Conventionality and aptness are two dimensions of metaphorical sentences thought to play an important role in determining how quick and easy it is to process a metaphor. Conventionality reflects the familiarity of a metaphor whereas aptness reflects the degree to which a metaphor vehicle captures important features of a metaphor topic. In recent years it has become clear that operationalizing these two constructs is not as simple as asking naïve raters for subjective judgments. It has been found that ratings of (...) aptness and conventionality are highly correlated, which has led some researchers to pursue alternative methods for measuring the constructs. Here, in four experiments, we explore the underlying reasons for the high correlation in ratings of aptness and conventionality, and question the construct validity of various methods for measuring the two dimensions. We find that manipulating the processing fluency of a metaphorical sentence by means of familiarization to similar senses of the metaphor (“in vivo conventionalization”) influences ratings of the sentence's aptness. This misattribution may help explain why subjective ratings of aptness and conventionality are highly correlated. In addition, we find other reasons to question the construct validity of conventionality and aptness measures: for instance, we find that conventionality is context dependent and thus not attributable to a metaphor vehicle alone, and we find that ratings of aptness take more into account than they should. (shrink)

Degeneracy is a poorly understood process, essential to natural selection. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the concept of degeneracy was commandeered by the colonial imagination. A rigid understanding of species, race, and culture grew to dominate the normative thinking that persisted well into the burgeoning new industrial age. A 20th-century reconfiguration of the concept by George Gamow highlighted a form of intraorganismic variation that is still underexplored. Degeneracy exists in a population of variants where structurally different components perform a (...) similar, but not necessarily identical, function with respect to context. The presence of degeneracy increases a system’s complexity and robustness against perturbations. The loss of a genetic component in biological systems, for example, can be compensated by redundant elements , or by degenerate elements . A historical survey of the use of the term “degeneracy” reveals how and why the processes it once designated, and the mechanisms it now represents, have largely escaped the purview of contemporary science. Despite confusion and general oversight, degeneracy has been characterized by select researchers at the molecular, genetic, and neuronal levels. The concept is a potent analytical tool to understand selection, variation, and transmission. (shrink)

Paul H Hirst; Language and Thought, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 1, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 63–75, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1967.tb.

Paul H Hirst; Forms of Knowledge—A reply to Elizabeth Hindess, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 7, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 260–271, https://doi.or.

Paul H Hirst; Human Movement, Knowledge and Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 101–108, https://doi.org/10.11.

Political discourse is saturated with metaphor, but evidence for the persuasive power of this language has been hard to come by. We addressed this issue by investigating whether voting intentions were affected by implicit mappings suggested by a metaphorically framed message, drawing on a real-world example of political rhetoric about the federal budget. In the first experiment, the federal budget was framed as similar to or different from a household budget, though the information participants received was identical in both conditions. (...) When the federal budget was described as similar to a household's, people considered the personal finances of a presidential candidate more relevant—a finding we replicated in a larger, pre-registered study. In a follow-up experiment, we presented participants with a more explicit rhetorical argument and found a similar effect, moderated by political affiliation. These studies illuminate how metaphorical comparison affects cognition for important real-world issues, sometimes in unintended ways. (shrink)

With attention to the experiences, agency, and rights of tuberculosis patients, this symposium on TB and ethics brings together a range of different voices from the social sciences and humanities. To develop fresh insights and new approaches to TB care and prevention, it is important to incorporate diverse perspectives from outside the strictly biomedical model. In the articles presented in this issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, clinical experience is married with historical and cultural context, ethical concerns are brought (...) to bear on global health, and structural analyses shed light upon the lived experience of people living with TB. The relational and reciprocal dimensions of care feature strongly in these discussions, which serve as a poignant reminder that behind each of the yearly deaths from TB is a deeply personal story. No single discipline holds a monopoly on how to care for each of these people, but strong cases are made for support from mental health and social workers in addressing the kaleidoscope of needs in TB prevention. As the World Health Organization moves towards the goal of eliminating TB globally by 2050, attending to the needs of TB patients serves global interests to lower disease burden and to develop better integrated communities worldwide. (shrink)

The natural experiments of history present an opportunity to test Hobbes' view of government and law as the wellspring of social order. Groups have found themselves in a wide variety of situations in which no governmental law existed, from shipwrecks to gold mining camps to failed states. Yet the wide variety of situations show common patterns among the groups in their responses to their often difficult circumstances. Rather than survival of the fittest, a more common reaction is social cooperation and (...) a commitment to fairness and justice, although both can be subverted in certain predictable ways. The absent-law situations also illustrate the dependence of social order and cooperation on a group's commitment to justice. The insights from the absent-law situations have implication for several modern criminal justice issues, including the appropriate distributive principle for criminal liability and punishment, restorative justice programs, the movement to promote non-incarcerative sanctions, transitional justice and truth commissions, the use-of-force rules under international law, the procedures for fairness in criminal adjudication, and crime-control policies in fighting organized crime and terrorism. (shrink)

Phylogenetic trees based on gene sequence data contain information about the evolutionary processes responsible for their genesis. Methods have now been developed which help to reveal those processes. The methods are based on simple models of evolutionary change but, when applied across individuals in a population, rather than across species in a higher‐level taxon, they can reveal the past history of population change. Examples from salamanders and viruses are used to illustrate how the past history of changes in speciation rate (...) and the origin of epidemics can be inferred in the absence of fossil material or historical documentation. (shrink)

Paul H Hirst; The Nature of Educational Theory:, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 6, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 110–118, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14.

Paul Tillich and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin both have made contributions to a theology of evolution. In a 2002 essay John Haught expresses doubt that Tilllich's rather classical theology of “being” is radical enough to account for the “becoming” of evolution. Tillich's ontology of being includes the polarity of form and dynamics. Dynamics is the potentiality of being, that is, becoming. Tillich's dynamic dialectic of being and nonbeing is a more descriptive metaphor for the five mass extinctions of evolutionary (...) history than Teilhard's progress. This dialectic is also a more realistic description of cosmic evolution. Tillich's “Kingdom of God” within history as well as “the End of History,” in contrast to Teilhard's Omega Point, does not appear to contradict the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which predicts that the universe will ultimately disintegrate. Haught's contrast/contact modes of relating science and religion would regard Teilhard's Omega Point as an expression of spiritual hope and purpose rather than a scientifically verifiable principle. The contrast/ contact position is consonant with Tillich's description of religion as part of the vertical dimension of ultimate concern and science as part of the horizontal dimension of relationships between finite objects. Tillich did not share Teilhard's optimistic vision of the future. (shrink)

The authors use social science methodology to determine whether a doctrinal shift—from an objectivist view of criminality in the common law to a subjectivist view in modem criminal codes—is consistent with lay intuitions of the principles of justice. Commentators have suggested that lay perceptions of criminality have shifted in a way reflected in the doctrinal change, but the study results suggest a more nuanced conclusion: that the modern lay view agrees with the subjectivist view of modern codes in defining the (...) minimum requirements of criminality, but prefers the common law's objectivist view of grading the punishment deserved. The authors argue that there is practical value in having criminal law track shared community intuitions of the proper rules for assigning liability and punishment. For that reason, the study results support the often criticized subjectivist view of modern codes in setting the minimum requirements of liability, but disapprove of the modern codes' shift away from the common law's objectivist view of grading. (shrink)

This volume brings together a collection of essays, many of them scholarly classics, which form part of the debate around three questions central to criminal law theory: firstly, what conduct should be necessary for criminal liability, and what sufficient? Secondly, what culpability should be necessary for criminal liability, and what sufficient? Finally, essays consider the question of how criminal law rules should be best organized into a coherent and clarifying doctrinal structure.

The case outlined below is the basis for the In That Case section of the “Ethics and Epistemology of Big Data” symposium. Jordan receives reports from two separate personal genomic tests that provide intriguing data about ancestry and worrying but ambiguous data about the potential risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. What began as a personal curiosity about genetic inheritance turns into an alarming situation of medical uncertainty. Questions about Jordan’s family tree are overshadowed by even more questions about Alzheimer’s disease (...) and healthy ageing. As a parent, Jordan is unsure whether to share these results and what it would mean for their children to learn about their genetic inheritance and potential future health. Furthermore, Jordan is unsure how to make sense of these reports in light of current knowledge of the risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and in the absence of effective treatments or robust preventative guidelines. (shrink)

This is a collection of papers that helped shape the field of formal semantics in linguistics.

The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" -- just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes -- as a (...) justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of rationality, but one that is, in large part, illusory. Without a principle defining the interrelation of the "purposes," nearly any rule can be justified by some "purpose of punishment." Thus, a decision maker can switch among distributive principles as needed to provide an apparent rationale for whichever rule the person prefers, even if that preference is not based on rational criteria. A second example is found in a central mechanism for determining an offenderâs blameworthiness: the use of an individualized objective standard. The widely used mechanism avoids the problems acknowledged to attend a strictly objective standard. A person's situation and capacities are central to an assessment of whether a person can be fairly blamed for a violation, and the individualized objective standard allows the decision maker to take these into account. At the same time, the mechanism avoids reversion to a completely subjective standard, which might exempt many blameworthy cases from liability. In reality, however, the mechanism only shifts the form of the problem. Codes that use the individualized objective standard fail to provide a principle by which one can determine those characteristics of an offender with which the objective standard ought to be individualized and those with which it ought not. Without a governing principle, the issue again is left to the discretion of decision makers, with no guidance as to how that discretion is to be exercised. A final illusion obscures whether the criminal justice system is, in fact, in the business of "doing justice." The "criminal justice" system imposes "punishment" and encourages moral condemnation of those found "guilty" of "crimes." But while the system cultivates its doing-justice image, it increasingly shifts to a system of essentially preventive detention, where a violator's sanction is derived more from what is needed to incapacitate him from committing future offenses than to punish him for a past offense. There are great advantages to the deception, but also serious costs and inefficiencies. The paper discusses why some illusions are more objectionable than others and what the existence of such illusions says about modern criminal law scholarship. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMetaphors pervade discussions of critical issues and influence how people reason about these domains. For instance, when crime is a beast people are more likely to suggest enforcement-oriented approaches to crime-reduction ; reading that crime is a virus, on the other hand, leads people to suggest systemic reforms for the affected community. In the current study, we find that extending metaphoric language into the descriptions of policy interventions bolstered the persuasive influence of metaphoric frames for important issues. That is, in (...) response to a crime virus people were even more likely to endorse social reforms that were described as “treatments,” while in response to a crime beast people were even more likely to endorse “attacking” the problem with harsh enforcement tactics. Of note, people were not simply drawn to extensions of previously instantiated metaphors: when extended metaphors were paired with a conceptually incongruent policy intervention (e... (shrink)

What are we doing to our climate? Emissions from fossil fuel burning have raised carbon dioxide concentrations 35 percent higher than in the past millions of years. This increase is warming our planet via the greenhouse effect. What is climate change doing to and for us? Dry regions are drier and wet ones wetter. Wildfires have increased threefold, hurricanes more violent, floods setting record heights, glaciers melting, and seas rising. Parts of Earth are increasingly uninhabitable. Climate change requires us to (...) act as a global community. Climate justice enjoins emitters to pay the social‐environmental costs of fossil fuel burning. This would expedite green solar, wind, and next‐generation nuclear energy sources. Individuals should conserve resources, waste less food, and eat a plant‐rich diet. (shrink)

A defining characteristic of primary emotions is that they occur in wide variety of species. Secondary emotions are thought to be restricted to humans and other primates. We report evidence from two studies investigating claims of primary and secondary emotions in non-primate species. Study 1. We surveyed 907 owners about emotions that they had observed in their animal. Participants reported primary emotions more frequently than secondary emotions and self-conscious emotions more frequently than self-conscious evaluative emotions. Jealousy was reported at very (...) high levels (81% of dogs and 79% of horses), which was surprising as jealousy is generally defined as a secondary emotion. Study 2. Forty dog owners were interviewed about the contexts and behaviours that led them to claim their animal was jealous. There was coherence and consistency in the behavioural descriptions of jealousy. We claim that such reports provide evidence for the existence of secondary emotions in non-primate species as predicted by theorists such as Buck (Citation1999). (shrink)

Mammalian livers express endocytic cell surface receptors that specifically bind natural or synthetic molecules containing terminal galactosyl or N‐acetylgalactosaminyl sugars. One of these hepatocyte receptors is the asialogly‐coprotein receptor, which mediates the endocytosis and subsequent lysosomal degradation of these glyco‐molecules. Although the receptor was discovered almost 30 years ago, the physiological reason why mammals have this receptor is still unknown. At the cellular level, the basic molecular function of the receptor is to mediate the uptake and ultimate degradation of galactosyl/N‐acetylgalactosaminyl‐containing (...) molecules (ligands). At the organism level, however, the physiological function is uncertain. The identity of the natural ligands and the reasons for this elaborate receptor system to remove these ligands are both unknown. This article proposes an explanation for the purpose of this asialoglycoprotein receptor and its role in regulating the dynamic flux of galactosyl/N‐acetylgalactosaminyl glycoconjugates in mammals. (shrink)

Many different but related arguments developed in the Caritas in Veritate converge on one central, yet not clearly stated, conclusion or thesis: economic and business activities are ‘incomplete’. This article will explore the above-mentioned ‘incompleteness’ thesis or argument from three different perspectives: the role, the practice and the purpose of economic and business activities in contemporary societies. In doing so, the paper will heavily draw on questions and, still not fully learned, lessons derived from the present financial and economic crisis. (...) Caritas in Veritate provides an appealing moral framework in which many of these lessons take a deeper sense and a more comprehensive meaning. The notion of ‘incompleteness’ is applied here to economic and business theory and practice in the sense derived from Gödel’s theorems. They state in terms of logical and mathematical demonstrations that no system of axiomatic statements can provide a proof of its own consistency. Such a proof requires the use of statements belonging to another (higher) level system. In the case of economics or business theory and practice these ‘higher level’ statements are value judgments. By stressing the importance of ethics and moral philosophy for daily life, Caritas in Veritate strongly reminds us that neither economy nor business are self-sufficient either in organisational and social, practical or moral terms. (shrink)