How old is war? Is it a deep-seated propensity in the human species or is it a recent cultural invention? This article investigates the archaeological evidence for prehistoric war across world regions by probing two competing hypotheses. The “deep roots” thesis asserts that war is an evolved adaptation that humans inherited from their common ancestor with chimpanzees, from which they split around seven million years ago, and that persisted throughout prehistory, encompassing both nomadic and sedentary hunter-gatherer societies. In contrast, the (...) “shallow roots” viewpoint posits that peaceful intergroup relations are ancestral in humans, suggesting that war emerged only recently with the development of sedentary, hierarchical, and densely populated societies, prompted by the agricultural revolution ~ 12,000–10,000 years ago. To ascertain which position is best supported by the available empirical evidence, this article reviews the prehistoric archaeological record for both interpersonal and intergroup conflict across world regions, following an approximate chronological sequence from the emergence of humans in Africa to their dispersal out of Africa in the Near East, Europe, Australia, Northeast Asia, and the Americas. This worldwide analysis of the archaeological record lends partial support to both positions, but neither the “deep roots” nor the “shallow roots” argument is fully vindicated. Intergroup relations among prehistoric hunter-gatherers were marked neither by relentless war nor by unceasingly peaceful interactions. What emerges from the archaeological record is that, while lethal violence has deep roots in the Homo lineage, prehistoric group interactions—ranging from peaceful cooperation to conflict—exhibited considerable plasticity and variability, both over time and across world regions, which constitutes the true evolutionary puzzle. (shrink)

SummaryIt is argued that Hugo de Vries's conversion to Mendelism did not agree with his previous theoretical framework. De Vries regarded the number of offspring expressing a certain character as a hereditary quality, intrinsic to the state of the pangene involved. His was a shortlived conversion since after the ‘rediscovery’ he failed to unify his older views with Mendelism. De Vries was never very much of a Mendelian. The usual stories of the Dutch ‘rediscovery’ need, therefore, a considerable reshaping.

This study explores the relationship between moral intensity and the use of different sensemaking strategies in military critical incidents. First, narratives of military personnel were used to select prototypical high/low moral intensity critical incidents. In a follow-up, a scenario study was conducted with active duty military personnel to examine the relationship between moral intensity and the use of sensemaking tactics. This study offers three main conclusions. First, the use of sensemaking tactics is strongly tied to the level of moral intensity (...) in the situation. In high-intense situations, the servicemen draw on previous experiences, prediction of consequences, and help of others to recognize and interpret the situation. Less attention goes out to higher level critical thinking. Thus, it seems that in these critical incidents, the servicemen react without giving room for thorough consideration and deliberation. Second, the number of deployments a serviceman experienced influences the perceived seriousness and harmfulness of the situation negatively in low-intense situations. Finally, and in line with earlier studies, the results indicate that the concept of moral intensity is formed out of three rather than the six dimensions originally proposed by Jones. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Most studies of academic inbreeding have focused on assessing its impact on scholarly practices, outputs, and outcomes. Few studies have concentrated on the other possible effects of academic inbreeding. This paper draws on a large number of studies on academic inbreeding to explore how the practice has been conceptualized, how it has emerged, and how it has been rationalized in the creation and development of higher education systems. Within this framework, the paper also explores how academic inbreeding shapes and maintains (...) a powerful academic oligarchy, leading to the stonewalling of both knowledge and institutional change to maintain social and political structures somewhat akin to those of medieval societies. The paper shows that the key to mitigating academic inbreeding practices lies in ensuring that academic recruitment processes are open, meritocratic, and transparent. However, a more difficult task is to change longstanding mentalities and disrupt a system that serves the interests of certain groups but not the advancement of knowledge or the fulfillment of universities’ social mandates. (shrink)

This paper explores the relation between metaethical reflection and value experience, and does so by focusing on robust realism. Robust realism is typically criticized for its ontological and epistemological commitments. In this paper, however, we hope to shed new critical light on the plausibility of the theory by using two concepts – ‘reification’ and ‘alienation’ – that have their origin in critical social theory. We use the concept of ‘reification’ as an interpretative lens to look at robust realism and show (...) that it is reifying in two respects: it turns values into things, and, correspondingly, turns human agents into disengaged observers of those things. This analysis is then used to argue that robust realism is alienating in the sense that it distances us from the world that presents itself to us in value experience, and that it separates us from what we call our engaged responsiveness. We also argue that its alienating effects give us good reason to reject the theory. (shrink)

The role of reasoning in our moral lives has been increasingly called into question by moral psychology. Not only are intuitions guiding many of our moral judgments and decisions, with reasoning only finding post-hoc rationalizations, but reasoning can sometimes play a negative role, by finding excuses for our moral violations. The observations fit well with the argumentative theory of reasoning (Mercier H, Sperber D, Behav Brain Sci, in press-b), which claims that reasoning evolved to find and evaluate arguments in dialogic (...) contexts. This theory explains the strong confirmation bias that reasoning displays when it produces arguments, which in turn explains its tendency to rationalize our decisions. But this theory also predicts that people should be able to evaluate arguments felicitously and that, as a result, people should reason better in groups, when they are confronted with other people’s arguments. Groups are able to converge on better moral judgments. It is argued that reasoning and argumentation play an important role in our everyday moral lives, and a defense of the value of reasoning for moral change is offered. (shrink)

One of the goals of computerized tutoring systems is to optimize the learning of facts. Over a hundred years of declarative memory research have identified two robust effects that can improve such systems: the spacing and the testing effect. By making optimal use of both and adjusting the system to the individual learner using cognitive models based on declarative memory theories, such systems consistently outperform traditional methods. This adjustment process is driven by a continuously updated estimate of the rate of (...) forgetting for each item and learner on the basis of the learner's accuracy and response time. In this study, we investigated to what extent these estimates of individual rates of forgetting are stable over time and across different materials. We demonstrate that they are stable over time but not across materials. Even though most theories of human declarative memory assume a single underlying rate of forgetting, we show that, in practice, it makes sense to assume different materials are forgotten at different rates. If a computerized, adaptive fact-learning system allowed different rates of forgetting for different materials, it could adapt to individual learners more readily. (shrink)

Many fields of study have shown that group discussion generally improves reasoning performance for a wide range of tasks. This article shows that most of the population, including specialists, does not expect group discussion to be as beneficial as it is. Six studies asked participants to solve a standard reasoning problem—the Wason selection task—and to estimate the performance of individuals working alone and in groups. We tested samples of U.S., Indian, and Japanese participants, European managers, and psychologists of reasoning. Every (...) sample underestimated the improvement yielded by group discussion. They did so even after they had been explained the correct answer, or after they had had to solve the problem in groups. These mistaken intuitions could prevent individuals from making the best of institutions that rely on group discussion, from collaborative learning and work teams to deliberative assemblies. (shrink)

Some preliminary comments Introduction: The EDWs perspective in my article from 2005 and my book from 2008 -/- I. PHYSICS, COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY (‘REBORN DINOSAURS’ ) • (2016) Did Sean Carroll’s ideas (California Institute of Technology, USA) (within the wrong framework, the “universe”) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2010) (within the EDWs framework) on quantum mechanics, the relationship between Einstein relativity and quantum mechanics, life, the mind-brain problem, etc.? • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Frank Wilczek’s ideas (Nobel Prize in Physics) and (...) my ideas (2002-2008, etc.) (Philosophy of Mind and Quantum Mechanics) • (2017-2019 NEW) Strong similarity between Carlo Rovelli’s ideas (Italy) in three books (2015, 2017) to my ideas (2002-2008) + commentary February 2018! • (2016) Kastner + (2017) R. E. Kastner, Stuart Kauffman, Michael Epperson “Taking Heisenberg’s Potentia Seriously”: Quite similar ideas to my ideas (2008) + • (2017) A trick: Unbelievable similarities between Lee Smolin’s ideas (2017) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (May 2018) ‘Thus spoke Zarathustra!’ - A fairy-tale with Eugen Ionesco and the Idiot about Nothingness -/- II. PHYSICS • (2011) The unbelievable similarities between Radu Ionicioiu (Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania) and Daniel R. Terno’s ideas (Physics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) and my ideas (Quantum Mechanics) • (2013) Côté B. Gilbert (Oontario, Canada) Unbelievalbe similarities • (2015) The strong similarity between Pikovski Igor, Zych Magdalena, Costa Fabio, and Brukner Časlav’s ideas and my ideas (2006-2008) regarding the Schrodinger’s cat’s interactions with its environment (the gravitation of Earth) (both entities being macro-objects) (Quantum Mechanics) • (2015) The strong similarity between Elisabetta Caffau’s ideas (Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and the Paris Observatory) and my ideas (2011, 2014) regarding the appearance of Big Bang in many places (Cosmology) • (2015) Did Wolfram Schommers (University of Texas at Arlington, USA & Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany) plagiarize my ideas? (Physics) • (2015) Some astrophysicists about "Dark Matter May be 'Another Dimension' - Or Even a Major Galactic Transport System" January 22, 2015 • (2016) The strong similarities between Dylan H. Mahler, Lee Rozema, Kent Fisher, Lydia Vermeyden, Kevin J. Resch, Howard M. Wiseman, and Aephraim Steinberg’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Bill Poirier’s ‘Many Interacting Worlds’ and my EDWs (Quantum Mechanics) • (2016 or 2017) Similarities between Adam Frank’s ideas (University of Rochester in New York , USA) (“Minding matter - The closer you look, the more the materialist position in physics appears to rest on shaky metaphysical ground”) and my ideas (2005, 2008) • (2017, 2017) Did Sebastian de Haro (HPS, Cambridge, UK) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Unbelievable similarities between Laura Condiotto’s ideas and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2016) The unbelievable similarities between Hugo F. Alrøe and Egon Noe’s (Department of Agroecology, Aarhus University, Denmark) ideas (USA) and my ideas (2002-2008) (Bohr's complementarity extended to ontology) • (2017) The unbelievable similar ideas between Federico Zalamea’s ideas and my ideas • (2018) Unbelievable similarities between Peter J. Lewis’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) Timothy Hollowood, ‘Classical from Quantum’, [arXiv:1803.04700v1 [quant-ph] 13 March 2018] • (2018) Mario Hubert and Davide Romano, ‘The Wave-Function as a Multi-Field’ -/- III. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND • (2011-2014) Did Georg Northoff (Psychoanalysis, Institute of Mental Health) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? • (2011) The unbelievable similarities between Kalina Diego Cosmelli, Legrand Dorothée and Thompson Evan’s ideas (USA) and my ideas (Cognitive Neuroscience) • (2015) Did David Ludwig (Philosophy, University of Amsterdam) plagiarize many of my ideas? (Philosophy (of Mind) • (2016) Did Neil D. Theise (Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) and Kafatos C. Menas (Department of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA) plagiarize my ideas of Physics and Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy (the mind-brain problem, quantum mechanics, etc.) from 2002-2008? • Did David Bourget (2018) (Director, Centre for Digital Philosophy, Western University (or University of Western Ontario) plagiarize my ideas regarding the mind-brain problem? + Chalmers • (2016) Unbelievable similarities between Dan Siegel’s ideas (Mindsight Institute, USA) and my ideas (2002-2008) -/- IV. Philosophy (of science) • (2010) The unbelievable similarities between Alexey Alyushin (Moscow, Russia) and my ideas (on Ontology) • (2013 + 2017) Did Markus Gabriel (Bonn University) plagiarize my ideas? • (2013) The unbelievable similarities between Andrew Newman’s ideas (University of Nebraska, at Omaha, USA) and my ideas (Ontology) • (2016) Did Tahko E. Tuomas (University of Helsinki, Finland) plagiarize my ideas? + Tahko E. Tuomas (‘The Epistemology of Essence’) • (2017) Did Jani Hakkarainen (University of Tampere, Finland) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? + (2017) Markku Keinänen, Antti Keskinen & Jani Hakkarainen • (2017) The unbelievable similarities between Dean Rickles’s ideas (HPS, Univ. of Sydney) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2017) Did Dirk K. F. Meijer and Hans J. H. Geesink (University of Groningen, Netherlands) plagiarize my ideas (2002-2008)? (2017) • (2018) Unbelievable similar ideas between Jason Winning’s ideas (2018) and my ideas (2002-2008) • (2018) David Mark Kovacs (Lecturer of philosophy at Tel Aviv University), ‘The Deflationary Theory of Ontological Dependence’, Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming) -/- Conclusion [Obviously, there are other “specialists” that published UNBELIEVABLE similar ideas to my ideas but I have not discovered them yet…] Bibliography [Some people haven't read my works but they claim my ideas can be found in other works. Soon, they will discover EDWs in Shakespeare, Bach, Sophocles and ET's letter sent 10 million years ago... me vs. people who have plagiarized my ideas: on Youtube] ------------------------------------------------------------------ July 2018 -/- • Oreste M. Fiocco • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva, forthcoming) • Antonella Mallozzi (The Graduate Center – CUNY, forthcoming in Synthese, penultimate draft) • Erik C. Banks (Wright State University, 2014) • Sami Pihlström (2009) • Katherin Koslicki’s ideas (2008) The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press) and my ideas (2002-2005-2006) -/- November 2018 • Maurizio Ferraris (2014/2012) Manifesto of New Realism -/- • Graham Harman (2017) : Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Penguin Books) ---------------------------------------------------------------- -/- January 2019 • Philip Ball (2018): “Why everything you thought you knew about quantum physics is different” • Gerhard Grössing “Vacuum landscaping: cause of nonlocal influences without signaling” • Anne Sophie Meincke (November 2018) The Disappearance of Change (IJPS) 28. The Disappearance of Change Towards a Process Account of Persistence Forthcoming in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2018.1548634 • Baptiste Le Bihana (University of Geneva) and James Read (Oxford Univ.) “Duality and Ontology” (forthcoming, in Philosophy Compass) • Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva): “Space Emergence in Contemporary Physics: Why We Do Not Need Fundamentality, Layers of Reality and Emergence” in Disputatio, Vol. X, No. 49, November 2018 • Alexander Alexandrovich Antonov (2016) (Research Center of Information Technologies “TELAN Electronics”, Kiev, Ukraine): “Hypothesis of the Hidden Multiverse Explains Dark Matter and Dark Energy”, Journal of Modern Physics, 2016, 7, 1228-1246 -/- February 2019 • James Barham (2019): “The Reality of Purpose and the Reform of Naturalism” • Giorgio Lando (2017) Mereology - A Philosophical Introduction, Bloomsbury Academic • (2018) Albrecht von M¨uller • Elias Zafiris, Concept and Formalization of Constellatory Self-Unfolding - A Novel Perspective on the Relation between Quantum and Relativistic Physics • (2019) Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban Castro-Ruiz, & Časlav Brukner “Quantum mechanics and the covariance of physical laws in quantum reference frames”, Nature Communications • (2019) Valia Allori, “Scientific Realism without the Wave-Function: An Example of Naturalized Quantum Metaphysics” (to appear in J. Saatsi, S. French (eds.) “Scientific Realism and the Quantum” OUP (2019) - Department of Philosophy Northern Illinois University) • (2018) Paulo De Jesus “Thinking through enactive agency: sense-making, bio-semiosis and the ontologies of organismic worlds”, Phenom Cogn Sci • (2016) TIMOTHY MORTON, For a Logic of Future Coexistence, (Columbia University Press) • (2017) Andrew Cooper, Two directions for teleology: naturalism and idealism, Synthese . (shrink)

Giorgio Agamben plantea que mediante el estado de excepción se logra vincular, por medio de la violencia, dos dimensiones carentes en principio de vínculo entre sí: nuda vida y normatividad. El estado de excepción parece encarnar así una racionalidad manipuladora. En contraste, en el pensamiento de Schmitt hay una permanente preocupación por el problema de la técnica, a la cual devela como racionalidad manipuladora. En este artículo se intenta determinar los alcances y límites de la teoría del estado de excepción (...) de Schmitt, a partir de un análisis de su comprensión de la racionalidad técnica. (shrink)

People not only disagree about religious belief, but they disagree about what it is to disagree about religious belief; and consequently about what it would be for one religion to be uniquely true. What I shall try to do first is to characterise the nature of religious disagreement; and next to suggest in what the uniqueness of Christianity might consist.

ABSTRACT In Ecce Homo’s “Why I am a Destiny,” Nietzsche declares that “the concept of politics” will merge entirely into a “Mind-war” and that “the earth will know Great politics.” Through analyzing these two concepts, the aim of this article is to counter Bernard Williams’s claim that “Nietzsche did not move to any view that offered a coherent politics.” Nietzsche does so in calling for the founding of a “Party of Life,” whose “concept of politics” is to breed a new (...) “master race,” to fight a Mind-war, ignited by the “act” of the “Revaluation,” The Antichrist, against the “Party of Christianity.”. (shrink)

La recepción de la Wissenschaft der Logik de G. W. F. Hegel en la filosofía argentina fue tardía y focal. A la casi nula atención al aspecto especulativo de la filosofía hegeliana durante el positivismo decimonónico, continuó un superficial interés en las primeras décadas del siglo XX que derivó en dos comentarios de la Wissenschaft der Logik: La Lógica de Hegel de M. A. Virasoro y Hegel y la dialéctica de C. Astrada. Para Virasoro la obra representaba un posicionamiento lógico (...) contrapuesto al formal con derivaciones gnoseológicas y metafísicas; para Astrada ella exponía la fundamentación del método dialéctico, el cual tenía relevancia ontológica y política. Ambos filósofos coincidieron en un interés crítico por la obra y en un privilegio exegético de la Doctrina del ser por sobre la Esencia y el Concepto. Las diferencias y las continuidades entre ambas interpretaciones conformaron la recepción inicial de la Wissenschaft der Logik en la filosofía argentina. (shrink)

Hindbrain development is orchestrated by a vertebrate gene regulatory network that generates segmental patterning along the anterior–posterior axis via Hox genes. Here, we review analyses of vertebrate and invertebrate chordate models that inform upon the evolutionary origin and diversification of this network. Evidence from the sea lamprey reveals that the hindbrain regulatory network generates rhombomeric compartments with segmental Hox expression and an underlying Hox code. We infer that this basal feature was present in ancestral vertebrates and, as an evolutionarily constrained (...) developmental state, is fundamentally important for patterning of the vertebrate hindbrain across diverse lineages. Despite the common ground plan, vertebrates exhibit neuroanatomical diversity in lineage‐specific patterns, with different vertebrates revealing variations of Hox expression in the hindbrain that could underlie this diversification. Invertebrate chordates lack hindbrain segmentation but exhibit some conserved aspects of this network, with retinoic acid signaling playing a role in establishing nested domains of Hox expression. (shrink)

En un libro reciente, Maurizio Viroli sostiene que en El Príncipe Maquiavelo delinea la imagen del fundador que la teoría política republicana necesita, la que recibe su encarnación paradigmática en Moisés y sus acciones. Aquí propongo que para una comprensión adecuada del Moisés de Maquiavelo resulta clave la interpretación que éste ofrece del incidente del becerro de oro (Discursos III, 30), al que interpreta como una revuelta contra Moisés motivada por la envidia. Este episodio, sugiero, ejemplifica las acciones necesarias para (...) asegurar las instituciones de un estado libre recién constituido en el contexto del conflicto permanente entre grandes y pueblo. (shrink)

NG van Kampen is a well-known theoretical physicist who has had a long and distinguished career. His research covers scattering theory, plasma physics, statistical mechanics, and various mathematical aspects of physics. In addition to his scientific work, he has written a number of papers about more general aspects of science. An indefatigable fighter for intellectual honesty and clarity, he has pointed out repeatedly that the fundamental ideas of physics have been needlessly obscured. As those papers appeared in various journals, partly (...) in Dutch, it was felt that it would be worthwhile to collect them (translating the Dutch material into English) and make them available to a larger audience. This is a book of major importance to scientists and university teachers. (shrink)