Epigenetics impacts gene–culture coevolution by amplifying phenotypic variation, including clustering, and bridging the difference in timescales between genetic and cultural evolution. The dual inheritance model described by Uchiyama et al. could be modified to provide greater explanatory power by incorporating epigenetic effects.

This collection of original essays--by philosophers of biology, biologists, and cognitive scientists--provides a wide range of perspectives on species. Including contributions from David Hull, John Dupre, David Nanney, Kevin de Queiroz, and Kim Sterelny, amongst others, this book has become especially well-known for the three essays it contains on the homeostatic property cluster view of natural kinds, papers by Richard Boyd, Paul Griffiths, and Robert A. Wilson.

This book offers the first sustained critique of individualism in psychology, a view that has been the subject of debate between philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Tyler Burge for many years. The author approaches individualism as an issue in the philosophy of science and by discussing issues such as computationalism and the mind's modularity he opens the subject up for non-philosophers in psychology and computer science. Professor Wilson carefully examines the most influential arguments for individualism and identifies the main (...) metaphysical assumptions underlying them. Since the topic is so central to the philosophy of mind, a discipline generating enormous research and debate at present, the book has implications for a very broad range of philosophical issues including the naturalisation of intentionality, psychophysical supervenience, the nature of mental causation, and the viability of folk psychology. (shrink)

"Amongst the human mind's proudest accomplishments is the invention of a science dedicated to understanding itself: cognitive science. ... This volume is an authoritative guide to this exhilarating new body of knowledge, written by the experts, edited with skill and good judment. If we were to leave a time capsule for the next millennium with records of the great achievements of civilization, this volume would have to be in it."--Steven Pinker.

This article provides an account of the value of privacy in securing the republican aims of self-government and conditions of non-domination. It describes how loss of privacy might lead to subjugation to dominating power. The republican concept of domination provides the foundation of a broad and coherent account of the value of privacy. One that encompasses circumstances in which the subject suffers interference as a result of the loss, is aware that he has suffered a loss of privacy, but suffers (...) no subsequent interference and is unaware that he has suffered any loss of privacy, and suffers no subsequent interference. Liberal accounts explain the value of privacy in the first two circumstances by pointing to the possible effect of the loss on the autonomy of the subject, but because they focus on autonomy are unable to explain why privacy is valuable where an agent is unaware of the loss. The republican account provided here explains why loss is harmful in all three circumstances. The final part of the article argues that because privacy is a pre-requisite for effective participation in political life, and republicans consider such participation to be the essence of self-government and the means through which a polity can secure conditions of freedom, in a republican democracy individual privacy will be seen as a collective good. (shrink)

Motherese is a form of affective prosody injected automatically into speech during caregiving solicitude. Affective prosody is the aspect of language that conveys emotion by changes in tone, rhythm, and emphasis during speech. It is a neocortical function that allows graded, highly varied vocal emotional expression. Other mammals have only rigid, species-specific, limbic vocalizations. Thus, encephalization with corticalization is necessary for the evolution of progressively complex vocal emotional displays.

Over the last few decades, there has been a push towards evidence-based medicine, with the medical fraternity recognising and embracing the improved outcomes brought about by this approach. Central to this is the ability of healthcare professionals across all levels to be able to understand and undertake scientifically sound efforts to gather and learn from this evidence. This can be on a local level, for example departmental audits, or on a national or international level, as is the case with large (...) randomised controlled trials. Unfortunately, although academic medicine topics such as research and teaching are often discussed and taught at medical schools - many of which are at the forefront of international research efforts - medical students and junior doctors rarely get the chance to participate in any real-world studies, or indeed critique any practice changing studies in a meaningful way for themselves. The situation in regard to teaching is similar. Peer to peer teaching opportunities may be limited to self-arranged sessions with little to no guidance or formal training in how to do this key task, which will be crucial for the rest of one's career. This is despite these activities being recognised as essential by undergraduate and post-graduate educators. In fact, they are a key part of selection for postgraduate employment. Candidates that demonstrate awareness of and proficiency with research and other academic activities such as teaching are highly sought after. However, many candidates, particularly those who don't take time out of their undergraduate programmes or pursue a higher degree, tend not to have had the exposure and opportunities to engage with these academic activities as students and junior healthcare professionals. Many will have never undertaken any formal research or teaching during this time. Furthermore, we have found that many students with an interest in medical research don't have the skills and experience required to get started, and may lack mentors and senior colleagues with the time, interest or experience to help them. (shrink)

Philosophers have proposed many accounts of biological function. A coarse-grained distinction can be made between backward-looking views, which emphasise historical contributions to fitness, and forward-looking views, which emphasise the current contribution to fitness or role of a biological component within some larger system. These two views are often framed as being incompatible and conflicting with one another. The emerging field of synthetic biology, which involves applying engineering principles to the design and construction of biological systems, complicates things further by adding (...) intentional design as a source of function. In the current study we explored how biology experts and novices think about function in the context of single-celled, multi-celled, and synthetic organisms. We also explored the extent to which each group were function pluralists, and if they were function pluralists, which accounts of function tended to be endorsed together. The results showed a surprising degree of similarity between experts and novices in most contexts, although certain differences were apparent. Most surprisingly, we found evidence not only of function pluralism in both groups, but pluralism between backward-looking and forward-looking accounts. We discuss these findings in the context of the philosophical debate on function and consider the practical implications for public acceptance of synthetic biology. First, we argue that philosophers of biology should re-examine the purported incompatibility between accounts of function. Second, we argue that due to the introduction of an intentional aetiology in synthetic biology, there may be an inherent conflict between the views of experts and novices when thinking about synthetic biology. (shrink)

Individualism in psychology is the view that mental states must be individuated so as to be intrinsic to particular individuals. This view has been thought to impose an intuitive and plausible constraint on explanation in psychology. The dissertation is a sustained examination of individualism, especially with respect to its role in psychological explanation. My particular interest is in showing that individualism is not a constraint on psychology which follows from either psychology's scientific nature, or from the nature of causation or (...) materialism. ;Apart from an extended introduction in which I explain why individualism is both a substantive and plausible constraint on taxonomy and explanation in psychology, the dissertation has three parts. The aim of Part One is to reconstruct and critically discuss three influential, recent arguments for individualism: an a priori argument , a empirical argument , and a methodological argument. I argue that each of these arguments is unsound and should be rejected. In an Appendix to Chapter 2 I argue that individualism does not follow from the causal theory of properties. ;In Part Two I turn to examine individualism itself. The aim of this part of the dissertation is to address the view that psychological kinds and explanations which are not individualistic cannot be part of an adequate account of mental causation. Chapter 5 both responds to particular charges that have been made about denials of individualism, and articulates and criticizes a central intuition about the local nature of causation from which individualism has sometimes been thought to follow. Chapter 6 focusses on folk psychology and attempts to show how one can view folk psychological explanation as unproblematically causal even though it is not individualistic. ;In Part Three I develop a core case against individualism using the concepts of causal depth and theoretical appropriateness, concepts which form the basis for two constraints on good causal explanations. I argue that individualism should be rejected because individualistic explanations of behavior, including individualistic psychological explanations, are not always the causally deepest or most theoretically appropriate explanations available. (shrink)

Ethical cultures, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and sustainability strategies are increasingly being addressed through formal organisational policies and structures. This is evidenced by codes of ethics, conduct, whistle-blowing reporting lines, anti-bribery and corruption policies, and broader stakeholder and environmental engagement strategies. In the United States, corporate ethics managers are responsible for these functions, supported by specific professional and university-level qualifications. However, this is not the case in Australia and Asia where the role appears delegated to human resource personnel in organisations. (...) Human resource management (HRM) is increasingly advanced as a formal profession, yet whether corporate ethics content features as a significant component of the HRM profession is unclear. Expert knowledge is a foundation of a profession along with the duty to act within the limits of that knowledge and expertise. This paper scopes what constitutes professional expert knowledge. It examines corporate ethics expertise and HRM within this context. Major Australian and Asian organisations are examined to verify that HRM Departments, and thus HRM practitioners, are responsible for managing corporate ethics. Given the seniority and strategic importance of this function, the content of selected Masters in HRM and related fields are examined to identify the extent of ethics content. This is considered in the light of the expertise required to manage corporate ethics, and conclusions are drawn whether the HRM discipline is appropriately qualified to manage this function. Finally, recommendations and further research towards advancing the role and function of corporate ethics managers in general are proposed. (shrink)

A controversial claim in recent dual process accounts of reasoning is that intuitive processes not only lead to bias but are also sensitive to the logical status of an argument. The intuitive logic hypothesis draws upon evidence that reasoners take longer and are less confident on belief–logic conflict problems, irrespective of whether they give the correct logical response. In this paper, we examine conflict detection under conditions in which participants are asked to either judge the logical validity or believability of (...) a presented conclusion, accompanied by measures of eye movement and pupil dilation. The findings show an effect of conflict, under both types of instruction, on accuracy, latency, gaze shifts, and pupil dilation. Importantly, these effects extend to conflict trials in which participants give a belief‐based response (incorrectly under logic instructions or correctly under belief instructions) demonstrating both behavioral and physiological evidence in support of the logical intuition hypothesis. (shrink)

This article deals with one aspect of imparting criminal justice in the context of various objective and subjective determiners. It provides some indication of the breadth, quality, and value of the empirical research work that has been conducted in this area of the law. It considers the pervasive influence of two broad issues—efficiency and security—on decision-making in criminal justice systems across various jurisdictions. It illustrates the contingent nature of the criminal process and discusses the social and political issues, the institutions (...) of the criminal justice system, legal doctrine, policies, and working practices which are the product of complex reflexive relationships. The frame includes the subjective aspects of the decision-maker, his behavioral subjectivity and the prism through which he perceives the matter at hand. This article ends by suggesting a pressing need for empirical research that reveals how policy and practice are influenced by these concepts. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that is of (...) particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 40-41, July 2012.

The living mycelium networks are capable of efficient sensorial fusion over very large areas and distributed decision making. The information processing in the mycelium networks is implemented via propagation of electrical and chemical signals en pair with morphological changes in the mycelium structure. These information processing mechanisms are manifested in experimental laboratory findings that show that the mycelium networks exhibit rich dynamics of neuron-like spiking behaviour and a wide range of non-linear electrical properties. On an example of a single real (...) colony of _Aspergillus niger_, we demonstrate that the non-linear transformation of electrical signals and trains of extracellular voltage spikes can be used to implement logical gates and circuits. The approaches adopted include numerical modelling of excitation propagation on the mycelium network, representation of the mycelium network as a resistive and capacitive network and an experimental laboratory study on mining logical circuits in mycelium bound composites. (shrink)

Aggleton & Brown argue that a hippocampal-anterior thalamic system supports the “recollection” of contextual information about previous events, and that a separate perirhinal-medial dorsal thalamic system supports detection of stimulus “familiarity.” Although there is a growing body of human literature that is in agreement with these claims, when recollection and familiarity have been examined in amnesics using the process dissociation or the remember/know procedures, the results do not seem to provide consistent support. We reexamine these studies and describe the results (...) of an additional experiment using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) technique. The results of the reanalysis and the ROC experiment are consistent with Aggleton & Brown's proposal. Patients with damage to both regions exhibit severe deficits in recollection and smaller, but consistent, deficits in familiarity. (shrink)

Originally published in 1989 Liberal Neutrality approaches the recommendation of neutrality by confronting the abstract prescription (that we should be neutral) with the implications for particular people and institutions. This not only identifies what neutrality involves logically, but also exposes the practical difficulties that may be encountered in pursuing it. In some cases, such close examination shows that neutrality is not desirable, and in others that it is attainable only within certain limits. Although neutrality has become a fashionable term in (...) political theory, this is the only volume to subject the idea to systematic scrutiny. It will be useful not only to specialists in diverse disciplines - political scientists, philosophers, sociologists, lawyers and educationalists. (shrink)

A reply to contemporary skepticism about intuitions and a priori knowledge, and a defense of neo-rationalism from a contemporary Kantian standpoint, focusing on the theory of rational intuitions and on solving the two core problems of justifying and explaining them.

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

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that developments in transhumanist technologies may have upon human cultures (and thus upon the lifeworld), and to do so by exploring a potential debate between Habermas and the transhumanists. Transhumanists, such as Nick Bostrom, typically see the potential in genetic and other technologies for positively expanding and transcending human nature. In contrast, Habermas is a representative of those who are fearful of this technology, suggesting that it will compound the deleterious (...) effects of the colonisation of the lifeworld, further constraining human autonomy and undermining the meaningfulness of the lifeworld by expanding the technological control and manipulation of humanity. It will be argued that these opposed positions are grounded in fundamentally different understandings of the consequences of scientific and technological advance. On one level, the transhumanists remain confident that the lifeworld has within it the resources necessary to find meaning and purpose in a society deeply infused by genetic technology. Habermas disagrees. On another level, the difference is articulated by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, primarily by challenging what may be understood as a Baconian faith in science as a project for the domination of nature (where nature is an infinitely malleable material, to be dominated and shaped, without adverse consequences, purely for the purposes of human survival). While the transhumanists broadly embrace this faith, Habermas returns to something akin to Horkheimer and Adorno’s pessimistic scepticism. (shrink)

A new kind of debate about the normative error theory has emerged. Whereas longstanding debates have fixed on the error theory’s plausibility, this new debate concerns the theory’s believability. Bart Streumer is the chief proponent of the error theory’s unbelievability. In this brief essay, we argue that Streumer’s argument prevails against extant critiques, and then press a criticism of our own.