underpin contemporary artificial intelligence systems, has created new opportunities for the automation of work processes and management functions. While algorithmic management has been observed primarily within the platform-mediated gig economy, its transformative reach and consequences are also spreading to more standard work settings. Exploring algorithmic management as a sociotechnical concept, which reflects both technological infrastructures and organizational choices, we discuss how algorithmic management may influence existing power and social structures within organizations. We identify (...) three key issues. First, we explore how algorithmic management shapes pre-existing power dynamics between workers and managers. Second, we discuss how algorithmic management demands new roles and competencies while also fostering oppositional attitudes toward algorithms. Third, we explain how algorithmic management impacts knowledge and information exchange within an organization, unpacking the concept of opacity on both a technical and organizational level. We conclude by situating this piece in broader discussions on the future of work, accountability, and identifying future research steps. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

A simple mathematical extension of quantum theory is presented. As well as opening the possibility of alternative methods of calculation, the additional formalism implies a new physical interpretation of the standard theory by providing a picture of an external reality. The new formalism, developed first for the single-particle case, has the advantage of generalizing immediately to quantum field theory and to the description of relativistic phenomena such as particle creation and annihilation.

To date, the business ethics movement has mainly concentrated on reaching the troops, not the generals. But the issue that will determine how well this movement succeeds in the opening decades of the new millennium is not how we drive ethics andcompliance programs down an organization, but how we integrate considerations of ethics and values up in an organization. We mustbroaden the present group of business ethics advocates by enlisting influential policymakers, opinion leaders, the media, boards ofdirectors, CEOs, investment bankers, (...) international economic experts, and others who comprise what we might call the International Club of Thinkers and Doers. The key to ethical health in the future is a process that will drive integrity-based leadership and governance to the top of our global business organizations, with a goal to achieving global and universal standards of fundamental ethical values. (shrink)

Discourses of interdisciplinary health‐care are becoming more centralised in the context of global healthcare practices, which are increasingly based on multisystem interventions. As with all dominant discourses that are narrated into being, many others have been silenced and decentralised in the process. While questions of the nature and constituents of interdisciplinary practices continue to be debated and rehearsed, this paper focuses on the discourse of interdisciplinary collaboration using psychiatry as an example, with the aim of highlighting competing and alternative discourses. (...) The fundamental premise of this paper is that collaborative relationships form the basis of interdisciplinary practices in psychiatry. Through a critical engagement and a deconstructive reading of the pretext, context and subtexts of interdisciplinarity, we interrogate the concept of interdisciplinary practice within psychiatry. We contend that an important part of understanding and further conceptualising the discourse is through fracturing it. This process is illustrated in the successive stages of our conceptual map of discourse development: establishing, maintaining and developing discourses. An understanding of interdisciplinary practice is not only critical for psychiatry, but also offers important insights into the performance of collaborative failures and indeed successes across nursing and allied health professions. (shrink)

German philosopher Martin Heidegger stirred educators when in 1951 he claimed teaching is more difficult than learning because teachers must ‘learn to let learn’. However in the main he left the aphorism unexplained as part of a brief four-paragraph, less than two-page set of observations concerning the relationship of teaching to learning; and concluded at the end of those observations that to become a teacher is an ‘exalted matter’. This paper investigates both of Heidegger's claims, interpreting letting learn in the (...) context of Heidegger's larger philosophical project, and suggesting why in light of that project to become a teacher is an exalted concern. The methodology guiding the inquiry is largely hermeneutic, the purpose of the essay to interpret teaching from a Heideggerian perspective: its nature and general method. (shrink)

This article considers Friedrich Kittler’s deterministic media theory as both an appropriation and mutation of Michel Foucault’s archaeological method. Focusing on these two thinkers’ similar but divergent conceptions of the “death of man,” it will be argued that Kittler’s approach attempts to expunge archaeology of its last traces of Kantian transcendentalism by locating the causal agents of epistemic change within the domain of empirical experience, but in doing so, actually amplifies the anthropological vestiges that Foucault hoped to eradicate. The result (...) is an alluring but dogmatically positivist theory of mediatic causality that, in spite of its best efforts, can only reify, rather than dispel, the image of “so-called man.”. (shrink)

Review of 'Consciousness and Emotion', edited by Ralph D. Ellis and Natika Newton, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Recent decades have seen a rapid increase in the rate of conversion from conventional to organic farming, as organic farming shifted from an alternative production approach practiced by a small number of idealists, to the de facto alternative to mainstream conventional production. Although there has been considerable academic debate as to the role of agri-business penetration into the production and marketing chains of organic farming (‘conventionalization’), less is known about how the economic drivers of conventionalization are negotiated into practices at (...) the farm level. Drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of economic and cultural capitals, the direct connection between symbols of ‘good farming’ and the economic requirements of maintaining a viable farming business (i.e., the ‘taste of necessity’) is demonstrated. Findings indicate that conventional and organic farmers in the study sites identified a similar range of cultural symbols, but organic farmers emphasized different symbols within this range. This diversity and selectivity demonstrates the fragmentation and contestation of ideals resulting from economic challenges at the time of the study. Economic capital is important to the decision to consider conversion to organic farming, but formal conversion reflects re-weighting of forms of cultural capital. The author argues that recognition of the impact of economic pressures on conventional farming, which in the study sites often led to reduced input use rather than intensification, is missing from the conventionalization debate. The mainstreaming of organic farming production has presented conventional farmers with a set of alternative or re-weighted symbols and a crucible for reflexive consideration of their own standards and practices of farming. (shrink)

I examine the relationship between complete analysis and clarificatory analysis and explain why Wittgenstein thought he required both in his account of how to solve the problems of philosophy. I first describe Wittgenstein’s view of how philosophical confusions arise, by explaining how it is possible to misunderstand the logic of everyday language. I argue that any method of logical analysis in the Tractatus will inevitably be circular, but explain why this does not threaten the prospect of solving philosophical problems. I (...) distinguish between complete and clarificatory analysis and argue that Wittgenstein’s ‘strictly correct’ philosophical method is clarificatory analysis. Finally I discuss the relationship between the two forms of analysis and claim that, although, at the time of writing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein believed that the possibility of complete analysis underpins clarificatory analysis, in fact this was a mistake. In the Philosophical Investigations complete analysis is rejected and clarificatory analysis is retained. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 426-427 [Access article in PDF] Timothy Smiley, editor. Mathematics and Necessity: Essays in the History of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 166. Cloth, $35.00.Mathematics and Necessity contains essays by M. F. Burnyeat, Ian Hacking, and Jonathan Bennett based on lectures given to the British Academy in 1998. All concern the history of the philosophical treatment of (...) mathematics, necessity, or both, although there is no single thread running through all three essays.Burnyeat focuses on Plato's understanding of mathematics in the Republic, making use of the Timeaus in particular to defend his interpretation. Plato claimed that in the ideal society mathematics should be studied for a full ten years, which many have thought excessive. To explain it, Burnyeat argues that the role of mathematics is pervasive: ethics and politics are mathematical, because in Plato's view mathematics is a constitutive part of ethical understanding. On Burnyeat's interpretation, goodness is part of the objective world, and mathematics is a science of values. The link between mathematics and goodness in the objective world is forged by the concord, harmony, and unity of proportions, which express the goodness of the Divine Craftsman's beneficent design. Proportions are both intrinsically good and the proper study of mathematics.Burnyeat explains why Plato thinks abstract kinematics (the pure non-sensible counterpart to astronomy) and abstract harmonics lead to knowledge of the good. Abstract kinematics concerns the "harmony of the spheres" described in the Republic. Drawing heavily on the Timeaus, Burnyeat argues that the circular motions of the spheres are motions in the intelligence of the world soul and that there are similar motions in human souls. The world soul and human souls are spatial and have circular motions (invisibility and intangibility make them incorporeal). Souls are the most important subject matter of abstract harmonics—the study of good proportions. A soul that understands the various mathematical disciplines and their relations takes on the harmony and hence goodness of the world soul. Such a soul serves as a model for organizing the social world, a model which properly trained rulers can use to shape a community. Burnyeat's well-argued essay is compelling and exciting. [End Page 427]Ian Hacking's views provide a great contrast to Burnyeat's Plato. Hacking conducts a phenomenological inquiry into why some philosophers have become obsessed by mathematics as a source of philosophical inspiration. He holds that mathematics concerns a relatively minor part of human culture and that the influence of mathematics on philosophy is pernicious; he even describes it as an infection.Hacking examines the views of six philosophers: Plato, Leibniz, Mill, Descartes, Lakatos, and Wittgenstein. Hacking's assessment of the six philosophers is at times disputable, but it is also interesting and stimulating, and serves his phenomenological inquiry.Hacking traces philosophy's infection by mathematics to two factors. A mathematical proof can be perspicuous; that is, a proof can be "grasped," which requires seeing directly why something must be true and being able to recapitulate it. A mathematical proof can also anticipate facts about the world. He thinks that these two factors affect us in two ways: they give us the idea of a priori knowledge, and they dazzle us into unreasoned conviction in proofs. One might respond that, setting aside the feeling proofs give us, we are still justified in being impressed by them. Hacking argues that much of what impresses is based on a misunderstanding of their nature, which he attempts to correct.According to Hacking, a mathematical demonstration involves shifts of meaning that analytically bind the proof and the theorem it establishes. They thereby mutually support each other and provide what he calls self-authentication. The correctness of the proof is supported by the "analytified" truth of the theorem and the theorem is considered true because proven.This bootstrapping feature of mathematical proofs supports Hacking's deflationary account of necessity. Hacking suggests that the "must" of logical necessity rests upon our unwillingness to accept empirical counter-examples to the... (shrink)

This study addresses the nature of the contribution made by Christian feminist thinkers who claim that mutuality is a necessary part of a Christian social ethical framework. The theological method employed is analytical and comparative toward the end of illuminating, testing, and demonstrating the thesis: mutuality is a formal norm for Christian social ethics that functions along with love and justice to promote a balance of power that is required for optimum human flourishing, a flourishing set within the interdependent context (...) of the whole of creation. ;Chapter One analyzes selected primary sources of Rosemary Radford Ruether, Carter Heyward, Beverly Wildung Harrison, and Elizabeth A. Johnson isolating their definition and treatment of the term, "mutuality." A consensus definition of mutuality drawn from definitions by the four feminists. It is concluded that, similar to the tripartite nature of justice, mutuality has four forms--cosmic, gender, generative, and social. ;Chapters Two and Three illustrate several moments in the history of Christian thought wherein antecedents of the feminists' notion of mutuality are found. Selected primary works of Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, Martin Buber, and H. Richard Niebuhr are examined. ;Chapter Four compares the four feminists' definition of mutuality with definitions of formal norm by Josef Fuchs, Lisa Sowle Cahill, and Timothy E. O'Connell, determining that mutuality is a formal norm for Christian social ethics. Chapter Five is a case study. Utilizing our definition, it is shown how consideration of mutuality and its four forms influences the ethical analyses of George Weigel, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Stanley Hauerwas in determining if the Persian Gulf War was a just war. It is concluded that the probative value of the formal norm, mutuality, is multifaceted. First and foremost, it requires the moral agent to deal concretely in moral reflection and moral decision-making. Specific and careful attention needs to be given to the reality revealing questions in the concrete, as well as in the abstract. Second, mutuality requires the moral agent to probe the dynamics of power in an ethical dilemma and to seek out ways to shape those dynamics to serve power-with. It is a complement to and corrective of love and justice. Third, engaging the norm of mutuality presses the moral agent toward inclusivity drawing into the process of moral reflection concern for the thriving and flourishing of all involved. More than the norms of love and justice, mutuality places humans in a perspective within the whole of creation. (shrink)

One fundamental barrier to eliminating health disparities, particularly with regard to the determinants of health, is the persistence of discrimination. Civil rights law is the primary legal mechanism used to address discrimination. Federal civil rights laws have been the subject of wider analyses as a determinant of health as well as a tool to address health disparities. The research on state civil rights laws, while more limited, is growing. This article will highlight a few examples of how some states are (...) using civil rights laws to combat discrimination, particularly in more expansive ways and in the interest of new populations, presenting tools that can target determinants and address the goal of reducing health disparities. (shrink)

Jane Austen’s Emma : Philosophical PerspectivesDADLEZE. M. oup. 2018. pp. xvi + 246. £19.99.

Much evidence suggests that, from a young age, humans are able to generalize information learned about a subset of a category to the category itself. Here, we propose that—beyond simply being able to perform such generalizations—people are biased to generalize to categories, such that they routinely make spontaneous, implicit category generalizations from information that licenses such generalizations. To demonstrate the existence of this bias, we asked participants to perform a task in which category generalizations would distract from the main goal (...) of the task, leading to a characteristic pattern of errors. Specifically, participants were asked to memorize two types of novel facts: quantified facts about sets of kind members and generic facts about entire kinds. Moreover, half of the facts concerned properties that are typically generalizable to an animal kind, and half concerned properties that are typically more idiosyncratic. We predicted that—because of the hypothesized bias—participants would spontaneously generalize the quantified facts to the corresponding kinds, and would do so more frequently for the facts about generalizable properties. In turn, these generalizations would lead to a higher rate of quantified-to-generic memory errors for the generalizable properties. The results of four experiments supported this prediction. Moreover, the same generalizable-versus-idiosyncratic difference in memory errors occurred even under cognitive load, which suggests that the hypothesized bias operates unnoticed in the background, requiring few cognitive resources. In sum, this evidence suggests the presence of a powerful bias to draw generalizations about kinds. (shrink)

Reads modern philosophy (and the university) as rooted in an audiocentric fantasy.

Drawing from our interdisciplinary qualitative study of LGBTI conservative Christians and their allies, we name an especially toxic form of shame—what we call sacramental shame—that affects the lives of LGBTI and other conservative Christians. Sacramental shame results from conservative Christianity's allegiance to the doctrine of gender complementarity, which elevates heteronormativity to the level of the sacred and renders those who violate it as not persons, but monsters. In dispensing shame as a sacrament, nonaffirming Christians require constant displays of shame as (...) proof that LGBTI church members love God and belong in the community. Part of what makes this shame so harmful is that parents and pastors often dispense it with sincere expressions of care and affection, compounding the sense that one's capacity to give and receive love is damaged. We foreground LGBTI Christian movements to overcome sacramental shame by cultivating nonhubristic pride, and conclude by discussing briefly their new understandings of love and justice that could have far‐reaching benefits. (shrink)

Some photographs show determinate features of a scene because the photographed scene had those features. This dependency relation is, rightly, a consensus in philosophy of photography. I seek to refute many long-established theories of photography by arguing that they are incompatible with this commitment. In Section II, I classify accounts of photography as either single-stage or multi-stage. In Section III, I analyze the historical basis for single-stage accounts. In Section IV, I explain why the single-stage view led scientists to postulate (...) “latent” photographic images as a technical phenomenon in early chemical photography. In Section V, I discredit the notion of an invisible latent image in chemical photography and, in Section VI, extend this objection to the legacy of the latent image in digital photography. In Section VII, I appeal to the dependency relation to explain why the notion of a latent image makes the single-stage account untenable. Finally, I use the multi-stage account to advance debate about “new” versus “orthodox” theories of photography. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the causally symmetric version of the familiar de Broglie–Bohm interpretation, this version allowing the spacelike nonlocality and the configuration space ontology of the original model to be avoided via the addition of retrocausality. Two different features of this alternative formulation are considered here. With regard to probabilities, it is shown that the model provides a derivation of the Born rule identical to that in Bohm’s original formulation. This derivation holds just as well for a many-particle, (...) entangled state as for a single particle. With regard to “certainties”, the description of a particle’s spin is examined within the model and it is seen that a statistical description is no longer necessary once final boundary conditions are specified in addition to the usual initial state, with the particle then possessing a definite value for every spin component at intermediate times. These values are consistent with being the components of a single, underlying spin vector. The case of a two-particle entangled spin state is also examined and it is found that, due to the retrocausal aspect, each particle possesses its own definite spin during the entanglement, independent of the other particle. In formulating this picture, it is demonstrated how such a realistic model can preserve Lorentz invariance in the face of Bell’s theorem and avoid the need for a preferred reference frame. (shrink)

Human rights are foundational to the health and well-being of all individuals and have remained a central tenet of nursing’s ethical framework throughout history. The purpose of this study is to explore continuity and changes to human rights in nursing codes of ethics in the Canadian context. This study examines nursing codes of ethics between the years 1953 and 2017, which spans the very first code in Canada to the most recently adopted. The historical method is used to compare and (...) contrast human rights language, positioning and descriptions between different code editions. The findings suggest there has been very little change in how human rights have been included within the Canadian nursing codes of ethics. Furthermore, we consider how changes within the nursing profession have influenced the authority of codes of ethics and their ability to support nurses in carrying out ethical obligations specific to human rights. Finally, the impacts and implications of these changes are discussed concerning the protection of human rights in today’s healthcare landscape in Canada. (shrink)

In 1773, the Scottish traveller Patrick Brydone published an account of visiting Mount Etna, in which he drew on three distinct categories of thought: the scientific, the aesthetic, and the cultural. He carried his barometer up the volcano to measure it; he was overwhelmed with awe on viewing the sunrise from its summit; and he carefully set his account in the context of different mythological and philosophical explanations of Etna, largely drawn from the writings of classical authors. In preceding centuries, (...) Thomas Burnet’s Theory of the Earth and Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus viewed mountains as laboratories for better understanding nature, for evoking a sense of eschatological awe, and as embedded in long traditions of cultural appreciation. Earlier still, Pietro Bembo in 1496 recounted his journey to the summit of Etna which wove together personal observation, classical insights, and aesthetic admiration. In an ancient example, the first-century anonymous Aetna poem urged readers to move beyond mythological explanations for volcanic activity and to instead enjoy true aesthetic pleasure in investigating the volcano and its causes for themselves. This article offers a close reading of these texts in order to demonstrate three key points. The first is that an intense aesthetic experience of volcanoes can be found in accounts predating the eighteenth-century articulation of the ‘natural sublime’. The second is that the compulsion to investigate and understand natural phenomena, as a key element of aesthetic appreciation, is also evident before the Enlightenment. Third, the article suggests that a sense of Etna as ‘classic ground’—as a feature which both intensified the viewer’s interest in its natural phenomena and produced an ‘interested’ aesthetic experience of its natural greatness—likewise extends back even to the ancient texts from which later travellers would draw their own cultural associations. (shrink)

A collection of ten essays explaining ethical positions in major religions on such issues as sexuality and sexual difference, contraception and reproduction, death and dying, and ecology and warfare. In addition to the standard Buddhist, Hindu, Judaism, existential Christianity, and Islam, they include goddess religions and aboriginal philosophies. Two consider feminist challenges to ethics and religious responses to global ethical issues. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics and the author of the book under review should not be confused with the John Gray who thinks that men are from Mars and women from Venus. Our man is a political philosopher, best known for a string of books on liberalism and a lot less sanguine about the prospects for humanity than his New Age namesake. In fact, perhaps on account of his earlieRAffection for Margaret Thatcher, he (...) concludes: ' Humanity does not exist. There are only humans . . .' . If Gray's reclassification of homo sapiens as homo rapiens and his ecological pessimism are right, humans are unlikely to be around for much longer either. John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other animals, London: Granta Publications, 2002, ?12.99, ISBN 1862075123. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of Kant's theory of mathematical cognition in his phoronomy, his pure doctrine of motion. I argue that Kant's account of how we can construct the composition of motion rests on the construction of extended intervals of space and time, and the representation of the identity of the part–whole relations the construction of these intervals allow. Furthermore, the construction of instantaneous velocities and their composition also rests on the representation of extended intervals of space and time, (...) reflecting the general approach to instantaneous velocity in the eighteenth century. (shrink)