In 2004, twelve capuchin monkeys were moved from the labs of the Danish psychiatric hospital of Sankt Hans to a small private-owned zoo in another part of Denmark in order to be rehabilitated. These monkeys were the last nonhuman primates to be used as research animals in Danish biomedical laboratories. The normal procedure would be to kill research animals after the termination of an experiment; in this case, however, a decision was reached to close down the lab. (...) The moral landscape had changed, and it was no longer considered acceptable to use nonhuman primates in Danish biomedicine. From being considered a biological resource serving as a model of man, the monkeys had become moral subjects with a claim to a life suiting their natural needs. Simultaneously, the monkeys became instrumental in creating moral legitimacy for the actors involved in their rescue. What we see is an instance of pathfinding in a changing moral landscape where actors negotiate nonhuman primate nature as they create new moral positions for themselves. (shrink)

Photographs by one of French cinema's most influential and enigmatic artists. Any new film and any new book by French filmmaker Chris Marker is an event. Marker gave film lovers one of their most memorable experiences with La Jetée —a time-travel montage set after a nuclear war that inspired Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. His still camerawork is not as well known, but Marker has been taking photographs as long as he has been making films. Staring Back presents 200 (...) black-and-white photographs from Marker's personal archives, taken from 1952 to 2006. Some of the photographs are related to his classic films, others are portraits of famous faces, but most are pictures of people Marker has encountered as he has traveled the world. The central section of the book contains a series of photographs documenting political protests Marker has witnessed, including the march on the Pentagon in 1967, the events of May 1968 in Paris, and the tumultuous 2006 demonstrations protesting the French government's proposed employment policies. The photographs are accompanied by several unpublished texts by Marker, including the English language text of The Case of the Grinning Cat and Marker's annotations for some of the photos. The book—which appears in conjunction with an exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University—also includes essays by Wexner Center curator Bill Horrigan and art historian Molly Nesbit. (shrink)

This paper examines various philosophical arguments to do with time travel. It argues that time travel has not been shown to be logically impossible. It then considers whether time travel would give rise to improbable strings of coincidences, or closed causal loops. Finally, it considers whether we could ever be justified in believing someone who claimed to be a time traveller, or whether we would always be more justified in believing that the claimant was either deluded or trying to deceive (...) us. For this last issue the Terry Gilliam film ‘Twelve Monkeys’ is used as an example. (shrink)

Humans have long been fascinated by the idea of visiting the past and of seeing what the future will bring. Time travel has been one of the most popular themes of science fiction. Most people have seen the TV series ‘Dr Who’ or ‘Quantum Leap’ or ‘Star Trek’. You’ve probably seen one of the ‘Back to the Future’ or ‘Terminator’ movies, or ‘Twelve Monkeys’. Time travel narratives provide fascinating plots, which exercise our imaginations in ever so many ways. (...) But is the idea of travelling forward and backward in time pure fantasy—or can it be done? To be sure, not all time travel scenarios are coherent. But we hope to persuade you that the most common objections to the very idea of time travel have no real force. (shrink)

Every culture has its own taboos. Communication works better when the participants share more assumptions and knowledge about each other (Scollon & Scollon, 2000). However, in many cases, participants realize the existence of the rules associated with taboos only after they have violated them. Those who do not observe these social “rules” might face serious results, such as total embarrassment or, as Saville-Troike (1989) puts it, they may be accused of immorality and face social ostracism. This paper reports that certain (...) verbal and non-verbal taboos among Chinese people centuries ago still affect their language and behavior choices. Two types of Chinese possible taboos in language and behavior are introduced and compared with cultures of the Koreans and Americans: (1) gift-giving taboos which are phonologically linked to the “separation” and “death” in Chinese society, and (2) verbal expressions which are linked to the twelve zodiac-animals in Chinese traditional metaphors. This research paper also tries to answer two questions related to Asian culture and history: (1) whether Koreans share more of these phonologically-linked taboos than Americans do because Korean language has very similar sounds to Chinese; and (2) whether Koreans share with Chinese people more of the zodiac-animal-linked metaphors (i.e., the rat, the bull/cow, the tiger, the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the sheep/lamb, the monkey, the chicken, the dog, and the pig) than Americans do because Korean people also use the same animals as a cycle of every twelve years. Data were collected in two ways: questionnaires and interviews. (shrink)

The Homeobox (Hox) genes essentially define body regions in all animals including humans – responsible for determining two arms, two legs, one nose and so on. This gene is shared by all living beings – from the snail to the elephant to humans – and it can now be manipulated into transforming certain parts of the body into others. We have observed such transformations, such as that of an amputated antenna into a limb, as far back as 1901, termed neomorphosis (...) (Morgan 1901), and it has only recently re-emerged as an area of scientific study. Spontaneous transformations and induced regenerations are fascinating research topics that are fast becoming a reality; some scientists are postulating that it may be possible that the hox gene could be central to limb regeneration in the future. This article will present the Hox Zodiac project, which attempts to introduce this subject and push the ideas further into speculation of mutation (i.e. humans and animals) into creatures that may resemble the mythical beings we know as fiction. The starting point of this wheel of life is the Chinese zodiac, consisting of twelve animals that are associated with humans. In the process of development, it became interesting to note that half of the animals on the wheel are those used in the lab – rat, pig, monkey, dog, sheep and rabbit. The ox, tiger, horse, snake and rooster are considered mythical and the dragon could easily fall into the category of a genetically modified creature that is to re-emerge in the future. Since medical and scientific testing on humans is strictly forbidden, scientists have virtually shifted to animals for all such studies. Thus, everything that is used on our bodies and minds is directly related to the animal kingdom. The pig heart and rat mind are symbols for the paradox of science that uses animals in ways that are at once disconnected while subconsciously connecting us more than ever by using research results in medical and food products we consume. Although the controversy of using animals in labs is widely known and often violently opposed, the artist in the lab questions how this research impacts our collective consciousness, especially with the growing trend of brain-computer interfaces and particularly synthetic telepathy. This relationship of the human to the metaphorical meaning of the animal kingdom brought to mind Jung’s research on metaphors, symbolism and archetypes, which became central to the Hox Zodiac. (shrink)

Recent work in judgment and decision-making has shown that a good’s price can have irrational effects on people’s preferences. People tend to prefer goods that cost more money and assume that such expensive goods will be more effective, even in cases where the price of the good is itself arbitrary. Although much work has documented the existence of these pricing effects, unfortunately little work has addressed where these price effects come from in the first place. Here we use a comparative (...) approach to distinguish between different accounts of this bias and to explore the origins of these effects. Specifically, we test whether brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) are also susceptible to pricing effects within the context of an experimentally trained token economy. Using a capuchin population previously trained in a token market, we explored whether monkeys used price as an indicator of value across four experiments. Although monkeys demonstrated an understanding of which goods had which prices (consistently shifting preferences to cheaper goods when prices were increased), we observed no evidence that such price information affected their valuation of different kinds of goods. These results suggest that human price effects may involve more sophisticated human-unique cognitive capacities, such as an understanding of market forces and signaling. (shrink)

The article analyzes the neural and functional grounding of language skills as well as their emergence in hominid evolution, hypothesizing stages leading from abilities known to exist in monkeys and apes and presumed to exist in our hominid ancestors right through to modern spoken and signed languages. The starting point is the observation that both premotor area F5 in monkeys and Broca's area in humans contain a “mirror system” active for both execution and observation of manual actions, and (...) that F5 and Broca's area are homologous brain regions. This grounded the mirror system hypothesis of Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998) which offers the mirror system for grasping as a key neural “missing link” between the abilities of our nonhuman ancestors of 20 million years ago and modern human language, with manual gestures rather than a system for vocal communication providing the initial seed for this evolutionary process. The present article, however, goes “beyond the mirror” to offer hypotheses on evolutionary changes within and outside the mirror systems which may have occurred to equip Homo sapiens with a language-ready brain. Crucial to the early stages of this progression is the mirror system for grasping and its extension to permit imitation. Imitation is seen as evolving via a so-called simple system such as that found in chimpanzees (which allows imitation of complex “object-oriented” sequences but only as the result of extensive practice) to a so-called complex system found in humans (which allows rapid imitation even of complex sequences, under appropriate conditions) which supports pantomime. This is hypothesized to have provided the substrate for the development of protosign, a combinatorially open repertoire of manual gestures, which then provides the scaffolding for the emergence of protospeech (which thus owes little to nonhuman vocalizations), with protosign and protospeech then developing in an expanding spiral. It is argued that these stages involve biological evolution of both brain and body. By contrast, it is argued that the progression from protosign and protospeech to languages with full-blown syntax and compositional semantics was a historical phenomenon in the development of Homo sapiens, involving few if any further biological changes. Key Words: gestures; hominids; language evolution; mirror system; neurolinguistics; primates; protolanguage; sign language; speech; vocalization. (shrink)

"This reviewer had to be restrained from stopping people in the street to urge them to read it: They would learn something of the way science is done,...

Twelve Infallible Men: The Imams and the Making of Shiʿism. By Matthew Pierce. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 254. $45, £35.95, €40.50.

This essay explores references to monkeys as a way of talking about imitation, authenticity, and identity in Greek stories about the “Monkey Island” Pithekoussai and in Athenian insults, and in Plautus' comedy. In early Greek contexts, monkey business defines what it means to be aristocratic and authoritative. Classical Athenians use monkeys to think about what it means to be authentically Athenian: monkey business is a figure for behavior which threatens democratic culture—sycophancy or other deceptions of the people. Plautus' (...) monkey imagery across the corpus of his plays moves beyond the Athenian use of “monkey” as a term of abuse and uses the “imitative” relation of monkeys to men as a metapoetic figure for invention and play-making. For Plautus, imitator—and distorter—of Greek plays, monkeys' distorted imitations of men are mapped not onto the relations between inauthentic and authentic citizens, as in Athens, but onto the relation of Roman to Greek comedy and culture at large. Monkey business in Plautus is part of the insistence on difference which was always crucial in Roman encounters with Greek culture. (shrink)

Research with nonhuman primates is essential to medical progress and will still be necessary for the foreseeable future. Almost all research scientists agree that animal research is critical to understanding basic biology, discovering new treatments for human (and animal) diseases, and maximizing the safety of new medicines while minimizing their harm to humans. All but two of the Nobel prizes in medicine awarded over the last one hundred years have depended on animal research, and the list of modern medicines, vaccines, (...) and other treatments, as well as basic science discoveries, is so extensive that it could not be adequately covered in even a huge volume. Increases in average life span in the last century are the result of improved public health measures, and many diseases may be related to lifestyle choices. But animal research has contributed to understanding these factors and to the development of vaccines and lifesaving treatments. The philosophical debate regarding the benefits and moral costs of animal research has also filled many volumes by ethicists and philosophers. The major arguments against the use of animals in medical research have been explicitly refuted by a few brave scientists, as well as implicitly by the vast majority of the working biomedical science community. My contribution to this discussion is to provide a personal perspective on my decision if, when, and how to use monkeys in research experiments on Parkinson disease. As a physician researcher, I have been working for many years to understand and cure Parkinson disease. (shrink)

Twelve of the greatest voices from ancient Greece and Rome - and why they still inspire and affect us in the 21st century. A book for all readers who want to know more about the literature that underpins Western civilization.

The data reviewed in Barresi & Moore's treatment of social understanding is recast in terms of a model of social intelligence that was advanced some time ago (Gallup 1982). When it comes to their analysis of the behavior of other individuals, most primates (and humans younger than 18 months of age) appear to function as radical behaviorists, whereas chimpanzees and older infants show evidence of becoming primitive cognitive psychologists.

We develop a formal semantic analysis of the alarm calls used by Campbell’s monkeys in the Tai forest and on Tiwai island —two sites that differ in the main predators that the monkeys are exposed to. Building on data discussed in Ouattara et al. :e7808, 2009a; PNAS 106: 22026–22031, 2009b and Arnold et al., we argue that on both sites alarm calls include the roots krak and hok, which can optionally be affixed with -oo, a kind of attenuating (...) suffix; in addition, sentences can start with boom boom, which indicates that the context is not one of predation. In line with Arnold et al., we show that the meaning of the roots is not quite the same in Tai and on Tiwai: krak often functions as a leopard alarm call in Tai, but as a general alarm call on Tiwai. We develop models based on a compositional semantics in which concatenation is interpreted as conjunction, roots have lexical meanings, -oo is an attenuating suffix, and an all-purpose alarm parameter is raised with each individual call. The first model accounts for the difference between Tai and Tiwai by way of different lexical entries for krak. The second model gives the same underspecified entry to krak in both locations, but it makes use of a competition mechanism akin to scalar implicatures. In Tai, strengthening yields a meaning equivalent to non-aerial dangerous predator and turns out to single out leopards. On Tiwai, strengthening yields a nearly contradictory meaning due to the absence of ground predators, and only the unstrengthened meaning is used. (shrink)

The chapter argues that atheism need pose no hurdle to practicing the Twelve Steps given the importance of action over belief in Twelve Step spirituality. The chapter proposes two theologically anti-realist approaches, fictionalism and reductionism, that provide philosophical coherence to an atheist practicing the Twelve Steps and concludes with a discussion of the virtue of theological open-mindedness.

Following the example of the many organizations in the United States which have a code of ethics, an increasing interest on the part of companies, trade organizations, (semi-)governmental organizations and professions in the Netherlands to develop codes of ethics can be witnessed. We have been able to escort a variety of organizations in this process. The process that organizations must go through in order to attain a code involves a variety of difficult decisions. In this article we will, based on (...) our experiences, describe twelve dilemmas which will have to be solved during the development of such a code. When one or more of these dilemmas is ignored or an ungrounded choice is made, the effectiveness of the code will be negatively affected. Furthermore, the twelve dilemmas could be used as twelve dimensions to exemplify organizational codes of ethics. In this article we will also discuss a method to organize ethics within the organization. This will serve as a guide as to how, with respect to the dilemmas described, adequate considerations can be made. The article will be concluded with a description of our experiences at the Dutch Schiphol Airport. This case demonstrates how the aforementioned reasoning can be applied in practice. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has generated a great deal of excitement among ethicists largely because it is seen as an alternative to the traditional theories – utilitarianism and Kantian ethics – which have come under considerable scrutiny and criticism in the past 30 years. Rather than give up the enterprise of doing moral theory altogether, as some have suggested, others have opted to develop an alternative that would hopefully avoid the shortcomings of both utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Several writers, such as Jorge (...) Garcia and Michael Slote, have tried to develop this alternative of virtue ethics, or at least sketch out ways such a theory could be developed. (shrink)

Ideas of Human Nature, now revised and updated in this second edition, presents twelve of the most influential Western thinkers on the topic of human nature.

Existing literature on counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs) has focused on the influence that interpersonal and organizational factors have on predicting said behavior. However, more recent studies have begun to explore the dimensionality of CWB in relation to the likelihood of coworkers reporting coworkers’ CWBs. Likelihood of reporting CWB across various types of CWB, and the relationships between self-reported CWB were assessed across two studies. The studies did so utilizing two different measures of CWB and two different measures of CWB reporting, (...) and found very similar results. Results suggest those employees who report one type of CWB behavior would also be more willing to report other types of CWBs, and those who have lower self-reported CWB are more likely to report CWB. (shrink)

This fourth article in a six-part series correlating Kant’s philosophy with the Yijing begins by summarizing the foregoing articles: both Kant and the Yijing’s 64 hexagrams (gua) employ “architectonic” reasoning to form a four-level system with 0+4+12+(4x12) elements, the fourth level’s four sets of 12 correlating to Kant’s model of four university “faculties”. This article explores the second twelvefold set, the law faculty. The “idea of reason” guiding this wing of the comparative analysis is immortality. Three of Kant’s “quaternities” correspond (...) to three sets of four gua in the Yijing: the fourfold nature of the soul in rational psychology (as substantial, simple, unified, spatially related) corresponds to gua 47, 6, 58, 10, respectively; the three “Definitive Articles” and fourth, “Secret Article”, in Perpetual Peace correspond to gua 16, 35,51, 21; and the four objective relations of law to duty in Metaphysics of Morals correspond to gua 45, 12, 17, 25. (shrink)

This is the third in a series of articles that correlates Kant's architectonic with the Yijing's sixty-four hexagrams. Previous articles explained “architectonic” reasoning, introduced four levels of the “Compound Yijing,” consisting of 0 + 4 + 12 + gua, and suggested correlating the fourth level's four sets of twelve to the four “faculties” in Kant's model of the university. This third paper examines the philosophy faculty, assessing whether the twelve proposed gua meaningfully correlate with twelve basic philosophical (...) concepts that Kant introduces in his three Critiques. A key difference emerges: Kant's architectonic method aims to produce synthetic a priori knowledge, while the Yijing's architectonic method aims to produce analytic a posteriori belief. (shrink)

Stoerig and Cowey’s work is widely regarded as showing that monkeys with lesions in the primary visual cortex have blindsight. However, Mole and Kelly persuasively argue that the experimental results are compatible with an alternative hypothesis positing only a deficit in attention and perceptual working memory. I describe a revised procedure which can distinguish these hypotheses, and offer reasons for thinking that the blindsight hypothesis provides a superior explanation. The study of blindsight might contribute towards a general investigation into (...) animal consciousness, though there is a problem when it comes to showing how a non-verbal animal can indicate whether or not it is perceiving consciously. Perhaps whether there is something that it is like to be a given animal depends on whether it exhibits the cognitive profile of conscious vision as opposed to non-conscious “natural blindsight.”. (shrink)

Abstract. A rhesus monkey, Helen, from whom the striate cortex was almost totally removed, was studied intensively over a period of 8 years. During this time she regained an effective, though limited, degree of visually guided behaviour. The evidence suggests that while Helen suffered a permanent loss of `focal vision she retained (initially unexpressed) the capacity for `ambient vision.

Armed conflict can destroy both a healthcare system and the people who comprise it. Where the facilities themselves may take decades to rebuild, this collection of essays is evidence of the remarkable resilience of healthcare providers working in these conflict zones. Twelve narratives are shared by doctors, nurses, and other staff working in current crises in places such as Afghanistan, Darfur, Gaza, Iraq, Myanmar, Syria, and Ukraine. The essays reveal logistical, personal, and ethical challenges of providing fundamental healthcare services (...) under. (shrink)

The linked stanza form of Pearl is widely known and admired. Yet there exists no complete account of how this aspect of Pearl compares with other Middle English poems written in twelve-line units. The omission is surprising, not least because this information may offer a background for dating Pearl. Four editors—of Pearl or of other verse—have compiled lists of verse specimens with a cognate stanza, but none of these tentative lists is complete or entirely accurate. The best resource for (...) tracking such information, Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope Robbins's Index of Middle English Verse, has become increasingly outdated and therefore unreliable: new poems have been discovered; verses listed as unpublished have now been printed; some single listings have turned out to comprise two or more different pieces; and separate listings have been recognized as variants of the same poem. Consequently, when scholars attempt to compare Pearl with other poems in this or related stanza forms, confusions arise because we still lack the context that a comparative history would supply. In this article I hope to provide such a context by examining the lyrics that survive in the three main types of twelve-line stanzas and, with this evidence, to reconsider the question of the date of Pearl. (shrink)

Readers have struggled to interpret an image from the end of Juvenal's fifth satire, a poem which focusses upon the poor hospitality shown to a dinner guest, Trebius, at the hands of his host, Virro. After repeatedly juxtaposing the luxurious food served to Virro with the scant fare served to Trebius, Juvenal describes the final course of thecena. He again contrasts the host's hyper-abundance with his guest's mere scraps (5.149–55):Virro sibi et reliquis Virronibus illa iubebitpoma dari, quorum solo pascaris odore,qualia (...) perpetuus Phaeacum autumnus habebat,credere quae possis subrepta sororibus Afris:tu scabie frueris mali, quod in aggere roditqui tegitur parma et galea, metuensque flagellidiscit ab hirsuta iaculum torquere capella.Virro will demand that he and the rest of his entourage receive these apples—though you'll dine on their smell alone—like those the endless autumn of the Phaeacians used to yield, which you could believe stolen away from the African sisters: you will enjoy the scab of an apple, which, on the Embankment, is gnawed by someone who is protected by a buckler and helm and who, fearing a whipping, learns to hurl a javelin from atop a shaggy goat.While the core contrast between the quality of each type of fare is clear, the concludingqui-clause is less intelligible. Who could this entity be? On line 153, the scholiast comments:quale simia manducat. Whilequalecould refer to the object being eaten (scabie mali quod) rather than to thequi-antecedent, it is clear in any case that the ancient reader felt that 5.153–5 evoked the image of an ape. Recent commentaries on Juvenal's fifth satire reflect a scholarly consensus: J.D. Duff, Edward Courtney, Susanna Braund and Biagio Santorelli all follow the scholiast's suggestion and believe that the passage describes a trained ape, as do recent readers of the poem. (shrink)

Pike, Gregory K Drug abuse has come into the public spotlight again as the Australia21 group recently released several documents arguing for an end to the prohibition of drugs like cannabis, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamine. The arguments are not new, and those who advance them probably think it is only a matter of time before they achieve their goal.

In recent years, collaboration between medical educators and art museum educators has emerged as an important trend. The museum environment can support a kind of professional reflection and conversation that is difficult to develop in a medical setting. Skills such as close looking, empathic communication, resilience, and cultural awareness may also be developed in the art museum when plans for the visit are developed with attention to their relevance to health professions. Working across disciplines requires identifying and cultivating a strong (...) partner as well as clear communication about goals and possibilities. The following tips were developed by museum educators based on their extensive experience working with medical students, interns, residents and faculty at Harvard Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School over the past twelve years. (shrink)