In recent years, bioethical discourse around the topic of ‘genetic enhancement’ has become increasingly politicized. We fear there is too much focus on the semantic question of whether we should call particular practices and emerging bio-technologies such as CRISPR ‘eugenics’, rather than the more important question of how we should view them from the perspective of ethics and policy. Here, we address the question of whether ‘eugenics’ can be defended and how proponents and critics of enhancement should engage with each (...) other. (shrink)

In Disturbed Consciousness, philosophers and other scholars examine various psychopathologies in light of specific philosophical theories of consciousness. The contributing authors—some of them discussing or defending their own theoretical work—consider not only how a theory of consciousness can account for a specific psychopathological condition but also how the characteristics of a psychopathology might challenge such a theory. Thus one essay defends the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against the charge that it cannot account for somatoparaphrenia (a delusion in which (...) one denies ownership of a limb). Another essay argues that various attempts to explain away such anomalies within subjective theories of consciousness fail. -/- Other essays consider such topics as the application of a model of unified consciousness to cases of brain bisection and dissociative identity disorder; prefrontal and parietal underconnectivity in autism and other psychopathologies; self-deception and the self-model theory of subjectivity; schizophrenia and the vehicle theory of consciousness; and a shift in emphasis away from an internal (or brainbound) approach to psychopathology to an interactive one. Each essay offers a distinctive perspective from the intersection of philosophy, consciousness research, and psychiatry. -/- Contributors Alexandre Billon, Andrew Brook, Paula Droege, Rocco J. Gennaro, Philip Gerrans, William Hirstein, Jakob Hohwy, Uriah Kriegel, Timothy Lane, Thomas Metzinger, Erik Myin, Inez Myin-Germeys, Myrto Mylopoulos, Gerard O’Brien, Jon Opie, J. Kevin O’Regan, Iuliia Pliushch, Robert Van Gulick . (shrink)

In Disturbed Consciousness, philosophers and other scholars examine various psychopathologies in light of specific philosophical theories of consciousness. The contributing authors—some of them discussing or defending their own theoretical work—consider not only how a theory of consciousness can account for a specific psychopathological condition but also how the characteristics of a psychopathology might challenge such a theory. Thus one essay defends the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness against the charge that it cannot account for somatoparaphrenia (a delusion in which (...) one denies ownership of a limb). Another essay argues that various attempts to explain away such anomalies within subjective theories of consciousness fail. Other essays consider such topics as the application of a model of unified consciousness to cases of brain bisection and dissociative identity disorder; prefrontal and parietal underconnectivity in autism and other psychopathologies; self-deception and the self-model theory of subjectivity; schizophrenia and the vehicle theory of consciousness; and a shift in emphasis away from an internal (or brainbound) approach to psychopathology to an interactive one. Each essay offers a distinctive perspective from the intersection of philosophy, consciousness research, and psychiatry. (shrink)

The ethical problem of how to apportion limited resources amongst the needy has been forced on us by arbitrary limitation of health expenditure. Its solution would not be required if health expenditure were higher. Distribution of resources according to best value for money, assessed as Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) per unit cost, has been suggested as a possible solution, but leads to absurd anomalies. In the calculation of QALYs the implied value of life is no more than the absence (...) of suffering. The use of QALYs for the comparison of treatments that are symptomatic or life-saving therefore leads to serious undervaluation of life and treatments that prolong it. Moreover, distribution of resources by best value for money, however assessed, is inequitable since for a given degree of suffering those whose illnesses happen to be cheaper to treat will be treated in preference to those whose treatments are more expensive. (shrink)

This paper examines mortality by cause of death in a rural area of Machakos district in Kenya. The cause-of-death data collected between 1975 and 1978 were likely to be of fairly good quality. The number of deaths was higher among infants and children. Infectious diseases and diseases of the respiratory system were the leading causes of death among children below 5 years of age. Next in prominence were the causes ascribed to congenital anomalies and perinatal conditions.Among adolescents and young adults, (...) injury and poisoning, together with tuberculosis and other infectious and parasitic diseases, were the leading causes of death. Degenerative diseases, especially diseases of the circulatory system and neoplasms and respiratory illness, were responsible for the majority of deaths among the older population. (shrink)

Infertility affects 15 per cent of the world's couples. Research at Edinburgh University has been directed at transplanting fetal ovarian tissue into infertile women, thus enabling them to bear children. Fetal ovary transplantation (FOT) has generated substantial controversy; in fact, one ethicist deemed the procedure 'so grotesque as to be unbelievable' (1). Some have suggested that fetal eggs may harbour unknown chromosomal abnormalities: however, there is no evidence that these eggs possess a higher incidence of genetic anomaly than ova (...) found in a healthy adult female. There is also concern that fetal egg children will be psychologically harmed by the knowledge of their special conceptual status. It will be demonstrated that special conceptual status in and of itself does not determine developmental success. Rather, psychological well-being is dependent upon how the family and child cope with the unique challenges inherent in FOT. Lastly, though considering FOT a legitimate method of family building, given the global population crisis the wisdom of procreational rights will be challenged. Inherent to this challenge is a re-evaluation of the treatment of infertility as a significant disease necessitating remedy. (shrink)

A few years ago, I argued that according to spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics, arithmetic applies to macroscopic objects only as an approximation. Several authors have written articles defending spontaneous collapse theories against this charge, including Bassi and Ghirardi, Clifton and Monton, and now Frigg. The arguments of these authors are all different and all ingenious, but in the end I think that none of them succeeds, for reasons I elaborate here. I suggest a fourth line of response, based (...) on an analogy with epistemic paradoxes, which I think is the best way to defend spontaneous collapse theories, and which leaves my main thesis intact. (shrink)

A vast amount has been written on the relationship between Terence's and Menander's Eunuchus. On some points a good measure of agreement has been reached, but much remains in dispute. In an important article W. Ludwig convincingly demonstrated the inner unity of Terence's plot, against earlier theories of large-scale ‘contaminatio’ The nature of the changes made by Terence in introducing two characters from Menander's Colax is now fairly clear, although argument is possible over details. The changes are numerous but relatively (...) small and do not affect the main lines of Menander's plot. In this paper I shall argue that Terence made similar changes in two other parts of the play, and that these caused certain anomalies which have prompted theories of more drastic Terentian change. (shrink)

Scientific anomalies are observations and facts that contradict current scientific theories and they are instrumental in scientific theory change. Philosophers of science have approached scientific theory change from different perspectives as Darden (Theory change in science: Strategies from Mendelian genetics, 1991) observes: Lakatos (In: Lakatos, Musgrave (eds) Criticism and the growth of knowledge, 1970) approaches it as a progressive “research programmes” consisting of incremental improvements (“monster barring” in Lakatos, Proofs and refutations: The logic of mathematical discovery, 1976), Kuhn (The structure (...) of scientific revolutions, 1996) observes that changes in “paradigms” are instigated by a crisis from some anomaly, and Hanson (In: Feigl, Maxwell (eds) Current issues in the philosophy of science, 1961) proposes that discovery does not begin with hypothesis but with some “problematic phenomena requiring explanation”. Even though anomalies are important in all of these approaches to scientific theory change, there have been only few investigations into the specific role anomalies play in scientific theory change. Furthermore, much of these approaches focus on the theories themselves and not on how the scientists and their experiments bring about scientific change (Gooding, Experiment and the making of meaning: Human agency in scientific observation and experiment, 1990). To address these issues, this paper approaches scientific anomaly resolution from a meaning construction point of view. Conceptual integration theory (Fauconnier and Turner, Cogn Sci 22:133–187, 1996; The way we think: Conceptual blending and mind’s hidden complexities, 2002) from cognitive linguistics describes how one constructs meaning from various stimuli, such as text and diagrams, through conceptual integration or blending. The conceptual integration networks that describe the conceptual integration process characterize cognition that occurs unconsciously during meaning construction. These same networks are used to describe some of the cognition while resolving an anomaly in molecular genetics called RNA interference (RNAi) in a case study. The RNAi case study is a cognitive-historical reconstruction (Nersessian, In: Giere (ed) Cognitive models of science, 1992) that reconstructs how the RNAi anomaly was resolved. This reconstruction traces four relevant molecular genetics publications in describing the cognition necessary in accounting for how RNAi was resolved through strategies (Darden 1991), abductive reasoning (Peirce, In: Hartshorne, Weiss (eds) Collected papers, 1958), and experimental reasoning (Gooding 1990). The results of the case study show that experiments play a crucial role in formulating an explanation of the RNAi anomaly and the integration networks describe the experiments’ role. Furthermore, these results suggest that RNAi anomaly resolution is embodied. It is embodied in a sense that cognition described in the cognitive-historical reconstruction is experientially based. (shrink)

Electron-phonon interactions appear to explain some of, but not all, the features of the dispersive kinks in recently observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The remaining anomalies have led to suggestions that magnon, and not phonon, interactions are involved. If one abandons the effective-medium approximation and replaces it with dopant-centred filamentary percolation, a picture emerges that is consistent not only with the photoemission experiments but also with tunnelling, infrared and neutron scattering data.

It is shown that a wave vector representing a light pulse in an adiabatically evolving expanding space should develop, after a round trip a geometric phase for helicity states at a given fixed position coordinate of this expanding space. In a section of the Hopf fibration of the Poincaré sphere S2 that identifies a projection to the physically allowed states, the evolution defines a parallel transported state that can be joined continuously with the initial state by means of the associated (...) Berry–Pancharatnam connection. The connection allows to compute an anomaly in the frequency for the vector modes in terms of the scale factor of the space–time background being identical to the reported Pioneer Anomaly. (shrink)

We conducted two in vivo studies to explore how scientists respond to anomalies. Based on prior research, we identify three candidate strategies: mental simulation, mental manipulation of an image, and comparison between images. In Study 1, we compared experts in basic and applied domains (physics and meteorology). We found that the basic scientists used mental simulation to resolve an anomaly, whereas applied science practitioners mentally manipulated the image. In Study 2, we compared novice and expert meteorologists. We found that (...) unlike experts, novices used comparison to address anomalies. We discuss the nature of expertise in the two kinds of science, the relationship between the type of science and the task performed, and the relationship of the strategies investigated to scientific creativity. (shrink)

Research in education and cognitive development suggests that explaining plays a key role in learning and generalization: When learners provide explanations—even to themselves—they learn more effectively and generalize more readily to novel situations. This paper proposes and tests a subsumptive constraints account of this effect. Motivated by philosophical theories of explanation, this account predicts that explaining guides learners to interpret what they are learning in terms of unifying patterns or regularities, which promotes the discovery of broad generalizations. Three experiments provide (...) evidence for the subsumptive constraints account: prompting participants to explain while learning artificial categories promotes the induction of a broad generalization underlying category membership, relative to describing items (Exp. 1), thinking aloud (Exp. 2), or free study (Exp. 3). Although explaining facilitates discovery, Experiment 1 finds that description is more beneficial for learning item details. Experiment 2 additionally suggests that explaining anomalous observations may play a special role in belief revision. The findings provide insight into explanation’s role in discovery and generalization. (shrink)

Spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics require an interpretation if their claim to solve the measurement problem is to be vindicated. The most straightforward interpretation rule, the fuzzy link, generates a violation of common sense known as the counting anomaly. Recently, a consensus has developed that the mass density link provides an appropriate interpretation of spontaneous collapse theories that avoids the counting anomaly. In this paper, I argue that the mass density link violates common sense in just as (...) striking a way as the fuzzy link, and hence should not be regarded as a problem-free alternative to the fuzzy link. Hence advocates of spontaneous collapse theories must accept some violation of common sense, although this is not necessarily fatal to their project. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that the link between quantum language and ordinary language must be "fuzzier" than the traditional eigenstate-eigenvalue link. In the context of spontaneous-collapse theories, Albert and Loewer argue that the form of this fuzzy link is a matter of convention, and can be freely chosen to minimize anomalies for those theories. I defend the position that the form of the link is empirical, and could be such as to render collapse theories idle. This means that defenders of (...) spontaneous-collapse theories must gamble that the actual form of the link renders such theories tenable. (shrink)

Spontaneous collapse theories of quantum mechanics require an interpretation if their claim to solve the measurement problem is to be vindicated. The most straightforward interpretation rule, the fuzzy link, generates a violation of common sense known as the counting anomaly. Recently, a consensus has developed that the mass density link provides an appropriate interpretation of spontaneous collapse theories that avoids the counting anomaly. In this paper, I argue that the mass density link violates common sense in just as (...) striking a way as the fuzzy link, and hence should not be regarded as a problem-free alternative to the fuzzy link. Hence advocates of spontaneous collapse theories must accept some violation of common sense, although this is not necessarily fatal to their project. (shrink)

In his early experimental work with Suppes, Davidson adopted rationality assumptions, not as necessary constraints on interpretation, but as practical conceits in addressing methodological problems faced by experimenters studying decision making under uncertainty. Although the content of their theory has since been undermined, their methodological approach—a Galilean form of methodological rationalism—lives on in contemporary psychological research. This article draws on Max Weber’s verstehen to articulate an account of Galilean methodological rationalism; explains how anomalies faced by Davidson’s early experimental work gave (...) rise to his later, canonical claims about rationality and interpretation; and reclaims this Galilean framework for use in contemporary psychological research. (shrink)

There is an anomaly about the origins of Augustine’s great work of anti-pagan polemic and Christian apologetic that has not been accorded due weight in discussion of the development of the work’s idea in Augustine’s mind. The purpose of this brief note is to point out a hitherto unrecognized explanation for this anomaly, while leaving aside a full-scale development of the implications of this discovery.

There is an anomaly about the origins of Augustine’s great work of anti-pagan polemic and Christian apologetic that has not been accorded due weight in discussion of the development of the work’s idea in Augustine’s mind. The purpose of this brief note is to point out a hitherto unrecognized explanation for this anomaly, while leaving aside a full-scale development of the implications of this discovery.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of FranceAndrew J. McKennaThe Self Between: From Freud to the New Social Psychology of France, by Eugene Webb; ix & 268 pp. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993, $35.00.That psychology and sociology are one science is the fundamental premise guiding Eugene Webb’s The Self Between, which he defines early on as “a self constituted dynamically and continuously by (...) the relationships it finds itself involved i n.” The “new social psychology of France” designated by his subtitle is mostly the one inspired by René Girard’s mimetic model of human behavior, to which four of Webb’s seven chapters are specifically devoted.Girard’s idea, which he learned from our literary masterpieces, is that human desire is mimetic, that it imitates other desires in its choice of objects and in pursuit of their possession. As desires converge on a single object, the locus of conflict will be between subjects rather within their individual psyches, a consequence that motivates Girard’s ongoing critique of Freudian psychoanalysis.But Freud’s theories are everywhere disputed in this book, which reports reliably on the devastating critiques advanced by François Roustang, Marie Balmary, and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. Roustang has convincingly (and entertainingly) uncovered Freud’s blindness to the pathologies of transference and discipleship investing the foundation of psychoanalysis. A pattern of rivalry for recognition and preeminence guides Freud’s career in a way that is reenacted around Lacan. Balmary, somewhat a Lacanian her self, has turned psychoanalytic theory against Freud to explore his own family secrets, while severely questioning the master’s bid for a universal theory pursued via self-analysis amidst a period of emotional upheaval. And Borch-Jacobsen has shown how th e dynamics of hypnosis that Freud rejected early on were brought back as transference, while arguing for his own part that mimetic identification with the other, rather than any primordial drives, is what brings the subject into being. These informat ive chapters help bring us up to date on significant debates that have developed since Lacan drew the French intellectual world, and so many Americans after it, into the orbit of psychoanalysis.But by far the bulk of Webb’s attention goes to Girard’s work and to that of [End Page 191] scholars and practitioners who have sought to extend it further in the social sciences. Principle among them is Jean-Michel Oughourlian, whose Puppet of Desire (translated by Webb in 1991) demonstrates how the mimetic model plays out in psychotherapy, notably in the workings of hypnotism and somnambulism, in cases of demonic possession, and in obsessional neurosis. In each case, the subject is unwitt ingly captive of another’s desire in a way that produces behavioral anomalies and disorders that are nonetheless available to lucid, jargon-free diagnosis. What is appealing here is the deployment of a rational explanation for irrational behavior, once we grasp the paradoxical rationale of desire; equally appealing prospects of actual healing are outlined here and at the end of the book, where possibilities of freedom and responsibility are resurrected from a technical vocabulary that smothers them.Girard’s idea of the self as relation, as interdividuality, rather than as a discreet unit, has social and political dimensions to which we only find tantalizing allusions in his works. They have been pursued with acumen by such writers as André Orléan, Paul Dumouchel and especially Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who figures importantly among those aligning systems theory with theories of social and economic organization. Like Borch-Jacobsen and Roustang, Dupuy restores due attention to concep tions of crowd behavior outlined at the end of the last century by Tarde and Le Bon, whose best insights Freud studiously discarded.This is richly interdisciplinary work, strongly suggesting that we variously redraw and erase lines defining academic fields. Occam’s razor flicks often and decisively in these pages, which restore needed balance to the effects of some wild er French imports. Webb brings no new ideas of his own to this capable synthesis, but his accurate report will help guide researchers toward major recent developments in France around and mostly beyond Freudian psychoanalysis... (shrink)

By empirically investigating the neural correlates of the basic experience one makes of oneself as bodily self and of its alterations, new light can be shed on the relationship between self-disturbances and social deficits in schizophrenia. We review recent neuroscientific evidence showing how a pre-reflective, experiential understanding of others can be accomplished, so that others are conceived as bodily selves by means of neural reuse of our own sensorimotor and visceromotor resources, and how a clear distinction between self and other (...) is normally preserved. By conjugating identity and alterity, a putative neural mechanism is provided underpinning the blurring of such distinction in schizophrenic patients. The reviewed empirical data suggest brain function anomalies at the levels of multisensory integration, differential processing of self- and other-related bodily information, and mediating self-experience at the basis of an imbalance in the pre-reflective relationship of the embodied self to the world including the social environment. (shrink)

Unrecognized presuppositions about patient appearance have become increasingly important in medicine, medical ethics and medical law. Symptoms of these historically conditioned assumptions include common ageism, aesthetic surgery, and litigation about ‘wrongful life’. These phenomena suggest a societal intolerance for what is considered an ‘abnormal’ appearance. Among others, eighteenth-century artists and anatomists helped to set these twentieth-century precedents, actually measuring deviations of external traits to analogous deformations of the soul, and drawing moral conclusions from physiognomic measurements. Other eighteenth-century artists countered with (...) pathognomy, recognizing that uneven physical features may indicate humanity, instead of character flaws. We suggest that there is an important and as yet unrecognized role played by visual and perceptual preferences in our judgments concerning normalcy and anomaly. We further suggest a shift away from our current fashion-magazine, youth-oriented aesthetic, and towards an aesthetic of imperfection. Physicians and medical students can be made aware of their historically conditioned reactions to ‘abnormal’ appearing patients by studying the understandings and methods with which artists have portrayed those who are considered deformed in appearance. (shrink)

Language anomalies and left-hemisphere dysfunction are commonly reported in schizophrenia. Additional evidence also suggests differences in the integration of information between the hemispheres. Bilateral gain is the increase in accuracy and decrease in latency that occurs when identical information is presented simultaneously to both hemispheres. This study measured bilateral gain in controls and individuals with schizophrenia using a lexical-decision task where word or non-word judgements were made to letter strings presented in the left visual field , right visual field or (...) bilaterally . Language was not abnormally lateralized in the schizophrenia group. Controls exhibited the expected decrease in latency when words were presented bilaterally. This effect was not observed in the schizophrenia group who were actually disadvantaged in this condition. The lack of bilateral gain in schizophrenia is discussed as arising from differences in the connections between areas in each hemisphere that mediate language. (shrink)

The self-disorder model provides a phenomenological framework for understanding how the core symptoms of Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSDs) are rooted in an instability of minimal selfhood. This instability involves a range of “anomalous experiences”: transformations in an individual’s perceptual field and sense of being an agent of action. The explanatory value of this theoretical model can be summarized in two claims about the role of anomalous experiences in self-disorders: (1) anomalous experiences express a common trait-like disturbance that is characteristic of (...) SSDs, and (2) anomalous experiences contribute to explanations regarding how self-disorders progress into SSDs. While hypotheses consistent with the first claim have been substantiated in several studies, hypotheses consistent with the second claim remain underexamined. We argue that attending to this gap in the literature requires considering which methodological strategies are best suited for investigating if and how anomalous experiences contribute to the development of self-disorders into SSDs and psychotic states. Network modeling is discussed as one such strategy suitable for examining the role of anomalies of lived-world in the maintenance of paranoid delusions in SSDs. (shrink)

The acquisition and evolution of speech production, discourse and communication can be negatively impacted by brain malformations. We describe, for the first time, a case of developmental dynamic dysphasia (DDD) in a right-handed adolescent boy (subject D) with cortical malformations involving language-eloquent regions (inferior frontal gyrus) in both the left and the right hemispheres. Language evaluation revealed a markedly reduced verbal output affecting phonemic and semantic fluency, phrase and sentence generation and verbal communication in everyday life. Auditory comprehension, repetition, naming, (...) reading and spelling were relatively preserved, but executive function was impaired. Multimodal neuroimaging showed a malformed cerebral cortex with atypical configuration and placement of white matter tracts bilaterally and abnormal callosal fibers. Dichotic listening showed right hemisphere dominance for language and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) additionally revealed dissociated hemispheric language representation with right frontal activation for phonology and bilateral dominance for semantic processing. Moreover, subject D also had congenital mirror movements (CMM), defined as involuntary movements of one side of the body that mirror intentional movements of the other side. Transcranial magnetic stimulation and fMRI during voluntary unimanual (left and right) hand movements showed bilateral motor cortex recruitment and tractography revealed a lack of decussation of bilateral corticospinal tracts. Genetic testing aimed to detect mutations that disrupt the development of commissural tracts correlating with CMM (e.g., Germline DCC mutations) was negative. Overall, our findings suggest that DDD in subject D resulted from the underdevelopment of the left inferior frontal gyrus with limited capacity for plastic reorganization by its homologous counterpart in the right hemisphere. Corpus callosum anomalies probably contributed to hinder interhemispheric connectivity necessary to compensate language and communication deficits after left frontal involvement. (shrink)

Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, and reversed (...) lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing. (shrink)

This study examines the specificvalues held by consumers towards organic andconventionally produced meat, with particularreference to moral issues surrounding foodanimal production. A quota sample of 30 femalesfrom both a rural and an urban area of Scotland, were interviewed. Overall, there was lowcommitment towards the purchase of organicmeats and little concern for ethical issues.Price and product appearance were the primarymeat selection criteria, the latter being usedas a predictor of eating quality. Manyattitude-behavior anomalies were identified,mainly as a result of respondents' cognitivedissonance and (...) lack of understanding regardingmeat production criteria underpinning meatquality marks, e.g., Soil Association label.Responsibilities for ethical issues appeared tobe delegated by the consumer to the meatretailer or government. This raises issuesabout educating consumers and bringingconsumers closer to understanding meatproduction systems. A conceptual framework isproposed that illustrates the significance ofconsumer involvement in how meat-purchasingdecisions are approached in terms of theevaluation of tangible and or intangiblequality attributes. The results also point tothe need for further research into thoseaspects of quality that individuals tend toaddress at the level of the citizen,rather than at the point of purchase. (shrink)

Much empirical analysis and econometric work recognizes that there are nonlinearities, regime shifts or structural breaks, asymmetric adjustment costs, irreversibilities and lagged dependencies. Hence, empirical work has already transcended neoclassical economics. Some progress has also been made in modeling endogenously generated cyclical growth and fluctuations. All this is inconsistent with neoclassical general equilibrium. Hence there is growing evidence of Kuhnian anomalies. It therefore follows that there is a Kuhnian crisis in economics and further research in nonlinear dynamics and complexity can (...) only increase the Kuhnian anomalies. This crisis can only deepen. However, there is an ideological commitment to general equilibrium that justifies “free enterprise” with only minimal state intervention that may still sustain neoclassical economics despite the growing evidence of Kuhnian anomalies. Thus, orthodox textbook theory continues to ignore this fact and static neoclassical theory remains a dogma with no apparent reformulation to replace it. (shrink)

Synthetic meat made from animal cells will transform how we eat. It will reduce suffering by eliminating the need to raise and slaughter animals. But it will also have big public health benefits if it becomes widely consumed. In this paper, we discuss how “clean meat” can reduce the risks associated with intensive animal farming, including antibiotic resistance, environmental pollution, and zoonotic viral diseases like influenza and coronavirus. Since the most common objection to clean meat is that some people find (...) it “disgusting” or “unnatural,” we explore the psychology of disgust to find possible counter-measures. We argue that the public health benefits of clean meat give us strong moral reasons to promote its development and consumption in a way that the public is likely to support. We end by depicting the change from farmed animals to clean meat as a collective action problem and suggest that social norms rather than coercive laws should be employed to solve the problem. (shrink)

Governments across the globe have squandered treasure and imprisoned millions of their own citizens by criminalising the use and sale of recreational drugs. But use of these drugs has remained relatively constant, and the primary victims are the users themselves. Meanwhile, antimicrobial drugs that once had the power to cure infections are losing their ability to do so, compromising the health of people around the world. The thesis of this essay is that policymakers should stop wasting resources trying to fight (...) an unwinnable and morally dubious war against recreational drug users, and start shifting their attention to the serious threat posed by our collective misuse of antibiotics. (shrink)

Factory farming continues to grow around the world as a low-cost way of producing animal products for human consumption. However, many of the practices associated with intensive animal farming have been criticized by public health professionals and animal welfare advocates. The aim of this essay is to raise three independent moral concerns with factory farming, and to explain why the practices associated with factory farming flourish despite the cruelty inflicted on animals and the public health risks imposed on people. I (...) conclude that the costs of factory farming as it is currently practiced far outweigh the benefits, and offer a few suggestions for how to improve the situation for animals and people. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that one of the core functions of government is to supply public goods that markets either fail to provide or cannot provide efficiently. I will suggest that arguments for government provision of public goods require fundamental moral judgments in addition to the usual economic considerations about the relative efficacy of markets and governments in supplying them. While philosophers and policymakers owe a debt of gratitude to economists for developing the theory of public goods, the link between (...) public goods and public policy cannot be forged without moral reflection on the proper function and scope of government power. (shrink)