The Bible is normative for all Christian theology and ethics, including responsible theological reflection on the biotechnological future. This article considers the representation of creaturehood and what might be labelled ‘deification’ within the biblical material, framing these concepts in terms of participation in providence and redemption. This participatory emphasis allows us to move past the simplistic dismissal of biotechnological progress as ‘playing God’, by highlighting ways in which the development of technology and caregiving are proper creaturely activities, but ones that (...) must be morally aligned to the goodness of God. Framing our approximation of divine character in terms of ‘deification’ highlights its relational and soteriologically defined shape, preventing us from conceiving its attainment in any way that is loosed from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The discussion allows us to affirm the pursuit of biotechnological research, but to recognize that it is unable by itself to accomplish certain ends, and that it must be pursued in alignment with the standards of goodness by which God loves his world. (shrink)

Effective altruism is the use of evidence and careful reasoning to work out how to maximize positive impact on others with a given unit of resources, and the taking of action on that basis. It’s a philosophy and a social movement that is gaining considerable steam in the philanthropic world. For example, GiveWell, an organization that recommends charities working in global health and development and generally follows effective altruist principles, moves over $90 million per year to its top recommendations. Giving (...) What We Can, which encourages individuals to pledge at least 10% of their income to the most cost-effective charities, now has over 3500 members, together pledging over $1.5 billion of lifetime donations. Good Ventures is a foundation, founded by Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, that is committed to effective altruist principles; it has potential assets of $11 billion, and is distributing over $200 million each year in grants, advised by the Open Philanthropy Project. [...] GPI Working Paper No. 8-2019. (shrink)

This article objects to two arguments that William MacAskill gives in What We Owe the Future in support of optimism about the prospects of longtermism, that is, the prospects of positively influencing the longterm future. First, it grants that he is right that, whereas humans sometimes benefit others as an end, they rarely harm them as an end, but argues that this bias towards positive motivation is counteracted by the fact that it is practically easier to harm than to (...) benefit. For this greater easiness makes it likely both that accidental effects will be harmful rather than beneficial and that the means or side‐effects of the actions people perform with the aim of benefiting themselves and those close to them will tend to be harmful to others. Secondly, while our article agrees with him that values could lock‐in, it contends that the value of longtermism is unlikely to lock in as long as human beings have not been morally enhanced but remain partial in favor of themselves and those near and dear. (shrink)

Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory. Just as it is central to biological evolution, so, it seems, it should be central to cultural evolutionary theory. But importing the biological fitness concept to CET is no straightforward task—there are many features unique to cultural evolution that make this difficult. This has led some theorists to argue that there are fundamental problems with cultural fitness that render it hopelessly confused. In this essay, we defend the coherency of cultural fitness against (...) those who call it into doubt. (shrink)

There are three related criteria that a concept of fitness should be able to meet: it should render the principle of natural selection non-tautologous and it should be explanatory and predictive. I argue that for fitness to be able to fulfill these criteria, it cannot be a property that changes over the course of an individual's life. Rather, I introduce a fitness concept--Block Fitness--and argue that an individual's genes and environment fix its fitness in such a way that each individual's (...) fitness has a fixed value over its lifetime. (shrink)

This article argues that legal precedents do not create rules, but rather create a special type of reason in favour of a decision in later cases. Precedents are often argued to be analogous to statutes in their law-creating function, but the common law practice of distinguishing is difficult to reconcile with orthodox accounts of the function of rules. Instead, a precedent amounts to a decision on the balance of reasons in the case before the precedent court, and later courts are (...) required to decide cases on the basis that the earlier decision was correctly decided. (shrink)

In this essay I examine a well-known articulation of human nature skepticism, a paper by Hull. I then review a recent reply to Hull by Machery, which argues for an account of human nature that he claims is both useful and scientifically robust. I challenge Machery’s account and introduce an alternative account—the “life-history trait cluster” conception of human nature—that I hold is scientifically sound and makes sense of our intuitions about—and desiderata for—human nature.

The philosophy of chemistry has emerged in recent years as a new and autonomous field within the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. With the development of this new discipline, Eric Scerri and Grant Fisher's "Essays in Philosophy of Chemistry" is a timely and definitive guide to all current thought in this field. One of the themes of this collection is how philosophy of chemistry can make a contributions to problems of philosophy more generally, such as how chemistry and quantum chemistry contribute (...) to the philosophy of the mind. (shrink)

One contentious debate in the philosophy of biology is that between the statisticalists and causalists. The former understand core evolutionary concepts like fitness and selection to be mere statistical summaries of underlying causal processes. In this view, evolutionary changes cannot be causally explained by selection or fitness. The causalist side, on the other hand, holds that populations can change in response to selection—one can cite fitness differences or driftability in causal explanations of evolutionary change. But, on the causalist side, it (...) is often not clear how, precisely, one should understand these causes. Thus, much more could be said about what sort of causes fitness and driftability are. In this paper, I borrow Dretske's distinction between structuring and triggering causes and I suggest that fitness and driftability are structuring causes of evolution. (shrink)

The study of animal culture is a flourishing field, with culture being recorded in a wide range of taxa, including non-human primates, birds, cetaceans, and rodents. In spite of this research, however, the concept of culture itself remains elusive. There is no universally assented to concept of culture, and there is debate over the connection between culture and related concepts like tradition and social learning. Furthermore, it is not clear whether culture in humans and culture in non-human animals is really (...) the same thing, or merely loose analogues that go by the same name. The purpose of this paper is to explicate core desiderata for a concept of culture and then to construct a concept that meets these desiderata. The paper then applies this concept in both humans and non-human animals. (shrink)

Homology is a biological sameness relation that is purported to hold in the face of changes in form, composition, and function. In spite of the centrality and importance of homology, there is no consensus on how we should understand this concept. The two leading views of homology, the genealogical and developmental accounts, have significant shortcomings. We propose a new account, the hierarchical-dependency account of homology, which avoids these shortcomings. Furthermore, our account provides for continuity between special, general, and serial homology.

In this paper, I argue (contra some recent philosophical work) that an objective distinction between natural selection and drift can be drawn. I draw this distinction by conceiving of drift, in the most fundamental sense, as an individual-level phenomenon. This goes against some other attempts to distinguish selection from drift, which have argued either that drift is a population-level process or that it is a population-level product. Instead of identifying drift with population-level features, the account introduced here can explain these (...) population-level features based on a property that I label driftability. Additionally, this account shows that biology’s “first law”—the Principle of Drift (Brandon, J Phil 102(7):319–335 2006)—is not a foundational law, but is a consequence of driftability. (shrink)

Innovation is a key component of most definitions of culture and intelligence. Additionally, innovations may affect a species' ecology and evolution. Nonetheless, conceptual and empirical work on innovation has only recently begun. In particular, largely because the existing operational definition (first occurrence in a population) requires long-term studies of populations, there has been no systematic study of innovation in wild animals. To facilitate such study, we have produced a new definition of innovation: Innovation is the process that generates in an (...) individual a novel learned behavior that is not simply a consequence of social learning or environmental induction. Using this definition, we propose a new operational approach for distinguishing innovations in the field. The operational criteria employ information from the following sources: (1) the behavior's geographic and local prevalence and individual frequency; (2) properties of the behavior, such as the social role of the behavior, the context in which the behavior is exhibited, and its similarity to other behaviors; (3) changes in the occurrence of the behavior over time; and (4) knowledge of spontaneous or experimentally induced behavior in captivity. These criteria do not require long-term studies at a single site, but information from multiple populations of a species will generally be needed. These criteria are systematized into a dichotomous key that can be used to assess whether a behavior observed in the field is likely to be an innovation. (shrink)

This Article argues that U.S. law should give protection to relationships between cohabitants and their partners’ children when necessary to avoid the economic and emotional trauma that may be caused by separation of the child from a member of his or her household if the cohabitation ends. After examining the social science literature about the welfare of both stepchildren and children of cohabitants and the inadequate legal treatment of custody, visitation, and child support issues under current law, the author recommends (...) that cohabiting stepparents be given standing to seek custody if they have acted as de facto parents, with a presumption in favor of custody by the stepparent when the cohabitant who is the child’s biological parent has died and the possibility of joint custody in other cases; be awarded visitation if both the ex-cohabitant and child desire it; and be obligated to pay child support for the child if the cohabitation dissolves after a period of two years or more. (shrink)

A major debate in the philosophy of biology centers on the question of how we should understand the causal structure of natural selection. This debate is polarized into the causal and statistical positions. The main arguments from the statistical side are that a causal construal of the theory of natural selection's central concept, fitness, either (i) leads to inaccurate predictions about population dynamics, or (ii) leads to an incoherent set of causal commitments. In this essay, I argue that neither the (...) predictive inaccuracy nor the incoherency arguments successfully undermine the causal account of fitness. 1 Introduction2 The Importance of Trait Fitness3 Trait Fitness is not a Silver Bullet4 The Fundamental Incoherency Argument5 Car Racing and Trait Fitness Reversals6 Population Subdivisions and Evolution7 The STP and the Argument for the Incoherency of the Causal Account of Fitness8 Conclusions. (shrink)

Biological fitness is a foundational concept in the theory of natural selection. Natural selection is often defined in terms of fitness differences as “any consistent difference in fitness (i.e., survival and reproduction) among phenotypically different biological entities” (Futuyma 1998, 349). And in Lewontin’s (1970) classic articulation of the theory of natural selection, he lists fitness differences as one of the necessary conditions for evolution by natural selection to occur. Despite this foundational position of fitness, there remains much debate over the (...) nature of fitness, especially whether fitness differences can truly be said to cause evolutionary change. In recent years these debates have crystalized into two camps: (1) causalists, who see fitness differences as being one of the causes of evolutionary change, and (2) statisticalists, who deny the causal efficacy of fitness and instead hold that “fitness is a mere statistical, noncausal property of trait types” (Walsh 2010, 148). (shrink)

There is clearly a plurality of forms of altruism. Classically, biological altruism is distinguished from psychological altruism. Recent discussions of altruism have attempted to distinguish even more forms of altruism. I will focus on three altruism concepts, biological altruism, psychological altruism, and helping altruism. The questions I am concerned with here are, first, how should we understand these concepts? and second, what relationship do these concepts bear to one another? In particular, is there an essence to altruism that unifies these (...) concepts? I suggest that while there is no essence to altruism, this does not mean that the array of altruism concepts is completely disunified. Instead, I propose we place all the concepts into a common framework-an altruism space-that could lead to new questions about how this space can be filled. (shrink)

In this commentary on Lewens, I argue that although his criticisms of Machery's conception of human nature are sound, I disagree with his conclusion that human nature cannot inform us regarding issues of human enhancement. I introduce a framework for understanding human nature, the “life history trait cluster account,” which aligns the concept of human nature with the human sciences and allows human nature to inform questions of human enhancement.

Reciprocal altruism was originally formulated in terms of individual selection and most theorists continue to view it in this way. However, this interpretation of reciprocal altruism has been challenged by Sober and Wilson (1998). They argue that reciprocal altruism (as well as all other forms of altruism) evolves by the process of group selection. In this paper, we argue that the original interpretation of reciprocal altruism is the correct one. We accomplish this by arguing that if fitness attaches to (at (...) minimum) entire life cycles, then the kind of fitness exchanges needed to form the group-level in such situations is not available. Reciprocal altruism is thus a result of individual selection and when it evolves, it does so because it is individually advantageous. (shrink)

This paper expands the focus of ethical analysis to look at the basic approaches to strategy used by business firms. Using a set of criteria historically used to judge ethical issues, three strategy paradigms are evaluated in terms of their likely effects on society as well as the firm. From this analysis, recommendations are offered regarding the ethical pursuit of profit and suggestions made for future research into the relationship between strategy and ethics.

Previous research has found that funding disparities are driven by applications’ final impact scores and that only a portion of the black/white funding gap can be explained by bibliometrics and topic choice. Using National Institutes of Health R01 applications for council years 2014–2016, we examine assigned reviewers’ preliminary overall impact and criterion scores to evaluate whether racial disparities in impact scores can be explained by application and applicant characteristics. We hypothesize that differences in commensuration—the process of combining criterion scores into (...) overall impact scores—disadvantage black applicants. Using multilevel models and matching on key variables including career stage, gender, and area of science, we find little evidence for racial disparities emerging in the process of combining preliminary criterion scores into preliminary overall impact scores. Instead, preliminary criterion scores fully account for racial disparities—yet do not explain all of the variability—in preliminary overall impact scores. (shrink)

That science is more than the unilinear application of general theories to specific empirical circumstances is, one hopes, no longer something that is controversial or requires detailed argument. To be sure, there were times when devising universally applicable theories was seen as the most worthy task of science, with less lofty activities such as experimentation and scientific modeling being relegated to the underbelly of “proper science.” Arguing for a pluralistic recognition of the diversity of scientific practices, methods, and goals, might—at (...) least on the pages of this journal—amount to preaching to the converted. Yet, once the diversity and heterogeneity of science is acknowledged, the real work only starts:... (shrink)

This article discusses the nature of persuasive authorities in the common law, and argues that many of them are best understood in terms of their (being regarded) as having theoretical rather than practical authorities for the courts that cite them. The contrast between theoretical and practical authority is examined at length in order to support the view that the treatment of many persuasive authorities by courts is more consistent with this view. Finally, it is argued that if persuasive authorities are (...) best understood as theoretical authorities, this raises difficulties for both positivistic and interpretivist theories of law. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to engage with the interplay between representational content and design in chemistry and to explore some of its epistemological consequences. Constraints on representational content arising from the aspectual structure of representation can be manipulated by design. Designs are epistemologically important because representational content, hence our knowledge of target systems in chemistry, can change with design. The significance of this claim is that while it has been recognised that the way one conveys information makes a (...) difference to the inferences one can draw from representations in spite of the invariance of informational content, the present paper argues that in chemistry and biochemistry it is often the case that designs have cognitive priority relative to informational content. (shrink)

Suppose you think that whether you believe some proposition A at some future time t might have a causal influence on whether A is true. For instance, maybe you think a woman can read your mind, and either (1) you think she will snap her fingers shortly after t if and only if you believe at t that she will, or (2) you think she will snap her fingers shortly after t if and only if you don't believe at t (...) that she will. Let A be the proposition that she snaps her fingers shortly after t. In case (1), theoretical rationality seems to leave it open whether you should believe A or not. Perhaps, for all it has to say, you could just directly choose whether to believe A. David Velleman seems to be committed to something close to that, but his view has been unpopular. In case (2), you seem to be in a theoretical dilemma, a situation where any attitude you adopt toward A will be self-undermining in a way that makes you irrational. Such theoretical dilemmas ought to be impossible, just as genuine moral dilemmas ought to be impossible, but it is surprisingly hard to show that they are (perhaps because they aren't). I study cases analogous to (1) and (2) in a probabilistic framework where degrees of belief rather than all-or-nothing beliefs are taken as basic. My principal conclusions are that Velleman's view is closer to the truth than it is generally thought to be, that case (2) type theoretical dilemmas only arise for hyperidealised agents unlike ourselves, and that there are related cases that can arise for agents like us that are very disturbing but might not quite amount to theoretical dilemmas. (shrink)

Focusing on computational studies of pericyclic reactions from the late twentieth century into the twenty-first century, this paper argues that computational diagnostics is a key methodological development that characterize the management and coordination of plural approximation methods in computational organic chemistry. Predictive divergence between semi-empirical and ab initio approximation methods in the study of pericyclic reactions has issued in epistemic dissent. This has resulted in the use of diagnostics to unpack computational greyboxes in order to critically assess the effect of (...) specific misrepresentations on predictive accuracy given that approximations and idealizations must be made to render computational models tractable. Furthermore, benchmarking is used to determine the applicability of approximation methods depending on how accurate the results need to be in a given research context. The epistemology of benchmarking consists of the co-generation of data sets in a hybrid computational–experimental form used to standardize computational methods but does not determine a unique quantitative method to be used across computational organic chemistry. (shrink)

This paper raises four queries about Simester’s defective engagement with reason account of culpability found in his Fundamentals of Criminal Law: (1) the characterisation of the account in terms of moral ‘vices’; (2) the basis for identifying a vice as a ‘moral’ vice; (3) what is involved in an agent manifesting ‘insufficient care and concern’ for the interests of others; and (4) whether the account is an account of culpability generally, or is instead an account of criminal culpability, i.e., the (...) type of culpability necessary for criminal conviction. (shrink)

The development of gene expression profiling and next-generation sequencing technologies have steered oncogenomics to the forefront of precision medicine. This created a need for harmonious cooperation between clinicians and researchers to increase access to precision oncology, despite multiple implementation challenges being encountered. The aim is to apply personalised treatment strategies early in cancer management, targeting tumour subtypes and actionable gene variants within the individual’s broader clinical risk profile and wellbeing. A knowledge-generating database linked to the South African Medical Research Council’s (...) Genomic Centre has been created for the application of personalised medicine, using an integrated service and research approach. Insights gained from patient experiences related to tumour heterogeneity, access to targeted therapies and incidental findings of pathogenic germline variants in tumour DNA, provided practice-changing evidence for the implementation of a cost-minimisation pathology-supported genetic testing strategy. Integrating clinical care with genomic research through data sharing advances personalised medicine and maximises precision oncology benefits. (shrink)

Hundreds of books have been written about Deleuze, but although many prominent philosophers and schools of philosophy have inherited from him, no single philosopher has emerged as the primary inheritor of Deleuze’s project. The Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers could serve as one conceptual persona among others playing such a role. Stengers refers to Deleuze in all but one of her fourteen books which have so far been translated into English, especially in The Invention of Modern Science, Cosmopolitics and Thinking with (...) Whitehead, and this article ‘thinks with’ Stengers as she thinks with Deleuze through most of her references to his work over four decades. (shrink)

Guilt poses a unique evolutionary problem. Unlike other dysphoric emotions, it is not immediately clear what its adaptive significance is. One can imagine thriving despite or even because of a lack of guilt. In this article, we review solutions offered by Scott James, Richard Joyce, and Robert Frank and show that although their solutions have merit, none adequately solves the puzzle. We offer an alternative solution, one that emphasizes the role of empathy and posttransgression behavior in the evolution of guilt. (...) Our solution, we contend, offers a better account of why guilt evolved to play its distinctive social role. (shrink)

Although it is not clear that Deleuze and Guattari were simply and unambiguously Jungians, they extensively engaged with Jung’s depth psychology in both affirmative and critical ways. It is striking that Deleuze expresses a strong affinity between his work and that of Jung in several texts; Jung’s influence on Deleuze has not tended to be emphasised by scholars, though there is a rapidly growing ‘Jungian turn’ in Deleuze and Guattari studies. This article briefly extracts the influence of Jung on Deleuze (...) and Guattari and, more extensively, explores profound resonances between Deleuze's Difference and Repetition and James Hillman's Re-Visioning Psychology. (shrink)

The finding that people tend to prefer logically valid conclusions over invalid ones is known in the literature as the logic‐liking effect and has traditionally been interpreted as evidence for the notion of so‐called logical intuitions. Results of more recent empirical studies investigating conditional and categorical syllogisms suggest, however, that previous instances of the logic‐liking effect can be accounted for by a confound in terms of surface‐feature atmosphere. But the true nature of this atmosphere effect has so far remained largely (...) elusive. Here, we address this issue and introduce two variants of disjunctive syllogisms that enable us to deconfound validity, possibility of the conclusion, and surface‐feature atmosphere, which has been impossible with simple disjunctive syllogisms used in earlier studies. Three experiments, in which participants were asked to provide liking and logic ratings for these arguments, revealed that the logic‐liking effect in disjunctive syllogisms can be explained by an atmosphere confound in combination with implied demand to consider logicality when judging likability. We also observed a strong atmosphere effect in logic ratings over and above an effect of logical validity per se. Furthermore, atmosphere effects appear to be induced only by specific surface features, namely those that are ecologically valid, if fallible, predictors for logicality. We conclude that acquired atmosphere heuristics provide proxies for logical validity that reasoners often take at face value. A comparison of the present results with previous findings from experiments that focused on conditional and categorical syllogisms additionally indicates that these atmosphere heuristics are used irrespective of an argument's complexity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Coercion Law References.

Using the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the authors compare the gender pay gap at predominantly white institutions with the gap at historically Black colleges and universities. Also, within the HBCU milieu, they examine how class of the institution has an impact on pay gaps. First, they find that HBCUs do seem to have a smaller gap but that pay for all faculty at HBCUs is lower than in PWIs. Second, the gap is only significantly smaller in the rank of (...) associates. Third, the gap is smaller at the associate rank because men make less money in HBCUs than they do in PWIs. Fourth, elite HBCUs are more similar to PWIs than to HBCUs in terms of their gender pay gap. Race, class, and gender effects must be taken into account to understand patterns of wage equity across these institutions. The greater gender equity at HBCUs is apparent because of the absence of the “men's bonus, ” which is prevalent in PWIs and elite HBCUs. (shrink)

Este artículo examina una característica lingüística a menudo olvidada en la polémica cristiana sobre Muḥammad en la Iberia medieval: la transliteración de fórmulas islámicas del árabe al latín. Tras esbozar un marco para evaluar estas expresiones dentro del contexto multilingüe más amplio de al-Andalus, examina dos polémicas latinas de la región que contienen transcripciones sustanciales de fórmulas similares. En primer lugar, se examina la transcripción de la declaración de fe islámica en el Liber scale Mahometi, del siglo XIII, e identifica (...) un patrón de vernacularización y distorsión en la presentación de frases árabes en el texto. En segundo lugar, analiza una transliteración del Tultusceptru de los siglos IX-X, considerada corrupta por estudiosos anteriores, y evalúa los datos fonológicos de la frase. Este artículo defiende una lectura novedosa que, a su vez, indica una mayor conciencia y sensibilidad del pensamiento islámico por parte del polemista. Por último, estas lecturas son corroboradas comparando las interpretaciones de los textos del takbīr. (shrink)