We investigate whether age profiles of ethnobiological knowledge development are consistent with predictions derived from life history theory about the timing of productivity and reproduction. Life history models predict complementary knowledge profiles developing across the lifespan for women and men as they experience changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring. We evaluate these predictions using an ethnobiological knowledge assessment tool developed for an off-grid pastoralist population known as Choyeros, from Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our results indicate that (...) while individuals acquire knowledge of most dangerous items and edible resources by early adulthood, knowledge of plants and animals relevant to the age and sex divided labor domains and ecologies (e.g., women’s house gardens, men’s herding activities in the wilderness) continues to develop into middle adulthood but to different degrees and at different rates for men and women. As the demands of offspring on parents accumulate with age, reproductive-aged adults continue to develop their knowledge to meet their children’s needs. After controlling for vision, our analysis indicates that many post-reproductive adults show the greatest ethnobiological knowledge. These findings extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring predict the development of men’s and women’s ethnobiological knowledge across the lifespan. (shrink)

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09399-4.

Some years ago, Lokhorst proposed an intuitionistic reformulation of Mally's deontic logic. This reformulation was unsatisfactory, because it provided a striking theorem that Mally himself did not mention. In this paper, we present an alternative reformulation of Mally's deontic logic that does not provide this theorem.

We are pluralists about logical consequence [1]. We hold that there is more than one sense in which arguments may be deductively valid, that these senses are equally good, and equally deserving of the name deductive validity. Our pluralism starts with our analysis of consequence. This analysis of consequence is not idiosyncratic. We agree with Richard Jeffrey, and with many other philosophers of logic about how logical consequence is to be defined. To quote Jeffrey.

Consequence is at the heart of logic, and an account of consequence offers a vital tool in the evaluation of arguments. This text presents what the authors term as 'logical pluralism' arguing that the notion of logical consequence doesn't pin down one deductive consequence relation; it allows for many of them.

Orthologic is defined by weakening the axioms and rules of inference of the classical propositional calculus. The resulting Lindenbaum-Tarski quotient algebra is an orthoimplication algebra which generalizes the author's implication algebra. The associated order structure is a semi-orthomodular lattice. The theory of orthomodular lattices is obtained by adjoining a falsity symbol to the underlying orthologic or a least element to the orthoimplication algebra.

This article reflects on the author's modest experience as an expert witness in two trials: Osheroff vs. Greenspan (1983), and In the Matter of Baby K (1994). Bioethicists' expertise as scholar-teachers and consultants on particular issues merits qualification by judges as expert witnesses. The article argues that a different kind of expertise – strong moral advocacy – is required to be an effective expert witness. The major lessons of expert witnessing for the author concern the demands and strains on the (...) bioethicist's role as scholar, teacher, and consultant. The Baby K case is analyzed in some detail, due to its importance for bioethics, ethics consultation, and the testimony of bioethicists on either side of the case. Rules of thumb are offered to guide decisions as to choices regarding expert witnessing, as well as a discussion of the interaction of law and bioethics. (shrink)

David Hume is one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in English. His Dialogues ask if a belief in God can be inferred from what is known of the universe, or whether such a belief is even consistent with such knowledge. The Natural History of Religion investigates the origins of belief, and follows its development from polytheism to dogmatic monotheism. Together, these works constitute the most formidable attack upon religious belief ever mounted by a philosopher. This new edition (...) includes Section XI of The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a letter by Hume in which he discusses Dialogues. (shrink)

Little, if anything, in Justin scholarship has been as controversial as the dating of the so-called Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus. Suggested dates have varied from the time of Antoninus Pius through the third century to the end of the fourth. The latter was proposed in 1988 by Sir Ronald Syme, but has in fact received little support in subsequent literature on Justin, which has tended to accept the earlier dating . An exception is T. D. Barnes, (...) who has voiced support for a later dating based on a linguistic parallel to Justin in the Historia Augusta. Barnes observes that Oscar Hey, author of the article ducatus in TLL , drew attention to the similarity between Justin 30.2.5 Agathocles regis lateri iunctus civitatem regebat, tribunatus et praefecturas et ducatus mulieres ordinabant and HA Heliog. 6.2 militaribus… praeposituris et legationibus et ducatibus venditis. Hey, he notes, refers at the head of that particular section of the article to Seeck's article on dux. Seeck had demonstrated—and this is now taken for granted by scholars—that from the time of Diocletian dux is used technically as a formal title, and, in drawing attention to the parallel between HA Heliog. 6.2 and Justin, Hey must have been intimating that Justin is, like the author of Heliog. 6.2, using ducatus as a formal title. He then seems to suggest that Hey was right and Justin is to be dated to at least some time after 260. (shrink)

In his very valuable study of generic patterns in ancient poetry Francis Cairns assigns Propertius 2.28, [Tib.] 3.10 , and Ovid Am. 2.13 to the genre Soteria, that is works of congratulation and thanksgiving on the recovery from illness of a friend, and he sees the resemblances between the poems as due to the elegists’ attempts to produce ‘dramatized’ examples of the genre, with the situation developing from the girl's illness at the beginning of the poem to her recovery at (...) the end , pp.153–7). Cairns's arguments and interpretation of the poems should, I feel, be scrutinized carefully, especially since his classification of the poems has been accepted recently without demur by at least one scholar , 118 and n.50). (shrink)