Homology is a biological sameness relation that is purported to hold in the face of changes in form, composition, and function. In spite of the centrality and importance of homology, there is no consensus on how we should understand this concept. The two leading views of homology, the genealogical and developmental accounts, have significant shortcomings. We propose a new account, the hierarchical-dependency account of homology, which avoids these shortcomings. Furthermore, our account provides for continuity between special, general, and serial homology.

How should we understand the relationship, for Aristotle, between matter, form, and hylomorphic composite? Are matter and form distinct from each other, so that each hylomorphic unity harbours a plurality within it, or would such a plurality undermine the unity of the composite? A recent strand of argument in both Aristotelian and contemporary literature on hylomorphism has concluded that no genuine unity can be composed of a plurality. I will argue that the objection motivating this conclusion falls away as improperly (...) formulated in light of Aristotle's metaontology—in particular, his thesis that unity is indeterminate. The genuine objection threatening hylomorphic unity is one that Aristotle himself formulates as a central concern in his Metaphysics: no substance can be composed of substances. He answers this genuine objection in his appeal to the actuality/potentiality distinction, and in Metaphysics VIII.6 he reminds us why no more basic problem of hylomorphic unity arises. Against the backdrop of Aristotle's metaontology, hylomorphic unity cannot be undermined by the plurality, just as such, of matter and form. (shrink)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and states adopted social distancing, social isolation, or quarantine measurements to slow the transmission of the disease. Negative mental health outcomes including depression and anxiety have been associated with social distancing or social isolation. The purpose of the present study was to examine changes in psychological health and physical activity over an 8 week period under social distancing policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: Ninety individuals participated in this study. Qualifying participants answered questions using an (...) online survey regarding their loneliness, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, mood state, and physical activity over four time points each lasting two weeks.Results: Symptoms of depression and state anxiety were increased in the population when compared to nationwide statistics from before the COVID-19 pandemic. Time point 2, ~1 month into social isolation, showed the most significant effects on mental health. During this time point, 100% of the participants showed symptoms of depression. There were no significant changes in physical activity over the 8 weeks. Loneliness, depressive symptoms, fatigue, and mood state were negatively associated with participation in physical activity. Vigor and state anxiety were associated with participation in physical activity.Conclusion: Social isolation and social distancing practices have had a negative effect on depression, anxiety, and mood over time. It appeared that depressive symptoms and total mood disturbance was elevated during time point two. Depressive symptoms were much higher than average compared to previous epidemiological data. Physical activity amount did not change over time but was associated with poor mental health. (shrink)

The explanatory value of niche construction can be strengthened by firm footing in semiotic theory. Anthropologists have a unique perspective on the integration of such diverse approaches to human action and evolutionary processes. Here, we seek to open a dialogue between anthropology and biosemiotics. The overarching aim of this paper is to demonstrate that niche construction, including the underlying mechanism of reciprocal causation, is a semiotic process relating to biological development as well as cognitive development and cultural change. In making (...) this argument we emphasize the semiotic mechanisms underlying the niche concept. We argue that the “niche” in ecology and evolutionary biology can be consistent with the Umwelt of Jakob von Uexkull. Following John Deely we therefore suggest that investigations into the organism—environment interface constituting niche construction should emphasize the semiotic basis of experience. Peircean signs are pervasive and allow for flexible interpretations of phenomena in relation to the perceptual and cognitive capacities of the behaving organism, which is particularly pertinent for understanding the relation of proximate/ultimate selective forces as co-productive. Additionally, theoretical work by Kinji Imanishi on the evolution of daily life and Gregory Bateson’s relational view of evolution both support the linkage between proximate and ultimate evolutionary processes of causation necessitated by the niche construction perspective. We will then apply this theoretical framework to two specific examples: 1) hominin evolution, including uniquely human cultural behaviors with niche constructive implications; and 2) the multispecies and anthropocentric niche of human-dog coevolution from which complex cognitive capacities and semiotic relationships emerged. The intended outcome of this paper is the establishment of concrete semiotic mechanisms and theory underlying niche constructive behavior which can then be applied to a broad spectrum of organisms to contextualize the reciprocal relation between proximate and ultimate drivers of behavior. (shrink)

The traditional concept of prime matter – a purely potential substratum that persists through substantial change and serves to constitute the generated substance – has played a dwindling part in Aristotelian scholarship over the centuries. In medieval interpretations of Aristotle, prime matter was thought to play these two roles in all substantial changes, not only in changes at the level of the four elements. In more recent centuries, traditional prime matter was relegated only to the context of substantial changes between (...) the four elements. And in the last few decades of Aristotelian scholarship, it has become common either to downplay or even to eliminate prime matter’s role in elemental changes too. I will support the traditional concept of prime matter by showing that it aligns Aristotle’s view of elemental change with one of the central constraints on matter imposed in his Physics to a degree that cannot be achieved on the non-traditional interpretations: the need for matter to be in potentiality in a way that avoids the two problematic extremes of mere persistence, on the one hand, and destruction, on the other. This point will be supported by Aristotle’s rejection of both monism and pluralism in On Generation and Corruption. Second, I will argue that Aristotle calls for precisely the same kind of potentiality in a very different context: his critique of Anaxagoras’s view of matter in the Generation of Animals. Here the very same problematic extremes of mere persistence and destruction that plague the alternate views to traditional prime matter also plague the dominant views on the matter for animal generation. Especially since Aristotle takes living things to be paradigmatic substances, these comparisons suggest that the apparent idiosyncrasies of elemental transformation which have motivated interpreters to depart from traditional prime matter may not be so idiosyncratic after all. And if that is so, it may be that the problem lies not so much with traditional prime matter as with our assumptions about how persistence and constitution work in substantial change according to Aristotle. In the end, this line of argument opens the door to three new potential interpretations of the matter for substantial generation in Aristotle, interpretations which align with his concept of potentiality and – to varying degrees – with traditional prime matter as well. (shrink)

In his account of epistēmē, the highest level of understanding attainable in philosophical inquiry, Aristotle articulates standards for the ideal explanations that confer this level of understanding. I argue that Aristotle's key standard for epistēmē is of central importance for the biological homology concept. The explanatory shortcoming that results from violating this standard has been vaguely articulated in recent literature on homology; Aristotle's account offers a more neutral and precise formulation of the shortcoming and its antidote. Further, the risk for (...) this shortcoming has heightened with recent accounts of homology grounded in genetics, increasing the contemporary relevance of Aristotelian epistēmē. (shrink)

Aristotle insists that the organic matter composing an organism depends for its being and becoming upon the living organism whose organic matter it is. An evolutionary context may at first seem to secure autonomy for an organism’s organic matter: after all, in such a context not only can organisms in divergent taxa have the same trait, but a trait can remain the same through thoroughgoing changes in its form, function, composition, and organismic context over evolutionary time. The biological homology concept (...) attempts to capture this mysterious relationship of trait sameness. However, accounts of biological homology that have dominated the contemporary scene face compelling problems—these problems, I will argue, arise from their exclusion of the organism as an explanatory locus for the being and becoming of biological traits. An evolutionary framework in fact supports an account of homology that retains these two aspects of Aristotle’s views on organic matter. (shrink)

Aristotle insists that the organic matter composing an organism depends for its being and becoming upon the living organism whose organic matter it is. An evolutionary context may at first seem to secure autonomy for an organism’s organic matter: after all, in such a context not only can organisms in divergent taxa have the same trait, but a trait can remain the same through thoroughgoing changes in its form, function, composition, and organismic context over evolutionary time. The biological homology concept (...) attempts to capture this mysterious relationship of trait sameness. However, accounts of biological homology that have dominated the contemporary scene face compelling problems—these problems, I will argue, arise from their exclusion of the organism as an explanatory locus for the being and becoming of biological traits. An evolutionary framework in fact supports an account of homology that retains these two aspects of Aristotle’s views on organic matter. (shrink)

Socrates and Plato are one in species, but diverse in number. What accounts for their diversity in this sense? This question lies at the center of a longstanding controversy over what has been called the principle of individuation. Though multiple questions have been investigated using the terminology of individuation, the author’s focus here is on the question of what, for Aristotle, explains the numerical diversification of cospecific organisms, along with the two mainstream answers to this question: that their diversity derives (...) from the diversity of their matter, or that it derives from the diversity of their forms. She argues that if we take Aristotle’s metaontology as our starting point for investigating this question, both of the mainstream views falter for the same reason. Aristotle’s analyses of the concepts of unity and diversity support the conclusion that the diversity of cospecific organisms is underived. (shrink)

On the winter morning of 16 June 1976, fifteen thousand black children marched on Orlando Stadium in Soweto, carrying slogans dashed on the backs of exercise books. The children were stopped by armed police who opened fire, and thirteen-year-old Hector Peterson became the first of hundreds of schoolchildren to be shot down by police in the months that followed. If, a decade later, the meaning of Soweto’s “year of fire” is still contested,1 it began in this way with a (...) symbolic display of contempt for the unpalatable values of Bantu education, a public rejection of the “culture of malnutrition” with which blacks had been fed.2 The local provocation for the Orlando march was a ruling that black children be taught arithmetic and social studies in Afrikaans—the language of the white cabinet minister, soldier, and pass official, prison guard, and policeman. But the Soweto march sprang from deeper grievances than instruction in Afrikaans, and the calamitous year that passed not only gave rise to a rekindling of black political resistance but visibly illuminated the cultural aspects of coercion and revolt.The children’s defacement of exercise books and the breaking of school ranks presaged a nationwide rebellion of uncommon proportion. The revolt spread across the country from community to community, in strikes, boycotts, and street barricades. It represented in part the climax of a long struggle between the British and Afrikaans interlopers for control over an unwilling black populace and was at the same time a flagrant sign of the contestation of culture, an open declaration by blacks that cultural value, far from shimmering out of reach in the transcendent beyond, would now be fought for with barricades of tires, empty classrooms, and precocious organization. 1. At least three general analyses of the Soweto uprising have emerged: deeper African National Congress involvement in the community; strains on the educational system, unemployment and recession, with greater industrial militancy stemming from the strikes in the early seventies; and the emergence of Black Consciousness ideology. See Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa Since 1945 , pp. 321-62.2. See M. K. Malefane, “ ‘The Sun Will Rise’: Review of the Allahpoets at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg,” Staffrider ; reprinted in Soweto Poetry, ed. Michael Chapman, South African Literature Studies, no. 2 , p. 91. Soweto Poetry will hereafter be cited as SP. Anne McClintock is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Columbia University. She is the author of a monograph on Simone de Beauvoir and is working on a dissertation on race and gender in British imperial culture. Her previous contribution to Critical Inquiry , “No Names Apart: The Separation of Word and History in Derrida’s ‘Le Dernier Mot du Racisme,’ ” appeared in the Autumn 1986 issue. (shrink)

When in 1866 American publisher Ticknor and Fields released St. Martin's Summer, Anne Hampton Brewster's second full-length novel, she was already the author of more than fifty short stories, poems, and essays that had appeared in such prominent venues as Godey's Lady's Book, Graham's American Monthly Magazine, Neal's Saturday Gazette, Lippincott's Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and Peterson's.1 Nonetheless, Brewster and this imaginative transformation of her first European Grand Tour in 1857–58, including interactions with utopian visionary and politician Robert (...) Dale Owen, remain relatively unknown in literary and utopian studies.2 St. Martin's Summer deserves more attention, especially among the latter, for the... (shrink)

Two interpretations of the precautionary principle are considered. According to the normative interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges doctors and other decision makers to do. According to the epistemic interpretation, the precautionary principle should be characterised in terms of what it urges us to believe. This paper recommends against the use of the precautionary principle as a decision rule in medical decision making, based on an impossibility theorem presented in Peterson . However, (...) the main point of the paper is an argument to the effect that decision theoretical problems associated with the precautionary principle can be overcome by paying greater attention to its epistemic dimension. Three epistemic principles inherent in a precautionary approach to medical risk analysis are characterised and defended. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivism aims to explain morality’s authority and relevance by basing it in agency, in a capacity of the creatures who are in fact morally bound. But constructivists have struggled to wring anything recognizably moral from an appropriately minimal conception of agency. Even if they could, basing our reasons in our individual agency seems to make other people reason-giving for us only indirectly. This paper argues for a constructivism based on a social conception of agency, on which our capacity to (...) recognize ourselves as having reasons ties us inescapably to others. It argues that mutual recognition is a pervasive feature of linguistic concepts, and builds this into a view called transformative expressivism. (shrink)

Dans la genese de sa constitution, la philosophie n'a pu faire l'economie d'une confrontation avec la musique qui fournissait aux anciens Grecs les schemes fondamentaux de la culture. De cette confrontation Platon est le temoin. Scindant la musique, il privilegie l'Harmonique, qui en est la partie theorique, sans toutefois lui reconnaitre la titre de science supreme. Correlativement, il condamne comme dysharmonie, tumulte fracassant et perturbateur de l'ordre cosmique, l'harmonie chromaticiste dont il s'emploie, non sans paradoxe, a decrire le detail. Par (...) cette lecture en filigrane des Dialogues de Platon, l'auteur se propose de reconstruire la pensee qui procede de l'harmonie chromaticiste et de montrer son importance dans l'elaboration de la philosophie fondatrice. Au carrefour des disciplines du savoir antique, ce livre s'adresse non seulement aux philosophes, mais aussi a tous ceux qui, musiciens ou stylisticiens, s'interessent a la forme musicale. (shrink)

In Australia and other countries, certain groups of women have traditionally been denied access to assisted reproductive technologies . These typically are single heterosexual women, lesbians, poor women, and those whose ability to rear children is questioned, particularly women with certain disabilities or who are older. The arguments used to justify selection of women for ARTs are most often based on issues such as scarcity of resources, and absence of infertility , or on social concerns: that it “goes against nature”; (...) particular women might not make good mothers; unconventional families are not socially acceptable; or that children of older mothers might be orphaned at an early age. The social, medical, legal, and ethical reasoning that has traditionally promoted this lack of equity in access to ARTs, and whether the criteria used for client deselection are ethically appropriate in any particular case, are explored by this review. In addition, the issues of distribution and just “gatekeeping” practices associated with these sensitive medical services are examined. (shrink)

Biological theories of religious belief are sometimes understood to undermine the very beliefs they are describing, proposing an alternative explanation for the causes of belief different from that given by religious believers themselves. This article surveys three categories of biological theorizing derived from evolutionary biology, cognitive science of religion, and neuroscience. Although each field raises important issues and in some cases potential challenges to the legitimacy of religious belief, in most cases the significance of these theories for the holding of (...) religious beliefs is not very great. (shrink)

A transformative decision rule transforms a given decision probleminto another by altering the structure of the initial problem,either by changing the framing or by modifying the probability orvalue assignments. Examples of decision rules belonging to thisclass are the principle of insufficient reason, Isaac Levi'scondition of E-admissibility, the de minimis rule, andthe precautionary principle. In this paper some foundationalissues concerning transformative decision rules are investigated,and a couple of formal properties of this class of rules areproved.

In this paper, I take a critical look at Sartorio’s book Causation and Free Will (2016). Sartorio offers a rich defence of an actual-sequence view of freedom, which pays close attention to issues in the philosophy of causation and how they relate to freedom. I argue that although this focus on causation is illuminating, Sartorio’s project nevertheless runs into some serious difficulties. Perhaps most worrying amongst them is whether the agent-based reason-sensitivity account, offered by Sartorio, is consistent with Frankfurt-style cases (...) – the very cases which are provided as the sole reason to endorse an actual-sequence view of freedom. I suggest that given that powers and causation are so intimately bound together, the debate is skewed somewhat by thinking of these as rivals. (shrink)

_A portion of the revenue from this book’s sales will be donated to Doctors Without Borders to assist the humanitarian work of nurses, doctors, and other health care providers in the fight against COVID-19 and beyond._ _Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics_ is an introduction to contemporary ethical issues in health care, designed especially for Canadian audiences. The book is organized around six key concepts: beneficence, autonomy, truth-telling, confidentiality, justice, and integrity. Each of these concepts is explained and discussed with (...) reference to professional and legal norms. The discussion is then supplemented by case studies that exemplify the relevant concepts and show how each applies in health care and nursing practice. This new fourth edition includes an added chapter on end-of-life issues, and it is revised throughout to reflect the latest developments on topics such as global health ethics, cultural competence, social media, and palliative sedation, as well as ethical issues relating to COVID-19. (shrink)

Despite its imperative to include all gendered positions under one umbrella, ‘trans’ is continually riven by intramural confrontation over the differences between its masculine and feminine iterations. Whether in political organizing, on social media or in the pages of academic trans theory, it sometimes seems like ‘trans’ is subject to an interminable and gendered custody battle. Dissatisfied with the terms of masc–femme antagonism, this essay uses the gendered interfaces of critique and autotheory to enmesh the work of Jules Gill-Peterson (...) and Paul B. Preciado. Reading into the interdependence of Gill-Peterson’s and Preciado’s texts yields a different theory: trans as an auto-antonym, a word that produces opposite meanings depending on context. Treating trans as auto-antonymic conjures a relational and even erotic escape from the naturalization of gendered antagonism in trans theory, affirming the unexpected bridges, reversals or ‘sex changes’ of specifically trans writing. (shrink)

To examine Heidegger's pedagogy is to be invited into a particular era and cultural reality—starting in Weimar Germany and progressing into the rise and fall of the Third Reich. In his attempt to reform the German university in a strictly hierarchical, authoritarian and nationalistic mold, Heidegger addressed one group of students and professors and not another. The petit‐bourgeois student and the future philosophers he invited with his ‘logic of recruitment’ into the corps of instructors, would share his coded language with (...) its built‐in taboos and censorship. The result was a rhetoric of absolute self‐reference and a semiotic of pure propaganda, based on the evocation of the ancient Greeks in which the philosopher meant to project all that was properly Germanic. Heidegger's rhetoric is exclusionary; its politics and its philosophy are interpenetrating. His lecture courses grew increasingly poeticized, and thus mired in ambiguity, evasion, elision, avoidance, grandiloquence. Parallels are drawn in this essay between Heidegger and our time. Is Heidegger's insistence on autocratic controls within the German university comparable to the corporate positions taken today by some educators? How does the shifting relation between disciplines affect the role of the specialist? How might the sciences morales or humanities, along with the much maligned ‘humanism’, be redefined morally and holistically? (shrink)

Although some attention has been devoted to assessing the attitudes and concerns of businesspeople toward ethics, relatively little attention has focused on the attitudes and concerns of tomorrow's business leaders, today's college students. In this investigation a national sample was utilized to study college students' attitudes toward business ethics, with the results being analyzed by academic classification, academic major, and sex. Results of the investigation indicate that college students are currently somewhat concerned about business ethics in general, and that female (...) students in particular are more concerned about ethical issues than are their male counterparts. (shrink)

Schelling's first systematic attempt to articulate a complete philosophy of nature.

In these skeptical and disillusioned times, there are still groups of people scattered throughout the world who are trying to live out utopian dreams. These communities challenge the inevitability and morality of dominant political and economic models. By putting utopian religious ethics into practice, they attest to the real possibility of social alternatives. In Seeds of the Kingdom, Anna L. Peterson reflects on the experiences of two very different communities, one inhabited by impoverished former refugees in the mountains of (...) El Salvador and the other by Amish farmers in the Midwestern U.S. What makes these groups stand out among advocates of environmental protection, political justice, and sustainable development is their religious orientation. They aim, without apology, to embody the reign of God on earth. The Salvadoran community is grounded in Roman Catholic social thought, while the Amish adhere to Anabaptist tradition. Peterson offers a detailed portrait of these communities' history, social organization, religious life, environmental values, and agricultural practices. She discovers both practical and ideological commonalities in these two comparatively successful and sustainable communities, including a strong collective identity, deep attachment to local landscapes, a desire to preserve non-human as well as human lives, and, perhaps unexpectedly, a utopian horizon that provides both goals and the hope of reaching them. By examining the process by which people struggle to live according to a transcendent value system, she sheds light on both the actual and the potential place of religion in public life. Peterson argues that the Amish and Salvadoran communities, geographically and culturally removed from the industrialized West, have relevance for the political and environmental problems of the developed world. These communities have succeeded in the face of significant internal and external challenges, offering important practical and theoretical lessons on how to achieve ecological sustainability and social justice in the wider world. (shrink)

Hegel’s discussion of sense certainty in the Phenomenology of Spirit contains the following, humorous, observation.