There are increasing concerns that research regulatory requirements exceed those required to manage risks, particularly for low- and negligible-risk research projects. In particular, inconsistent documentation requirements across research sites can delay the conduct of multi-site projects. For a one-year, negligible-risk project examining biobank operations conducted at three separate Australian institutions, we found that the researcher time required to meet regulatory requirements was eight times greater than that required for the approved research activity. In total, 76 business days were required to (...) obtain the necessary approvals, and site-specific processes required twice as long as primary Human Research Ethics Committee and Research Governance Office processes. We describe the impact of this administrative load on the conduct of a one-year, externally-... (shrink)

Background In their paper “Research approvals iceberg: how a ‘low-key’ study in England needed 89 professionals to approve it and how we can do better” Petrova and Barclay highlight concerns with the health research regulatory environment in the UK. Discussion As long-standing chairs of NHS research ethics committees, researchers, and also academics in research ethics, we are also often frustrated with the regulatory process in the UK. However, we think that Petrova and Barclay’s analysis is misleading because it conflates research (...) ethics with governance and funding processes, thus failing to adequately distinguish between the national coordinating function of the Health Research Authority, local research governance processes, and interactions with research sponsors and/or the Clinical Research Network. (shrink)

While there is now general agreement that memory gives rise to both conscious and unconscious influences, there remains disagreement concerning the process architecture underlying these distinct influences. Do they arise from independent underlying systems or from systems that are interactive ? In the current paper we present a novel “inside-out” technique that can be used with the process-dissociation paradigm to arrive at more concrete conclusions concerning this central question and demonstrate this technique via a meta-analysis of currently published findings. Our (...) results suggest that the data presented in these studies vary in ways most consistent with the assumption that conscious and unconscious influences behave independently. (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 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. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Josiah Royce's "Enlightened" Antiblack Racism?Dwayne A. TunstallThis article has not been written by some ideal Roycean mediator whose interpretive acts can help heal the deep-seated racial and ethnic divisions of contemporary American society. Nor has it been written by an impartial judge adjudicating a dispute. Rather this article has been written by a Roycean scholar and a philosopher of race who feels compelled to examine Royce's social philosophy (...) in order to determine whether his positions on race in the United States of America and on racialized colonialism in the British Caribbean presuppose the legitimacy of antiblack racism. What has compelled me to examine Royce's social philosophy critically are the presentations made by Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley and Tommy J. Curry at the joint Josiah Royce Society and Personalist Discussion Group session for the 2008 American Philosophical Association (APA) Central Division meeting.For those readers who might be familiar with Royce's philosophy, this entire article may seem pointless. I can imagine quite a few readers asking themselves the following questions: Why should we waste our time reading an article investigating whether Royce's social philosophy presupposes antiblack racism? Do we not already know that Royce's philosophy is an antiracist one? This response has been nurtured by those Roycean scholars who have interpreted his philosophy to be antiracist. Indeed, this has apparently been the standard approach to interpreting Royce's philosophy since the publication of his 1905 address to the Chicago Ethical Society, "Race Questions and Prejudices," in Race Questions, Provincialism and Other American Problems. These scholars have included American pragmatists, African-American philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and philosophers of race. Over the last forty years alone, these scholars have included William T. Fontaine, Cornel West, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Alain Locke, Shannon Sullivan, and Jacquelyn Kegley. [End Page 39]In this article I argue that the standard antiracist interpretation of Royce's philosophy is a mistaken one. This is an understandable mistake, though, given that many of those who interpret Royce this way presuppose that (1) one can analyze certain concepts and principles from Royce's ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics (e.g., his theory of interpretation) apart from his concrete social philosophy and (2) one can ignore his tacit acceptance of early twentieth-century, British-style racialized colonialism. I think Kegley's writings on Royce and race are paradigmatic examples of this reading of Royce.Kegley's recent APA presentation can be read as a further articulation of one of the central contentions in her 2005 article, "Is a Coherent Racial Identity Essential to Genuine Individuals and Communities?": "… Royce advocates and provides the foundation for an anti-essentialist and nonracialist understanding of race" (216). Following her earlier analysis, Kegley's presentation takes these two contentions for granted: First, when one criticizes an essentialist conception of race (that is, regarding race as a natural kind), that person is not racist. Second, when one regards the concept of race as a social kind, one is antiracist, if not an outright nonracist. However, I think that it is possible for one to criticize an essentialist conception of race and regard race as a social kind and still accept a form of cultural antiblack racism. Moreover, I think that Royce's social philosophy is a paradigmatic example of this phenomenon, with him being a nonessentialist with regards to the concept of race but yet being a cultural antiblack racist.Here, the significance of Curry's presentation for Royce scholars is obvious. In it he asks us Royce scholars if Royce's social philosophy, with regards to race issues, is an accomplice for the cultural perpetuation of white supremacy. I think that the answer to that question hinges on whether Royce's acceptance of British-style racialized colonialism in the West Indies is based on a misguided ethnocentrism or on a form of cultural antiblack racism.I take it for granted that Royce's recommendation that Southern Euro-Americans learn from the British colonial rule of Jamaica and Trinidad in "Race Questions and Prejudices" is evidence that he had accepted the legitimacy of British-style racialized colonialism. What I would like to do now is explain how Royce's... (shrink)

ABSTRACTBenjamin Vaughan had a passion for anonymity. This is the first attempt to provide a full list of his many and significant contributions to intellectual life and letters in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. No attempt has been made to unveil Vaughan’s scientific writings, and only two of his productions after emigrating to the United States are here included, in both cases because they relate to his earlier writings. After coming to the United States, Vaughan renounced further involvement (...) in the affairs of Europe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Josiah Royce in FocusDwayne A. TunstallJosiah Royce in Focus Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008.Josiah Royce in Focus reads like a sequel to Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley’s earlier book on Royce’s public philosophy, Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities. As she did in Genuine Individuals and Genuine Communities, Kegley does a remarkable job of interpreting Royce’s philosophy such that it has [End Page 127] contemporary (...) relevance for academic philosophy, conflict resolution, psychology, and the religion-science dialogue. Yet, unlike with her earlier book, Kegley devotes over two-thirds of this book to the task of weaving together Royce’s life and educational experiences with his thought. This integration of Royce’s life with his thought allows the reader to glimpse just how Royce is “a model philosopher: a scholar and a committed teacher, as well as a philosopher much concerned about public issues and basic human concerns” (xiv). Kegley does this while introducing the reader to many dimensions of Royce, including Royce the son, Royce the father, Royce the first-generation Californian, Royce the first-rate historian of California, Royce the amateur novelist, and Royce the world traveler. Amazingly, she uses Royce’s life to illuminate his philosophical thought without psychologizing Royce and hence avoids the all-too-common urge to reduce people’s philosophical ideas to mere rationalizations of their own preferences and desires. This is to be applauded in the age of Oprah, the proliferation of memoirs, and the apparent glut of self-help books.The first five chapters constitute Kegley’s portrait of Royce the person and Royce the thinker. In chapter 1, “Royce as a Frontier Californian and Intellectual Pioneer: Forging Self and Thought in a New and Developing Land,” she introduces the reader to Royce the first-generation Californian and intellectual pioneer. Here she persuasively links his California frontier upbringing; his early educational experiences in California at the Lincoln School (San Francisco) and the University of California, Berkeley; his studies in Germany; and his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins to his concerns about social conflicts and his lifelong attempt to resolve those conflicts to better the communities in which they occur (7–12).Indeed, she persuasively argues that Royce had already formulated the central insights of his philosophy by the time of his arrival at Harvard University in 1882. Kegley’s interpretation of Royce’s intellectual development owes much to Randall Auxier’s recent work on Royce’s thought. In Auxier’s interpretation of Royce’s thought, Royce had formulated the central intellectual insights of his philosophy—especially his ethics, philosophy or religion, and public philosophy—years before The Religious Aspect of Philosophy was published in 1885. This account of Royce’s intellectual development differs somewhat from Frank M. Oppenheim’s account. Oppenheim’s account depicts Royce’s intellectual development as a series of interrelated yet momentous “maximal intellectual insights.” Each of these insights marks a noticeable shift in his intellectual development. Oppenheim thinks that, of all the maximal intellectual insights Royce had throughout his career, the [End Page 128] most momentous one is the 1912 Peircean insight. This insight leads Royce to convert to Peircean semiotics and clarify his moral philosophy and philosophy of religion with Peirce’s theory of interpretation. In Oppenheim’s account, The Sources of Religious Insight (1912) and The Problem of Christianity (1913) are the glorious fruits of his Peircean insight. What Kegley has done in chapter 1 is to provide an account of Royce’s intellectual development that supersedes Oppenheim’s account. Indeed, her account of Royce’s intellectual development could possibly change how scholars study Royce’s thought, much in the same way that John E. Smith’s Royce’s Social Infinite did from the early 1950s until recently.In chapter 2, “The Self,” Kegley depicts Royce as a late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century psychologist whose ideas are still relevant today. She reminds the reader throughout this chapter that Royce is a pioneer in psychology, given that his book Outlines of Psychology (1903) advances an approach to psychology that sidesteps faculty psychology and that he is one of the first psychologists, along with William James... (shrink)

Compatibilism is the view that determinism is true, but agents nevertheless possess free will as long as they act from a compatibilist friendly agential structure (i.e., agents want to perform their actions, agents identify with the actions they perform, agents would be responsive to reasons against performing those actions, etc.). The most powerful contemporary objection to compatibilism is the manipulation argument, according to which agents determined to act as they do by the prodding of manipulative neuroscientists are not considered free, (...) so agents determined to act by physical processes operating from the remote past should not be considered free either. One compatibilist response to the manipulation argument is the so-called hard-line reply, according to which compatibilists argue that agents determined by physical processes operating from the remote past are free, so agents determined by manipulative neuroscientists are free as well. In this paper I demonstrate that leading hard-line replies fail, while also introducing a novel argument against the hard-line reply. (shrink)

Qualia epiphenomenalism is the view that qualitative properties of events, such as the raw feel of tastes or painfulness, lack causal efficacy. One common objection to qualia epiphenomenalism is the epistemic argument, which states that this loss of causal efficacy undermines our capacity to know about these epiphenomenal qualitative properties. A number of rejoinders have been offered up to insulate qualia epiphenomenalism from the epistemic argument. In this paper I consider and ultimately reject two such replies, namely, the common underlying (...) cause reply and the appeal to physical-effect epiphenomenalism. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson and Philosophy: Essays on the Philosophical Cast of Jefferson’s Writings is a collection of essays on topics that relate to philosophical aspects of Jefferson’s thinking over the years. Much historical insight is given to ground the various philosophical strands in Jefferson’s thought and writing on topics such as political philosophy, moral philosophy, slavery, republicanism, wall of separation, liberty, educational philosophy, and architecture.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:La Métaphysique de Royce, avec un appendice de texts, publiée et préfacée par Miklos VetöDwayne Alexander TunstallGabriel Marcel La Métaphysique de Royce, avec un appendice de texts, publiée et préfacée par Miklos Vetö Paris L'Hartmattan, 2005xix + 250 pp.Gabriel Marcel's La Métaphysique de Royce (MR) is the most influential Continental interpretation of Josiah Royce's philosophy. Moreover, Marcel's monograph-length study of Royce's metaphysics remains the only significant work on (...) Royce's philosophy written in French. MR was originally published as a series of four articles in La Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (May-June 1918 and January-April 1919) and published, in a slightly edited form, as a monograph by Aubier in 1945. The L'Hartmattan edition of Marcel's MR is, to my knowledge, the first edition of Marcel's MR to be published in any language since the publication of the English translation of MR in 1956 under the title, Royce's Metaphysics.1Because an English translation of MR is already available, this review will not examine Marcel's actual monograph in any significant detail. Rather, it will describe Vetö's preface and the texts comprising this book's appendices.Vetö's preface seeks to fulfill two aims: (1) to situate MR in its own historical context and (2) to convey its insights to a contemporary audience. Vetö fulfills the first aim by situating Royce's thought within the milieu of late nineteenth-century Anglo-American idealism and its reception of German idealism (pp. vii-viii). He also fulfills this aim by explaining how a young Marcel could have devoted an entire monograph to Royce's thought. As for fulfilling the second aim, Vetö admits that doing so will be difficult, since Royce's thought "attracts only very modest attention from philosophers and historians of philosophy outside of America" (p. vii). It seems that Vetö attempts to fulfill the second aim by concentrating on how Royce's thought influenced the development of Marcel's thought. Due to space constraints, I will describe only a few of the more insightful observations Vetö makes about Marcel's MR in his preface.One such insightful observation is Vetö's recognition that, unlike most formulations of the principle of individuation in the Western philosophic tradition, Royce's principle of individuation is essentially volitional. Following Marcel, Vetö explains how Royce does not think that an individual is definable, ontologically speaking, by its empirical qualities or by some logical designation of class membership. Royce thought that an individual cannot be defined apart from the communal and moral interests of the one who recognizes that individual (p. xi). In fact, the act of recognizing an individual is an act of love for Royce. What Royce regards as love is different than the common definitions of the term, however. Vetö reminds the reader that Roycean love involves the exclusive selection of an individual to be the object of one's attention. This means that whenever one exclusively attends to someone or something in the world, that someone or something becomes a genuine individual.2 [End Page 582]Another insightful observation is Vetö's recognition that Royce's conception of God as fellow-sufferer, indeed as the One who experiences our sufferings more intensely and meaningfully than we do, seems to anticipate Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy and, to a greater extent, Charles Hartshorne's process theology (p. xiv).A third insightful observation is Vetö's description of how Royce's thought influenced the development of Marcel's thought. While Marcel writes that Royce's thought had only a negligible influence on the formation of his mature position on intersubjectivity in his author's preface to the English translation of his monograph in 1956, Vetö contends that Royce obviously played an important role in Marcel's early insights into the nature of intersubjectivity. This is especially true of Marcel's insights into intersubjectivity as they are articulated in the second part of his Metaphysical Journal (1927).3 In that work, Marcel notes how his own nascent existentialism, e.g., his distinction between being and having... (shrink)

High-spin states in the odd-odd N = Z nucleus Co-54 have been investigated by the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32,1 alpha 1p1n)Co-54. Gamma-ray information gathered with the Ge detector array Gammasphere was correlated with evaporated particles detected in the charged particle detector system Microball and a 1 pi neutron detector array. A significantly extended excitation scheme of Co-54 is presented, which includes a candidate for the isospin T = 1, 6(+) state of the 1f(7/2)(-2) multiplet. The results are compared to large-scale shell-model (...) calculations in the fp shell. Effective interactions with and without isospin-breaking terms have been used to probe isospin symmetry and isospin mixing. A quest for deformed high-spin rotational cascades proved negative. This feature is discussed by means of cranking calculations. (shrink)

Two rotational bands have been identified and characterized in the proton-magic N = Z + 1 nucleus Ni-57. These bands complete the systematics of well-and superdeformed rotational bands in the light nickel isotopes starting from doubly magic Ni-56 to Ni-60. High-spin states in Ni-57 have been produced in the fusion-evaporation reaction Si-28(S-32, 2p1n)Ni-57 and studied with the gamma-ray detection array GAMMASPHERE operated in conjunction with detectors for evaporated light charged particles and neutrons. The features of the rotational bands in Ni-57 (...) are compared to those of neighbouring isotopes and interpreted by means of configuration-dependent cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky calculations. The two observed high-spin bands are considered signature partners and assigned to configurations with one 1g(9/2) proton and one 1g(9/2) neutron, resulting in an unambiguous understanding of the energetically favoured signature alpha = -1/2 band but a somewhat less satisfactory description of the signature alpha = +1/2 band. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBenjamin Vaughan had a passion for anonymity and Kenneth E. Carpenter’s is the first attempt to provide a full list of his many and significant contributions to intellectual life and letters in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, up to his emigration to North America in 1797. This is an introduction to Carpenter’s important research.

Among Aristotle’s criticisms of the Form of the Good is his claim that the knowledge of such a Good could be of no practical relevance to everyday rational agency, e.g. on the part of craftspeople. This critique turns out to hinge ultimately on the deeply different assumptions made by Plato and Aristotle about the relation of ‘good’ and ‘good for’. Plato insists on the conceptual priority of the former; and Plato wins the argument.

To better understand the work of pre-Darwinian British life researchers in their own right, this paper discusses two different styles of reasoning. On the one hand there was analysis:synthesis, where an organism was disintegrated into its constituent parts and then reintegrated into a whole; on the other hand there was palaetiology, the historicist depiction of the progressive specialization of an organism. This paper shows how each style allowed for development, but showed it as moving in opposite directions. In analysis:synthesis, development (...) proceeded centripetally, through the fusion of parts. In palaetiology, development moved centrifugally, through the ramifying specialization of an initially simple substance. I first examine a community of analytically oriented British life researchers, exemplified by Richard Owen, and certain technical questions they considered important. These involved the neurosciences, embryology, and reproduction and regeneration. The paper then looks at a new generation of British palaetiologists, exemplified by W.B. Carpenter and T.H. Huxley, who succeeded at portraying analysts' questions as irrelevant. The link between styles of reasoning and physical sites is also explored. Analysts favored museums, which facilitated the examination and display of unchanging marine organisms while providing a power base for analysts. I suggest that palaetiologists were helped by vivaria, which included marine aquaria and Wardian cases. As they became popular in the early 1850s, vivaria provided palaetiologists with a different kind of living and changing evidence. Forms of evidence, how they were preserved and examined, and career options all reinforced each other: social and epistemic factors thus merged. (shrink)

This essay selectively reviews, from an historical and philosophical perspective, the dopamine (DA) hypothesis of schizophrenia (DHS; Table 1 lists the abbreviations used in this essay). Our goal is not to adjudicate the validity of the theory—although we arrive at a generally skeptical conclusion—but to focus on the process whereby the DHS has evolved over time and been evaluated. Since its inception, the DHS has been the most prominent etiologic theory in psychiatry and is still referred to widely in current (...) textbooks (e.g., Buchanan and Carpenter, Jr. 2005, 1336; Cohen 2003, 225; Gazzaniga 2004, 1257;Kandel et al. 2000, 1200). Understanding its origins and evolution should help to clarify the nature of modern .. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy’s decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action occurs or (...) not: Maddy’s reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent’s lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent’s lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up. (shrink)

Aristotle bequeathed to us a powerful metaphysical picture, of substances in which properties inhere. The picture has turned out to be highly problematic in many ways; but it is nevertheless a picture not easy to dislodge. Less obvious are the normative tones implicit in the picture and the way these permeate our system of values, especially when thinking of ourselves and our ambitions, hopes and fears. These have proved, if anything, even harder to dislodge than the metaphysical picture which supports (...) them. This paper first draws out the ethics suggested by a conception of being as individual substances, and finds both inner tensions among these values—expressed in divergent characteristics in the history of philosophy—and a neglect of a significant set of values. Substance metaphysics prefers freedom, independence and autonomy over relational and reciprocal values, which can even be regarded as existentially threatening. A prominent attempt to accommodate both sorts of values without eschewing substantialist metaphysics is briefly considered, before turning to examine an alternative metaphysics and the values it implies. A metaphysics which takes being as becoming, it is argued, supports an ethics centred on relational values, and their associated virtues of care. (shrink)

Qualia Epiphenomenalism is the view that qualitative events lack causal efficacy. A common objection to qualia epiphenomenalism is the so-called Self-Stultifying Objection, which suggests that justified, true belief about qualitative events requires, among other things, the belief to be caused by the qualitative event—the very premise that qualia epiphenomenalism denies. William Robinson provides the most sustained response to the self-stultification objection that is available. In this paper I argue that Robinson's reply does not sufficiently overcome the self-stultification objection.

Endosex, in contrast to intersex, refers to innate physical sex characteristics judged to fall within the broad range of what is considered normative or typical for ‘binary’ female or male bodies by the medical field, or to persons with such characteristics1 (p. 437). In this short contribution, we explain the origins and increasing use of this little-known term and discuss its practical and ethical relevance to medicine as well as to scholarship from a range of disciplines concerned with individuals’ sexed (...) embodiment. There is growing awareness in many quarters of the term intersex— used within some discourses to refer to clusters of bodily attributes (as in ‘intersex traits’, also termed differences of sex development or variations of sex characteristics)1 or more broadly to persons (as in ‘intersex persons’) whose bodily attributes differ from the dominant clinical, biological, or legal paradigms that categorise and differentiate female and male bodies. Intersex traits have historically been stigmatised as monstrous, morbid or tragic, justifying surgical and hormonal ‘fixing’.2 Persons born with the attributes named with these terms, even if physically healthy, therefore risk unnecessary pathologisation and medicalisation, prompting interventions, often non-voluntary, into their bodies to make them appear or function in ways that are deemed more typically female or male. In addition, some legal and social systems automatically associate persons with these traits with third categories of sex—neither female nor male—which may or may not align with their sex designation at birth, sex of rearing, personal experience or self-conception (see Coda). Being seen as intersex or being judged to have …. (shrink)

Four studies examined how people combine social concepts that have conflicting implications (e.g., Harvard‐educated and carpenter). Several kinds of evidence indicated that such combinations are guided by causal reasoning that draws upon both causal relations contained within the constituent concepts and on broader world knowledge. Open‐ended descriptions of members of combinations contained explicit causal descriptors, as well as emergent attributes not used to describe members of constituents. Ratings of the likelihood that combination members possessed various attributes were not fully (...) predicted by comparable ratings of constituents. Causal reasoning appeared to be most pervasive for combinations viewed as more surprising, suggesting that surprise may have triggered the generation of causal accounts. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim argues that unreduced mental causes are excluded from efficacy because physical causes are sufficient in themselves. One response to this causal exclusion argument is to embrace some form of overdetermination. In this paper I consider two forms of overdetermination. Independent overdetermination suggests that two individually sufficient causes bring about one effect. This model fails because the sufficiency of one cause renders the other cause unnecessary. Dependent overdetermination suggests that a physical cause is necessary and sufficient for a given (...) effect, but it necessitates a mental cause of the effect as well. This model fails because the necessity of the mental cause renders the physical cause individually insufficient. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s principle of Explanatory Exclusion says there can be no more than a single complete and independent explanation of any one event. Accordingly, if we have a complete neurological explanation for some piece of human behavior, the mental explanation must either be excluded, or it must not be distinct from the neurological explanation. Jaegwon Kim argues that mental explanations are not distinct from neurological explanations on account of the fact that they refer to the same objective causal relation between (...) events. A number of critics have argued that this extensional model of explanatory individuation allows for too many descriptions to state the same explanation. In this paper I consider, and ultimately reject, a possible response to these critics called the Constitutive Property Reply. (shrink)

This review discussion outlines Justin Barrett’s Preparedness Model. This evolutionary model for belief in God is shown to posit a maladaptive mind for infants. Questions about its implications and the supporting data are considered.

In the cladistic literature, there is a recurrent perspective that considers homoplasy as something undesirable. Homoplasy, according to this view, is believed to obscure homologies that may lead to synapomorphies. Some cladists often call homoplasies an ad hoc hypothesis or an “error in our preliminary assignment of homology.” Consequently, homoplasy is generally regarded negatively, hindering further investigations, because it matters little whether a character subject to homoplasy is a convergence, a parallelism, or a reversal, since they all fall within the (...) problematic homoplastic category. Nixon and Carpenter developed one of the recent arguments supporting this vision. In this context, I will argue that phylogenetics, being a part of evolutionary biology, must be compatible with its principles. Therefore, I will discuss the idea that homoplasy is more complex than just nonhomology, sometimes even constituting evidence of common ancestry (e.g., parallelism). I will put forward the thesis that it is crucial to differentiate instances of convergence, parallelism, and reversions by incorporating recent advances from EvoDevo research. Ultimately, this approach aims to demonstrate that evolutionary biology and phylogenetics mutually complement each other and assist in providing different lines of evidence that can be used to test different evolutionary hypotheses. (shrink)

In A Treatise of Artificial Magnets, John Michell observes, Not being aware of this property [i.e. the equality of attraction and repulsion], he [Gilbert] concluded from some experiments he had made, not very irationally [sic], that the Needle was not attracted by the magnet, but turned into its position by, what he calls, a disponent virtue […]. For Michell, the disponent virtue 1 is the underlying cause of magnetic phenomena in Gilbert’s treatment. He is not alone. Ridley and Carpenter (...) also read Gilbert’s magnetism as positing a disponent virtue.2 I agree. In this paper, I show what it would entail to treat Gilbertian magnetism as... (shrink)

Man's ultimate end, by the Rev. Father James.--Free will and responsibility, by H. Pope.--The criteria of morality, by the Rev. Father James.--Law and its obligations, by T. Flynn.--Conscience, by B. Grimley.--The natural virtues, by H. Carpenter.--The supernatural virtues, by H. Carpenter.--Merit and demerit, by H. Pope.--Rights natural and civil, by T. E. Flynn.--The right to private property, by L. Watt.--Marriage and conjugal duties, by H. Davis.--The duties of parents, by H. Davis.--The purpose and authority of civil society, by (...) B. Grimley.--International relations, by J. Keating. (shrink)