The article argues that Marx’s use of the concept of ideology in The German Ideology is incidental to a sustained critique of how those he described as the German ideologists think and reason about society and history and that this critique is not simply of an idealist theory that represents society and history as determined by consciousness but of methods of reasoning that treat concepts, even of those of political economy, as determinants. His view of how consciousness is determined historically (...) by our social being does not envisage some kind of mechanical transfer of class status to class consciousness. Rather, he works with an epistemology that takes the concepts foundational to political economy as expressions or reflections of the social relations of a mode of production. The difference between ideology and science is the difference between treating those concepts as the primitives of theory and treating them as sites for exploring the social relations that are expressed in them. Thus, the historical rather than further undermining claims to knowledge, provides both the conditions under which knowledge is possible and its limitations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:328 HUME, MIRACLES AND LOTTERIES This paper addresses recent criticisms of Hume's skepticism with regard to miracles, by 1 2 Sorensen and Hambourger who argue that there are counterexamples, illustrated by lotteries, to Hume's account of how the truth of reports of improbable events (either first or second hand) must be evaluated. They believe these counterexamples are sufficient to prove that Hume's argument against the believability of miracles, defined (...) as violations of laws of nature caused by God, is unsound. Their arguments merit consideration not only in their own right but also on the basis of historical precedent, since they have in common an assumption that is found in Butler's criticism of Hume's predecessors in this debate. The bulk of my paper deals with Hambourger, who presents the most detailed version of the 'Butler' criticism. Sorensen's version can be answered in light of the evaluation of Hambourger 's argument. Hume's Argument Hume's argument is not against the possibility of miracles but against the possibility that it could ever be reasonable to believe a miracle 4 had occurred. His argument can be summed up as follows: in judging the credibility of a report of an improbable event, the probability of the event must be weighed against the probability that the report could be mistaken. The probability of an event is determined by the degree to which it conforms to known laws of nature. Laws of nature are formulated on the basis of uniform experience. Assuming that a miracle is a violation of laws of nature, any judgment that an event is miraculous presupposes a 329 judgment that there exists a uniform pattern of causation to which it is opposed, which pattern would constitute empirical proof against the miracle's occurrence. Testimony, on the other hand, is shown by experience not to be uniformly reliable. Consequently, no report of a miracle will have credibility since there will always be a uniform experience that is full proof against it, which therefore outweighs whatever merits testimony may have. In Hume's words, [N]o testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.... When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened.... If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till- then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion (E 115-116). Hambourger 's Criticism Hambourger maintains that Hume's argument depends on a principle which he calls the "principle of relative likelihood." He restates this principle as follows: Suppose that someone or, perhaps, a group of people testify to the truth of a proposition P that, considered by itself, is improbable. Then to evaluate the testimony, one must weight (sic) the probability that P is true against the probability that the informants are lying or mistaken. If it is more likely that P is true than that the informants are lying or mistaken, then, on balance, the 330 testimony renders P more likely than not, and it may be reasonable for one to believe that P. However, if it is as likely, or even more likely, that the informants are lying or mistaken than it is that P is true, then, on balance, the testimony does not render P more likely true than false, and it would not be,reasonable for one to believe that P. As a counterexample to this principle, Hambourger asks us to suppose that a lottery is held in which there are one million entrants, each of whom has a one in a million chance of winning, and that a reliable newspaper, the New York Times, reports that the winner of the lottery is Smith. He further asks us to suppose that the Times errs only once out of every 10,000 times. Thus, the probability that the Times ' report is wrong is... (shrink)

Introduction, W G Runciman Social Evolution in Primates: The Role of Ecological Factors and Male Behaviour, Carel P van Schaik Determinants of Group Size in Primates: A General Model, R I M Dunbar Function and Intention in the Calls of Non-Human Primates, Dorothy L Cheney & Robert M Seyfarth Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare, Robert Boyd & Peter J Richerson An Evolutionary and Chronological Framework for Human Social Behaviour, Robert A Foley Friendship and the Banker?s (...) Paradox: Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides The Early Prehistory of Human Social Behaviour: Issues of Archaeological Inference and Cognitive Evolution, Steven Mithen The Emergence of Biologically Modern Populations in Europe: A Social and Cognitive ?Revolution??, Paul Mellars Responses to Environmental Novelty: Changes in Men?s Marriage Strategies in a Rural Kenyan Community, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder Genetic Language Impairment: Unruly Grammars, M Gopnik, J Dalalakis, S E Fukuda, S Fukuda & E Kehayia The Emergence of Cultures among Wild Chimpanzees, Christophe Boesch Terrestriality, Bipedalism and the Origin of Language, Leslie C Aiello Conclusions, John Maynard Smith. (shrink)

Computer and video games have become nearly ubiquitous among individuals in industrialized nations, and they have received increasing attention from researchers across many areas of scientific study. However, relatively little attention has been given to Massively-Multiplayer Online Games . The unique social context of MMOGs raises ethical questions about how communication occurs and how conflict is managed in the game world. In order to explore these questions, we compare the social context in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft and Disney’s Toontown, focusing (...) on griefing opportunities in each game. We consider ethical questions from the perspectives of players, game companies, and policymakers. (shrink)

This chapter provides a historical reconstruction of how Alfred Schutz’s American writings were critically engaged by the feminist sociologists Dorothy E. Smith and Patricia Hill Collins. Schutz’s articulation of a phenomenological sociology in relation to, among others, the sociology of Talcott Parsons and the philosophies of science of Ernest Nagel and Carl G. Hempel proved fruitful to Smith in the development of her feminist standpoint theory in her 1987 The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology. Collins (...) likewise draws on Schutz’s writing in the development of her own standpoint theory in her 1986 paper “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought,” but in a way that addresses some of her own concerns with Smith’s feminist sociology. As I hope to show with the recovery of this underappreciated history, the critical insights of Smith and Collins with regard to the possible uses and limits of phenomenology for feminist theorizing, are still valuable today. (shrink)

Public discourse on race-specific medicine typically erects a wall between the scientific use of race as a biological category and the ideological battle over race as a social identity. Scientists often address the potential for these therapeutics to reinforce a damaging understanding of “race” with precautions for using them rather than questioning their very development. For example, Esteban Gonzalez Burchard, an associate professor of medicine and biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, states, “We do see racial differences (...) between populations and shouldn’t just close our eyes. Unfortunately, race is a politically charged topic, and there will be evildoers. But the fear should not outweigh the benefit of looking.” Although it is recognized that ideology influences thesocialmeaning of race, it is usually assumed that there is a separate, prior scientific understanding of race that is not contaminated by politics. (shrink)

Public discourse on race-specific medicine typically erects a wall between the scientific use of race as a biological category and the ideological battle over race as a social identity. Scientists often address the potential for these therapeutics to reinforce a damaging understanding of “race” with precautions for using them rather than questioning their very development. For example, Esteban Gonzalez Burchard, an associate professor of medicine and biopharmaceutical sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, states, “We do see racial differences (...) between populations and shouldn’t just close our eyes. Unfortunately, race is a politically charged topic, and there will be evildoers. But the fear should not outweigh the benefit of looking.” Although it is recognized that ideology influences thesocialmeaning of race, it is usually assumed that there is a separate, prior scientific understanding of race that is not contaminated by politics. (shrink)

The scientific validity of racial categories has been the subject of debate among population geneticists, evolutionary biologists, and physical anthropologists for several decades. After World War II, the rejection of eugenics, which had supported sterilization laws and other destructive programs in the United States, generated a compelling critique of the biological basis of race. The classification of human beings into distinct biological “races” is a relatively recent invention propped up by deeply flawed evidence and historically providing the foundation of racist (...) ideology and inequities of power. Social scientists’ conclusion that race is socially constructed was confirmed by genomic studies of human variation, including the Human Genome Project, showing high levels of genetic similarity within the human species. Some scholars came to believe that the science of human genetic diversity would replace race as the preeminent means of grouping people for scientific purposes. (shrink)

This article addresses three questions concerning the legal regulation of the use of race as a category in biomedical research: how does the law currently encourage the use of race in biomedical research?; how might the existing legal framework constrain its use?; and what should be the law's approach to race-based biomedical research? It proposes a social justice approach that aims to promote racial equality by discouraging the use of “race” as a biological category while encouraging its use as a (...) socio-political category to understand and investigate ways to eliminate disparities in health status, access to health care, and medical treatment. (shrink)

In this article I argue that evolutionary psychological strategies for making inferences about present-day human psychology are methodologically unsound. Evolutionary psychology is committed to the view that the mind has an architecture that has been conserved since the Pleistocene, and that our psychology can be fruitfully understood in terms of the original, fitness-enhancing functions of these conserved psychological mechanisms. But for evolutionary psychological explanations to succeed, practitioners must be able to show that contemporary cognitive mechanisms correspond to those that were (...) selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, that these present-day cognitive mechanisms are descended from the corresponding ancestral mechanisms, and that they have retained the functions of the ancestral mechanisms from which they are descended. I refer to the problem of demonstrating that these conditions obtain as “the matching problem,” argue that evolutionary psychology does not have the resources to address it, and conclude that evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is therefore impossible. (shrink)

Pandemic plans are increasingly attending to groups experiencing health disparities and other social vulnerabilities. Although some pandemic guidance is silent on the issue, guidance that attends to socially vulnerable groups ranges widely, some procedural (often calling for public engagement), and some substantive. Public engagement objectives vary from merely educational to seeking reflective input into the ethical commitments that should guide pandemic planning and response. Some plans that concern rationing during a severe pandemic recommend ways to protect socially vulnerable groups without (...) prioritizing access to scarce resources based on social vulnerability per se. The Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project (MPEP), a public engagement project on rationing scarce health resources during a severe influenza pandemic, agrees and recommends an integrated set of ways to attend to the needs of socially vulnerable people and avoid exacerbation of health disparities during a severe influenza pandemic. Among other things, MPEP recommends: 1. Engaging socially vulnerable populations to clarify unique needs and effective strategies; 2. Engaging socially vulnerable populations to elicit ethical values and perspectives on rationing; 3. Rejecting rationing based on race, socioeconomic class, citizenship, quality of life, length of life-extension and first-come, first-served; 4. Prioritizing those in the general population for access to resources based on combinations of risk (of death or severe complications from influenza, exposure to influenza, transmitting influenza to vulnerable groups) and the likelihood of responding well to the resource in question. 5. Protecting critical infrastructures on which vulnerable populations and the general public rely; 6. Identifying and removing access barriers during pandemic planning and response; and 7. Collecting and promptly analyzing data during the pandemic to identify groups at disproportionate risk of influenza-related mortality and serious morbidity and to optimize the distribution of resources. (shrink)

Withholding or withdrawing life-saving ventilators can become necessary when resources are insufficient. In the USA, such rationing has unique social justice dimensions. Structural elements of dominant allocation frameworks simultaneously advantage white communities, and disadvantage Black communities—who already experience a disproportionate burden of COVID-19-related job losses, hospitalisations and mortality. Using the example of New Jersey’s Crisis Standard of Care policy, we describe how dominant rationing guidance compounds for many Black patients prior unfair structural disadvantage, chiefly due to the way creatinine and (...) life expectancy are typically considered.We outline six possible policy options towards a more just approach: improving diversity in decision processes, adjusting creatinine scores, replacing creatinine, dropping creatinine, finding alternative measures, adding equity weights and rejecting the dominant model altogether. We also contrast these options with making no changes, which is not a neutral default, but in separate need of justification, despite a prominent claim that it is simply based on ‘objective medical knowledge’. In the regrettable absence of fair federal guidance, hospital and state-level policymakers should reflect on which of these, or further options, seem feasible and justifiable.Irrespective of which approach is taken, all guidance should be supplemented with a monitoring and reporting requirement on possible disparate impacts. The hope that we will be able to continue to avoid rationing ventilators must not stand in the way of revising guidance in a way that better promotes health equity and racial justice, both to be prepared, and given the significant expressive value of ventilator guidance. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of what organisms are and therefore what kinds of biological entities qualify as organisms. For some time now, the concept of organismality has been eclipsed by the notion of individuality. Biological individuals are those systems that are units of selection. I develop a conception of organismality that does not rely on evolutionary considerations, but instead draws on development and ecology. On this account, organismality and individuality can come apart. Organisms, in my view, are as Godfrey- (...) class='Hi'>Smith puts it “essentially persisters.” I argue that persistence is underpinned by differentiation, integration, development, and the constitutive embeddedness of organisms in their worlds. I examine two marginal cases, the Portuguese Man O’ War and the honey bee colony, and show that both count as organisms in light of my analysis. Next, I examine the case of holobionts, hosts plus their microsymbionts, and argue that they can be counted as organisms even though they may not be biological individuals. Finally, I consider the question of whether other, less tightly integrated biological systems might also be treated as organisms. (shrink)

Although Paton depends for his materials on virtually all of Kant's writings on moral philosophy, he makes the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten central to his analysis. This is a wise choice and one that is defensible since Paton has set for himself the task of elucidating the categorical imperative and it is in the Grundlegung that Kant sought to grasp the supreme principle of morality and its appearance to us as a categorical imperative. Despite the fact that, as the (...) author points out on many occasions, the Grundlegung neither stresses morality from the standpoint of action, nor does it deal in detail with many significant problems, it must nevertheless always be looked upon as central to Kant's ethics just because it does deal with the supreme principle as a categorical imperative. The seemingly more authoritative Critique of Practical Reason is more definitely concerned with the larger subject of reason in its practical employment and does not deal as directly with Paton's special concern as the Grundlegung does. (shrink)