This book is born from a desire to understand how Plato influenced and was influenced by the intellectual culture of Western Greece, the ancient Hellenic cities of Sicily and Southern Italy. In 2018, a seminar on Plato at Syracuse was organized, in which a small group of scholars discussed a new translation of the Seventh Letter and several essays on the topic. The seminar was intense but friendly, having attracted a diverse group of scholars that ranged from graduate students to (...) senior professors, hailing from at least three different continents, and representing a variety of academic specialties. We tried to create a book that would invite further study of the topic by identifying new questions to be asked while addressing enduring issues. The essays consider the historical, political, and philosophical implications of Plato’s involvement in Syracuse. They also look at the reception of his voyage among fellow philosophers, ancient and modern. Readers may come to their own conclusions, but one thing is clear: the history of philosophy was profoundly influenced by Plato’s voyages in Western Greece. The book begins with a new translation of Plato’s Seventh Letter by Jonah Radding, as well as the epitaph for Dion attributed to Plato. An introduction by editors Heather Reid and Mark Ralkowski is followed by essays from Carolina Araújo, Christos C. Evangeliou, Filippo Forcignanò, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Jill Gordon, Andrew Hull, Tony Leyh, Marina Marren, Mary R. McHugh, Robert Metcalf, Marion Theresa Schneider, Karen Sieben, and Nickolas Pappas. (shrink)

Mimesis can refer to imitation, emulation, representation, or reenactment - and it is a concept that links together many aspects of ancient Greek Culture. The Western Greek bell-krater on the cover, for example, is painted with a scene from a phlyax play with performers imitating mythical characters drawn from poetry, which also represent collective cultural beliefs and practices. One figure is shown playing a flute, the music from which might imitate nature, or represent deeper truths of the cosmos based upon (...) Pythagorean views (which were widespread in Western Greece at the time). The idea that mimesis should be restricted to ideals was made famous by Plato (whose connections to Pythagoreanism and Siracusa are well-known), and famously challenged by his student Aristotle (not to mention by the mimetic character of Plato’s own poetry). This volume gathers essays not only on the philosophical debate about mimesis, but also on its use in architecture, drama, poetry, history, music, ritual, and visual art. The emphasis is on examples from Hellenic cities in Southern Italy and Sicily, but the insights apply far beyond – even to modern times. Contributors include: Thomas Noble Howe, Francisco J. Gonzalez, Gene Fendt, Guilherme Domingues da Motta, Jeremy DeLong, Carolina Araújo, Marie-Élise Zovko, Lidia Palumbo, Sean Driscoll, Konstantinos Gkaleas, Anna Motta, Jure Zovko, Alexander H. Zistakis, Christos C. Evangeliou, Dorota Tymura, Iris Sulimani, Elliott Domagola, Jonah Radding, Giulia Corrente, Laura Tisi, Ewa Osek, Argyri G. Karanasiou, Rocío Manuela Cuadra Rubio, Jorge Tomás García, Aura Piccioni, and José Miguel Puebla Morón. (shrink)

I argue that the aesthetic theoretical virtues of beauty, simplicity, and unification, as well as the evidential virtue of explanatory depth, can transform theistic-friendly personal cause (PC) arguments—like the kalām cosmological argument (KCA) and the fine-tuning argument—into stand-alone arguments for monotheism. The aesthetic virtues allow this by providing us with the grounds to rationally accept a perfect personal cause (i.e., God) as the best PC to believe in given the success of some PC argument. Using the KCA as an example, (...) I argue that, once the KCA is accepted and a PC believed in, then a theory that posits a perfect PC as the cause of the universe is more beautiful, simpler, and has more unification and explanatory depth than the imperfect PC normally posited by the KCA’s standard conceptual analysis. And the same would hold true for any imperfect PC. Thus, once a PC argument has been accepted, the perfect PC theory is preferable to hold over any other PC theory. Finally, I address various objections to this reasoning. (shrink)

This paper reviews evidence concerning the nature of grouping in music and language and their interactions with other linguistic and musical systems. I present brief typological surveys of the relationship between constituency and acoustic parameters in language and music, drawing from a wide variety of languages and musical genres. The two domains both involve correspondence between auditory discontinuities and group boundaries, reflecting the Gestalt principles of proximity and similarity, as well as a nested, hierarchical organization of constituents. Typically, computational-level theories (...) of musical grouping take the form of a function from acoustic properties through grouping representations to syntactic or interpretive constituents. Linguistic theories tend to be cast as functions in the opposite direction. This study argues that the difference in orientation is not grounded in principled differences in information flow between the two domains, and that reconceptualizing one or both theories allows for gains in analytical understanding. There are also obvious differences between musical and linguistic grouping. Grappling with those differences requires one to think in detail about modularity, information flow, levels of description, and the functional nature of cognitive domains. (shrink)

This article introduces and defends a probabilistic measure of the explanatory power that a particular explanans has over its explanandum. To this end, we propose several intuitive, formal conditions of adequacy for an account of explanatory power. Then, we show that these conditions are uniquely satisfied by one particular probabilistic function. We proceed to strengthen the case for this measure of explanatory power by proving several theorems, all of which show that this measure neatly corresponds to our explanatory intuitions. Finally, (...) we briefly describe some promising future projects inspired by our account. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to defend David Rosenthal's higher-order thought theory of consciousness against a prominent objection. The central claim of HOT theory is that a mental state is conscious only if one has the HOT that one is in that state. In broad outline, the objection is that HOT theory is unable to account for cases where the relevant HOTs are false. I consider two variants of the objection, corresponding to two kinds of false HOT: those that merely (...) misrepresent their targets, and those which lack targets altogether. I argue that a satisfactory response to the objection involving the latter, targetless, kind of HOTs, is to deny that one is in any conscious state in virtue of such HOTs. I show how this response is superior to Rosenthal's own response, and defend it against objections. I also argue that my account of targetless HOT cases may be generalized to cover cases of misrepresenting HOTs. (shrink)

Recently, in attempting to account for explanatory reasoning in probabilistic terms, Bayesians have proposed several measures of the degree to which a hypothesis explains a given set of facts. These candidate measures of "explanatory power" are shown to have interesting normative interpretations and consequences. What has not yet been investigated, however, is whether any of these measures are also descriptive of people’s actual explanatory judgments. Here, I present my own experimental work investigating this question. I argue that one measure in (...) particular is an accurate descriptor of explanatory judgments. Then, I discuss some interesting implications of this result for both the epistemology and the psychology of explanatory reasoning. (shrink)

The question whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can be transferred to firm performance to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) prompted this study to investigate how CSR strategies influence both SDGs and financial performance. A mediated moderating model based on the organizational alignment theory was developed to examine the mediating and moderating roles of organizational structure and corporate governance, respectively. By analyzing the three-year panel data of 1,480 firm-year observations from publicly listed companies in Taiwan, we find that organizational structure (...) mediates the relationship between a firm’s CSR strategy and firm performance consisting of SDG disclosures, sales revenue, net profit, and return on equity. Corporate governance plays a moderating role in the relationship between organizational structure and firm performance. Our objective financial data provide evidence supporting “doing well by doing good.” The proposed organizational alignment model and empirical results enhance the theoretical understanding of the CSR research field. The research findings have several practical implications for business executives to improve a firm’s social and financial performance. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy, EarlyView. The method of paraphrasing away apparent ontological commitments is a familiar tool for trimming one's ontology. Even so, I argue that aiming to avoid commitment via paraphrase is unjustified. The reason is the standard motivations for paraphrase rest on implicit yet faulty principles regarding ontological categories and categorization- or so I argue. These results also provide indirect support for a permissivist approach to ontology.

Two recently popular metaphilosophical movements, formal philosophy and experimental philosophy, promote what seem to be conflicting methodologies. Nonetheless, I argue that the two can be mutually supportive. I propose an experimentally-informed variation on explication, a powerful formal philosophical tool introduced by Carnap. The resulting method, which I call “experimental explication,” provides the formalist with a means of responding to explication's gravest criticism. Moreover, this method introduces a philosophically salient, positive role for survey-style experiments while steering clear of several objections that (...) critics of “positive experimental philosophy” raise. Thus, it provides the experimentalist with a more defensible example of how empirical work can have positive philosophical import. For these reasons, experimental explication should appeal to experimental philosophers and formal philosophers alike. (shrink)

I show that the two most devastating objections to Shogenji's formal account of coherence necessarily involve information sets of cardinality . Given this, I surmise that the problem with Shogenji's measure has more to do with his means of generalizing the measure than with the measure itself. I defend this claim by offering an alternative generalization of Shogenji's measure. This alternative retains the intuitive merits of the original measure while avoiding both of the relevant problems that befall it. In the (...) light of all of this, I suggest that there is new hope for Shogenji's analysis: Shogenji's early and influential attempt at measuring coherence, when generalized in a subset-sensitive way, is able to clear its most troubling objections. (shrink)

The study of biological invasions raises troubling scientific, political and moral issues that merit discussion and debate on a broad scale. Nativist trends in Conservation Biology have made environmentalists biased against alien species. This bias is scientifically questionable, and may have roots in xenophobic and racist attitudes. Rethinking conservationists' conceptions of biological invasion is essential to the development of a progressive environmental science, politics, and philosophy.

In this paper, I argue that van Fraassen's "bad lot objection" against Inference to the Best Explanation [IBE] severely misses its mark. First, I show that the objection holds no special relevance to IBE; if the bad lot objection poses a serious problem for IBE, then it poses a serious problem for any inference form whatever. Second, I argue that, thankfully, it does not pose a serious threat to any inference form. Rather, the objection misguidedly blames a form of inference (...) for not achieving what it never set out to achieve in the first place. (shrink)

Despite decades of focused philosophical investigation, Inference to the Best Explanation still lacks a precise articulation and compelling defense. The primary reason for this is that it is not at all clear what it means for a hypothesis to be the best available explanation of the evidence. This paper first seeks to rectify this problem by developing a formal explication of the explanatory virtue of power. A resulting account of IBE is then evaluated as a form of uncertain inference. Overall, (...) this paper offers a precise account and novel defense of one important version of IBE. (shrink)

This review article gives an overview of the two most influential definitions of antisemit­ism in Europe: the non-legally binding working definition by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the so-called Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Furthermore, the article explains where the definitions come from and summarises the current debates and discourses on how to define antisemitism in view of the history and politics of Europe. It also gives brief attention to the Nexus Document as a third influential definition, which plays (...) a more important role in the United States. The article ends with a reflection on the definition offered by the historian Helen Fein, which is more action-based, and Amos Morris-Reich’s statement of the importance of reflecting on the role of language and the ability of language to create hate and to hurt. (shrink)

The classic work on repentance and religious conduct. For anyone seeking the true path to repentance and reconnection with G-d, this incisive guide is essential. With vowelized Hebrew and English translation.

If natural kinds have microstructural essences they have them independently of rules for the application of kind terms. This suggests that what those rules are should make no difference to the essences being discoverable. I present two thought-experiments that suggest otherwise, however. Each shows an authority’s application of rules creates the appearance of there being kind essences; absent those rules, the appearance vanishes. This suggests natural kind essences are not independent of authority-sanctioned rules.

Until recently, scholars paid relatively little attention to chapter 23 of Leviathan, in which Hobbes discussed “the public ministers of sovereign power.” In the past few years, however, political theorists have used chapter 23 extensively in discussions of Hobbes’ concept of the state. But what was the significance of the chapter in its own time? This article suggests it served two purposes. First, it allowed Hobbes to bolster and elaborate arguments made elsewhere in Leviathan. Second, it responded to 1640s debates (...) between royalists and parliamentarians over the role of subordinate magistrates in a polity. By the time Leviathan was published in 1651 these debates were no longer pressing, which explains the chapter’s rapid descent into obscurity. Nonetheless, recovering this polemical context helps to understand the genesis of this small but significant part of Hobbes’ political thought. (shrink)

The argument from divine hiddenness (ADH) requires accepting that nonresistant nonbelief has existed or does exist. Yet some reasons for accepting nonresistant nonbelief are also reasons for accepting theistic-supporting and naturalism-falsifying evidentially compelling religious experiences (ECREs). Additionally, any reasons for rejecting ECREs can be used to reject nonresistant nonbelief, thus creating parity (at the very least) of epistemic warrant between the two claims. Consequently, accepting nonresistant nonbelief should lead to accepting ECREs. Accepting nonresistant nonbelief therefore indirectly threatens naturalism, atheism and (...) even the ADH itself. To any reason that can be given for rejecting ECREs there corresponds a parallel reason for rejecting nonresistant nonbelief. So it is irrational to accept the ADH while refusing to accept ECREs. Yet the existence of ECREs contradicts the ADH’s conclusion. So the ADH is self-defeating. (shrink)

When scientists seek further confirmation of their results, they often attempt to duplicate the results using diverse means. To the extent that they are successful in doing so, their results are said to be robust. This paper investigates the logic of such "robustness analysis" [RA]. The most important and challenging question an account of RA can answer is what sense of evidential diversity is involved in RAs. I argue that prevailing formal explications of such diversity are unsatisfactory. I propose a (...) unified, explanatory account of diversity in RAs. The resulting account is, I argue, truer to actual cases of RA in science; moreover, this account affords us a helpful, new foothold on the logic undergirding RAs. (shrink)

In three recent papers, Wayne Myrvold and Timothy McGrew have developed Bayesian accounts of the virtue of unification. In his account, McGrew demonstrates that, ceteris paribus, a hypothesis that unifies its evidence will have a higher posterior probability than a hypothesis that does not. Myrvold, on the other hand, offers a specific measure of unification that can be applied to individual hypotheses. He argues that one must account for this measure in order to calculate correctly the degree of confirmation that (...) a hypothesis receives from its evidence. Using the probability calculus, I prove that the two accounts of unification require the same underlying inequality; thus, McGrew and Myrvold have accounted for unification in fundamentally identical probabilistic terms. I then evaluate five putative counterexamples to this account and show that these examples, far from disqualifying it, serve to clarify our notion of unification by disentangling it from a host of other concepts. (shrink)

Competition between scientific hypotheses is not always a matter of mutual exclusivity. Consistent hypotheses can compete to varying degrees either directly or indirectly via a body of evidence. We motivate and defend a particular account of hypothesis competition by showing how it captures these features. Computer simulations of Bayesian inference are used to highlight the limitations of adopting mutual exclusivity as a simplifying assumption to model scientific reasoning, particularly due to the exclusion of hypotheses that may be true. We end (...) with a case study demonstrating the subtleties involved in hypothesis competition in scientific practice. (shrink)

A world where there exists n concrete things is a count-determinate world. The orthodox view is count-determinacy is necessary; if to be is to be the value of a variable and the domain of quantification is enumerable, count-determinacy follows. Yet I argue how many there are can be indeterminate; count-indeterminacy is metaphysically possible and even likely actual. Notably, my argument includes rebuttals of Evans’ reductio of indeterminate identity and the Lewis/Sider ‘argument from vagueness’. Count-indeterminacy should therefore be recognized as another (...) basic form of genuine metaphysical indeterminacy, in addition to types recently defend by Barnes, Williams, and Wilson. (shrink)

Options are often presented incidentally in a sequence, but does serial position impact choice after delay, and if so, how? We address this question in a consequential real-world choice domain. Using 25 years of citation data, and a unique identification strategy, we examine the relationship between article order and citation count. Results indicate that mere serial position affects the prominence that research achieves: Earlier-listed articles receive more citations. Furthermore, our identification strategy allows us to cast doubt on alternative explanations and (...) instead indicate that the effect is driven by psychological processes of attention and memory. These findings deepen the understanding of how presentation order impacts choice, suggest that subtle presentation factors can bias an important scientific metric, and shed light on how psychological processes shape collective outcomes. (shrink)

There’s something strange about Freud’s _Civilization and its Discontents_ (1930). Biologically, Freud was a Neo-Lamarckian, who believed in both the modification of organisms through need and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. However, in _Civilization_, Freud argued that because human nature is immutable, society has dim odds of improving substantially. Lamarckians, of course, rejected that any species-nature is immutable, as species can always be transformed via the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In fact, many of Freud’s Viennese contemporaries—such as Wilhelm Reich, Julius (...) Tandler, and Paul Kammerer—took their Lamarckism to license precisely the sorts of radical social projects Freud deemed impossible. Thus the Freud of _Civilization_ helped himself to a rigid view of human nature which, given his associated biological views, he seemingly ought to have rejected. In this paper, I explain this apparent inconsistency, and suggest Freud resolved it in the following way: Freud was not merely a Lamarckian, but also a strong and peculiar kind of recapitulationist, who believed stages of psychological development both recapitulate phylogeny, and “remain with us” throughout both individual lives and future species-history. I suggest Freud’s recapitulationism supposed a certain inertia: what occurred in phylogenetic history cannot un-occur, and therefore there are aspects of our nature which we cannot un-acquire. In this way, Freud reached a rigid conception of human nature despite his Lamarckism. (shrink)

This paper responds to Terry Horgan’s recent critique of Bayesian formal epistemology. I argue that each of Horgan’s criticisms misses its mark when Bayesianism is viewed as putting forward an inductive logic of confidences. Along the way, I explore the nature, scope, and limits of a defensible brand of Bayesianism.

Human reasoning often involves explanation. In everyday affairs, people reason to hypotheses based on the explanatory power these hypotheses afford; I might, for example, surmise that my toddler has been playing in my office because I judge that this hypothesis delivers a good explanation of the disarranged state of the books on my shelves. But such explanatory reasoning also has relevance far beyond the commonplace. Indeed, explanatory reasoning plays an important role in such varied fields as the sciences, philosophy, theology, (...) medicine, forensics, and law. -/- This dissertation provides an extended study into the logic of explanatory reasoning via two general questions. First, I approach the question of what exactly we have in mind when we make judgments pertaining to the explanatory power that a hypothesis has over some evidence. This question is important to this study because these are the sorts of judgments that we constantly rely on when we use explanations to reason about the world. Ultimately, I introduce and defend an explication of the concept of explanatory power in the form of a probabilistic measure. This formal explication allows us to articulate precisely some of the various ways in which we might reason explanatorily. -/- The second question this dissertation examines is whether explanatory reasoning constitutes an epistemically respectable means of gaining knowledge. I defend the following ideas: The probability theory can be used to describe the logic of explanatory reasoning, the normative standard to which such reasoning attains. Explanatory judgments, on the other hand, constitute heuristics that allow us to approximate reasoning in accordance with this logical standard while staying within our human bounds. The most well known model of explanatory reasoning, Inference to the Best Explanation, describes a cogent, nondeductive inference form. And reasoning by Inference to the Best Explanation approximates reasoning directly via the probability theory in the real world. Finally, I respond to some possible objections to my work, and then to some more general, classic criticisms of Inference to the Best Explanation. In the end, this dissertation puts forward a clearer articulation and novel defense of explanatory reasoning. (shrink)

Individuals with high self-concept will likely have high life satisfaction, they easily get adjusted to life, and they communicate their feeling more appropriately. However, it was not certain whether self-concept would decline or improve as individuals age, or whether self-concept would vary between genders and ethnic groups. To prove, a study was carried out to compare the self-concept of college students in an Asian context. The inquiry utilized the cross-sectional design in finding out significant differences in the self-concept of participants (...) in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. A 22-item questionnaire was adapted and administered to 222 Bachelor of Public Administration and Bachelor of Science in Business Administration students from the satellite campus of Bukidnon State University in the Philippines. Initially, a sample was randomly drawn from the population. During the actual data collection, the researchers had difficulty getting the responses from the randomly selected individuals due to internet connection and it was done amidst a pandemic. Instead, it took all responses from those who were available, have access to the internet, and could accomplish the google forms. The data were analyzed using Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test for independent sample, ANOVA and Post Hoc test. The results revealed that college students at the locale have a high level of self-concept in self-fulfilment, emotional adjustment, and honesty. Yet, they only had a moderate level of self-concept in autonomy. Further, there were significant differences in college students’ autonomy and honesty in terms of age and gender. Furthermore, there were significant differences in their emotional adjustment and self-fulfilment as to their ethnicity. The results have implications for instruction, administration, guidance services, and future research. (shrink)

The success of Bovens and Hartmann’s recent “impossibility result” against Bayesian Coherentism relies upon the adoption of a specific set of ceteris paribus conditions. In this paper, I argue that these conditions are not clearly appropriate; certain proposed coherence measures motivate different such conditions and also call for the rejection of at least one of Bovens and Hartmann’s conditions. I show that there exist sets of intuitively plausible ceteris paribus conditions that allow one to sidestep the impossibility result. This shifts (...) the debate from the merits of the impossibility result itself to the underlying choice of ceteris paribus conditions. (shrink)

This article contends that, despite the naturalization of hypermediacy in everyday life, a tension persists between the proliferation of digital media and human phenomenal experience. Everyday phenomenal experience, in its delineation of a unified spatial field populated with bounded physical objects, exists in palpable tension with the subperceptual digital networks and data flows that underpin contemporary society and are indexed by aesthetics of hypermediacy. I contend that cinema, which simultaneously appeals to phenomenal experience and has itself become permeated by hypermediacy (...) and the related aesthetic tendency of post-continuity, is a key site for expressing this larger cultural tension. Furthermore, I propose that what I am calling the action mode – action cinema’s anxious articulation of the physical body’s limits and capacities – is ideally suited to making this tension not only seen but felt. The film Mile 22 (Peter Berg, 2018), by combining the action mode with an aesthetic and thematic exploration of extreme hypermediacy, exemplifies the action mode’s potential in this way. (shrink)

Language does not make use of octave-based pitch-collections (scales); music lacks truth-conditional semantics; everyone can talk but not everyone can carry a tune; etc. (Jackendoff 2009).

In “The Contralife Argument and the Principle of Double Effect” (NCBQ, Spring 2011), Lawrence Masek tries to use the principle of double effect to show that natural family planning (NFP) is morally justified. This essay presents a summary explanation of the principle of double effect. It demonstrates that Masek wrongly applies the principle of double effect to NFP. It presents the teaching of the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae vitae with regard to NFP, and contends that to apply the principle of (...) double effect to the case of NFP is not only incorrect but also contrary to teaching of Humanae vitae. Because Masek implies that NFP involves the (justified) permission of evil, his article also counteracts the efforts of the Catholic Church to promote the practice of NFP. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.4 (Winter 2011): 661–667. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Ismailites; doctrines.

Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of “democratic backsliding” attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several policy recommendations are offered to help stabilize current systems of representative democracy.

At the center of the debate between contextualist versus relativist semantics for epistemic modal claims is an empirical question about when competent subjects judge epistemic modal disagreement to be present. John MacFarlane’s relativist claims that we judge there to be epistemic modal disagreement across the widest range of cases. We wish to dispute the robustness of his data with the results of two studies. Our primary conclusion is that the actual disagreement data is not consistent with relativist predictions, and so, (...) that the primary motivation for relativism disappears. Our study differs from a related study by Knobe and Yalcin :1–21, 2014) in that we focus directly on the question of genuine disagreement, as opposed to a question about truth or the appropriateness of retraction. Some of our findings agree with theirs about relativism. We uncover new lessons along the way, including that there are widespread situation effects of epistemic modal discourse; idiosyncratic features of the vignettes significantly influencing judgments about epistemic modal disagreement. We reflect with mixed feelings on the prospects for contextualism to accommodate our findings. (shrink)

This book explores the Bayesian approach to the logic and epistemology of scientific reasoning. Section 1 introduces the probability calculus as an appealing generalization of classical logic for uncertain reasoning. Section 2 explores some of the vast terrain of Bayesian epistemology. Three epistemological postulates suggested by Thomas Bayes in his seminal work guide the exploration. This section discusses modern developments and defenses of these postulates as well as some important criticisms and complications that lie in wait for the Bayesian epistemologist. (...) Section 3 applies the formal tools and principles of the first two sections to a handful of topics in the epistemology of scientific reasoning: confirmation, explanatory reasoning, evidential diversity and robustness analysis, hypothesis competition, and Ockham's Razor. (shrink)

We investigate 1 factor that influences the success of ideas or cultural representations by proposing that they have a habitat, that is, a set of environmental cues that encourages people to recall and transmit them. We test 2 hypotheses: (a) fluctuation: the success of an idea will vary over time with fluctuations in its habitat, and (b) competition: ideas with more prevalent habitats will be more successful. Four studies use subject ratings and data from newspapers to provide correlational support for (...) our 2 hypotheses, with a negative factoid, positive rumor, catchphrases, and variants of a proverb. Three additional experimental studies manipulate the topic of actual conversations and find empirical support for our theory, with catchphrases, proverbs, and slang. The discussion examines how habitat prevalence applies to a more extensive class of ideas and suggests how habitats may influence the process by which ideas evolve. (shrink)