Pietraszewski's model allows understanding group dynamics through the lens of evolved coalitionary psychology. This framework is particularly relevant to understanding group dynamics on social media platforms, where coalitions based on salience of group identity are prominent and generate unique frictions. We offer testable hypotheses derived from the model that may help to shed light on social media behavior.

REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of (...) Kochan's discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

This paper explores the central question of why soldiers in democratic societies might decide to fight in wars that they may have reason to believe are objectively or questionably unjust. First, I provide a framework for understanding the dilemma caused by an unjust war and a soldier's competing moral obligations; namely, the obligations to self and state. Next, I address a few traditional key thoughts concerning soldiers and jus ad bellum. This is followed by an exploration of the unique and (...) contradicting moral problems that confront modern soldiers and their officers. I argue that although traditional positions such as invincible ignorance provide a rather dangerous ‘head-in-the-sand’ mentality, soldiers serving a democratic government are nonetheless very limited in their legal and moral ability to interpret what is a justifiable war. However, a very few select senior officers are in positions to make such legal and moral decisions concerning jus ad bellum. (shrink)

We investigate uncertain reasoning with quantified sentences of the predicate calculus treated as the limiting case of maximum entropy inference applied to finite domains.

The aim of this essay is to show that there are no easy options for those who are disturbed by the suggestion that infanticide may on occasion be morally permissible. The belief that infanticide is always wrong is doubtfully compatible with a range of widely shared moral beliefs that underlie various commonly accepted practices. Any set of beliefs about the morality of abortion, infanticide and the killing of animals that is internally consistent and even minimally credible will therefore unavoidably contain (...) some beliefs that are counterintuitive. (shrink)

While Roman Ingarden remains best known among English‐speaking philosophers and literary theorists for his work in aesthetics, and primarily for his study of the literary work of art, his studies in aesthetics and art belong in fact to the comprehensive program of phenomenological research in ontology and metaphysics that occupied him for his entire career. In this article I briefly describe this program of phenomenological research, then I discuss some of the major features of Ingarden’s analyses of works of art (...) and the aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Public attention on embryo research has never been greater. Modern reproductive medicine technology and the use of embryos to generate stem cells ensure that this will continue to be a topic of debate and research across many disciplines. This multidisciplinary book explores the concept of a 'healthy' embryo, its implications on the health of children and adults, and how perceptions of what constitutes child and adult health influence the concept of embryo 'health'. The concept of human embryo health is considered (...) from preconception to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to recent foetal surgical approaches. Burgeoning capacities in both genetic and reproductive science and their clinical implications have catalysed the necessity to explore the concept of a 'healthy' embryo. The authors are from five countries and 13 disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, biological sciences and medicine, ensuring that the book has a broad coverage and approach. (shrink)

I apply the Zhuangzi 莊子 to assess the contemporary value of personal autonomy. Focusing on two concepts, wuwei 無為 and you 遊, I clarify the “wandering ideal” in the Zhuangzi to challenge the ideal of autonomy as central to a well-lived life. Drawing on Sneddon’s persuasive recent account of autonomy, the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, as well as recent secondary scholarship on the text, I show that the wandering ideal suggests a stark move away from the controlled and self-reflective (...) life of the autonomous person. My goal is to draw on the Zhuangzi to contribute to dialogue on the ideal of autonomy, rather than to provide an innovative way of reading the Zhuangzi. I argue that both autonomy and wandering are higher-order ideals that can be applied to individual actions and to a person’s form of life, but at both levels, wandering and personal autonomy are in tension. The conclusion briefly reflects on the significance of the tension. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to examine nostalgia as both a mood or disposition in general, and as a mood or disposition that is characteristic of philosophical reflection. Nostalgia is a combination of the Greek nostos, meaning home or the return home, with algos, meaning pain, so that its literal meaning is a pain associated with the return home. Part of this inquiry will involve a rethinking of the mood of nostalgia and what that mood encompasses. Rather than understand the nostalgic as (...) characterized solely by the desire to return to a halcyon past, it is explored through the connotations suggested by its Greek etymology as precisely a longing for the return home—a return that cannot be achieved—a form of homesickness, and so as unsettling rather than comfortable, as bringing with it a sense of the essential questionability of our own being in the world. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch’s Gestalt-inspired “field theory of consciousness” was introduced in the same period as Wolfgang Köhler’s theory of “electrical brain fields.” I consider parallels between these theories, drawing on results that have emerged in the last five years. First, I consider the claim that fields of consciousness supervene on electromagnetic fields in the brain, then I outline Gurwitsch’s field theory of consciousness, and finally I consider how the structures described by Gurwitsch might relate to structures in the brain’s electro-magnetic field. (...) Along the way, I expose a dogma (that qualia are paradigmatic conscious states) and develop an interpretation of Gurwitsch’s field theory. (shrink)

We consider two formalizations of the notion of irrelevance as a rationality principle within the framework of (Carnapian) Inductive Logic: Johnson's Sufficientness Principle, JSP, which is classically important because it leads to Carnap's influential Continuum of Inductive Methods and the recently proposed Weak Irrelevance Principle, WIP. We give a complete characterization of the language invariant probability functions satisfying WIP which generalizes the Nix-Paris Continuum. We argue that the derivation of two very disparate families of inductive methods from alternative perceptions of (...) 'irrelevance' is an indication that this notion is imperfectly understood at present. (shrink)

In the essay I argue that the routine use of contraception is morally tantamount to early-term abortion because it produces the same result: namely, it prevents the creation of a human life that would have otherwise probably taken place. Because it can be shown that contraception is ethically acceptable, it follows that early-term abortion is as well.

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the normative foundations and political implications of David Held's cosmopolitan social democracy are insufficient as solutions to the moral and social problems he criticizes. The article develops a life-grounded alternative critique of globalization that roots our ethical duties towards each other in consciousness of our shared needs and capabilities. These ethical duties are best realized in political projects aimed at fundamental long-term transformations in the principles that govern major socio-economic institutions.

All varieties of socialism share this trait in common: they are systematic alternatives to capitalism. But why should a systematic alternative to capitalism be necessary? Has it not proven to be the most productive economic system in history? Has it not created social conditions in which the powers of human imagination, creativity, and scientific understanding have grown to wider scope than in any previous society? Has it not enabled human beings to extend their life span and live healthier and more (...) active lives than ever before? Has it not proven extraordinarily plastic, able to solve unforeseen problems in ways that its opponents continue to predict that it cannot, thus proving itself superior to any proposed alternative? These are difficult questions that anyone who claims that an alternative is necessary must take seriously. (shrink)

At different times Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse argued that immortality is a condition of overcoming misery and achieving complete human freedom. Their arguments were made before “practical immortality” had become a concrete scientific project. The difference between what was then and what is now scientifically possible alters the ethical and political value of the idea of immortality. Had the first generation of critical theorists occupied the present historical moment, they would have realized that science harnessed to the demand for limitless (...) life would not solve the kind of ethical and existential problems they hoped it would. I argue that the scientific struggle against human finitude is driven by the same egocentric concern for money and self-maximization that early critical theory diagnosed as the main psychological pathology caused by capitalism. Finitude, I conclude, is the price human beings must pay if they are to live free and meaningful lives. (shrink)

Key Enlightenment minds are often juxtaposed with their iconic foes, religious conservatives. When discussing the subject of women’s rights, however, this comparison creates a false impression that Enlightenment male thinkers held ideas very much opposed to a dogmatic institution such as the Catholic Church. Ironically, and damaging to their legacy of prejudice-free rationalism, nearly all of the philosophes, many of whom were “freethinking” atheists, viewed woman’s intellectual nature and societal purpose through a prejudice-tainted glass, not unlike the most conservative establishments (...) of their time. Indeed, when it came to the perception of women, the philosophes had less in common with a virulently secular feminist such as Nicholas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, than they do with modern conservative Christians who believe women should be treated more fairly, but still cling to gender stereotypes. (shrink)

The trigonometric table and its construction principles were introduced to China as part of calendar reform, spear-headed by Xu Guangqi in the late 1620s to early 1630s. Chinese scholars attempted and succeeded in uncovering how the construction principles were established in the seventeenth century and then in the eighteenth century expanded to include more algorithms to compute the values of trigonometric lines. Successful as they were in discoursing the construction principles, most Chinese scholars did not actually construct trigonometric tables anew. (...) In the early nineteenth century, a revolutionary approach was developed, which resembles computing a finite sum of power series to trigonometric functions of an arbitrary arc less than a one-half circle. Though hailed by many modern historians as Chinese achievements in developing “infinite series” of trigonometric functions, this approach was viewed by the actors at the time as a quick means to construct trigonometric tables. Interestingly, even with these “quick” methods, no trigonometric table was constructed. Besides the fact that constructing a trigonometric table afresh is a time-consuming business, the classification of the trigonometric table and their construction principles into different genres of knowledge by scholars offers an additional explanation of drastically uneven treatment of trigonometric tables and their construction principles. (shrink)

Recognition is central in both heremeneutics and critical theory. For Gadamer the “highest” form of hermeneutic experience involves understanding a text not by reducing its meaning to its audior's intentions or its historical situation, but rather by recognizing it as a claim to truth. Genuine understanding is impeded both by approaching the text as a mere object and by failing to comprehend that the interpreter is ordinarily embedded in the very tradition as the text. It is only through a relation (...) of mutuality with the text, through an openess to its truth claims, through what Gadamer calls a “fusion of horizons,” that hermeneutic understanding can be achieved. And for Gadamer this openness to experience and to others' claims to truth is not only the essence of formal interpretation, but of all intersubjective understanding. (shrink)

We have modified Aristotelian syllogistic logic in for use in introductory philosophy courses. Although the scope of Aristotle's syllogistic is narrowed by our modifications, its pedagogical value is increased in one crucial way: in 4-6 hours of class time, students with no background in argumentation progress to the point where they can evaluate the structure of condensed and extended arguments. Because the mechanics of the program are readily grasped, it is possible to focus class time on important, abstract notions such (...) as validity, soundness, relevance, etc. If successfully implemented, the program encourages good habits for analysing, assessing and formulating arguments. (shrink)

Humanity’s food production activities profoundly affect our planet’s biosphere. While people commonly apply various ethical frameworks in making food choices, few consider the individual’s relationship with or obligation to our biosphere, the source of all food. A practical ethical framework capable of evaluating the relative biospheric goodness of various food production systems is needed. Toward that end there are three foundational concepts: an elaboration of Marx’s concept of value here extended to incorporate the life activity of all living beings, a (...) refocusing of ecological thought to include the value and the spaces created by nonhuman communities, and a characterization of power which also works to include all life and to obviate certain human/biospheric dichotomies. This approach joins the Marxist theory of value and exchange—which has well developed ethical principles—with ecology, which offers key insights into biotic relationships, but as a science eschews ethical positions. It is important to attend not only to the value resident in nonhuman bodies, but also to the value that these co-inhabitants invest in biospheric spaces—a matter often overlooked in both the social and natural sciences. (shrink)

In his later lectures, published as The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault surveys different modalities of obtaining ‘truth’ about one's self and the world: from Socrates to the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans and early church writers. Genealogically tracing this opposition between knowing self and world, he occasionally invites phenomenological enquiry into how this epistemic couplet bears on education. Drawing on three vignettes familiar to educators, my investigation explores modes of discovering self and world through counselling, distributed governance in the classroom (...) and the arts of writing. In each case we confront a paradox of freedom, in that agency is needed, already, to liberate the self from the world. An exegetical task is to show how Foucault worked through this philosophical problem, of relevance to many situations in education, by re-reading Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger. (shrink)