In this study, researchers examined the assumption that senior-level undergraduate students from private colleges universities possess higher levels of moral and ethical development than students from public institutions. In addition, the researchers sought to determine (a) if there was a relationship between narcissistic personality traits and the level of moral reasoning, and (b) there was a difference in the level of narcissistic personality tendencies of business students from private vs. public institutions based on demographic and textual variables. A cluster sampling (...) approach was used in the sample selection. The sample was limited to students majoring in general business at seven public and six private universities in North Dakota and Minnesota. A total of 269 subjects participated in the research project: 145 at private institutions and 124 at public institutions. The Defining Issues Test version 2 (DIT-2) and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) were used to collect data at seven public and six private institutions. Students from public and private universities scored similarly on the DIT-2. A significant difference between the NPI scores of the private college students and the public college students was found. No significant relationship was found between the NPI score and level of moral reasoning. Business educators should be concerned that an increase in the number of business ethics courses completed did not significantly impact students' moral reasoning or narcissistic traits. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Guy Kahane asks whether God’s existence is something we should want to be true. Expanding on some cryptic remarks from Thomas Nagel, Kahane’s informative and wide-ranging piece eventually addresses whether personal anti-theism is justified, where personal anti-theism is the view that God’s existence would make things worse overall for oneself. In what follows, I develop, defend, but ultimately reject the Meaningful Life Argument, according to which if God’s existence precludes the realization of certain goods that seem (...) to an agent to constitute a meaningful life, it is rational for an agent both to believe that personal anti-theism is true and to prefer that God not exist. (shrink)

Some claim that cognitive science of religion (CSR) either completely “explains religion away,” or at the very least calls the epistemic status of religious belief into question. Others claim that religious beliefs are the cognitive outputs of systems that seem highly reliable in other contexts, and thus CSR provides positive epistemic support for religious belief. I argue that (i) CSR does not provide evidence for atheism, but (ii) if one is an atheist, CSR lends “intellectual aid and comfort,” (iii) CSR (...) does not provide evidence for theism, but (iv) if one is a theist, CSR provides qualified support for Reformed Epistemology. (shrink)

Selon Kirk Lougheed, favoriser une version objective de l’argument du sens de la vie établit une sorte d’antithéisme, c’est-à-dire une perspective qui maintient que l’existence d’un Dieu théiste aggraverait les choses et qu’il est donc plus rationnel de préférer que Dieu n’existe pas. Cette version objective est présentée par Lougheed comme une amélioration par rapport à ma version subjective de l’argument du sens de la vie. Je soutiens que la version de Lougheed ne réussit pas mieux que la version subjective (...) que j’ai développée, puis rejetée. (shrink)

Pro-theism is the view that God’s existence would be good in that God’s existence increases the value of a world. Anti-theism is the view that God’s existence would decrease the value of a world. We develop and defend the morally good agent argument for pro-theism. The basic idea is that morally good agents tend to add value to states of affairs, and God, moral agent par excellence is no exception. Thus, we argue that the existence of God would be, on (...) balance, a good thing and therefore something that one can rationally desire to be true. (shrink)

Some claim that cognitive science of religion either completely “explains religion away,” or at the very least calls the epistemic status of religious belief into question. Others claim that religious beliefs are the cognitive outputs of systems that seem highly reliable in other contexts, and thus CSR provides positive epistemic support for religious belief. I argue that CSR does not provide evidence for atheism, but if one is an atheist, CSR lends “intellectual aid and comfort,” CSR does not provide evidence (...) for theism, but if one is a theist, CSR provides qualified support for Reformed Epistemology. (shrink)

The following paper is an exposition and analysis of Deleuze and Guattari's (hereafter called D&G) vision for philosophy. In sections I and II I discuss two defining features of this vision: respectively, the philosopher as creator and the concept as the philosopher's creation. In the final section I argue that D&G's vision is supported by a normative principle that is itself not intuitively obvious. I conclude that while D&G's vision for philosophy charts out a brave space for philosophy, one may (...) adopt the spirit of their vision without embracing their normative principle. (shrink)

While still under the shadow of decades of trauma, a recontexualized conversation about Anabaptist theology and identity emerges in this volume that is ecumenically engaged, philosophically astute, psychologically attuned, and resolutely vulnerable. The volume offers a Trinitarian and Christological framework that holds together the importance of Scripture, tradition, and the lived experience of the Christian community, as the contributors examine a wide variety of issues such as Mennonite feminism, Anabaptist queer theology, and Mennonite theological methods. These essays interrogate the operations (...) of power, violence, exclusion, and privilege in methodology in this changed context, offering self-critical constructive alternatives for articulating Anabaptist theology and identity. (shrink)

For many species that reproduce sexually, how sex is expressed at different points across lifespan is highly contingent and dependent on various environmental factors. For example, in many species of fish, environmental cues can trigger a natural process of sex transition where a female transitions to male. For many species of turtle, incubation temperature influences the likelihood that turtle eggs will hatch males or females. What is the case for Homo sapiens? Is human sex expression influenced by contingent environmental factors (...) like we see in fish and turtles, with whom we share common ancestry and DNA? Our paper explores the current biological science of sex determination and how it applies to philosophical and theological accounts of the human person. We argue that while human sex determination is not susceptible to environmental cues to the same degree we see in other species, there is sufficient variability among the pathways of human sex development to complicate simplistic biological categories of male and female. (shrink)

According to scientific realists, the predictive success of mature theories provides a strong epistemic basis for thinking that such theories are approximately true. However, we know that many theories once regarded as well-confirmed and predictively successful were eventually replaced with successor theories, and some claim this undermines the epistemic confidence we should have in the approximate truth of current science. Selective scientific realists in turn argue that if one can show that the predictive success of some rejected theory T is (...) a function of theoretical claims consistent with current science, then T’s failure doesn’t undermine the claim that current successful theories are approximately true. As such, Selective Scientific Realism (SSR) can be tested through historical examples. Showing that the predictive success of a failed theory is the result of theoretical features later rejected provides a counterexample to SSR. Conversely, SSR is supported if its explanation of the predictive success of failed theories--namely, that the factors which lead to predictive success in the failed theory survive in the successor theory--is able to handle a wide array of historical cases. (shrink)

In “The Natural Ontological Attitude,” Arthur Fine attempts to provide a way out of the realist/antirealist dichotomy in philosophy of science. Says Fine, the natural way of treating the ontological status of theoretical entities is not to form speculative metaphysical theories, be they realist or antirealist, but instead is to apply a homely version of Tarskian semantics. I argue that Fine’s position depends on two deficient maxims, and therefore does not provide a compelling way out of the realist/antirealist dichotomy. Fine’s (...) Maxim (FM) prohibits the possibility of inferring justified metaphysical theses from the truth-value of existence claims. Hilbert’s Maxim (HM) asserts that metatheoretic arguments are cogent only if they adhere to stricter standards than their constituent theories. I argue that (FM) is likely false, but even if true cannot be rationally believed. I further argue that (HM) is a deficient standard for theory justification due to the problem of infinite regress. (shrink)

In “The Natural Ontological Attitude,” Arthur Fine attempts to provide a way out of the realist/antirealist dichotomy in philosophy of science. Says Fine, the natural way of treating the ontological status of theoretical entities is not to form speculative metaphysical theories, be they realist or antirealist, but instead is to apply a homely version of Tarskian semantics. I argue that Fine’s position depends on two deficient maxims, and therefore does not provide a compelling way out of the realist/antirealist dichotomy. Fine’s (...) Maxim (FM) prohibits the possibility of inferring justified metaphysical theses from the truth-value of existence claims. Hilbert’s Maxim (HM) asserts that metatheoretic arguments are cogent only if they adhere to stricter standards than their constituent theories. I argue that (FM) is likely false, but even if true cannot be rationally believed. I further argue that (HM) is a deficient standard for theory justification due to the problem of infinite regress. (shrink)

Engaging citizens with digital technology to co-create data, information and knowledge has widely become an important strategy for informing the policy response to COVID-19 and the ‘infodemic’ of misinformation in cyberspace. This move towards digital citizen participation aligns well with the United Nations’ agenda to encourage the use of digital tools to enable data-driven, direct democracy. From data capture to information generation, and knowledge co-creation, every stage of the data lifecycle bears important considerations to inform policy and practice. Drawing on (...) evidence of participatory policy and practice during COVID-19, we outline a framework for citizen ‘e-participation’ in knowledge co-creation across every stage of the policy cycle. We explore how coupling the generation of information with that of social capital can provide opportunities to collectively build trust in institutions, accelerate recovery and facilitate the ‘e-society’. We outline the key aspects of realising this vision of data-driven direct democracy by discussing several examples. Sustaining participatory knowledge co-creation beyond COVID-19 requires that local organisations and institutions incorporate adaptive learning mechanisms into their operational and governance structures, their integrated service models, as well as employing emerging social innovations. (shrink)

No single theory so far proposed gives a wholly satisfactory account of the origin and maintenance of bird-song dialects. This failure is the consequence of a weak comparative literature that precludes careful comparisons among species or studies, and of the complexity of the issues involved. Complexity arises because dialects seem to bear upon a wide range of features in the life history of bird species. We give an account of the principal issues in bird-song dialects: evolution of vocal learning, experimental (...) findings on song ontogeny, dialect descriptions, female and male reactions to differences in dialect, and population genetics and dispersal.We present a synthetic theory of the origin and maintenance of song dialects, one that accommodates most of the different systems reported in the literature. The few data available suggest that large, regional dialect populations are genetically differentiated; this pattern is correlated with reduced dispersal between dialects, assortative mating by females, and male-male exclusion. At the same time, “subdialects” may be formed within regional dialects. Subdialect clusters are usually small and may represent vocal mimicry among a few adjacent territorial males. The relative importance of genetic and social adaptation may contribute to the emergence of subdialects; their distinctiveness may be correlated with the degree of polygyny, for example. Thus, subdialect formation is linked to one theory of the evolution of repertoire size, but data are too fragmentary to examine this idea critically. (shrink)

The recently proposed ``infinite decision puzzle'' is based on incorrect mathematics.

The attempt to relate distinctions in perceptual theory to different physiological systems leads to numerous exceptions and inconsistencies. A more promising approach to the reconciliation of constructivist theory and direct perception is to recognize that perception does involve inference, as the constructivists insist, but that inference is a process in logic that does not require unconscious reasoning and need be no more thought-like than resonance.

At the Second Annual Meeting of the New York University Institute of Philosophy convened to consider the scientific status of psychoanalysis, Professor John Hospers was one of the few participating philosophers who undertook to defend the scientific status of psychoanalysis against the cogent criticisms of his fellow philosophers. In this paper I shall examine Hospers’ defense, “Philosophy and Psychoanalysis”, as it appears in the published proceedings of the meeting [12] and in the process of so doing I shall attempt to (...) demonstrate that Hospers misunderstood the critique of his opponents, argued invalidly on several crucial issues and neglected to take into account the possibility of alternative explanations. (shrink)

No serious scholar in Christian Social Ethics today can introduce students to his or her field without taking into account the contributions of African American scholarship. The long traditions of Christian Social Ethics in the black church, and the innovative research and writing performed by African-American scholars in recent years are now essential components of a critical study of Ethics. Yet up to now, knowing how best to introduce the fruits of African American ethical scholarship to students, particularly those in (...) the survey class, has been difficult. Good resources exist, yet too often they were not written with the needs of introductory students in mind. This book meets that need by providing an overview of the most important developments in African American approaches to Christian Social Ethics. Written with the needs of beginning students in mind, it will offer insight into the particular ways that African American scholarship has shaped the world of Christian Ethics. (shrink)

Bradley N. Seeman charges that my book, The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context, tends toward “the idolatry of linguistic license.” I point out some ways this runs against the text of the book and then outline a Wittgensteinian approach to language and truth that is alethically “quasi-realist.” On this view truth is both epistemic, or deflationary, in the sense that it depends upon assertability conditions for its truth values, while there is also a nonepistemic, realist component (...) to truth in that these assertability conditions derive from forms of life that involve precognitive involvement with extralinguistic affairs. (shrink)

Preview: /Review: Tommy Shelby and Brandon M. Terry, eds. To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., 463 pages./ To mark the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, Harvard professors Tommie Shelby and Brandon M. Terry have produced a masterful reappraisal of King’s legacy, specifically as a political philosopher. More importantly, the book can be read as a mirror through which we can see King’s struggles and resistance, that led him down (...) a “dangerous road,” having strong parallels with the dangerous road we face with current political and social upheavals. Negative reactions against globalization have heightened the sentiments of fear, paranoia, and partisanship. Racial tensions are reaching a boiling-point in the U.S. after the 2017 Charlottesville protests and a pattern of discrimination and senseless killings from the privileged campus of Yale to the country roads of Minnesota or Georgia, by law enforcement and civilians alike. One of the tendencies growing in this distressing hour of world history entails the rise of personality and celebrity cults forming around “strong” leaders. A mobocracy mentality is forming the way we think about politicians, judges, or even health specialists like chief U.S. immunologist Anthony Fauci. Celebrity fetishizing has infected Americans’ sense of reality, including the ways in which politics are practiced and interpreted. Engulfed in the quagmires of identity politics, our attempts to legitimate who has the right to fight for social justice have been paralyzed by these performative gestures of social change and action. It could be argued that the aesthetic presentation and the skills of rebranding have, in a certain sense, replaced the philosophical and moral concerns explored in the sections on “Traditions,” “Ideals,” “Justice,” and “Conscience,” respectively. What King teaches us philosophically has, more often than not, been glossed over by a superficial publicity or aesthetics of infotainment destined for the tabloids. For this reason, King’s iconic image is both a blessing and curse. In order to appreciate the full thrust of King’s thinking, we have to go deeper morally and philosophically to supplement our aesthetic religious values and interests, and that is what these fifteen essays deliver. (shrink)

This paper examines an important issue facing academia-pay inversion. It discusses how inversion is accompanied by ethical issues including secrecy, moral dilemmas for faculty, honesty, and keeping promises. It then examines this issue from five ethical viewpoints: a legalistic perspective, ethical egoism, utilitarianism, distributive justice, and Kants deontological approach. As part of the discussion, the effect of the moral philosophy on the universitys corporate culture is examined, with attention given to morale and productivity. Finally, alternatives to pay inversion that universities (...) may want to consider are discussed. (shrink)

Western societies currently face the backlash of violent and militant extremisms practiced in the form of tribalistic-phobocratic politics. The battleground is set between advocates of self-centeredness and those who entertain a world-centered self. To entertain concerns what Henri Bergson calls “zones of indetermination” and assumes A. N. Whitehead’s dictum: “in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is, that it adds to interest”. Cultural agencies, processes, and (...) aims that we take an “interest” in have the power to be more influential, encouraging norms of persuasion. Such openness to the persuasion of entertainment is propositional in character, or acts as “lures for feeling” of proposals to be felt without mandates. The first section will discuss the way in which to take up the daunting task of reading Whitehead. The second and third sections will address those aspects pertinent to a philosophy of entertainment that present the cultural-aesthetic underpinnings for the emergence of persuasive agencies. The goal of cultivating tolerance and freedom for civilized societies hinges upon institutional methods and practices that are legitimated more by way of persuasive coercion rather than coercive persuasion. (shrink)

Identity politics has become dangerous and toxic. How should one respond to the current American psychosocial attitudes and mood swings? Should I keep my circle large or small? Professor Royce might respond: “It depends upon the community ideal that fosters one’s identity and individuality.” But from the perspectives and experiences of marginalized peoples, the answer is not so simple. A prominent Africana scholar retorts: “Keep your circle plastic!” Such is the distinction brought out in Tommy Curry’s investigative study of Royce’s (...) philosophy of white racial empire. Focusing on assimilation and Royce’s advocacy of practicing the “Dark Arts” of imperial rule, which Royce modeled on a system of British... (shrink)

Cultural identities and rituals are intersecting through increasingly overlapping social worlds. Whether one chooses to join in this mixing and to what degree, that is the question. Appropriationists and assimilationists assume a logic of domination that aims to justify forms of social entitlement, claiming exclusive possession or ownership of cultural heritages. This article argues that cultural adoption is a stronger frame for understanding how circulation of rituals and practices get distributed under “liquid,” orphan-like conditions. By accepting that no stable centers (...) or margins of culture can be securely ascertained, new semiotics of integral fakes gain cultural efficacy. Integral fakes manifest semblances and likenesses that can be adopted as one’s own, intensifying our experience of cultural freedom by expanding our sense of the familiar into unfamiliar cultural scales. Through a semiotics of cultural adoption, we hope to be attuned to an openness and hospitality that romanticized ideologies of culture suppress. (shrink)

This article confronts the problems of establishing normative restrictive claims for delegitimizing conduct and attitudes of cultural appropriation. Using C. Thi Nguyen’s and Matthew Strhol’s intimacy account (IA) as a background, I offer an alternative of cultural adoption relying upon Alain Locke’s value theory and philosophical pluralism. The phenomenon of cultural adoption I propose develops some insights from Nguyen’s and Strohl’s IA, while critiquing their framework’s perceived limitations. By adding loyalty and intensity to the prerogatives of intimacy, the hope is (...) that a more nuanced approach to the ethical concerns of cultural adoption will be achieved. My contention is that Locke’s notions of a racial sense or kinship feeling provides stronger grounds for establishing an ethics of the passerby or what I will call non-intimate encounters. Next, I will argue that the interpersonal relations of groups cannot be interpreted as simple, but only as complex wholes. Instead of monoliths and exclusive binaries, we have to recognize variation within groups and learn to think in what Albert Murray calls “mulatto,” or a culture of novel hybrids. In the final section, I argue that Locke’s philosophy, broadly construed, operates as a contraceptive knowledge against the growing imperial apathy of populists and absolutists. We should work to abandon forms of political and epistemological violence by rejecting these forms of cultural abuse. It is my grand contention that human groups express in their differences a uniqueness that makes us distrust or admire and like each other. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing and underappreciated aspects of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy is his treatment of peace as a civilizational aim of culture. The problem of peace is the subject in the final chapter of Whitehead’s Adventures of Ideas. It is considered along with the other four qualities of civilized societies, “Adventure, Art, Beauty, and Truth.” Although his analysis is driven by examples from Western and Christian history, respectively, the treatment of peace developed is not limited to this or (...) any specific experiential epoch. Peace is a transcultural value, the “harmony of harmonies,” which lies at the heart or in the “nature of things.” Whitehead designates the permanence-flux contrast of peace in human life as a tension between the “dream of youth” and “harvest of tragedy.” Our lives give way to the dance of the possible and actual that both unites and divides us. This article explains how Whitehead attempts to argue for peace by way of “balanced intensity” in response to the triumphs and tribulations of life. Section one deals with the ways in which youth and eros symbolize possibility and orient us toward the possible. Tragedy, or the determination of the individual in its own subjective realization and the consequent nature it produces through the “unity of adventure,” is the focus of the second section. In section three, the erotic-tragic contrast is presented in relation to peace as an “intuition of permanence.” In conclusion, Whitehead’s humanism will be offered as a viable alternative against the modern belief of progress or the quest for worldly success, in which prosperity becomes antithetical to the achievement of peace given its propensity to evade or outrun tragedy. (shrink)

Preview: No shortage of bigotry and prejudice can be found around the world. But why race to the bottom and compete for a monopoly on tragedy in human mistreatment? The philosophy of race is an intricate piece to the study of language, art, history, and culture and wants to learn about elsewhere and distant others. How we go about understanding the issues of identity politics and what solidifies a community’s sense of purpose and mythic consciousness hinges upon our attitudes toward (...) cultures and ethno-racial relations. When it comes to the migrant crises, socio-economic conditions aggravating inequalities, or geo-political conflicts, for example, people’s premonitions about race largely inform how they respond to the demands for social justice. Tracing the trajectory from chattel slavery, the trail of tears, Jim Crow laws and lynchings, the civil rights movements, police brutality and profiling, to Black Lives Matter should we be believers or skeptics of racial progress? Our global ethnoscape and diasporic makeup is vast and complex. Due to this, studying race is emerging from the backwaters of academia and becoming an essential mode of inquiry, especially in African American philosophy and philosophy of culture. Similar to the “linguistic turn,” philosophy is undergoing a “racial turn” of sorts. Philosophy’s transdisciplinary nature is well-suited to examine this ethno-racial complexity, but has not lived up to its potential by failing to take more seriously the social disadvantages endured by underrepresented groups. In many ways, philosophy contributed to the dark history of grounding antiblack racism in biology, anthropology, the social sciences, and speculative metaphysics. Hence, it is vital that all practioners in our profession, especially philosophers of culture, work on behalf of reconciliation and atonement for such sins. Furthermore, confronting questions about racism and social justice will “improve philosophy” as Naomi Zack and others have argued. (shrink)

Bradley N. Seeman has argued that The End of Apologetics comes perilously close to what he calls “the idolatry of linguistic license.” Despite my recent reply, Seeman continues to have a few concerns about my position. I offer a clarification regarding my description of theological language as “poetics,” and argue that it is a way of acknowledging the contingency of all theological descriptions and vocabularies. I also counter Seeman’s insistence on trans-language game truth-makers by noting that it begs the central (...) issue of my “alethic quasi realism,” and argue that this is not a thoroughly deflated concept of truth. (shrink)

Andrew Shephardson contends in Who’s Afraid of the Unmoved Mover that the combined postmodern objections of Carl A. Raschke, James K. A. Smith, and me, to natural theology, fail. Here I focus only on the issue of idolatry and natural theology, as one way of demonstrating a fundamental inadequacy characteristic of Shephardson’s rebuttal of postmodern challenges to evangelical appropriations of natural theology. I argue that contrary to Shephardson’s contention, Acts 17 does not support evangelical appropriations of natural theology, but operates (...) with a view of reason consistent with my postmodern one and opens postmodern possibilities for understanding natural revelation. (shrink)

This study proposes a model that explains the ethical behavior of automobile salespeople in terms of their ethical perception, legal perception, method of compensation (commission-based or salary-based), age, and education. The model is estimated by using five scenarios that involve ethical issues commonly found in the automobile industry and responses from 184 automobile salespeople in a mid-Atlantic metropolitan area. The findings suggest that ethical perception is the most important determinant of ethical behavior. Also, method of compensation is a major determinant (...) in four of five scenarios, and legal perception in two out of five scenarios. However, age and education are not significantly related to ethical behavior. A discussion of the results, limitations, and implications is presented for managers. (shrink)

We review the evidence for the concept of the “initial” or prototype brain. We outline four possible modes of brain evolution suggested by our new findings on the evolutionary status of the dolphin brain. The four modes involve various forms of deviation from and conformity to the hypothesized initial brain type. These include examples of conservative evolution, progressive evolution, and combinations of the two in which features of one or the other become dominant. The four types of neocortical organization in (...) extant mammals may be the result of selective pressures on sensory/motor systems resulting in divergent patterns of brain phylogenesis. A modular “modification/multiplication” hypothesis is proposed as a mechanism of neocortical evolution in eutherians. Representative models of the initial ancestral group of mammals include not only extant basal Insectivora but also Chiroptera; we have found that dolphins and large whales have also retained many features of the archetypal or initial brain. This group evolved from the initial mammalian stock and returned to the aquatic environment some 50 million years ago. This unique experiment of nature shows the effects of radical changes in environment on brain-body adaptations and specializations. Although the dolphin brain has certain quantitative characteristics of the evolutionary changes seen in the higher terrestrial mammals, it has also retained many of the conservative structural features of the initial brain. Its neocortical organization is accordingly different, largely in a quantitative sense, from that of terrestrial models of the initial brain such as the hedgehog. (shrink)

We review the evidence for the concept of the “initial” or prototype brain. We outline four possible modes of brain evolution suggested by our new findings on the evolutionary status of the dolphin brain. The four modes involve various forms of deviation from and conformity to the hypothesized initial brain type. These include examples of conservative evolution, progressive evolution, and combinations of the two in which features of one or the other become dominant. The four types of neocortical organization in (...) extant mammals may be the result of selective pressures on sensory/motor systems resulting in divergent patterns of brain phylogenesis. A modular “modification/multiplication” hypothesis is proposed as a mechanism of neocortical evolution in eutherians. Representative models of the initial ancestral group of mammals include not only extant basal Insectivora but also Chiroptera; we have found that dolphins and large whales have also retained many features of the archetypal or initial brain. This group evolved from the initial mammalian stock and returned to the aquatic environment some 50 million years ago. This unique experiment of nature shows the effects of radical changes in environment on brain-body adaptations and specializations. Although the dolphin brain has certain quantitative characteristics of the evolutionary changes seen in the higher terrestrial mammals, it has also retained many of the conservative structural features of the initial brain. Its neocortical organization is accordingly different, largely in a quantitative sense, from that of terrestrial models of the initial brain such as the hedgehog. (shrink)

It is a common assumption in ethics that everyone is due equal access to basic human goods. In our modern society, at least since the French Revolution, healthcare is counted along with food, shelter, and security as such a basic good. Anyone suffering from a treatable life-threatening disease can therefore, be seen as having a prima facie claim on medical treatment.