Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent researchers on the greatness of John Bonner and the implications of his work.

Margaret Macdonald was at the institutional heart of analytic philosophy in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Yet, her views on the nature of philosophical theories diverge quite considerably from those of many of her contemporaries. In this paper, I focus on her 1953 article ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’, a provocative paper in which Macdonald argues that the value of philosophical theories is more akin to that of poetry or art than science or mathematics. I do so for two reasons. First, (...) because it reveals just how far Macdonald’s meta- philosophical views diverged from those of many of her contemporaries. Second, because the discussion in LPP pre-empts recent literature on the nature of philosophical inquiry and the efficacy of philosophical arguments. Indeed, Macdonald’s paper is just as likely to provoke discussion today as it was in the 1950s. (shrink)

Berkeley’s likeness principle is the claim that “an idea can be like nothing but an idea”. The likeness principle is intended to undermine representationalism: the view (that Berkeley attributes to thinkers like Descartes and Locke) that all human knowledge is mediated by ideas in the mind which represent material objects. Yet, Berkeley appears to leave the likeness principle unargued for. This has led to several attempts to explain why Berkeley accepts it. In contrast to ‘metaphysical’ and ‘epistemological’ interpretations available in (...) the literature, in this paper I defend a ‘conceptual’ interpretation. I argue that Berkeley accepts the likeness principle on the basis of (i) his commitment to the transparency of ideas, and (ii) his account of resemblance which he sets out in his works on vision. Thus, I provide an explanation for Berkeley’s reasons for accepting the likeness principle which, appropriately, focuses on his views concerning ideas and likeness. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway, Marcy P. Lascano holds up the metaphysical views of two early modern women philosophers alongside one another in order to demonstrate that...

William Molyneux was born in Dublin, studied in Trinity College Dublin, and was a founding member of the Dublin Philosophical Society (DPS), Ireland’s counterpart to the Royal Society in London. He was a central figure in the Irish intellectual milieu during the Early Modern period and – along with George Berkeley and Edmund Burke – is one of the best-known thinkers to have come out of that context and out of Irish thought more generally. In 1688, when Molyneux wrote the (...) letter to Locke in which he posed the now famous question about a man born blind made to see, he was an active member of the DPS and was on familiar terms with several other key figures in Irish philosophy at the time. For the most part, Irish thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries answered “no” to Molyneux’s question of whether a blind man made to see could distinguish, by sight alone, between a cube and a sphere. (shrink)

In my contribution to this Concise Collection on Margaret Cavendish, I focus on teaching Cavendish’s work in the context of philosophy (and, more specifically, Early Modern Philosophy). I have three aims. First, to explain why teaching women from philosophy’s history is crucially important to the discipline. Second, to outline my own reflections on teaching Cavendish’s philosophy. Third, to defend a specific claim about the benefits of teaching Cavendish to philosophy students; namely, that introducing biographical detail alongside philosophical ideas enriches the (...) learning experience. (shrink)

: I argue that for Aquinas philosophy is a necessary tool of theology and that philosophy is not changed by its theological context. Rather, the subalternation of disciplines results in a reciprocal relation between philosophy and theology. This is understood in terms of the distinction between what is better known in itself and what is better known to us. This view is defended by (1) reinterpreting Aquinas' use of the metaphor of the water of philosophy being transformed into the wine (...) of theology; and (2) his position that the theological use of philosophy is an instance of grace perfecting nature. (shrink)

‘British Empiricism’ is a name traditionally used to pick out a group of eighteenth-century thinkers who prioritised knowledge via the senses over reason or the intellect and who denied the existence of innate ideas. The name includes most notably John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The counterpart to British Empiricism is traditionally considered to be Continental Rationalism that was advocated by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, all of whom lived in Continental Europe beyond the British Isles and all embraced innate (...) ideas. This article characterizes empiricists more broadly as those thinkers who accept Locke’s Axiom that there is no idea in the mind that cannot be traced back to some particular experience. It includes British-Irish Philosophy from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century. As well as exploring the traditional connections among empiricism and metaphysics and epistemology, it examines how British empiricists dealt with issues in moral philosophy and the existence and nature of God. The article identifies some challenges to the standard understanding of British Empiricism by including early modern thinkers from typically marginalised groups, especially women. Finally, in showing that there is nothing uniquely British about being an empiricist, it examines a particular case study of the eighteenth-century philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first African to receive a doctorate in Europe. (shrink)

The world of artificial intelligence appears to be in rapid transition, and claims that artificial general intelligence is impossible are competing with concerns that we may soon be seeing Artificial Godlike Intelligence and that we should be very afraid of this prospect. This article discusses the issues from a psychological and social perspective and suggests that with the advent of Generative Artificial Intelligence, something that looks to humans like Artificial General Intelligence has become a distinct possibility as is the idea (...) of making it semi-autonomous: not just responding to discrete external inputs or performing specific tasks but able to prompt itself to create an ongoing stream of cognition that can possess something akin to a ‘purpose’. Add to that the ability of computers to be connected in vast networks, and we can envisage intelligences with staggering amounts of knowledge and reasoning capability, engaging with humans to anticipate and grant wishes. Such Semi-Autonomous Godlike Artificial Intelligences (SAGAIs—meaning ‘engagements’ in Hindi) could end up like Kali, wreaking death and destruction on our species or like Thor, acting as a saviour and protector of humanity. Which of these our SAGAIs most resemble could depend on whose wishes it is designed to serve: a rich oligarchy seeking ever greater wealth and power whatever the cost to others, or a populace that has compassion for each other and for life on the planet. (shrink)

Using the corpus of JSTOR articles, we investigate the role of gender in collaboration patterns across the scholarly landscape by analyzing gender-based homophily--the tendency for researchers to co-author with individuals of the same gender. For a nuanced analysis of gender homophily, we develop methodology necessitated by the fact that the data comprises heterogeneous sub-disciplines and that not all authorships are exchangeable. In particular, we distinguish three components of gender homophily in collaborations: a structural component that is due to demographics and (...) non-gendered authorship norms of a scholarly community, a compositional component which is driven by varying gender representation across sub-disciplines, and a behavioral component which we define as the remainder of observed homophily after its structural and compositional components have been taken into account. Using minimal modeling assumptions, we measure and test for behavioral homophily. We find that significant behavioral homophily can be detected across the JSTOR corpus and show that this finding is robust to missing gender indicators in our data. In a secondary analysis, we show that the proportion of female representation in a field is positively associated with significant behavioral homophily. (shrink)

Stereological techniques allow biologists to create quantitative, three-dimensional descriptions of biological structures from two- dimensional images of tissue viewed under the microscope. For example, they can accurately estimate the size of a particular organelle, the total length of a mass of capillaries, or the number of neurons or synapses in a particular region of the brain. This book provides a practical guide to designing and critically evaluating stereological studies of the nervous system and other tissues. It explains the basic concepts (...) behind design-based stereology and how to get started. Also included are detailed descriptions of how to prepare tissue appropriately, perform pilot studies and decide on the appropriate sampling strategy, and account for phenomena such as tissue shrinkage. Numerous examples of applications of stereological methods that are applicable to studies of the central system and a wide variety of other tissues are explained. The book is therefore essential reading for neurobiologists and cell biologists interested in generating accurate representations of cell and tissue architecture. (shrink)

Coordinated daily rhythms are evident in most aspects of our physiology, driven by internal timing systems known as circadian clocks. Our understanding of how biological clocks are built and function has grown exponentially over the past 20 years. With this has come an appreciation that disruption of the clock contributes to the pathophysiology of numerous diseases, from metabolic disease to neurological disorders to cancer. However, it remains to be determined whether it is the disruption of our rhythmic physiology per se (...) (loss of timing itself), or altered functioning of individual clock components that drive pathology. Here, we review the importance of circadian rhythms in terms of how we (and other organisms) relate to the external environment, but also in relation to how internal physiological processes are coordinated and synchronized. These issues are of increasing importance as many aspects of modern life put us in conflict with our internal clockwork. (shrink)

The Psychology of Meditation: Research and Practice explores the practice of meditation and mindfulness and presents accounts of the cognitive and emotional processes elicited during meditation practice. Written by researchers and practitioners with considerable experience in meditation practice and from different religious or philosophical perspectives, he book examines the evidence for the effects of meditation on emotional and physical well-being in therapeutic contexts and in applied settings. The areas covered include addictions, pain management, psychotherapy, physical health, neuroscience and the application (...) of meditation in school and workplace settings. Uniquely, the contributors also present accounts of their own personal experience of meditation practice including their history of practice, phenomenology, and the impact it has had on their lives. (shrink)

On 30 June 2021, Ohio state Governor, Mike DeWine, signed a Bill which would enact the state's budget for the next two years. In addition to its core funding imperatives, the Bill also contained an amendment significantly expanding entitlements of health care providers to conscientiously object to professional duties to provide controversial health care services. This amendment has been heavily criticised as providing the means to allow health care providers to discriminate against a wide range of persons by denying them (...) access to often contested services such as abortion and contraception. In this paper, we examine the implications of this amendment and situate it in relation to other legislative actions intended to guarantee absolute rights to conscientious objection. In doing so, we argue that the entitlements extended to health care providers by these Bills are overly broad and ignore their potential to allow significant harm to be caused to clients. We then argue that if health care providers should have rights to conscientiously object, then any legislation intended to protect such rights should be limited, specific, and parsimonious. Where it is not, the ideological liberty of HCPs treads dangerously on the physical freedom of their clients. (shrink)

Traditional methods of teaching professional nursing ethics in the classroom have translated into limited success in clinical practice. Students don’t perceive an integration of ethics education in practical clinical settings, while educators grapple with a lack of perceived ‘excellence of moral character’ in their students when they are taught intellectual virtues and theoretical wisdom in the classroom that they do not see demonstrated in the clinical setting. Also traditionally, emphasis in ethics teaching has tended to focus on the nurse-patient relationship, (...) while less attention has been paid to nursing in a more inter/intra professional or global context. The purpose of using constructivist theory and concept-based learning strategies to teach junior level nursing students ethics was to present implications for nurse educators that will help them foster/improve their student’s critical thinking, and increase their mastery and global integration of the complex abstract concepts associated with professional nursing ethics. (shrink)

The primary meaning of haurire is ‘to take by scooping, to draw’, and it is used of liquids and of solids which pour. The first section of this paper will try to show that this meaning is frequent and sometimes missed by the commentators. The second section will trace the development of other meanings showing that this root is not applied to drinking and swallowing, except metaphorically, until well into the first century A.D., except once in Livy.

The primary meaning of haurire is ‘to take by scooping, to draw’, and it is used of liquids and of solids which pour. The first section of this paper will try to show that this meaning is frequent and sometimes missed by the commentators. The second section will trace the development of other meanings showing that this root is not applied to drinking and swallowing, except metaphorically, until well into the first century A.D., except once in Livy.

The purpose of this paper is to protest against the opinion that Catullus' Elegiacs are careless and uncouth. It will be shown that in many details his metre resembles that of the Augustan Elegists, and then it will be argued that some of the points in which Catullus differs from the Augustans are signs not of incompetence or indifference but of a deliberate adjustment of metre to content.

Behaving consistently across situations is fundamental to a person’s authenticity in Western societies. This can pose a problem for biculturals who often frame switch, or adapt their behavior across cultural contexts, as a way of maintaining fit with each of their cultures. In particular, the behavioral inconsistency entailed in frame switching may undermine biculturals’ sense of authenticity, as well as Westerners’ impressions of biculturals’ authenticity. Study 1 had a diverse sample of biculturals (N = 127) living in the US and (...) Canada describe an episode of frame switching (vs. no switching control vs. neutral control) and report on their state authenticity during the episode. Results showed that biculturals recalled feeling less authentic during an instance of frame switching compared to no switching control and neutral control. Study 2 had mainstream Canadians (White and of American, Canadian, or Western European cultural heritage, N = 97) read a hypothetical vignette, from a third-person perspective, about a bicultural who frame switches (vs. no switching control vs. neutral control) and provide their impressions of the bicultural’s authenticity and multiple other desirable traits. Participants rated the bicultural as less authentic when he frame switched compared to no switching control and neutral control, and rated him as less likeable, trustworthy, and warm (but not competent) as downstream consequences of seeing him as less authentic. These results demonstrate that frame switching can come at a cost to authenticity, both in terms of how biculturals see themselves and are seen by others, at least in Western societies. These findings highlight that the way biculturals negotiate their cultures affects them psychologically and socially. In the context of cultural fit, the active process of establishing and maintaining fit with one’s cultures can have unforeseen consequences. (shrink)

The argument as far as 205 is simply and clearly laid out by Munro, but later editors have rejected his explanation, and proposed more involved analyses. The first purpose of this paper is to support the simple interpretation and refute later complications.The only serious difficulty lies in the mention of plants in line 189. Without this line the argument would run as follows. ‘Nothing can move upwards of its own accord’. ‘Don&t be misled by the atoms of flames, for they (...) spring into being and take their increase in an upward direction, although all weights, left to themselves, move downwards’. ‘Nor must we believe that when fire leaps up to the roofs of houses …, it does so of its own accord’. Now the two analogicalarguments: ‘For blood spurts up into the air and timbers leap out of the water, yet everybody agrees that their weights left to themselves move downwards’. Now the conclusion repeating the original proposition: ‘This is how it must be that flames too rise, forced out upwards through the air although their weights, left to themselves, move downwards’. (shrink)

We demonstrate that the key components of cognitive architectures (declarative and procedural memory) and their key capabilities (learning, memory retrieval, probability judgment, and utility estimation) can be implemented as algebraic operations on vectors and tensors in a high‐dimensional space using a distributional semantics model. High‐dimensional vector spaces underlie the success of modern machine learning techniques based on deep learning. However, while neural networks have an impressive ability to process data to find patterns, they do not typically model high‐level cognition, and (...) it is often unclear how they work. Symbolic cognitive architectures can capture the complexities of high‐level cognition and provide human‐readable, explainable models, but scale poorly to naturalistic, non‐symbolic, or big data. Vector‐symbolic architectures, where symbols are represented as vectors, bridge the gap between the two approaches. We posit that cognitive architectures, if implemented in a vector‐space model, represent a useful, explanatory model of the internal representations of otherwise opaque neural architectures. Our proposed model, Holographic Declarative Memory (HDM), is a vector‐space model based on distributional semantics. HDM accounts for primacy and recency effects in free recall, the fan effect in recognition, probability judgments, and human performance on an iterated decision task. HDM provides a flexible, scalable alternative to symbolic cognitive architectures at a level of description that bridges symbolic, quantum, and neural models of cognition. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child (...) development, public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)

Niche construction refers to the activities of organisms that bring about changes in their environments, many of which are evolutionarily and ecologically consequential. Advocates of niche construction theory (NCT) believe that standard evolutionary theory fails to recognize the full importance of niche construction, and consequently propose a novel view of evolution, in which niche construction and its legacy over time (ecological inheritance) are described as evolutionary processes, equivalent in importance to natural selection. Here, we subject NCT to critical evaluation, in (...) the form of a collaboration between one prominent advocate of NCT, and a team of skeptics. We discuss whether niche construction is an evolutionary process, whether NCT obscures or clarifies how natural selection leads to organismal adaptation, and whether niche construction and natural selection are of equivalent explanatory importance. We also consider whether the literature that promotes NCT overstates the significance of niche construction, whether it is internally coherent, and whether it accurately portrays standard evolutionary theory. Our disagreements reflect a wider dispute within evolutionary theory over whether the neo-Darwinian synthesis is in need of reformulation, as well as different usages of some key terms (e.g., evolutionary process). (shrink)

Progress in addiction science is hampered by disagreements and ambiguity around its core construct: addiction. Addiction Ontology (AddictO) offers a path to a solution of the kind that has addressed similar problems in other areas of science: a set of clearly and uniquely defined entities to which terms such as ‘addiction’, addictive disorder’ and ‘substance dependence ’can be applied for ease of reference while recognizing that it is the construct definitions and their unique IDs that are central, not the terms.

The vegetation eaten by animals on large areas of several continents is deficient in phosphate and deleterious effects on physiology, particularly reproduction, ensue. Records on bone chewing behaviour by both pastoral andwild game animals extend over two centuries. In laboratory investigation of this apt behaviour it has been shown that the appetite for bones is innate and specific and cued predominantly by olfactory stimuli. It is suppressed by rapidly increasing the plasma phosphate concentration to normal but not influenced by increasing (...) the phosphate concentration in cerebrospinal fluid. The central organization of this genetically programmed behaviour appears to differ from systems subserving thirst and sodium appetite. (shrink)

To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. This article brings attention to these issues. We focus on three specific areas: the evolution of (...) cooperation, transmitted culture, and epigenetics. We do this to avoid confusion and wasted effort—dangers that are particularly acute in interdisciplinary research. Throughout this article, we suggest ways in which misunderstanding may be avoided in the future. (shrink)

In this international and interdisciplinary collection of critical essays, distinguished contributors examine a crucial premise of traditional readings of Plato's dialogues: that Plato's own doctrines and arguments can be read off the statements made in the dialogues by Socrates and other leading characters. The authors argue in general and with reference to specific dialogues, that no character should be taken to be Plato's mouthpiece. This is essential reading for students and scholars of Plato.