We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. We reject arbitrary distinctions that deny adequate protections to other animals who share with protected humans relevantly similar vulnerabilities to harms and relevantly similar interests in avoiding such harms. We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as a nonhuman person, Happy should be (...) released from her current confinement and transferred to an appropriate elephant sanctuary, pursuant to habeas corpus. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible with Happy’s personhood.

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

In this brief, we argue that there is a diversity of ways in which humans (Homo sapiens) are ‘persons’ and there are no non-arbitrary conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can include all humans and exclude all nonhuman animals. To do so we describe and assess the four most prominent conceptions of ‘personhood’ that can be found in the rulings concerning Kiko and Tommy, with particular focus on the most recent decision, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc v Lavery.

Nanomedicine is yielding new and improved treatments and diagnostics for a range of diseases and disorders. Nanomedicine applications incorporate materials and components with nanoscale dimensions where novel physiochemical properties emerge as a result of size-dependent phenomena and high surface-to-mass ratio. Nanotherapeutics and in vivo nanodiagnostics are a subset of nanomedicine products that enter the human body. These include drugs, biological products, implantable medical devices, and combination products that are designed to function in the body in ways unachievable at larger scales. (...) Nanotherapeutics andin vivonanodiagnostics incorporate materials that are engineered at the nanoscale to express novel properties that are medicinally useful. These nanomedicine applications can also contain nanomaterials that are biologically active, producing interactions that depend on biological triggers. Examples include nanoscale formulations of insoluble drugs to improve bioavailability and pharmacokinetics, drugs encapsulated in hollow nanoparticles with the ability to target and cross cellular and tissue membranes and to release their payload at a specific time or location, imaging agents that demonstrate novel optical properties to aid in locating micrometastases, and antimicrobial and drug-eluting components or coatings of implantable medical devices such as stents. (shrink)

E. E. Constance Jones, a regular contributor to Mind and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and the author of several textbooks and a monograph, worked in both philosophical l...

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive ...

This book explores the effects of technology on the education of digital generations and the technology-mediated interaction that will prepare these generations for an unpredictable future. It discusses strategies and approaches for curriculum design, professional development, and other aspects of school organization involving technology.

In Good and Real, Gary Drescher examines a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, quantum mechanics, and other topics, in an effort to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our ...

"An essential overview of an important intellectual movement, Logical Empiricism in North America offers the first significant, sustained, and multidisciplinary attempt to understand the intellectual, cultural, and political dimensions of ...

Discourse about the use of animals in biomedical research usually focuses on two issues: its empirical and moral use. The empirical issue asks whether the use of nonhumans in experiments is required in order to get data. The moral issue asks whether the use of nonhumans can be defended as matter of ethical theory. Although the use of animals in research may involve a plausible necessity claim, no moral justification exists for using nonhumans in situations in which we would not (...) use humans. (shrink)

Standard definitions of lying imply that intending to deceive others is a necessary condition of one's telling a lie. In an earlier paper, which appeared in this journal, Wokutch, Murrmann and I argued that intending to deceive others is not a necessary condition of one's telling a lie and proposed an alternative definition. In a reply which also appeared in this journal, Gary Jones argues that our arguments fail to establish the claim that it is possible to lie (...) without intending to deceive others, and that the objections which we raise for standard definitions apply equally to our own. The present paper argues that one can lie without intending to deceive others. I concede Jones' second criticism and propose a new alternative definition. (shrink)

The most critical factor explaining the disjuncture between empathy’s revolutionary potential and today’s empathically-impaired society is the interaction between the brain and our dominant political culture. The evolutionary process has given rise to a hard-wired neural system in the primal brain and particularly in the human brain. This book argues that the crucial missing piece in this conversation is the failure to identify and explain the dynamic relationship between an empathy gap and the hegemonic influence of neoliberal capitalism, through the (...) analysis of the college classroom, the neoliberal state, media, film and photo images, marketing of products, militarization, mass culture and government policy. This book will contribute to an empirically grounded dissent from capitalism’s narrative about human nature. Empathy is putting oneself in another’s emotional and cognitive shoes and then acting in a deliberate, appropriate manner. Perhaps counter-intuitively, it requires self-empathy because we’re all products of an empathy-anesthetizing culture. The approach in this book affirms a scientific basis for acting with empathy, and it addresses how this can help inform us to our current political culture and process, and make its of interest to students and scholars in political science, psychology, and other social sciences. ​ ​. (shrink)

Discourse about the use of animals in biomedical research usually focuses on two issues. The first, which I will refer to as the “necessity issue,” is empirical and asks whether the use of nonhumans in experiments is required in order to gather statistically valid information that will contribute in a significant way to improving human health. The second, which I will refer to as the “justification issue,” is moral and asks whether the use of nonhumans in biomedical research, if necessary (...) as an empirical matter, can be defended as a matter of ethical theory.If it is not necessary as an empirical matter to use animals in research, then there is no need to inquire about moral justification. Therefore, I examine the necessity issue first. The argument that it is necessary to use nonhumans in biomedical research, though flawed, is at least plausible, unlike our necessity arguments for other animal uses. I then discuss the justification issue and conclude that we cannot morally justify using nonhuman animals in research. (shrink)

Bovine growth hormone is a protein that occurs naturally in cattle. A chain of 190 amino acids, bGH is produced by the pituitary gland and helps to regulate a cow’s lactational cycle; generally speaking and up to a certain point, the more bGH a cow has, the more milk she gives. Using the techniques of genetic engineering, researchers at Monsanto Company have isolated the gene that produces the protein and devised low-cost techniques to manufacture it. Bacteria are placed into fermentation (...) chambers where they multiply rapidly; lab technicians then extract and purify the final product, which is identical to the naturally occurring protein in 189 of the 190 amino acids; and the product is then injected into cows. (shrink)

Over the last generation, the womanist idea--and the tradition blooming around it--has emerged as an important response to separatism, domination, and oppression. Gary L. Lemons gathers a diverse group of writers to discuss their scholarly and personal experiences with the womanist spirit of women of color feminisms. Feminist and womanist-identified educators, students, performers, and poets model the powerful ways that crossing borders of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation-state affiliation(s) expands one's existence. At the same time, they bear witness (...) to how the self-liberating theory and practice of women of color feminism changes one's life. Throughout, the essayists come together to promote an unwavering vein of activist comradeship capable of building political alliances dedicated to liberty and social justice. Contributors: M. Jacqui Alexander, Dora Arreola, Andrea Assaf, Kendra N. Bryant, Rudolph P. Byrd, Atika Chaudhary, Paul T. Corrigan, Fanni V. Green, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Susan Hoeller, Ylce Irizarry, M. Thandabantu Iverson, Gary L. Lemons, Layli Maparyan, and Erica C. Sutherlin. (shrink)

Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction: in the spirit of Zora : traveling with the "eternal feminine" -- Returning to the margin : changed -- African American literature : like a bridge over troubled water -- Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes : envisioning the (new) "Negro artist" -- Striking down colorism in color struck : a play in four scenes -- We are not tragically colored -- Langston Hughes writing about the "the Negro artist and the racial mountain" -- Transgressing (...) boundaries of white male power in the ways of white folks -- Blackness from the inside out -- Seeing "women loving women" -- Black female journey to sexual in(sight)fullness -- "What if Mama finds out?" : entering a life-changing place of self-liberation -- When "nobody was lesbian, nobody was feminist, nobody was gay" -- Higher education that makes a difference -- "Still children of the night" : survivors against the odds -- Black boys' lives still matter : in search of a loving father -- "Spilled salt" on a Black mother's table and the struggle for maternal survival -- No shame: recovering our mother's way(s) of being -- Remembering where we came from -- Getting to the heart of the lessons : Black women teaching "other" ways of loving -- Epilogue: continuing to teach in the image of "an alternative Black man" -- It's about revolutionary manhood. (shrink)

Despite influencing the social sciences since the 1930s, S. S. Stevens' "operationist" philosophy of science has yet to be adequately understood. I reconstruct Stevens' operationism from his early work and assess the influence of various views (logical positivism, behaviorism and the "operational viewpoint" of P. W. Bridgman, among others) on Stevens. Stevens' operationism emerges, on my reconstruction, as a naturalistic methodological directive aimed at agreement, founded in turn on the belief that agreement is constitutive of science, the scientific community, and (...) objectivity. Further, I show that operationism is historically and philosophically independent of the views mentioned above. (shrink)

Special design criteria are largely unable to discriminate between claims that specific competencies in judgements under uncertainty are a result of an adaptation for representing naturally sampled frequencies, or due only to inherent properties of such a format. Because divisions between these perspectives are thin, evidence via additional criteria are persuasive only in combination, using inference to the best available explanation.

In 1973, Richard Sylvan began his seminal essay, "Do We Need a New, an Environmental Ethic?" with these words: "It is increasingly said that ... Western civilization ... stands in need of a new ethic ... setting out people's relations to the natural environment." In the intervening years, it has increasingly been said that Western civilization is in need of ecocentrism, an ethic according to which a thing's value is derived from its contribution to the integrity, stability, and beauty of (...) ecosystems. Do those interested in agricultural ethics need a new, an ecocentric, ethic? I argue that the answer is no. Agriculturalists must look elsewhere for an adequate ethic setting out our relations to the natural environment. (shrink)

Agricultural biotechnology refers to a diverse set of industrial techniques used to produce genetically modified foods. Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods manipulated at the molecular level to enhance their value to farmers and consumers. This book is a collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of ag biotech. The essays were written over a dozen years, beginning in 1988. When I began to reflect on the subject, ag biotech was an exotic, untested, technology. Today, in the first year of (...) the millenium, the vast majority of consumers in the United States have taken a bite of the apple. Milk produced by cows injected with a GM protein called recombinant bovine growth hormone (bGH), is found, unlabelled, on grocery shelves throughout the US. In 1999, half of the soybeans and cotton harvested in the US were GM varieties. Billions of dollars of public and private monies are being invested annually in biotech research, and commercial sales now reach into the tens of billions of dollars each year. Whereas ag biotech once promised to change American agriculture, it now is in the process of doing so. (shrink)

Three correctives can get researchers out of the trap of constructing unitary theories of “thinking”: (1) Strong inference methods largely avoid problems associated with universal prescriptive normativism; (2) theories must recognize that significant modularity of cognitive processes is antithetical to general accounts of thinking; and (3) consideration of the domain-specificity of rationality render many of the present article's issues moot.

Cybersecurity research often describes people as understanding internet security in terms of metaphorical mental models (e.g., disease risk, physical security risk, or criminal behavior risk). However, little research has directly evaluated if this is an accurate or productive framework. To assess this question, two experiments asked participants to respond to a statistical reasoning task framed in one of four different contexts (cybersecurity, plus the above alternative models). Each context was also presented using either percentages or natural frequencies, and these tasks (...) were followed by a behavioral likelihood rating. As in previous research, consistent use of natural frequencies promoted correct Bayesian reasoning. There was little indication, however, that any of the alternative mental models generated consistently better understanding or reasoning over the actual cybersecurity context. There was some evidence that different models had some effects on patterns of responses, including the behavioral likelihood ratings, but these effects were small, as compared to the effect of the numerical format manipulation. This points to a need to improve the content of actual internet security warnings, rather than working to change the models users have of warnings. (shrink)

Gary L. Cesarz - Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 361-362 Steven B. Smith. Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. xxvi + 230. Cloth, $35.00. Smith's well-crafted narrative contributes substantially to revealing the moral and political intentions "at the core" of the Ethics . Its focus is the role and (...) possibility of freedom in Spinoza's metaphysics, based on Smith's thesis that a version of teleological eudaemonism and democratic politics are the principal themes of the Ethics. Indeed, Smith considers the Ethics a "founding document of . . . democratic individualism" . He places Spinoza in his Enlightenment context, building on known.. (shrink)

Not long ago, interreligious conversations were regulated by the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty. We are suspicious of these noble sounding ideals today. In a world of liberation theology, feminist criticism, and the hermeneutics of suspicion, can there be any new, “postmodern,” rules to govern our religious dialogues? Not able to consult any general theory, or “metanarrative,” in order to provide the answer, I simply tell the story of the only postmodern Catholic I have ever known. On the basis (...) of that experience, I argue that something like the old rules will have to accompany us into the new age. (shrink)

Most people care about animals, but only a tiny fraction are vegan. The rest often think of veganism as an extreme position. They certainly do not believe that they have a moral obligation to become vegan. Gary L. Francione—the leading and most provocative scholar of animal rights theory and law—demonstrates that veganism is a moral imperative and a matter of justice. He shows that there is a contradiction in thinking that animals matter morally if one is also not vegan, (...) and he explains why this belief should logically lead all who hold it to veganism. Francione dismantles the conventional wisdom that it is acceptable to use and kill animals as long as we do so “humanely.” He argues that if animals matter morally, they must have the right not to be used as property. That means that we cannot eat them, wear them, use them, or otherwise treat them as resources or commodities. Why Veganism Matters presents the case for the personhood of nonhuman animals and for veganism in a clear and accessible way that does not require any philosophical or legal background. This book offers a persuasive and powerful argument for all readers who care about animals but are not sure whether they have a moral obligation to be vegan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 280-281 [Access article in PDF] Maria Dimova-Cookson. T. H. Green's Moral and Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Perspective. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xiii + 175. Cloth, $60.00 Like most today who study Green's idealism, Dimova-Cookson finds only his ethics to be still relevant. She rejects his metaphysical epistemology and consequently his teleology, but offers an alternative. Dimova-Cookson proposes a Husserlian analysis (...) of Green's positions on goodness and a critical defense that attempts to rectify his apparently inconsistent formulations of that concept. Provided we recall that Husserl's method is not unproblematic and resist the tendency to adjust the doctrine analyzed for the sake of methodological fidelity, there is reason to be open to the author's proposal. Several of Husserl's ideas seem relevant to Green's thought: intentionality; "noematic content of the determinable X" and "horizon" developed in Ideas; intersubjectivity; and Husserl's teleological descriptions of phenomenological consciousness. But Dimova-Cookson pursues none of these. She employs Husserl's problematic "epoche" and a "necessary feature of human practice" she calls "the phenomenological circle" (69, hereafter, PC).Dimova-Cookson uses PC to resolve certain confusions imputed to Green. Green himself anticipates the charge of vicious circularity concerning the moral ideal when he reasons that "the unconditional good for man" is the good will and that the good will is to will the unconditional good. He subsequently explains that the circularity is not logically vicious for the two terms describe different states of one teleological process of a will actualizing its potential for perfection, and are distinguished "as the complete from the incomplete." According to Dimova-Cookson, Green hasn't escaped the charge and needn't try. Rather, he has unwittingly stumbled upon PC, but confused matters by carelessly conflating perspectives on the senses of "good" which she believes are two different definitions of two different things, elements in PC. "Circularity in explaining morality can be legitimized," she says, provided one rigorously clarifies the shift in perspective between the two elements in PC (70ff.). This move, she holds, can resolve certain contemporary criticisms. But note that if Green hasn't escaped the charge, and it is a genuine logical circle, then, as Husserl recognized, it cannot be avoided simply by making a rigorously clear shift in perspective. That would be a psychologistic response to a logical problem. Moreover, even if clarity of perspectival shift is useful here, it fails to capture the continuity in the moral progress of the self-actualization of moral agent to moral citizen. Finally, had Green represented his distinction in such dichotomous fashion, this would have compromised the teleological component of his explanations and made it more difficult to keep his theory from being conflated with utilitarianism. Green is far-sighted here, given recent tendencies to confuse utilitarianism and teleology on the basis that both can be represented as versions of consequentialism, a confusion based on the fallacy of undistributed middle.Most of Dimova-Cookson's connections are highly suggestive and many of her distinctions useful. She teases out several possible meanings of Green's conception of good, and is to be commended for having tried to answer some of his critics and calling attention to the valuable content of Green's doctrine. Her attempt at a phenomenological approach is novel.It is troubling, though, that Dimova-Cookson thinks it is also transcendental, for her words reveal a grave confusion about what this means. When discussing what she thinks is either transcendental or phenomenological, she uses the language of contingent psychological experience; e.g., "storing experience" (44), and projecting and relating to one's self-image (65). The process of learning she describes is more reminiscent of Piaget's "assimilation-accommodation" model than anything Husserlian or transcendental. Yet the author considers this an "advanced transcendentalism" wherein "our experience is preconditioned—that is, made possible—by the conceptual baggage that has accumulated and is always present at the back of our minds" (27). If one holds that we accumulate... (shrink)