Fincher & Thornhill (F&T) present a compelling argument that parasite stress underlies certain cultural practices promoting assortative sociality. However, we suggest that the theoretical framework proposed is limited in several ways, and that life history theory provides a more explanatory and inclusive framework, making more specific predictions about the trade-offs faced by organisms in the allocation of bioenergetic and material resources.

We evaluate the “story grammar” approach to story understanding from three perspectives. We first examine the formal properties of the grammars and find only one to be formally adequate. We next evaluate the grammars empirically by asking whether they generate all simple stories and whether they generate only stories. We find many stories that they do not generate and one major class of nonstory that they do generate. We also evaluate the grammars' potential as comprehension models and find that they (...) would add nothing to semantic models that focus on the story content. Hence we advocate a story content oriented approach to studying story understanding instead of the structural story grammar approach. (shrink)

Any adequate theory of chance must accommodate some version of David Lewis's ‘Principal Principle’, and Lewis has argued forcibly that believers in primitive propensities have a problem in explaining what makes the Principle true. But Lewis can only derive (a revised version of) the Principle from his own Humean theory by putting constraints on inductive rationality which cannot be given a Humean rationale.

Many think that the aim of Hume’s Dialogues is simply to discredit the design argument for the existence of an intelligent designer. We think instead that the Dialogues provides a model of true religion. We argue that, for Hume, the truly religious person: believes that an intelligent designer created and imposed order on the universe; grounds this belief in an irregular argument rooted in a certain kind of experience, for example, in the experience of anatomizing complex natural systems such as (...) the eye; and retains this belief, on the basis of these reasons, even after careful scrutiny. We argue that two of the Dialogues’s characters, Philo and Cleanthes, exhibit true religion. A third character, Demea, exhibits false religion and a persistent impiety. Taken as a whole, we see the Dialogues as an educational performance for the benefit of Pamphilus, Cleanthes’s ward, as well as for the benefit of readers of the Dialogues. Specifically, we think, given that its lessons concern theology and the principles of religion, the dynamics of the Dialogues’s discussion and the interplay between its characters can be seen as a demonstration of a method for becoming truly religious. (shrink)

Arguments to the effect that Church's thesis is intrinsically unprovable because proof cannot relate an informal, intuitive concept to a mathematically defined one are unconvincing, since other 'theses' of this kind have indeed been proved, and Church's thesis has been proved in one direction. However, though evidence for the truth of the thesis in the other direction is overwhelming, it does not yet amount to proof.

Any adequate theory of chance must accommodate some version of David Lewis's ‘Principal Principle’, and Lewis has argued forcibly that believers in primitive propensities have a problem in explaining what makes the Principle true. But Lewis can only derive (a revised version of) the Principle from his own Humean theory by putting constraints on inductive rationality which cannot be given a Humean rationale.

Viewing moral scepticism as the rejection of objective desirabilities, inductive scepticism may be seen as the rejection of objective believabilities. Moral scepticism leads naturally to amoralism rather than subjectivism, and inductive scepticism undermines not our practices of induction but only a view about justification. The two scepticisms together amount to the adoption of a defensibly narrow, formal view of reason.

This paper shows how John R. Commons’ analysis of a firm’s goodwill value gives analytical support to Professor Amartya Sen’s contention (BEQ, 1993) that business ethics makes economic sense. A firm’s market value consists of the value of both tangible and intangible capital, including the goodwill value of ongoing customer relations. If a firm is to defend its goodwill value, it needs to have the protection of the courts and to pursue ethical practices. The courts defend fair competition by giving (...) protection from unethical competitors while the firm defends its reputation with honest dealings.By implication, firms which depend on ongoing customer relations will tend to engage in more ethical business practices than firms which do not. Even a firm which makes a mistake that compromises its product’s safety may reduce the loss of goodwill value over time by admitting the mistake early rather than hiding it.Also by implication, the transition from a command socialist economy to a market economy cannot be made instantaneously since trust, reputation, and these ongoing customer relations-key institutions of market economics-cannot be generated instantaneously. (shrink)

This paper shows how John R. Commons’ analysis of a firm’s goodwill value gives analytical support to Professor Amartya Sen’s contention (BEQ, 1993) that business ethics makes economic sense. A firm’s market value consists of the value of both tangible and intangible capital, including the goodwill value of ongoing customer relations. If a firm is to defend its goodwill value, it needs to have the protection of the courts and to pursue ethical practices. The courts defend fair competition by giving (...) protection from unethical competitors while the firm defends its reputation with honest dealings.By implication, firms which depend on ongoing customer relations will tend to engage in more ethical business practices than firms which do not. Even a firm which makes a mistake that compromises its product’s safety may reduce the loss of goodwill value over time by admitting the mistake early rather than hiding it.Also by implication, the transition from a command socialist economy to a market economy cannot be made instantaneously since trust, reputation, and these ongoing customer relations-key institutions of market economics-cannot be generated instantaneously. (shrink)

In view of scholarly work that has explored the socio-psycho significance of national performativity, the body and the “other,” this article critically analyses newspaper representations of the Canadian-born British tennis player Greg Rusedski. Drawing on Lacanian interpretations of the body, it illustrates how Rusedski’s media framing centered on a particular feature of his body—his “smile.” In doing so, we detail how Rusedski’s “post-imperial” Otherness—conceived as a form of “extimacy” (extimité)—complicated any clear delineation between “us” and “them,” positing instead a dialectical (...) understanding of the splits, voids and contradictions that underscore the national “us.”. (shrink)

Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these intersections are explored through British media coverage of the Canadian‐born, British tennis player, Greg Rusedski. This coverage (...) is examined through the lens of ‘performativity,’ as articulated by Judith Butler. Through a critical application of Butler's ideas, the ways in which the media seek to recognise and normalise certain identities, while problematising and excluding others, can be more fully appreciated. Thus, it was within newspaper framings of Rusedski that hegemonic notions of White Englishness could be performed, maintained, and embedded. (shrink)

This is a fascinating collection of essays focusing on humanism and thought and other key aspects of Renaissance culture such as philology, political thought and scholastic and platonic philosophy. An essential read for all students of this era.

How much of our ordinary moral thought can we make sense of using a model of practical reason in which value is seen as subjective? There are already problems with showing strength of will not to be irrational. If social obligations are conceived of instrumentally as in a tradition running from Hobbes through Hume to Mackie, and if we employ our strength of will to sacrifice our individual projects in favor of them, the problems become insuperable.

We attempt to gain some insight into the issue of whether pure states evolve to density matrices in the black hole evaporation process by examining the mode functions of the particles entering the black hole which are correlated with the particles which escape to infinity. We show that these particles enter the black hole singularity at relatively early times. This tends to support the view that pure states evolve to density matrices, i.e., that in this process quantum (...) coherence is lost. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to contribute to the larger project of assessing the relative merits of different theories of substance. An important preliminary step in this project is assessing the explanatory resources of one main theory of substance, the so-called bundle theory. This article works towards such an assessment. I identify and explain three distinct explanatory challenges an adequate bundle theory must meet. Each points to a putative explanatory gap, so I call them the Gap Challenges. I consider (...) three bundle-theoretic strategies for meeting these challenges. I argue that none of them goes very far. The upshot is that, absent other strategies for meeting the challenges, bundle theory involves a significant amount of stipulation. This black box makes bundle theory relatively weak with respect to its explanatory power—unless, of course, rival theories of substance are unable to do better. (shrink)

Attention to the role of phenomenology in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks is fundamental to an appreciation of the book’s progressive structure. And it is through an appreciation of this structure that it becomes apparent that the book’s engagement with phenomenology amounts to an enrichment, not a critique, of existential phenomenology, although the latter might appear to be the case at first sight, given Fanon’s rejection of certain aspects of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Black Orpheus.” This is demonstrated through (...) an examination of Fanon’s references to Sartre, Günther Anders, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the book’s final crucial pages on temporality. His largely neglected relation to Karl Jaspers and the concept of historicity is also explored. (shrink)

February is Black History Month and so healthcare practitioners will soon rummage history books for information about famous African Americans, like Onesimus, the African slave who...

Protecting the people we experiment on --"Inside the black box" : becoming and being IRB members -- Weighing risks and benefits and undue inducement -- Defining research and how good it needs to be -- What to tell subjects : battles over consent forms -- From "nitpicky" to "user-friendly" : inter-IRB variations and their causes -- Federal agencies vs. local IRBs -- The roles of industry -- The local ecologies of institutions -- Trusting vs. policing researchers -- Bad behavior: (...) research integrity -- Researchers abroad : studies in the developing world -- Changing national policies -- Conclusions : other changes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT We like to believe that our world is regular, that we can predict it fairly well, and that we can control the risks we run. Nassim Taleb argues that we are fooling ourselves and that the course of history is driven by rare and extreme events, which he calls Black Swans. There is much to this, but scholars—at least in political science—are less oblivious to the problem than he believes. More thought needs to be given to hard issues (...) of whether key events were anticipated, whether there were functional substitutes for events that are seen as turning points, the role of beliefs and expectations in Black Swans, and the dynamics that might explain unpredictability. (shrink)

We like to believe that our world is regular, that we can predict it fairly well, and that we can control the risks we run. Nassim Taleb argues that we are fooling ourselves and that the course of history is driven by rare and extreme events, which he calls Black Swans. There is much to this, but scholars—at least in political science—are less oblivious to the problem than he believes. More thought needs to be given to hard issues of (...) whether key events were anticipated, whether there were functional substitutes for events that are seen as turning points, the role of beliefs and expectations in Black Swans, and the dynamics that might explain unpredictability. (shrink)

According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media (...) malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper will argue that we continually refrain from the very question(ing) that would call these companies to account: what does the algorithm desire? In approaching this question, this article will draw from Lacan’s ‘hysterical’ position in accordance with Robert Pfaller’s notion of interpassivity. Together, these concepts will be used to provide a psychoanalytic account of how our subjectivization in social media renders an unconscious endorsement that both frames our awareness of the dilemmas encompassing social media, while also positing an inherent limitation that may offer a possible path out of its impeding affects. This subjective ambivalence – delegated yet reluctantly disavowed – offers an opportunity to realign discussions on the lost object of desire (objet a) and its reproduction in social media algorithms. In so doing, the case will be made that an account of interpassivity can help lay bare the hysterical significance underscoring our digital subjectivization. (shrink)

In Notes For Friends, world-renowned photographer Robert Adams explores the possibility of discovering beauty in the compromised landscape of the new American West. His photographs, rendering the landscape in rich black-and-white images, clearly demonstrate that beauty can be found, suggesting a new kind of exploration that could yield a transforming discovery-the basis for a love of home. Pictures in the book reacquaint us with places that we may have lost to habit or prejudice. Robert Adams encourages us (...) to walk minor roads that at first appear inconsequential, but that in fact lead to wonder. Light rains its miracle on fields next to suburban developments, across the slopes of nameless foothills, and onto trees next to expressways. (shrink)