Growing ties to private industry have prompted many to question the impartiality of academic bioethicists who receive financial support from for-profit corporations in exchange for ethics-related services and research. To the extent that corporate sponsors may view bioethics as little more than a way to strengthen public relations or avoid potential controversy, close ties to industry may pose serious threats to professional independence. New sources of support from private industry may also divert bioethicists from pursuing topics of greater social importance, (...) such as the needs of medically underserved communities. To inform ongoing debates about the financing of bioethics and its transparency to those concerned about potential sources of bias, we examined funding disclosures appearing in original research reports in major bioethics journals. Reviewing research published over a 15-year period, we found little evidence that for-profit corporations are influencing bioethics research directly. Instead, we found evidence that a great number of organizations, both public and private, support bioethics research. These findings suggest that worries about the cooption of bioethics research by a few interested stakeholders are greatly overstated and undersupported by available data. (shrink)

Over the past three decades, more and more students are expressing a desire to attend college, yet for many members of disenfranchised groups, this goal is often not attained. While many factors contribute to these disparities, research has shown that students begin adjusting their expectations (what they think they can achieve) for the future in relation to their idealised aspirations (what they would like to achieve). The current study explores this gap among 207 eighth grade students from two urban middle (...) schools. Using the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised, three factors were found to predict expectations which matched student aspirations. These factors were academic motivation and self-regulating behaviours, academic self-perception and attitudes towards teachers. Implications for educational interventions and school reform are discussed. (shrink)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

Presents a plethora of approaches to developing human potential in areas not conventionally addressed. Organized in two parts, this international collection of essays provides viable educational alternatives to those currently holding sway in an era of high-stakes accountability.

Flavin‐containing monooxygenases (FMOs), traditionally known for detoxifying xenobiotics, are now recognized for their involvement in endogenous metabolism. We recently discovered that an isoform of FMO, fmo‐2 in Caenorhabditis elegans, alters endogenous metabolism to impact longevity and stress tolerance. Increased expression of fmo‐2 in C. elegans modifies the flux through the key pathway known as One Carbon Metabolism (OCM). This modified flux results in a decrease in the ratio of S‐adenosyl‐methionine (SAM) to S‐adenosyl‐homocysteine (SAH), consequently diminishing methylation capacity. Here we discuss (...) how FMO‐2‐mediated formate production during tryptophan metabolism may serve as a trigger for changing the flux in OCM. We suggest formate bridges tryptophan and OCM, altering metabolic flux away from methylation during fmo‐2 overexpression. Additionally, we highlight how these metabolic results intersect with the mTOR and AMPK pathways, in addition to mitochondrial metabolism. In conclusion, the goal of this essay is to bring attention to the central role of FMO enzymes but lack of understanding of their mechanisms. We justify a call for a deeper understanding of FMO enzyme's role in metabolic rewiring through tryptophan/formate or other yet unidentified substrates. Additionally, we emphasize the identification of novel drugs and microbes to induce FMO activity and extend lifespan. (shrink)

Sex and sensibility: The role of social selection Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9464-6 Authors Erika L. Milam, Department of History, University of Maryland, 2115 Francis Scott Key Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA Roberta L. Millstein, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA Angela Potochnik, Department of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210374, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA Joan E. Roughgarden, Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020, USA Journal (...) Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796. (shrink)

It is commonly understood that in its focus on rights and obligations law is centrally concerned with organising responsibility. In defining how obligations are created, in contract or property law, say, or imposed, as in tort, public, or criminal law, law and legal institutions are usually seen as society’s key mode of asserting and defining the content and scope of responsibilities. This book takes the converse view: legal institutions are centrally involved in organising irresponsibility. Particularly with respect to the production (...) of large-scale harms – including extensive human rights violations, forms of colonialism, or environmental or nuclear devastation – and in opposition to conventional understandings of responsibility in law, morality and politics, the book provides a detailed analysis of the ways in which legal institutions – their practices, concepts, and categories – themselves operate as much to deflect responsibility for harms suffered as they do to acknowledge them. Drawing on a series of case studies from local, national, and global concerns the book analyses how law facilitates dispersals and disavowals of responsibility, and it shows how it does so in consistent and patterned ways. In assessing how this ‘organised irresponsibility’ operates, and what its consequences are for both legal analysis and society generally, a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of law’s methods, operation, and consequences is required. At stake is nothing less than a fundamental re-assessment of the role of modern law in the production and legitimation of human suffering. This innovative and interdisciplinary book provides a sustained challenge to conventional thinking about law and legal institutions. It will be of major interest to those working in law, political and legal theory, sociology and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Presenting the first book-length study in English of Aristotle's Sophistical Refutations, this work takes a fresh look at this seminal text on false reasoning.

David Papineau’s _The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience_ is deep, insightful, refreshingly brisk, and very readable. In it, Papineau argues that sensory experiences are intrinsic and non-relational states of subjects; that they do not essentially involve relations to worldly facts, properties, or other items (though they do happen to correlate with worldly items); and that they do not have truth conditions simply in virtue of their conscious (i.e., phenomenal) features. I am in enthusiastic agreement with the picture as described so far. (...) But Papineau also argues that sensory experiences are in no interesting sense essentially representational and that what is responsible for their truth conditions is their correlations with the environment. Here, I disagree. Indeed, I think Papineau does not follow his arguments to their proper conclusions. For if sensory experiences are intrinsic, non-relational, and only contingently correlated with worldly conditions (as Papineau and I agree they are), then the phenomenal features of sensory states are representational in an important sense: they constitute what we think, perceptually experience, or otherwise entertain, making up how things seem to us from a first-person perspective. Because of this, the truth conditions of perceptual experiences cannot be entirely independent of their phenomenal features. They cannot merely be a matter of environmental correlations. If we follow Papineau’s arguments to their proper conclusions, we end up with a view much closer to a version of representationalism that Papineau dismisses, a view he calls “pure phenomenal intentionalism”. (shrink)

This paper compares tracking and phenomenal intentionality theories of intentionality with respect to the issue of naturalism. Tracking theories explicitly aim to naturalize intentionality, while phenomenal intentionality theories generally do not. It might seem that considerations of naturalism count in favor of tracking theories. We survey key considerations relevant to this claim, including some motivations for and objections to the two kinds of theories. We conclude by suggesting that naturalistic considerations may in fact support phenomenal intentionality theories over tracking theories.

Moods and emotions are sometimes thought to be counterexamples to intentionalism, the view that a mental state's phenomenal features are exhausted by its representational features. The problem is that moods and emotions are accompanied by phenomenal experiences that do not seem to be adequately accounted for by any of their plausibly represented contents. This paper develops and defends an intentionalist view of the phenomenal character of moods and emotions on which emotions and some moods represent intentional objects as having sui (...) generis affective properties, which happen to be uninstantiated, and at least some moods represent affective properties not bound to any objects. (shrink)

Over the past few decades, the dominant approach to explaining intentionality has been a naturalistic approach, one appealing only to non-mental ingredients condoned by the natural sciences. Karen Neander’s A Mark of the Mental (2017) is the latest installment in the naturalist project, proposing a detailed and systematic theory of intentionality that combines aspects of several naturalistic approaches, invoking causal relations, teleological functions, and relations of second-order similarity. In this paper, we consider the case of perceptual representations of colors, which (...) is a challenging case for Neander’s theory. This case will brings out a general methodological concern with Neander’s and other naturalistic theories: these theories generally rest on the assumption that the mental intentionality we are acquainted with in everyday life—the phenomenon exhibited by desires for cups of coffee, perceptual experiences of dogs playing in yards, and thoughts about the weather—is the very same kind of phenomenon that cognitive science studies under labels such as “mental representation” and, in some cases, “information processing.” This assumption is dubious, as the case of Neander’s theory illustrates. (shrink)

From very early on, Western philosophers have been obsessed with the understanding of a relatively few works of philosophy which have played a disproportionately large and fundamental role in developing the Western philosophical canon, dominating the curriculum in the past and in the present; there is no indication that they will not do so in the future.Uses and Abuses of the Classics examines the various ways in which the different periods of the history of philosophy have approached these texts. The (...) editors have chosen for analysis some of the major philosophers from periods of the history of philosophy in which the interpretation of the classics has been particularly significant.Contributions to this book include entries on: Aristotle's reading of Plato; Averroes on Aristotle; Nietzsche on the Beginnings of Western Philosophy; and Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. (shrink)

Propositionalism is the view that all intentional states are propositional states, which are states with a propositional content, while objectualism is the view that at least some intentional states are objectual states, which are states with objectual contents, such as objects, properties, and kinds. This paper argues that there are two distinct ways of understanding propositionalism and objectualism: (1) as views about the deep nature of the contents of intentional states, and (2) as views about the superficial character of the (...) contents of intentional states. I argue that we should understand the views in the second way. I also argue that the propositionalism debate is fairly independent from debates over the deep nature of intentionality, and that this has implications for arguments for propositionalism and objectualism from claims about the nature of intentional content. I close with a short discussion of how related points apply to the debate over singular content. (shrink)

Debate about cognitive science explanations has been formulated in terms of identifying the proper level(s) of explanation. Views range from reductionist, favoring only neuroscience explanations, to mechanist, favoring the integration of multiple levels, to pluralist, favoring the preservation of even the most general, high-level explanations, such as those provided by embodied or dynamical approaches. In this paper, we challenge this framing. We suggest that these are not different levels of explanation at all but, rather, different styles of explanation that capture (...) different, cross-cutting patterns in cognitive phenomena. Which pattern is explanatory depends on both the cognitive phenomenon under investigation and the research interests occasioning the explanation. This reframing changes how we should answer the basic questions of which cognitive science approaches explain and how these explanations relate to one another. On this view, we should expect different approaches to offer independent explanations in terms of their different focal patterns and the value of those explanations to partly derive from the broad patterns they feature. (shrink)

The most pressing worry for panpsychism is arguably the combination problem, the problem of intelligibly explaining how the experiences of microphysical entities combine to form the experiences of macrophysical entities such as ourselves. This chapter argues that the combination problem is similar in kind to other problems of mental combination that are problems for everyone: the problem of phenomenal unity, the problem of mental structure, and the problem of new quality spaces. The ubiquity of combination problems suggests the ignorance hypothesis, (...) the hypothesis that we are ignorant of certain key facts about mental combination, which allows the panpsychist to avoid certain objections based on the combination problem. (shrink)

Levels of organization and their use in science have received increased philosophical attention of late, including challenges to the well-foundedness or widespread usefulness of levels concepts. One kind of response to these challenges has been to advocate a more precise and specific levels concept that is coherent and useful. Another kind of response has been to argue that the levels concept should be taken as a heuristic, to embrace its ambiguity and the possibility of exceptions as acceptable consequences of its (...) usefulness. In this chapter, I suggest that each of these strategies faces its own attendant downsides, and that pursuit of both strategies (by different thinkers) compounds the difficulties. That both kinds of approaches are advocated is, I think, illustrative of the problems plaguing the concept of levels of organization. I end by suggesting that the invocation of levels may mislead scientific and philosophical investigations more than it informs them, so our use of the levels concept should be updated accordingly. (shrink)

In Algorithms & Autonomy, Rubel, Castro, and Pham (hereafter RCP), argue that the concept of autonomy is especially central to understanding important moral problems about algorithms. In particular, autonomy plays a role in analyzing the version of social contract theory that they endorse. I argue that although RCP are largely correct in their diagnosis of what is wrong with the algorithms they consider, those diagnoses can be appropriated by moral theories RCP see as in competition with their autonomy based theory. (...) Most notably, proponents of consequentialism and virtue ethics can appropriate RCPs insights. This is good news because RCP’s social contract theory is vulnerable to a well known class of counterexamples. The most significant contribution of RCP, if I am right, is in their identification, presentation, and evaluation of concrete cases involving algorithms and not in the more controversial claims about theoretical ethics that RCP themselves see as central to what they are doing. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are two distinct kinds of senses, immediate senses and reflective senses. Immediate senses are what we are immediately aware of when we are in an intentional mental state, while reflective senses are what we understand of an intentional mental state's (putative) referent upon reflection. I suggest an account of immediate and reflective senses that is based on the phenomenal intentionality theory, a theory of intentionality in terms of phenomenal consciousness. My focus is on the immediate (...) and reflective senses of thoughts and the concepts they involve, but it also applies to other mental instances of intentionality. (shrink)

According to Lynne Rudder Baker’s Practical Realism, we know that we have beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes independent of any scientific investigation. Propositional attitudes are an indispensable part of our everyday conception of the world and not in need of scientific validation. This paper asks what is the nature of the attitudes such that we may know them so well from a commonsense perspective. I argue for a self-ascriptivist view, on which we have propositional attitudes in virtue of ascribing (...) them to ourselves. On this view, propositional attitudes are derived representational states, deriving their contents and their attitude types from our self-ascriptions. (shrink)

The descriptions and examples of unethical behaviors in sport in this book will challenge readers to rethink how they view sport and question whether participating in sport builds character--especially at the youth and amateur levels. * Describes and analyzes key ethical issues, such as cheating, fair play, violence, discriminatory actions, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs, in a single volume * Identifies how ethical problems in sport affect sport in the United States and internationally but also significantly impact society overall (...) * Examines significant events and influential individuals to provide a historical and sociological context for understanding how and why individuals behave unethically in sport * Provides a wealth of information and resources that describe how poor behaviors of athletes, coaches, and parents in sport can be changed through educational interventions and a reemphasis on values like integrity. (shrink)

Do the meanings of the innumerable fetish-signs appearing in recent artworks depend on the senders' intentions? Is the meaning of postfeminist glamour the celebration of femininity that its practitioners tout to counter ersatz macho posturing? To fully examine and clarify these and other issues involving gender, postcolonial, and artistic otherness, this book argues for a more adequate view of performativity than presently available from speech-act theory and certain strains of linguistic pragmatics. In drawing simultaneously on Charles Sander Peirce’s pragmatic analysis (...) of signs, Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalytic inquiry, and radical feminist thought, the concern of Beyond Fetishism is with the ethical and aesthetic import of the psychopragmatics resulting from this intermingling. (shrink)

Il testo si apre con una breve descrizione divulgativa della biologia della visione, dalla percezione delle linee complesse ai colori, e di come questa si sia evoluta nel corso dei millenni, da meccanismo pro-sopravvivenza legato all'analisi dell’ambiente naturale e dei propri simili, a strumento di valutazione e apprezzamento della composizione artistica. Indaga le analogie tra lo sviluppo del cervello nei bambini affetti da disturbi dello spettro affettivo e relazionale (autismo) e le rappresentazioni iconografiche degli uomini primitivi, dal paleolitico al neolitico. (...) Un’ampia sezione descrive dinamiche cerebrali dovute ai cosiddetti neuroni specchio e di come questi influiscono sull’espressione e la fruizione dell’opera d’arte, analizzando le produzioni di due degli artisti contemporanei più famosi: Damien Hirst e Jeff Koons, collegati da una complementarità culturale ancestrale, quella tra eros e thanatos, che affonda le radici nell’arte funeraria etrusca. Il testo continua con l’analisi neuroestetica della visione e i suoi effetti sull’organismo umano, seguendo l’evoluzione che ha subito il punto di visuale. Dal basso verso l’alto nel barocco, dal basso a “volo d’uccello” nell’arte futurista e dall’alto verso il basso nella produzione pittorica dell’archistar anglo-irachena Zaha Hadid. Lo stesso punto di vista che fugge i confini della rappresentazione pittorica, fino ad abbandonare totalmente i confini del corpo e le dinamiche cerebrali nell’arte riferita al metaumanesimo e transumanesimo. (shrink)

Als Charles Darwin im Jahr 1859 seine Theorie einer Evolution der Arten durch natürliche Auslese veröffentlichte, sah er bereits eine grosse Debatte voraus, jedoch nicht deren Ausstrahlungskraft und Langlebigkeit. Zu Beginn standen die Folgen für die Wissenschaften, den Glauben an Gott und die Moralvorstellungen im Vordergrund. Bald kamen Überlegungen über Gesellschaft, Politik, internationale Beziehungen und über Eingriffe bis hinunter auf die Ebene des Individuums und seines Erbmaterials, seiner Gene hinzu. Sozialdarwinismus, Eugenik, Rassismus galten zeitweise als wissenschaftlich legitime Diskussions- und Politikfelder. (...) Befürchtungen vor einem vermeintlichen Niedergang lassen sich bis heute angesichts der Biologisierung des Denkens scheinbar wissenschaftlich-objektiv untermauern. Gegenwärtig sind die Kontroversen noch vielfältiger, beziehen weit mehr Menschen ein als im späten 19. Jahrhundert, haben weit gravierendere Auswirkungen. Die aus elf Ländern stammenden Autorinnen und Autoren zeichnen aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären Perspektiven die Facetten einer spannenden und bis in die Gegenwart hochaktuellen Debatte nach und fragen nach der Zukunft des "Streitfalls Evolution". (shrink)

This chapter argues that olfactory experiences represent either everyday objects or ad hoc olfactory objects as having primitive olfactory properties, which happen to be uninstantiated. On this picture, olfactory experiences reliably misrepresent: they falsely represent everyday objects or ad hoc objects as having properties they do not have, and they misrepresent in the same way on multiple occasions. One might worry that this view is incompatible with the plausible claim that olfactory experiences at least sometimes justify true beliefs about the (...) world. This chapter argues that there is no such incompatibility. Since olfactory experiences reliably misrepresent, they can lead to true and justified beliefs about putatively smelly objects. (shrink)

FEATURED IN EVENTAL AESTHETICS RETROSPECTIVE 1. LOOKING BACK AT 10 ISSUES OF EVENTAL AESTHETICS. In this article I ask: how to rescue “magical thinking” (a notion I inherit from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno) in and from Hegel and imagine its possibilities for posthuman society, ethics, and aesthetics? To address this question, I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit through Horkheimer and Adorno, who argue that Enlightenment’s program is “the disenchantment of the world”: with the end of magical thinking and the (...) beginning of enlightened thinking came chasm and disparity between subject and object and, for Horkheimer and Adorno, the onset of barbarism. Hegel himself speaks directly to the danger of failed recognition between two consciousnesses, a failure followed by a duel to the death, in which the two figures leave each other indifferently, like things. After reading a distinctly “magical thinking” into the shape of Hegel’s dialectic, I show how contemporary posthumanism and ecopoetics make use of Hegel’s thought in order to reimagine subject-object relations in and as response to ecological crisis. I discuss how Donna Haraway, following in the traditions of Hegel and Adorno, magically thinks her way toward new models for relating more ethically (to borrow Haraway’s own terminology) to human and other-than-human others in the new century. Then, I look at how such models are being adapted in and by aesthetic practice — specifically, in the experimental ecopoetics of contemporary poet Brenda Hillman. In the end, I argue that contemporary posthumanisms and ecopoetics in fact need magical thinking in order to begin reimagining the social and the ecological and resuscitate a devastatingly enlightened world. (shrink)

Science is the study of our world, as it is in its messy reality. Nonetheless, science requires idealization to function—if we are to attempt to understand the world, we have to find ways to reduce its complexity. Idealization and the Aims of Science shows just how crucial idealization is to science and why it matters. Beginning with the acknowledgment of our status as limited human agents trying to make sense of an exceedingly complex world, Angela Potochnik moves on to (...) explain how science aims to depict and make use of causal patterns—a project that makes essential use of idealization. She offers case studies from a number of branches of science to demonstrate the ubiquity of idealization, shows how causal patterns are used to develop scientific explanations, and describes how the necessarily imperfect connection between science and truth leads to researchers’ values influencing their findings. The resulting book is a tour de force, a synthesis of the study of idealization that also offers countless new insights and avenues for future exploration. (shrink)

Previous literature has documented the general issues psychologists often face while balancing their personal and professional lives. The struggle stems from attempting to satisfy the need to maintain a life outside of work while having the professional obligation to follow the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (Ethics Code) to prevent their personal lives from interfering with their professional roles and relationships. The present article analyzes the subject of psychologists taking a public position on (...) controversial public issues. Although the APA Ethics Code does not restrict how psychologists conduct themselves during their personal time, taking a public stance on a controversial issue could potentially strain professional relationships and inadvertently reflect negatively on the profession. The present article examines ethical issues that (a) should be taken into account before psychologists take a public position on a controversial issue and (b) are in conflict with APA’s Ethics Code or current research. (shrink)

Whether or not quantum physics can account for molecular structure is a matter of considerable controversy. Three of the problems raised in this regard are the problems of molecular structure. We argue that these problems are just special cases of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics: insofar as the measurement problem is solved, the problems of molecular structure are resolved as well. In addition, we explore one consequence of our argument: that claims about the reduction or emergence of molecular structure (...) cannot be settled independently of the choice of a particular resolution to the measurement problem. Specifically, we consider how three standard putative solutions to the measurement problem inform our under- standing of a molecule in isolation, as well as of chemistry’s relation to quantum physics. (shrink)

To what extent should parents be able to choose the kind of child they have? The unfortunate phrase 'designer baby' has become familiar in debates surrounding reproduction. As a reference to current possibilities the term is misleading, but the phrase may indicate a societal concern of some kind about control and choice in the course of reproduction. Typically, people can choose whether to have a child. They may also have an interest in choosing, to some extent, the conditions under which (...) they do so, such as whether they have a child with a serious disability or disease. The purpose of this book is to explore the difficult and controversial question of the appropriate ethical and legal extent of reproductive autonomy in this context. The book examines ethical, legal and public policy issues in prenatal screening, prenatal diagnosis (PND), selective abortion and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). It explores the ethics of these selection practices and the ability of current ethical guidelines and legal mechanisms, including the law on selective abortion and wrongful birth, to deal with advances in genetic and other knowledge in these areas. Unlike in the United States, in England the relevant law is not inherently rights-based, but the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 inevitably raises questions about the proper scope of reproductive autonomy in this context. The implications of the analysis are considered for the development of relevant law, public policy and ethical guidelines and will be of interest to academics in medical law and ethics, health professionals, lawyers, those working on public policy and students with an interest in these issues. (shrink)

Introduction The Aesthetics of Symbolic Construction and Experience Bruce Kapferer and Angela Hobart The essays in this volume address aesthetic forms and ...

Cognitive science proposes that we have evolved to build mental maps of the world not according to its actual, physical nature, but according to what allows us to thrive. In other words, our individual and collective realities are fictions - carefully constructed to enable us to maintain our particular perspectives. It used to be that our fictions were rooted to reasonably solid things: to people, places and memories. Today, in an age of online personas, alternative truths, constant surveillance and an (...) increasingly hysterical news cycle, our realities are becoming more flimsy and more vulnerable than ever before. Ours is now a zoomed-in perspective, where the backstage is centre stage. We are both camera person and subject, with new powers and new weaknesses. Our personal and political spheres are dangerously merging. How will the form and grammar of our feelings have to change in this over-exposed environment? Should any of our stories remain secret? How are these phenomena changing the way we live? How do we maintain a sense of reality in an increasingly fantastic world? Picnic Comma Lightning is an innovative examination of the nature of reality in the twenty-first century, one that explores the key ethical, political and neurological forces contouring our inner selves, but also the old influences of grief and desire, memory and imagination. In it, award-winning author Laurence Scott provides a lively and accessible new philosophy for this epoch in Western civilisation, one that will change the way you see the world, and your place within it."--Publisher description. (shrink)

Scientific literacy is an essential aspect of an undergraduate education. Recipes for Science responds to this need by providing an accessible introduction to the nature of science and scientific methods appropriate for any beginning college student. The book is adaptable to a wide variety of different courses, such as introductions to scientific reasoning, methods courses in scientific disciplines, science education, and philosophy of science. -/- Recipes for Science ​​was first published in 2018, and a thoroughly revised second edition was published (...) in 2024. Special features include contemporary and historical case studies from many fields of physical, life, and social sciences; visual aids to clarify and illustrate ideas; text boxes to explore related topics; plenty of exercises to support student recall and application of concepts; suggestions for further readings at the end of each chapter; a glossary with helpful definitions of key terms; and a companion website with course syllabi, PowerPoint presentations, additional exercises, and original short videos on key topics. (shrink)

“Natural logic” was proposed by Lewis Henry Morgan as the engine of cultural evolution, concluding that the “course and manner” of cultural development “was predetermined, as well as restricted within narrow limits of divergence, by the natural logic of the human mind.” This essay argues that Morgan’s conception of natural logic aids the project of settler colonialism. Rather than being a false account of human agency, however, it is a conception of natural logic that is produced through the systematic narrowing (...) of possibilities for agency, human, and otherwise. This narrowed logic is thus only a part of a differently conceived logic of agency that is also general and normative. The discussion proceeds in four sections: first, a presentation of Morgan’s conception of natural logic and its origins; second, an analysis of four colonizing implications of Morgan’s view; third, examples of further developments of natural logic in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the work structuralist and post-structuralist theorists; and, last, a brief introduction of a decolonial logic that provides a broader alternative conception of the structure of agency, human, and otherwise, and that avoids the oppressive effects of the reductionism of the natural logic received from Morgan and his successors. (shrink)