Marcos Eberlin is a chemist and mass spectrometer who advances in a new book a refined Intelligent Design theory hinging on “foresight,” or the apparent teleology and purpose discernible in biological, chemical, and other complex life systems. Repurposing older ID arguments, such as those of “irreducible complexity,” and introducing new examples of phenomena pointed to by other ID theorists, Eberlin makes a strong argument for mindful creation by a “superintellect”. But is ID sufficient to answer Darwinism? Does “foresight” go far (...) enough in providing an alternative view of the origin of complex lifeforms? I argue that Eberlin, and other ID theorists, does not have a robust-enough definition of science to counter non-theistic theories of biology and biochemistry. An Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of science allows us to go beyond the divide between ID and a-theistic theories and move the science-and-faith debate onto more solid ground. (shrink)

In a recent conference volume, American philosopher Michael Sandel engages the Confucian tradition in the search for alternatives to what Sandel calls the “unencumbered self,” the unattached liberal subject as detailed in the philosophy of John Rawls. Responding to Sandel, American Confucianist Roger Ames draws on a lifetime of comparative thought to advance the Pragmatism of John Dewey as a way to interrogate Western philosophy in general, arguing that “humane becomings,” a view of the human person facilitated, Ames writes, (...) by Deweyan Pragmatism, are the Confucian ideal and the key to recovering a holistic anthropology within the Western tradition. In this essay, I intervene in the Ames-Sandel debate to argue that Charles Peirce, and not John Dewey, is the best American Pragmatist for bridging the divide between the Confucian and Rawlsian views of the human person. Peirce’s emphasis on love as true intersubjectivity and on communication as the exchange of real meaning is, I argue, the key to unlocking the Confucian ideal to the West. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Unauthorized Propositions”The Federalist Papers and Constituent PowerJason Frank (bio)The PEOPLE, who are the sovereigns of the State, possess a power to alter it when and in what way they please. To say otherwise is to make the thing created, greater than the power that created it.—Anonymous, Federal Gazette, March 18, 1789The we of the Constitution’s “We the People” was as much of an artificial construct as the Constitution itself, (...) it was its creature, not its creator.—Sheldon Wolin, The Presence of the PastIn Federalist No. 40, James Madison engaged the vexing question of whether the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 had been properly authorized “to frame and propose” the new Federal Constitution of the United States [83]. Madison explored there “the ground on which the Convention stood” [264], which he identified as the purportedly solid foundation of the people themselves [Morgan 272]. Federalist No. 40 offers a theoretically probing yet avowedly practical reflection on the availability of foundations and on dilemmas of popular authorization in times of constitutional crisis; it may be productively read as an exemplary eighteenth-century American reflection on a state of exception. As such, Federalist No. 40 provides helpful orientation to how the popular constitutionalism of the revolutionary and postrevolutionary years confronted and navigated—if never fully resolved—some of the most insistent paradoxes of modern democratic theory.In No. 40, Madison was preoccupied with the theoretical and historical dilemmas surrounding the eighteenth-century American conception of the people’s constituent power—that is, the ultimate power of the people to alter fundamental law “when and in what way they please.”1 However, in contrast to most contemporary theoretical approaches to constituent power—whether influenced by the political theology of Carl Schmitt or the immanentist optimism of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri—Madison’s navigation of the attending dilemmas of popular authorization resisted the turn to metaphysical abstraction and the appeal to a transcendent or immanent absolute. In his approach to the problem of constituent power, Madison insisted on the productive irreducibility of institutional mediation and the performative elicitation of a retrospective authorization by the people. While accepting the absence of a firm ground of legal authorization (the unbroken authority of law), Madison also rejected a wholly extralegal or unmediated appeal to the people themselves (the transcendental appeal to spirit beyond the letter of the law). Instead, he endorsed a political navigation of these dilemmas in medias res. Confronting [End Page 103] the dilemma of constituency—how does the people give birth to itself as a self-authorizing subject?—Madison shifted the register of discourse away from the formal and juridical and toward the informally ethicopolitical. Doing so, he was able to affirm a rupture in law while simultaneously enlisting another register of normative continuity. This essay outlines Madison’s productive encounter with these dilemmas in The Federalist, and suggests the relevance of his example for recent debates in democratic theory, too often captivated by the formal rubrics of “norm” and “exception.”1The government which [the Federalists] are so enthusiastically fond of is as yet an ideal phantom, a chimera, a mere theory detested and execrated by every true friend to government.—“One of the People,” Carlisle Gazette, January 9, 1788Madison wrote Federalist No. 40 as a response to widespread and persuasive Anti-Federalist claims that the Philadelphia Convention had exceeded the mandate granted to it by the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and the Congressional Act of 1787, both of which authorized the meeting of the Philadelphia Convention “for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation” [259]. While the Philadelphia Convention was, in Bruce Ackerman’s words, “expressly subordinated to existing institutions and procedures” [Ackerman 43], it had nonetheless produced an entirely new constitutional text and—theoretically more problematic for Madison—an entirely new procedure for its popular ratification [see also Ackerman and Katyal]. Under Article 13 of the Articles of Confederation, constitutional reform could come about only through the unanimous assent of the thirteen state legislatures.2 Under the Philadelphia Convention’s plan, the ratification of the proposed constitution would bypass the constituted power of the state legislatures and appeal instead to the... (shrink)

1. Introduction: Kairopolitics: The Politics of Realtime -- 2. Thought-Time: Immediacy and Live Theory -- 3. Control-Time: Immediacy and Constant Capitalism -- 4. Conclusion: Defense-Time: Immediacy and Realtime Resistance.

The problem of academic dishonesty is as old as it is widespread – dating back millennia and perpetrated by the majority of students. Attempts to promote academic integrity, by comparison, are relatively new and rare – stretching back only a few hundred years and implemented by a small fraction of schools and universities. However, the past decade has seen an increase in efforts among universities to promote academic integrity among students, particularly through the use of online courses or tutorials. Previous (...) research has found this type of instruction to be effective in increasing students’ knowledge of academic integrity and reducing their engagement in academic dishonesty. The present study contributes to this literature with a natural experiment on the effects of the Academic Integrity Course (AIC) at The University of Auckland, which became mandatory for all students in 2015. In 2012, a convenience sample of students (n= 780) had been asked to complete a survey on their perceptions of the University’s academic integrity polices and their engagement in several forms of academic dishonesty over the past year. In 2017, the same procedures and survey were used to collect data from second sample of students (n= 608). After establishing measurement invariance across the two samples on all latent factors, analysis of variance revealed mixed support for the studies hypotheses. Unexpectedly, students who completed the AIC (i.e., the 2017 sample) reported: (1) significantly lower (not higher) levels of understanding, support, and effectiveness with respect to the University’s academic integrity policies; (2) statistically equivalent (not higher) levels of peer disapproval of academic misconduct, and; (3) significantly higher (not lower) levels of peer engagement in academic misconduct. However, results related to participants’ personal engagement in academic misconduct offered partial support for hypotheses – those who completed the AIC reported significantly lower rates of engagement on three of the eight behaviors included in the study. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed as well as possible future directions for research. (shrink)

The first collection to theorise race and racism through the philosophy of Gilles DeleuzeIn this volume, an international and multidisciplinary team of scholars inaugurates the Deleuzian study of race through a wide-ranging and evocative array of case studies.Deleuze and Guattari provided new concepts of how humans are differentiated, through processes of state formation, capitalism, madness and desire. While sexual difference has received much attention in Deleuze studies, racial difference is a thornier problematic. As this collection of essays shows, Deleuze and (...) Guattari had extremely original things to say about race, and the politics of phenotype and origin is never far from any engaged consideration of how the world works. (shrink)

The first book of its kind, German Aesthetics assembles a who's who of German studies to explore 200 years of intellectual history, spanning literature, philosophy, politics, and culture.

Our purpose in this article is to identify and suggest resolution for two core problematics of grounded theory. First, while grounded theory provides transparency to one part of the conceptualization process, where codes emerge directly from the data, it provides no such systematic or transparent way for gaining insight into the conceptual relationships between discovered codes. Producing a grounded theory depends not only on the definition of conceptual pieces, but the delineation of a relationship between at least two of those (...) pieces. Second, the conceptualization process of grounded theory is done in hierarchical fashion, where individual codes emerge from the data but then are used to generate insight into more general concepts and thematic statements. But various works on grounded theory have failed to provide any systematic way of using data specific levels of scale (the codes) to gain insight into more macro levels of scale (concepts and themes). We offer fractal concept analysis as a means of resolving both of these issues. By using a logic structure generator, fractal concept analysis delineates self-similar conceptual frameworks at various levels of abstraction, yielding a method for linking concepts together within and between levels of scale encountered in the grounded theory coding and categorization process. We conclude that this fractal analytic technique can bolster the aims of grounded theory as a formalized and systematic process for generating theory from empirical data. (shrink)

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre-post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical (...) events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed. (shrink)

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited (...) competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed. (shrink)

With the proliferation of private standards many significant decisions regarding public health risks, food safety, and environmental impacts are increasingly taking place in the backstage of the global agro-food system. Using an analytical framework grounded in political economy, we explain the rise of private standards and specific actors – notably supermarkets – in the restructuring of agro-food networks. We argue that the global, political-economic, capitalist transformation – globalization – is a transition from a Fordist regime to a regime of flexible (...) accumulation (Harvey, 1989). We also argue that the standard making process of this new regulatory regime is increasingly moving from the front stage – where it is open to public debate and democratic decision-making bodies – to the backstage – where it is dominated by large supermarket procurement offices. We assert that transnational supermarket chains are increasingly controlling what food is grown where, how, and by whom. We also contend that the decision-making processes of transnational supermarket chains are typically “black-boxed.” The Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group (EUREP) is presented as a case of private governance by transnational supermarket chains. We conclude by examining the limitations and long-term efficacy of a system of private governance in the global agro-food system. (shrink)

This study provides a comparative analysis of students' self-reported beliefs and behaviors related to six analogous pairs of conventional and digital forms of academic cheating. Results from an online survey of undergraduates at two universities (N = 1,305) suggest that students use conventional means more often than digital means to copy homework, collaborate when it is not permitted, and copy from others during an exam. However, engagement in digital plagiarism (cutting and pasting from the Internet) has surpassed conventional plagiarism. Students (...) also reported using digital "cheat sheets" (i.e., notes stored in a digital device) to cheat on tests more often than conventional "cheat sheets." Overall, 32% of students reported no cheating of any kind, 18.2% reported using only conventional methods, 4.2% reported using only digital methods, and 45.6% reported using both conventional and digital methods to cheat. "Digital only" cheaters were less likely than "conventional only" cheaters to report assignment cheating, but the former was more likely than the latter to report engagement in plagiarism. Students who cheated both conventionally and digitally were significantly different from the other three groups in terms of their self-reported engagement in all three types of cheating behavior. Students in this "both" group also had the lowest sense of moral responsibility to refrain from cheating and the greatest tendency to neutralize that responsibility. The scientific and educational implications of these findings are discussed in this study. (shrink)

Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus engages with the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy through the lens of the 15th century philosopher and theologian, Nicholas of Cusa. The volume comprises nineteen essays that break down the barriers between medieval and Renaissance studies, reinterpreting Cusanus’ place in the history of thought by exploring the archive that informed his thinking, while also interrogating his works by exploring them from the standpoint of their later reception by modern philosophers (...) and theologians. The volume also offers tribute to the career of Donald F. Duclow, a leading scholar in the field of Cusanus studies in particular and of the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy more generally. (shrink)

This paper is the report of a meetingthat gathered many of the UK's most senioranimal scientists with representatives of thefarming industry, consumer groups, animalwelfare groups, and environmentalists. Therewas strong consensus that the current economicstructure of agriculture cannot adequatelyaddress major issues of concern to society:farm incomes, food security and safety, theneeds of developing countries, animal welfare,and the environment. This economic structure isbased primarily on competition betweenproducers and between retailers, driving foodprices down, combined with externalization ofmany costs. These issues must be addressed (...) by acombination of legislation, restructuring ofthe market, and use of public funds. Themeeting included workshops that made otherrecommendations for research and education. Themost urgent requirement is recognition thatchange is needed and development of a visionfor what that change must achieve. (shrink)

In what follows we introduce and present a translation of Salomon Maimon’s “On the First Grounds of Natural Right”. To begin, we briefly discuss textual issues surrounding the essay. We then...

Some patients who are dependent on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) are alert and retain capacity to participate in decision-making, including decisions regarding whether to continue life...

As a committee of the National Academy of Engineering recognized, ethics education should foster the ability of students to analyze complex decision situations and ill-structured problems. Building on the NAE’s insights, we report about an innovative teaching approach that has two main features: first, it places the emphasis on deliberation and on self-directed, problem-based learning in small groups of students; and second, it focuses on understanding ill-structured problems. The first innovation is motivated by an abundance of scholarly research that supports (...) the value of deliberative learning practices. The second results from a critique of the traditional case-study approach in engineering ethics. A key problem with standard cases is that they are usually described in such a fashion that renders the ethical problem as being too obvious and simplistic. The practitioner, by contrast, may face problems that are ill-structured. In the collaborative learning environment described here, groups of students use interactive and web-based argument visualization software called “AGORA-net: Participate – Deliberate!”. The function of the software is to structure communication and problem solving in small groups. Students are confronted with the task of identifying possible stakeholder positions and reconstructing their legitimacy by constructing justifications for these positions in the form of graphically represented argument maps. The argument maps are then presented in class so that these stakeholder positions and their respective justifications become visible and can be brought into a reasoned dialogue. Argument mapping provides an opportunity for students to collaborate in teams and to develop critical thinking and argumentation skills. (shrink)

Boredom Studies is an increasingly rich and vital area of contemporary research that examines the experience of boredom as an importan - even quintessential - condition of modern life. This anthology of newly commissioned essays focuses on the historical and theoretical potential of this modern condition, connecting boredom studies with parallel discourses such as affect theory and highlighting possible avenues of future research. Spanning sociology, history, art, philosophy and cultural studies, the book considers boredom as a mass response to the (...) atrophy of experience characteristic of a highly mechanised and urbanised social life. (shrink)

On the True Sense of Art collects essays by philosophers responding to John Sallis's Transfigurements: On the True Sense of Art as well as his other works on the philosophy of art, including Force of Imagination and Logic of Imagination. Each of the chapters, by some of the leading thinkers in Continental philosophy, engages Sallis's work on both ancient and new senses of aesthetics--a transfiguration of aesthetics--as a beginning that is always beginning again. With a responsive essay by Sallis himself, (...) On the True Sense of Art forms a critical introduction to the thought of this generation's most important aesthetician. (shrink)

Levinas never engaged closely with Fichte’s work, but there are two places in the chapter “Substitution,” in Otherwise than Being (1974), where he mentions Fichte by name. The point that Levinas underscores in both of these passages is that the other’s encounter with the subject is not the outcome of the subject’s freedom; it is not posited by the subject, as Fichte has it, but is prior to any free activity. The aim of this paper is to deepen the comparison (...) between Levinas and Fichte, giving special attention to Fichte's own novel theory of intersubjectivity and the summons. One result that emerges from this treatment is that both Levinas and Fichte view the second person in a way that has no equivalent in the current philosophical landscape. On this reading, each thinker views responsibility to the other, not only as an immediate and particular obligation, but also as an asymmetrical relation that gives the other moral priority. (shrink)

In a new book-length treatment, Tara Smith, who has written extensively on the intersections of Objectivist philosophy and law, explains how judicial review, a feature of non-Objectivist jurisprudence, should function in a truly Objectivist legal system. Divided into two halves, Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System first sets forth what Objectivism is and how Objectivists understand law. Of particular importance in this regard, Smith stresses, is the written constitution, which Smith, following the logical premises of Objectivism, calls “bedrock legal (...) authority.” In the second half of the book, Smith moves to narrower considerations of judicial review proper. Smith’s first task in those sections is to critique the “failures” of “the reigning accounts” to understand judicial review. After dispensing with the various mistaken versions of judicial review as she sees them, Smith defines Objectivist judicial review before providing a handful of examples of how such a process might work in “contemporary conditions.”. (shrink)

In an essay, I have established a new formula of the moral principle, different from the Kantian, and more convenient to use. It grounds itself in a new deduction,...

This article examines the concept of "brotherliness" as presented in Max Weber's sociological studies of religion. It argues that Weber presents a complex, if at times implicit, understanding of a number of contrasting forms of brotherliness: charismatic, Puritan, mystic, and medieval Christian. The article suggests that although these contrasting forms have been largely overlooked by Weberian scholars, they add an important dimension to Weber's understanding of the costs and paradoxes of Western rationalization.

The term ‘artificial intelligence’ has arguably come to function in political discourse as, what Laclau called, an ‘empty signifier’. This article traces the shifting political discourse on AI within three key institutions of global governance–OHCHR, WHO, and UNESCO–and, in so doing, highlights the role of ‘crisis’ moments in justifying a series of pivotal re-articulations. Most important has been the attachment of AI to the narrative around digital automation in human healthcare. Greatly enabled by the societal context of the pandemic, all (...) three institutions have moved from being critical of the unequal power relations in the economy of AI to, today, reframing themselves primarily as facilitators tasked with helping to ensure the application of AI technologies. The analysis identifies a shift in which human health and healthcare is framed as in a ‘crisis’ to which AI technology is presented as the remedy. The article argues the need to trace these discursive shifts as a means by which to understand, monitor, and where necessary also hold to account these changes in the governance of AI in society. (shrink)

In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically against Quine’s version of empiricism. One of these arguments is the starting points argument (SPA) and it is supposed to show that Quinean empiricism is incoherent. We argue here that this argument is deeply flawed, and we demonstrate how a Quinean may successfully defend his views against Bealer’s SPA. Our defense of Quinean empiricism against the SPA depends on showing (1) (...) that Bealer is, in an important sense, a foundationalist, and (2) that Quine is, in an important sense, a coherentist. Having established these two contentions we show that Bealer’s SPA begs the question against Quinean empiricists. (shrink)

Attentional control theory (ACT) was proposed to account for trait anxiety’s effects on cognitive performance. According to ACT, impaired processing efficiency in high anxiety is mediated through inefficient executive processes that are needed for effective attentional control. Here we review the central assumptions and predictions of ACT within the context of more recent empirical evidence from neuroimaging studies. We then attempt to provide an account of ACT within a framework of the relevant cognitive processes and their associated neural mechanisms and (...) networks, particularly the fronto-parietal, cingular-opercula, and default mode networks. Future research directions, including whether a neuroscience-informed model of ACT can provide a platform for novel neurocognitive intervention for anxiety, are also discussed. (shrink)

De Neys's incisive critique of empirical and theoretical research on the exclusivity feature underscores the depth of the challenge of explaining the interplay of fast and slow processes. We argue that a closer look at research on mindreading reveals abundant evidence for the exclusivity feature – as well as methodological and theoretical perspectives that could inform research on fast and slow thinking.

Electrical signaling by neurons depends on the precisely ordered distribution of a wide variety of ion channels on the neuronal surface. The mechanisms underlying the targeting of particular classes of ion channels to specific subcellular sites are poorly understood. Recent studies have identified a new class of protein‐protein interaction mediated by PDZ domains, protein binding modules that recognize specific sequences at the C terminus of membrane proteins. The PDZ domains of a family of synaptic cytoskeleton‐associated proteins, typified by PSD‐95, bind (...) to the intracellular C‐terminal tails of NMDA receptors and Shaker‐type K+ channels. This interaction appears to be important in the clustering and localization of these ion channels at synaptic sites. Recognition of specific C‐terminal peptide sequences by different PDZ domain‐containing proteins may be a general mechanism for differential targeting of proteins to a variety of subcellular locations. (shrink)

If a man born blind were to gain his sight in later life would he be able to identify the objects he saw around him? Would he recognise a cube and a globe on the basis of his earlier tactile experiences alone? This was William Molyneux's famous question to John Locke and it was much discussed by English and French empiricists in the eighteenth century as part of the controversy over innatism and abstract ideas. Dr Morgan examines the whole (...) history of this debate: Locke's own (negative) answer to the question, the contributions of Berkeley, Condillac, Diderot and Voltaire and the factual accounts of early cataract operations and modern laboratory studies. He shows how this debate is involved in the development and eventual separation of philosophy and experimental psychology after the eighteenth century and considers why the original question is effectively still unanswered. This is one problem-area with its intricate cluster of connected conceptual and technical difficulties which suggests the need for some reunion or at least collaboration between the two subjects. (shrink)

In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically Quine’s version of empiricism. In doing so, Bealer identifies three fundamental principles of Quine’s empiricism. First, the principle of empiricism states that.

In Discovering Levinas, Michael L. Morgan shows how this thinker faces in novel and provocative ways central philosophical problems of twentieth-century philosophy and religious thought. He tackles this task by placing Levinas in conversation with philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, Onora O'Neill, Charles Taylor, and Cora Diamond. He also seeks to understand Levinas within philosophical, religious, and political developments in the history of twentieth-century intellectual culture. Morgan demystifies Levinas by examining his unfamiliar and (...) surprising vocabulary, interpreting texts with an eye to clarity, and arguing that Levinas can be understood as a philosopher of the everyday. Morgan also shows that Levinas's ethics is not morally and politically irrelevant nor is it excessively narrow and demanding in unacceptable ways. Neither glib dismissal nor fawning acceptance, this book provides a sympathetic reading that can form a foundation for a responsible critique. (shrink)

Evolutionary discussions regarding the relationship between social status and fertility in the contemporary U.S. typically claim that the relationship is either negative or absent entirely. The published data on recent generations of Americans upon which such statements rest, however, are solid with respect to women but sparse and equivocal for men. In the current study, we investigate education and income in relation to age at first child, childlessness, and number of children for men and women in two samples—one of the (...) general American population and one of graduates of an elite American university. We find that increased education is strongly associated with delayed childbearing in both sexes and is also moderately associated with decreased completed or near-completed fertility. Women in the general population with higher adult income have fewer children, but this relationship does not hold within all educational groups, including our sample with elite educations. Higher-income men, however, do not have fewer children in the general population and in fact have lower childlessness rates. Further, higher income in men is positively associated with fertility among our sample with elite educations as well as within the general population among those with college educations. Such findings undermine simple statements on the relationship between status and fertility. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the inheritance of human handedness and cerebral lateralization within the more general context of structural biological asymmetries. The morphogenesis of asymmetrical structures, such as the heart in vertebrates, depends upon a complex interaction between information coded in the cytoplasm and in the genes, but the polarity of asymmetry seems to depend on the cytoplasmic rather than the genetic code. Indeed it is extremely difficult to find clear-cut examples in which thedirectionof an asymmetry is under genetic control. (...) As one possible case, there is some evidence that the direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, of rotation of the abdomen in certain mutant strains ofDrosophilais controlled by a particular gene locus, although there appears to be some degree of confusion on this point. By contrast, it is much easier to find examples in which thedegreebut not the direction of asymmetry is under genetic control. For instance, there is a mutant strain of mice in which half of the animals displaysitus inversusof the viscera. The proportion has remained at one half despite many years of inbreeding, suggesting that the mutant allele effectively cancels the normalsitusand allows the asymmetry to be specified in random fashion.Although this account does not deny that the right hemisphere of humans may be the more specialized for certain functions, it does attribute a leading or dominant role to the left hemisphere (at least in most individuals). We suggest that so-called “right-hemisphere” functions are essentially acquired by default, due to the left hemisphere's prior involvement with speech and skilled motor acts; we note, for instance, that these right-hemisphere functions include rather elementary perceptual processes. But perhaps the more critical prediction from our account is that the phenomenon of equipotentiality should be unidirectional: the right (lagging) hemisphere should be more disposed to take over left-hemisphere functions following early lesions than is the left (leading) hemisphere to take over right-hemisphere functions. We note preliminary evidence that this may be so. (shrink)