This study explores the evolutionary-based hypothesis that facial attractiveness (a guiding force in mate selection) is a cue for physical fitness (presumably an important contributor to mate value in ancestral times). Since fluctuating asymmetry, a measure of developmental stability, is known to be a valid cue for fitness in several biological domains, we scrutinized facial asymmetry as a potential mediator between attractiveness and fitness. In our sample of young women, facial beauty indeed indicated physical fitness. The relationships that pertained to (...) asymmetry were in the expected direction. However, a closer analysis revealed that facial asymmetry did not mediate the relationship between fitness and attractiveness. Unexpected problems regarding the measurement of facial asymmetry are discussed. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Informed Consent in Medical Therapy and Research. By Bernard Barber.

One popular conception of natural theology holds that certain purely rational arguments are insulated from empirical inquiry and independently establish conclusions that provide evidence, justification, or proof of God’s existence. Yet, some raise suspicions that philosophers and theologians’ personal religious beliefs inappropriately affect these kinds of arguments. I present an experimental test of whether philosophers and theologians’ argument analysis is influenced by religious commitments. The empirical findings suggest religious belief affects philosophical analysis and offer a challenge to theists and atheists, (...) alike: reevaluate the scope of natural theology’s conclusions or acknowledge and begin to address the influence of religious belief. (shrink)

A new edition of the classic introduction to mathematics, first published in 1930 and revised in the 1950s, explains the history and tenets of mathematics, ...

One version of moral error theory maintains that the central problem with morality is an ontological commitment to irreducible normativity. This paper argues that this version of error theory ultimately depends on an appeal to Ockham’s Razor, and that Ockham’s Razor should not be applied to irreducible normativity. This is because the appeal to Ockham’s Razor always contains an intractable element of epistemic circularity; and if this circularity is not vicious, we can construct a sound argument for the existence of (...) irreducibly normative truths that contains a similar kind of epistemic circularity. This argument is a version of Pascal’s Wager which I call “Parfit’s Wager,” because it is based on a passage from Derek Parfit’s On What Matters. It states that, if we believe that there are some irreducibly normative truths, we are more likely to be believing what we ought to believe compared to not believing that there are such truths, and that this indicates that we ought rationally to believe that there are such truths, justifying the ontological commitment to irreducible normativity in the process. (shrink)

Drawing on natural history, theology and philosophy, this book retraces the shifting foundations of the order of things that characterizes the period between Descartes and Kant with respect to three questions: What is an animal?

The potential for biases being built into algorithms has been known for some time, yet literature has only recently demonstrated the ways algorithmic profiling can result in social sorting and harm marginalised groups. We contend that with increased algorithmic complexity, biases will become more sophisticated and difficult to identify, control for, or contest. Our argument has four steps: first, we show how harnessing algorithms means that data gathered at a particular place and time relating to specific persons, can be used (...) to build group models applied in different contexts to different persons. Thus, privacy and data protection rights, with their focus on individuals, do not protect from the discriminatory potential of algorithmic profiling. Second, we explore the idea that anti-discrimination regulation may be more promising, but acknowledge limitations. Third, we argue that in order to harness anti-discrimination regulation, it needs to confront emergent forms of discrimination or risk creating new invisibilities, including invisibility from existing safeguards. Finally, we outline suggestions to address emergent forms of discrimination and exclusionary invisibilities via intersectional and post-colonial analysis. (shrink)

Scholarship in experimental jurisprudence has reported surprising findings about various concepts of legal significance: _acting intentionally_, _causation_, _consent_, _knowledge, recklessness_, _reasonableness,_ and _law_ itself. Often, these studies examine laypeople’s ordinary concepts and draw broader conclusions about legal experts’ concepts. This Article questions such inferences, from empirical findings about ordinary concepts to conclusions about the concepts of those with legal expertise. It presents a case study concerning what it means to act _intentionally._ An experiment examines intentionality judgments across four populations (N (...) = 774): laypeople, law students, non-law students, and United States judges. Legal training affected judgments in three ways that are consistent with the acquisition of a distinctive legal concept. This case study supports the Article’s broader claim: Laypeople’s ordinary concepts are not equivalent to experts’ legal concepts. The acquisition of legal concepts is an important form of legal expertise. (shrink)

As I write, I hear that Dr. Jack Kevorluan has delivered another victim to the emergency room of his local Michigan hospital. Why do physicians and terminally ill patients feel we need to change the law with respect to assisted suicide when a rogue pathologist, who has been stripped of his medical license, is allowed to pursue his appetite for providing his clients with inhalation treatments of carbon monoxide gas? If no court will convict this outlaw, what makes the physicians (...) and patients who brought Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington and Quill v. Vacco fear that any court would ever convict a licensed physician of assisting in a suicide when he/she writes one of her established patients a prescription for a short-acting barbiturate? Moreover, it is not even clear that laws against assisted suicide in most jurisdictions were ever intended to apply to the actions of licensed physicians. Nonetheless, the plaintiffs in the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals were clearly seeking some kind of redress, some kind of protection from potential legal claims they feared might be made against them. (shrink)

As I write, I hear that Dr. Jack Kevorluan has delivered another victim to the emergency room of his local Michigan hospital. Why do physicians and terminally ill patients feel we need to change the law with respect to assisted suicide when a rogue pathologist, who has been stripped of his medical license, is allowed to pursue his appetite for providing his clients with inhalation treatments of carbon monoxide gas? If no court will convict this outlaw, what makes the physicians (...) and patients who brought Compassion in Dying v. State of Washington and Quill v. Vacco fear that any court would ever convict a licensed physician of assisting in a suicide when he/she writes one of her established patients a prescription for a short-acting barbiturate? Moreover, it is not even clear that laws against assisted suicide in most jurisdictions were ever intended to apply to the actions of licensed physicians. Nonetheless, the plaintiffs in the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals were clearly seeking some kind of redress, some kind of protection from potential legal claims they feared might be made against them. (shrink)

The article introduces and defends the Nomological Account of ground, a reductive account of the notion of metaphysical explanation in terms of the laws of metaphysics. The paper presents three desiderata that a theory of ground should meet: it should explain the modal force of ground, the generality of ground, and the interplay between ground and certain mereological notions. The bulk of the paper develops the Nomological Account and argues that it meets the three desiderata. The Nomological Account relies on (...) two central notions: the notion of a ‘law of metaphysics’ and the notion of ‘determination via the laws’. The paper offers the constructional conception of the laws of metaphysics, on which the metaphysical laws are general principles that characterize construction–operations such as composition, constitution, or set-formation. The role of determination in the account is explained and some reductive approaches to the notion are sketched. The case for the Nomological Account presented in this article is also a case for the laws of metaphysics. Since the Nomological Account offers a promising approach to metaphysical explanation we should take the laws of metaphysics seriously. (shrink)

From ‘connecting the dots’ and finding ‘the needle in the haystack’ to predictive policing and data mining for counterinsurgency, security professionals have increasingly adopted the language and methods of computing for the purposes of prediction. Digital devices and big data appear to offer answers to a wide array of problems of (in)security by promising insights into unknown futures. This article investigates the transformation of prediction today by placing it within governmental apparatuses of discipline, biopower and big data. Unlike disciplinary and (...) biopolitical governmentality, we argue that prediction with big data is underpinned by the production of a different time/space of ‘between-ness’. The digital mode of prediction with big data reconfigures how we are governed today, which we illustrate through an analysis of how predictive policing actualizes between-ness as hotspots and near-real-time decisions. (shrink)

The paper explores a deductive-nomological account of metaphysical explanation: some truths metaphysically explain, or ground, another truth just in case the laws of metaphysics determine the latter truth on the basis of the former. I develop and motivate a specific conception of metaphysical laws, on which they are general rules that regulate the existence and features of derivative entities. I propose an analysis of the notion of ‘determination via the laws’, based on a restricted form of logical entailment. I argue (...) that the DN-account of ground can be defended against the well-known objections to the DN-approach to scientific explanation. The goal of the paper is to show that the DN-account of metaphysical explanation is a well-motivated and defensible theory. (shrink)

This collection of vivid and eloquent testimonies by environmentalists, eco-theologians, and native peoples illustrates a variety of responses to the same universal question: Where are we as a species heading on this planet? Contributors include Rick Bass, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard. Gretel Ehrlich, Barry Lopez, Peter Mattheisen, Thomas Moore, Terry Tempest Williams, and others.

Obtaining informed consent from patients is a moral and legal duty and, thus, a key legitimation for medical treatment. The pivotal prerequisite for valid informed consent is decision-making capacity of the patient. Related to the question of whether and when consent should be morally and legally valid, there has been a long-lasting philosophical debate about freedom of will and the connection of freedom and responsibility. The scholarly discussion on decision-making capacity and its clinical evaluation does not sufficiently take into account (...) this fundamental debate. It is contended that the notion of free will must be reflected when evaluating decision-making capacity. Namely, it should be included as a part of the appreciation-criterion for decision-making capacity. The argumentation is mainly drawn on the compatibilism of Harry Frankfurt. A solution is proposed which at the same time takes the notion of free will seriously and enriches the traditional understanding of decision-making capacity, strengthening its justificatory force while remaining clinically applicable. (shrink)

In the recently published manuscript “The Argument against Need” (ca. 1963), Heidegger discusses the notion of being-in-itself (Ansichsein) with regard to entities that predate the existence of knowers. Section 1 introduces the problem of so-called “ancestral facts,” which Meillassoux and Boghossian have used to argue for a specific form of realism. Sections 2 identifies a specific understanding of time as the basis for their argument. Sections 3–4 show how Heidegger rejects this account of time. Section 5 describes the general form (...) of ontologies that deny entity independence (dependence ontology). Section 6 turns to Heidegger’s account of a resistance to ontological sense-making in what he calls “beingless” (seinlos) entities. Discussing work by Haugeland and Wrathall, I conclude in section 7 that Heidegger’s response to the “argument against need” is to reject the idea of unidirectional dependence in favor of a triadic interdependence between being, entities, and us. (shrink)

The Handbook of Value combines the forces of the many disciplines involved in value research, by integrating the perspectives of distinguished scholars from the different disciplines. Contributions cover conceptual issues such as definitions of value, psychological and neurological mechanisms underlying value computation and representation, types and taxonomies of value, interindividual and intercultural value differences, the role of value in emotion, moral judgment, decision-making and behavior, as well as case studies of individual varieties of value. The volume contributes to an interdisciplinary (...) dialogue and integration by providing a common reference point that may serve as a resource for disciplinary excellence and interdisciplinary cross-fertilization. (shrink)

This paper builds off the Our Data Ourselves research project, which examined ways of understanding and reclaiming the data that young people produce on smartphone devices. Here we explore the growing usage and centrality of mobiles in the lives of young people, questioning what data-making possibilities exist if users can either uncover and/or capture what data controllers such as Facebook monetize and share about themselves with third-parties. We outline the MobileMiner, an app we created to consider how gaining access to (...) one’s own data not only augments the agency of the individual but of the collective user. Finally, we discuss the data making that transpired during our hackathon. Such interventions in the enclosed processes of datafication are meant as a preliminary investigation into the possibilities that arise when young people are given back the data which they are normally structurally precluded from accessing. (shrink)

Developmental, epidemiological, and neurobiological studies indicate that the adaptive and maladaptive functions, as well as immediate and long-term consequences of drug use, may vary by age. Early initiation seems to be associated with a reduced ability to use drugs purposely in a temporally stable, non-addictive manner. Prevention strategies should consider social environmental factors and aim to delay age at initiation.

Are acts of violence performed in virtual environments ever morally wrong, even when no other persons are affected? While some such acts surely reflect deficient moral character, I focus on the moral rightness or wrongness of acts. Typically it’s thought that, on Kant’s moral theory, an act of virtual violence is morally wrong (i.e., violate the Categorical Imperative) only if the act mistreats another person. But I argue that, on Kant’s moral theory, some acts of virtual violence can be morally (...) wrong, even when no other persons or their avatars are affected. First, I explain why many have thought that, in general on Kant’s moral theory, virtual acts affecting no other persons or their avatars can’t violate the Categorical Imperative. For there are real world acts that clearly do, but it seems that when we consider the same sorts of acts done alone in a virtual environment, they don’t violate the Categorical Imperative, because no others persons were involved. But then, how could any virtual acts like these, that affect no other persons or their avatars, violate the Categorical Imperative? I then argue that there indeed can be such cases of morally wrong virtual acts—some due to an actor’s having erroneous beliefs about morally relevant facts, and others due not to error, but to the actor’s intention leaving out morally relevant facts while immersed in a virtual environment. I conclude by considering some implications of my arguments for both our present technological context as well as the future. (shrink)

We introduce several new variants of the dice experiment by Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi :525–547, 2013) to investigate measures to reduce lying. Hypotheses on the relative performance of these treatments are derived from a straightforward theoretical model. In line with previous research, we find that groups of two subjects lied at least to the same extent as individuals—even in a novel treatment where we assigned to one subject the role of being the other’s monitor. However, we find that our participants hardly (...) lied if they do not benefit and only others do, even if they were in a reciprocal relationship. Thus, we conclude that collaboration on lying mostly happens for personal gain. To mitigate selfish lying, an honesty oath which aims to increase moral awareness turned out to be effective. (shrink)

Appraisal and constructivist theories of emotion both emphasize that emotions are not modular phenomena, but are constructed from more basic psychological parts. In the scientific debate, differences between the two approaches are sometimes overplayed, by classifying appraisal theories as “natural kinds” models, and sometimes underplayed, by basically merging them into constructivist accounts. The aim of this contribution is to illustrate some similarities and some differences between contemporary appraisal and constructivist approaches, and to highlight the fact that appraisal theory has indeed (...) already confronted the idea of construction in the elicitation of emotion. In doing so, I want to argue that, while there is a distinction between appraisal and constructivist camps, it is not as stark as one might think, even though the names of the “ingredients” of emotions may differ. (shrink)

This article will explore the relation of search engines to the freedom they invoke in human subjects. Away from questions about the social impact of search engines and their ethical use, it shall investigate the influence of search engines on ethical subjectifications. The article will criticise the common critique that search engines should only deliver neutral and objective results to their users, where ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ are defined as anti-subjective. On the contrary, it will argue that search engines are designed (...) to deliver subjective results. A possible ethical critique starts therefore where they fail to do so. Due to reasons immanent to the technology, search engines are never subjective enough in their relevance decisions. Their results collide at the same time with what their users expect them to deliver. The article will show that, far from being a disadvantage, this disagreement between the users’ expectations and the search engines results is what triggers an ethical subjectification. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Nostalgia serves as a guide to the complex and often contradictory concept of nostalgia, as well as the field of "nostalgia studies" more broadly. Nostalgia is an area of intense interest across several disciplines as well as within society and culture more generally. This handbook brings together an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers to survey the current landscape and identify common trends, achievements and gaps in existing literature. Comprising forty-five chapters, the volume covers the following topics: (...) Disciplinary perspectives of nostalgias including philosophy, history, literature, and psychology. Conceptual aspects of nostalgia including homesickness, temporality, affectivity, and memory. Historical and political dimensions such as afro-nostalgia, populism, feminism, and queer nostalgia. Spatial and material aspects of nostalgia including ruins, regionalism, and objects. Media related nostalgia such as analogue and digital nostalgia, reboots, revivals, gaming, and graphic novels. Essential reading for students and researchers working in nostalgia studies, this book will also be beneficial to related disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, geography, history and literature; cultural, media, heritage, museum and film studies courses; and more generally for readers interested in how the past is represented and used in the present. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant famously claims that we have an a priori intuition of space as an ‘infinite given magnitude’. Later on, in the Transcendental Analytic, he seems to add that the intuition of space presupposes a synthetic activity of the transcendental imagination. Several authors have recently pointed out that these two claims taken together give rise to two problems. First, it is unclear how the transcendental imagination of a finite mind could (...) ever result in the intuition of an entity that is infinitely large. Second, Kant claims that our intuition of space has a ‘whole-prior-to-its-parts’ structure, such that its parts are given only as limitations of the whole, while synthesis is compositional and has a ‘parts-prior-to-their-whole’ structure, because it consists in first running through and then taking together the parts of a sensible manifold. I will solve these two problems by showing that Kant thought that synthesis does not always have a compositional structure but that there is also a form of ‘decomposing’ synthesis, which has a whole-prior-to-its-parts structure. Building on similarities between Kant, Edmund Husserl and G. W. F. Hegel, I will argue that infinite space is given to us in intuition by precisely such an activity of decomposition, one that allows us to differentiate between finite spatial objects and the unlimited phenomenal horizon in which they appear. (shrink)

The Snowden revelations and the emergence of ‘Big Data’ have rekindled questions about how security practices are deployed in a digital age and with what political effects. While critical scholars have drawn attention to the social, political and legal challenges to these practices, the debates in computer and information science have received less analytical attention. This paper proposes to take seriously the critical knowledge developed in information and computer science and reinterpret their debates to develop a critical intervention into the (...) public controversies concerning data-driven security and digital surveillance. The paper offers a two-pronged contribution: on the one hand, we challenge the credibility of security professionals’ discourses in light of the knowledge that they supposedly mobilize; on the other, we argue for a series of conceptual moves around data, human–computer relations, and algorithms to address some of the limitations of existing engagements with the Big Data-security assemblage. (shrink)

Would there be possibles if God did not exist? The interpretative impasse on this point has been mainly due to the failure to recognize an ambiguity in Scotus’s terminology. “Possibilia” are (1) the eidetic natures of things or (2) the possibility for a creature to exist. In this paper I argue that Scotus denies that God is responsible for giving things the possibility of existence. In this sense, possibles do not depend on God. Yet I also argue that according to (...) Scotus, only God can originate the eidetic natures of creatures, i.e., the natures of which possibility is predicated. If God did not exist, there would be no possibles, because there would be no eidetic natures and thus no subjects of which possibility could be affirmed. What leads Scotus to this view are not so much considerations pertaining to modal logic but rather epistemological concerns. (shrink)