This groundbreaking volume casts light on the long shadow of naturalistic monism in modern thought and culture. When monism's philosophical proposition - the unity of all matter and thought in a single, universal substance - fused with scientific empiricism and Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century, it led to the formation of a powerful worldview articulated in the work of figures such as Ernst Haeckel. The compelling essays collected here, written by leading international scholars, investigate the articulation of monism in science, (...) philosophy, and religion and its impact on a range of social movements, from socialism and early feminism to imperialism and eugenics. The result is a broad and comprehensive chronological, disciplinary, and geographic map of a century of monism, as well as a bellwether for innovative new directions in the interdisciplinary study of science, religion, philosophy, and culture. (shrink)

Many compelling examples have recently been provided in which people can achieve impressive epistemic success, e.g. draw highly accurate inferences, by using simple heuristics and very little information. This is possible by taking advantage of the features of the environment. The examples suggest an easy and appealing naturalization of rationality: on the one hand, people clearly can apply simple heuristics, and on the other hand, they intuitively ought do so when this brings them high accuracy at little cost.. The ‘ought-can’ (...) principle is satisfied, and rationality is meaningfully normative. We show, however, that this naturalization program is endangered by a computational wrinkle in the adaptation process taken to be responsible for this heuristics-based (‘ecological’) rationality: for the adaptation process to guarantee even minimal rationality, it requires astronomical computational resources, making the problem intractable. We consider various plausible auxiliary assumptions in attempt to remove this obstacle, and show that they do not succeed; intractability is a robust property of adaptation. We discuss the implications of our findings for the project of naturalizing rationality. (shrink)

Arguments about the evolutionary function of phenomenal consciousness are beset by the problem of epiphenomenalism. For if it is not clear whether phenomenal consciousness has a causal role, then it is difficult to begin an argument for the evolutionary role of phenomenal consciousness. We argue that complexity arguments offer a way around this problem. According to evolutionary biology, the structural complexity of a given organ can provide evidence that the organ is an adaptation, even if nothing is known about the (...) causal role of the organ. Evidence from cognitive neuropsychology suggests that phenomenal consciousness is structurally complex in the relevant way, and this provides prima facie evidence that phenomenal consciousness is an adaptation. Furthermore, we argue that the complexity of phenomenal consciousness might also provide clues about the causal role of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

There is a strong impetus in international agricultural development to close ‘gender gaps’ in agricultural productivity. The goal of empowering women is often framed as the solution to closing these gaps, stimulating the proliferation of new indicators and instruments for the targeting, measurement, and tracking of programmatic goals in research for agricultural development. Despite these advances, current measurements and indices remain too simplified in terms of unit and scope of analysis, as well as being fundamentally flawed in how they aim (...) to capture the relevance of ‘gender’ in diverse local contexts. We propose that the impulse to apply exogenously defined and weakly validated ‘women’s empowerment’ measures to diverse local contexts risks prioritizing practical expedience over scientific accuracy and societal relevance. Furthermore, the application of such measures risks creating the impression that programmatic “gender targets” are being achieved, while simultaneously undermining substantive gender transformative goals. The authors conclude that a different methodological approach grounded in participatory and qualitative methods is needed to create more meaningful metrics for assessing progress towards women’s empowerment. (shrink)

In the past two decades, many anthropologists have been drawn to "interpre tive" perspectives which hold that the study of human culture would profit by using approaches developed in the humanities, rather than using approaches used in the natural sciences. The author discusses the source of the appeal of such perspectives but argues that interpretive approaches to social science tend to be fundamentally flawed, even by common everyday epistemological standards.

This paper explores some connections between flavour perception, emotion, and temporal experience. Focussing on the question, If you like that taste of X and I do not, are we tasting the same thing X?, I will approach it by looking at some differences between how experts and nonexperts ‘taste’. I will eventually answer that if by ‘the same thing’ we mean the overall flavour profile of a complex sensory object, then the answer must be negative. I will argue that there (...) is indeed a relatively trivial sense in which one tastes the same thing, but that this is not an experience of flavour. In the process I will reject the view that there are real emergent flavour properties. (shrink)

This paper explores the connections between Kant’s theory of hierarchical racial difference, on the one hand, and his cosmopolitanism and conceptions of moral and political progress, on the other. I argue that Kant’s racial biology plays an essential role in maintaining national-cultural differences, which he views as essential for the establishment of the cosmopolitan union. Unfortunately, not only are these views racist, they also complicate Kant’s ability to consistently think through the prospect of the human species’ moral progress. Thus, while (...) in the abstract, Kant’s attempts to understand the prospects for moral and political progress as rooted in historical reality, and his insistence that such progress is necessarily connected to the persistence of cultural difference, is appealing, his own way of carrying this out is decidedly not, being so intimately connected to racial hierarchy as a basic source of difference. (shrink)

McCullough et al. propose adaptations that motivate forgiveness when the potential benefits of continuing the relationship outweigh the costs incurred by the transgression. The costs incurred are definite, whereas future benefits of forgiveness are only probabilistic. This situation exposes the forgiver to cheating in the form of repeat transgression. Adaptations motivating genuine forgiveness are therefore unlikely to evolve.

This volume considers formalisations of love in the 21st century. Engaging with the Slovenian School of Philosophy, the book contends that psychoanalysis is the one line of thought that exposes the role that love plays in all knowledge, emphasising the importance of love in these unsettled times.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 215 Seiten: 119-141.

This article offers an historical-materialist account of the coup in Honduras on 28 June 2009, which ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. It draws on over two dozen interviews with members of theFrente Nacional de la Resistencia Popular[National Front of Popular Resistance, FNRP], and participation in numerous marches and assemblies over two periods of fieldwork – January 2010, and June–July 2011. The paper steps back in time to provide an historical cartography of the basic material structures of the Honduran economy (...) and its integration into the world market, as well as the geopolitical role it played as a launching pad for Ronald Reagan’s counter-insurgency campaigns against guerrilla forces elsewhere in the region during the 1980s. We show how the defeat of mass guerrilla insurgencies in Guatemala and El Salvador, as well as the triumph over the Sandinista government in Nicaragua by 1990, allowed for the neoliberal pacification of Central America as a whole, including Honduras. We further demonstrate how the centre-leftist Manuel Zelaya, elected to the Honduran presidency in 2006, modestly encroached upon neoliberal orthodoxy and forged geopolitical alliances with left and centre-left governments elsewhere in the region, laying the bases for his violent overthrow. Finally, the paper traces the origins, trajectory, and heterogeneity of the resistance that emerged almost immediately after the coup had been carried out. (shrink)

I examine recent work on moral dilemmas and argue that there are no moral dilemmas which issue in inescapable wrongdoing . In the first three chapters I examine some important arguments for and against tragic dilemmas---arguments from deontic logic, Martha Nussbaum's view that vulnerability is essential to human values, Bernard Williams' argument from guilt , and the argument from the fragmentation of value---and show that these arguments for and against are inconclusive. ;In Chapter 4 I attempt to provide a reason (...) to reject tragic dilemmas which will have force for those most inclined to accept dilemmas---those, such as Williams and Nussbaum, who are engaged in a critique of modern moral philosophy. Central to their critique is their denial of the distinction between moral and nonmoral reasons and of the primacy of the moral. I show that an account of practical deliberation which can accommodate the possibility of tragic dilemmas has the effect, not of undermining the distinction between moral and nonmoral reasons and the primacy of the moral, but of strengthening that distinction and that primacy. This is because a picture of practical deliberation which can accommodate the possibility of tragic dilemmas makes moral reasons distinct from nonmoral reasons in how they achieve their deliberative weight. ;In Chapter 5 I present an alternative picture of practical deliberation which I commend to these critics. In my alternative picture, moral reasons have deliberative weight for an agent for the same reason nonmoral reasons do: because the agent sees things from a point of view from which such reasons are important. My picture takes seriously the critics' view that moral value is continuous with other sorts of value and is not overriding and supremely regulative; but my picture does not accommodate the possibility of tragic dilemmas. I conclude that their project of criticizing modern moral philosophy is better served by accepting my picture and thus rejecting the possibility of tragic dilemmas. (shrink)

As Christians, we are called to think about the fundamental values that shape and guide our economic behavior and the economic structures of our society. This article focuses on the ways in which the problem of predatory lending, or usury, allows us to examine our most basic Christian values and principles and think about how they might serve as a moral foundation for reshaping our economic structures and transactions.

‘Saepe stilum vertas’, says Horace; and he had excellent company in his friend Virgil, who wrote the Aeneid at the rate of only about 900 lines a year, and spent hours in licking his verses into shape. It would have been instructive to sit at the elbow of these two poets, to see what they altered and what they rejected. It is clear, e.g., that there were certain caesural arrangements which Virgil deliberately affected and others which he as deliberately avoided. (...) But what of the care taken by these and other classical authors in arranging sounds in relation to mood or idea? This present incomplete essay is written frankly with scepticism in regard to dogmatic comments on certain particular points. It has been perilously easy to frame legislation on the basis of a predilection bolstered up by one or two instances. Even in the field of syntax we have seen generalizations on too narrow a foundation. An editor of Andocides enunciates ‘a very important principle of the language, which is rigidly observed by the best writers; viz., that, when a participle and a verb of different government are referred to the same object, the case of that object depends on the participle and not at all on the verb… Shilleto's remarks on this point must be excused, as evidently written hastily.’ But a casual cast of the net brings up about a score of violations of this principle from Homer to Menander. Where does the editor propose to draw the line between the respectable and the declassé Greek writers? Aristophanes, though cited in support, is actually flagrantly lawless in the matter; and with him must go not only Homer and Hyperides but Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, Xenophon, Lysias, and Plato, leaving among the élite, as cited by this editor, only Thucydides, Antiphon, and Aeschines; and one is entitled to doubt even their rigid observance of the law until they have actually been brought to court. In problems of rhythm, also, one has to be careful to use evidence as against preconception. When an editor hacks and fits the dactylics of Ennius so as to eradicate all feet beginning with two short syllables, it is as impious as recarving a statue by Daedalus because it does not conform to the canon of Polyclitus; and one may be forgiven if now and then one interprets the editor's corr. in his apparatus criticus not as correxi but as corrupi. (shrink)

Thomas Reid delivered philosophical orations triennially, in Latin, at graduation ceremonies in King's College, Aberdeen, 1753-1762. Each of the four orations is a summary of Reid's views on several philosophical topics, e.g. the "laws of practising philosophy"; the philosophy of science; the "theory of ideas". This translation from the Latin text is prefaced with an historical and philosophical introduction to the thought of Reid and his school. The text is footnoted with cross-references to Reid's published writings to enable the reader (...) to compare these early expressions of Reid's philosophy with his mature thought. A thorough bibliography of the most available editions of Reid's works and of the most important modern books and articles on Reid is appended. (shrink)

A working assumption that processes of natural and cultural evolution have tailored the mind to fit the demands and structure of its environment begs the question: how are we to characterize the structure of cognitive environments? Decision problems faced by real organisms are not like simple multiple-choice examination papers. For example, some individual problems may occur much more frequently than others, whilst some may carry much more weight than others. Such considerations are not taken into account when (i) the performance (...) of candidate cognitive mechanisms is assessed by employing a simple accuracy metric that is insensitive to the structure of the decision-maker's environment, and (ii) reason is defined as the adherence to internalist prescriptions of classical rationality. Here we explore the impact of frequency and significance structure on the performance of a range of candidate decision-making mechanisms. We show that the character of this impact is complex, since structured environments demand that decision-makers trade off general performance against performance on important subsets of test items. As a result, environment structure obviates internalist criteria of rationality. Failing to appreciate the role of environment structure in shaping cognition can lead to mischaracterising adaptive behavior as irrational. (shrink)

Readers’ Theater is a unique vehicle for introducing ethical, cultural, and social issues in medicine to academic, professional, and community audiences. It brings alive the characters in a story in a way that silent reading or reading a story aloud cannot. Audience members experience what is, in essence, a case report acted out “on stage” rather than reading or hearing someone report on a situation second hand. RT has an immediacy about it, a compelling aspect, that makes listeners pay attention (...) and mentally participate in the action. It draws people into the story, engages them. The oral reading and subsequent open discussion combine to educate audience members about the topic of the story and the variety of ways one can interpret the story’s message. This article describes the long-standing RT program at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and some of variations on RT that people have developed around the country. (shrink)

This paper explores the context of environmental justice (EJ) in Scotland, and presents a case study whereby the main attributes for an indicator of EJ were identified, encompassing procedural and distributive aspects of justice. Through a participatory process, weights were assigned using a Multi-Criteria Analysis tool, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Results show that overall, environmental injustices are mostly associated by respondents to unequal distribution of health burdens due to pollution, yet greater weight is attached to procedural justice by community (...) environmental activists. The paper suggests that AHP may be applied to many situations and could form a basis for the development of tools to address and deliver EJ in Scotland. (shrink)

I answer Alvin Plantinga's challenge to provide a ‘proper’ de jure objection to religious belief. What I call the ‘sophisticates’ evidential objection' concludes that sophisticated Christians lack epistemic justification for believing central Christian propositions. The SEO utilizes a theory of epistemic justification in the spirit of the evidentialism of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. I defend philosophical interest in the SEO against objections from Reformed epistemology, by addressing Plantinga's criteria for a proper de jure objection, his anti-evidentialist arguments, and the (...) relevance of ‘impulsional evidence’. I argue that no result from Plantinga-style Reformed epistemology precludes the reasons I offer in favour of giving the SEO its due philosophical attention. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.