Evolutionary biology since Darwin has seen a dramatic entrenchment and elaboration of the role of chance in evolution. It is nearly impossible to discuss contemporary evolutionary theory in any depth at all without making reference to at least some concept of “chance” or “randomness.” Many processes are described as chancy, outcomes are characterized as random, and many evolutionary phenomena are thought to be best described by stochastic or probabilistic models. Chance is taken by various authors to be central to (...) the understanding of fitness, genetic drift, macroevolution, mutation, foraging theory, and environmental variation, to take but a few examples. And for each of these notions, there are yet more stories to tell. Each weaves itself into the various branches of evolutionary theory in myriad different ways, with a wide variety of effects on the history and current state of life on Earth. Each is grounded in a particular trajectory in the history of philosophy and the history of biology, and has inspired a variety of responses throughout science and culture. This book endeavors to offer a cross-section of biological, historical, philosophical, and theological approaches to understanding chance in evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Genetic interventions, which include transgenic engineering, gene editing, and other forms of genome modification aimed at altering the information “in” the genetic code, are rapidly increasing in power and scale. Biosemiotics offers unique tools for understanding the nature, risks, scope, and prospects of such technologies, though few in the community have turned their attention specifically in this direction. Bruni is an important exception. In this paper, I examine how we frame the concept of “side effects” that result from genetic interventions (...) and how the concept stands up to current perspectives of the role of organism activity in development. I propose that once the role of living systems in constructing and modifying the informational value of their various developmental resources is taken into account, the concept of a “side effect” will need to be significantly revised. Far from merely a disturbance brought about in a senseless albeit complex system, a biosemiotic view would take “side effects” as at least sometimes the organism’s active re-organization in order to accommodate or make use of novelty. This insight is nascent in the work of developmental plasticity and niche construction theory, but it is brought into sharper focus by the explicitly interpretive perspective offered by biosemiotics. Understanding the “side effects” of genetic interventions depends in part on being able to articulate when and where unexpected consequences are a result of semiotic activity at various levels within the system. While a semiotic interpretation of “side effects” puts into question the naive attitude that would see all unintended side effects as indications of disturbance in system functionality, it certainly does not imply that such side effects are of no concern for the viability of the organisms in the system. As we shall see, the fact that such interventions do not respect the translation of information that occurs in multi-level biological systems ensures that disruption is still likely. But it does unprivilege the human agent as the sole generator of meaning and information in the products of biotechnology, with important consequences on how we understand our relationship with other species. (shrink)

Ancients and moderns alike have constructed arguments and assessed theories on the basis of common sense and intuitive judgments. Yet, despite the important role intuitions play in philosophy, there has been little reflection on fundamental questions concerning the sort of data intuitions provide, how they are supposed to lead us to the truth, and why we should treat them as important. In addition, recent psychological research seems to pose serious challenges to traditional intuition-driven philosophical inquiry. Rethinking Intuition brings together a (...) distinguished group of philosophers and psychologists to discuss these important issues. Students and scholars in both fields will find this book to be of great value. (shrink)

According to the modern synthesis, evolution is the gradual change of gene frequencies in a population. The MS is closely allied to adaptationist explanations of phenotypes, where organismic form and behavior is treated as previously selected for and owes its genesis to some remote past. However, some new theories of evolution broadly aligned with the extended evolutionary synthesis, in particular developmental plasticity theory and niche construction theory, foreground the fact that evolution is sometimes much more rapid than previously (...) imagined, and occurs through the active engagement of organisms accommodating and modifying their environments. This article describes how these contemporary theories reveal two interconnected sides of being an adaptive subject, a situated agent that modifies itself and its environment as it lives, and contributes to evolution in turn. MS and adaptationism have a generic logical structure that can be taught anywhere, but because developmental plasticity theory and niche construction theory point to an ontology that foregrounds the agency of the organism, they benefit from in situ exploration. I argue biology as a subject needs to adapt, and call for the renewed importance of field studies, outlining some elements of how such studies might be conceived. I close by considering how understanding organisms as adaptive subjects of evolution has important implications for sustainability education. (shrink)

Cognitive representation is the single most important explanatory notion in the sciences of the mind and has served as the cornerstone for the so-called 'cognitive revolution'. This book critically examines the ways in which philosophers and cognitive scientists appeal to representations in their theories, and argues that there is considerable confusion about the nature of representational states. This has led to an excessive over-application of the notion - especially in many of the fresher theories in computational neuroscience. Representation Reconsidered shows (...) how psychological research is actually moving in a non-representational direction, revealing a radical, though largely unnoticed, shift in our basic understanding of how the mind works. (shrink)

This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.

The philosophy of cognitive science has recently become one of the most exciting and fastest growing domains of philosophical inquiry and analysis. Until the early 1980s, nearly all of the models developed treated cognitive processes -- like problem solving, language comprehension, memory, and higher visual processing -- as rule-governed symbol manipulation. However, this situation has changed dramatically over the last half dozen years. In that period there has been an enormous shift of attention toward connectionist models of cognition that are (...) inspired by the network-like architecture of the brain. Because of their unique architecture and style of processing, connectionist systems are generally regarded as radically different from the more traditional symbol manipulation models. This collection was designed to provide philosophers who have been working in the area of cognitive science with a forum for expressing their views on these recent developments. Because the symbol-manipulating paradigm has been so important to the work of contemporary philosophers, many have watched the emergence of connectionism with considerable interest. The contributors take very different stands toward connectionism, but all agree that the potential exists for a radical shift in the way many philosophers think of various aspects of cognition. Exploring this potential and other philosophical dimensions of connectionist research is the aim of this volume. (shrink)

We study Kim-independence over arbitrary sets. Assuming that forking satisfies existence, we establish Kim's lemma for Kim-dividing over arbitrary sets in an NSOP1 theory. We deduce symmetry of Kim-independence and the independence theorem for Lascar strong types.

One contentious debate in the philosophy of biology is that between the statisticalists and causalists. The former understand core evolutionary concepts like fitness and selection to be mere statistical summaries of underlying causal processes. In this view, evolutionary changes cannot be causally explained by selection or fitness. The causalist side, on the other hand, holds that populations can change in response to selection—one can cite fitness differences or driftability in causal explanations of evolutionary change. But, on the causalist side, it (...) is often not clear how, precisely, one should understand these causes. Thus, much more could be said about what sort of causes fitness and driftability are. In this paper, I borrow Dretske's distinction between structuring and triggering causes and I suggest that fitness and driftability are structuring causes of evolution. (shrink)

Fitness is a central theoretical concept in evolutionary theory. Despite its importance, much debate has occurred over how to conceptualize and formalize fitness. One point of debate concerns the roles of organismic and trait fitness. In a recent addition to this debate, Elliott Sober argues that trait fitness is the central fitness concept, and that organismic fitness is of little value. In this paper, by contrast, we argue that it is organismic fitness that lies at the bases of both (...) the conceptual role of fitness, as well as its role as a measure of evolutionary dynamics. (shrink)

This article surveys recent scholarship on Confucian role ethics, examines some of its fundamental commitments, and suggests future directions for scholarship. Role ethics interprets early Confucianism as promoting a relational conception of persons and employs this conception to emphasize how a person's roles and relationships are the source of her ethical obligations and ethical growth. While there is much consensus among role ethic scholars, they disagree over the role of theory in further explicating the view and about the metaphysical (...) basis of relational persons. Strong and moderate versions of role ethics emerge, and the article explores the strengths and weaknesses of both. (shrink)

In various contexts and for various reasons, writers often define cognitive processes and architectures as those involving representational states and structures. Similarly, cognitive theories are also often delineated as those that invoke representations. In this paper, I present several reasons for rejecting this way of demarcating the cognitive. Some of the reasons against defining cognition in representational terms are that doing so needlessly restricts our theorizing, it undermines the empirical status of the representational theory of mind, and it encourages (...) wildly deflationary and explanatorily vacuous conceptions of representation. After criticizing this outlook, I sketch alternative ways we might try to capture what is distinctive about cognition and cognitive theorizing. (shrink)

Biological fitness is a foundational concept in the theory of natural selection. Natural selection is often defined in terms of fitness differences as “any consistent difference in fitness (i.e., survival and reproduction) among phenotypically different biological entities” (Futuyma 1998, 349). And in Lewontin’s (1970) classic articulation of the theory of natural selection, he lists fitness differences as one of the necessary conditions for evolution by natural selection to occur. Despite this foundational position of fitness, there remains much debate (...) over the nature of fitness, especially whether fitness differences can truly be said to cause evolutionary change. In recent years these debates have crystalized into two camps: (1) causalists, who see fitness differences as being one of the causes of evolutionary change, and (2) statisticalists, who deny the causal efficacy of fitness and instead hold that “fitness is a mere statistical, noncausal property of trait types” (Walsh 2010, 148). (shrink)

The present publication forms part of a projected book that F. P. Ramsey drafted but never completed. It survived among his papers and ultimately came into the possession of the University of Pittsburgh in the circumstances detailed in the Editor's Introduction. Our hope in issuing this work at this stage - some sixty years after Ramsey's premature death at the age of 26 - is both to provide yet another token of his amazing philosophical creativity, and also to (...) make available an important datum for the still to be written history of the development of philosophical analysis. This is a book whose appearance will, we hope and expect, be appreciated both by those interested in linguistic philosophy itself and by those concerned for its historical development in the present century. EDITORS'INTRODUCTION 1. THE RAMSEY COLLECTION Frank Plump ton Ramsey was an extra ordinary scholarly phenomenon. Son of a distinguished mathematician and President of Magdalene College, Cambridge and brother of Arthur Michael, eventual Archbishop of Canterbury, Ramsey was closely connected with Cambridge throughout his life, ultimately becoming lecturer in Mathematics in the University. Notwithstanding his great mathematical talent, it was primarily logic and philosophy that engaged his interests, and he wrote original and important contributions to logic, semantics, epistomology, probability theory, philosophy of science, and economics, in addition to seminal work in the foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

In multicellular organisms, cells are frequently programmed to die. This makes good sense: cells that fail to, or are no longer playing important roles are eliminated. From the cell’s perspective, this also makes sense, since somatic cells in multicellular organisms require the cooperation of clonal relatives. In unicellular organisms, however, programmed cell death poses a difficult and unresolved evolutionary problem. The empirical evidence for PCD in diverse microbial taxa has spurred debates about what precisely PCD means in the case of (...) unicellular organisms. In this article, we survey the concepts of PCD in the literature and the selective pressures associated with its evolution. We show that definitions of PCD have been almost entirely mechanistic and fail to separate questions concerning what PCD fundamentally is from questions about the kinds of mechanisms that realize PCD. We conclude that an evolutionary definition is best able to distinguish PCD from closely related phenomena. Specifically, we define “true” PCD as an adaptation for death triggered by abiotic or biotic environmental stresses. True PCD is thus not only an evolutionary product but must also have been a target of selection. Apparent PCD resulting from pleiotropy, genetic drift, or trade-offs is not true PCD. We call this “ersatz PCD.”. (shrink)

This note is a postscript to Ramsey's 'Truth and Probability'. It replaces that article's psychological reading of subjective probability with a reading of it as a consistency condition on the theory that we act to maximise expected utility.

Scientists employ a variety of procedures to eliminate degrees of freedom from computationally and/or analytically intractable equations. In the process, they often construct new models and discover new concepts, laws and functional relations. I argue these procedures embody a central notion of reduction, namely, the containment of one structure within another. However, their inclusion in the philosophical concept of reduction necessitates a reevaluation of many standard assumptions about the ontological, epistemological and functional features of a reduction. On the basis of (...) the reevaluation, I advocate a continuum of reduction which proceeds from the eliminative to the constructive. The metaphysical aspects of theory use in constructive reductions are sketched. (shrink)

Fitness is a central concept in evolutionary theory. Just as it is central to biological evolution, so, it seems, it should be central to cultural evolutionary theory. But importing the biological fitness concept to CET is no straightforward task—there are many features unique to cultural evolution that make this difficult. This has led some theorists to argue that there are fundamental problems with cultural fitness that render it hopelessly confused. In this essay, we defend the coherency of cultural (...) fitness against those who call it into doubt. (shrink)

For the past 40 years, philosophers have generally assumed that a key to understanding mental representation is to develop a naturalistic theory of representational content. This has led to an outlook where the importance of content has been heavily inflated, while the significance of the representational vehicles has been somewhat downplayed. However, the success of this enterprise has been thwarted by a number of mysterious and allegedly non-naturalizable, irreducible dimensions of representational content. The challenge of addressing these difficulties has (...) come to be known as the “hard problem of content” (Hutto & Myin, 2012), and many think it makes an account of representation in the brain impossible. In this essay, I argue that much of this is misguided and based upon the wrong set of priorities. If we focus on the functionality of representational vehicles (as recommended by teleosemanticists) and remind ourselves of the quirks associated with many functional entities, we can see that the allegedly mysterious and intractable aspects of content are really just mundane features associated with many everyday functional kinds. We can also see they have little to do with content and more to do with representation function. Moreover, we can begin to see that our explanatory priorities are backwards: instead of expecting a theory of content to be the key to understanding how a brain state can function as a representation, we should instead expect a theory of neural representation function to serve as the key to understanding how content occurs naturally. (shrink)

With a new foreword by noted theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, this classic text on war and the ethics of modern statecraft written at the height of the Vietnam era in 1968 speaks to a new generation of readers. Characterized by a sophisticated yet back-to-basics approach, The Just War begins with the assumption that force is a fact in political life which must either be reckoned with or succumbed to. It then grapples with modern challenges to traditional moral principles of (...) "just conduct" in war, the "morality of deterrence," and a "just war theory of statecraft.". (shrink)

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding, modeling, and creating intelligence of various forms. It is a critical branch of cognitive science, and its influence is increasingly being felt in other areas, including the humanities. AI applications are transforming the way we interact with each other and with our environment, and work in artificially modeling intelligence is offering new insights into the human mind and revealing new forms mentality can take. This volume of original essays presents the (...) state of the art in AI, surveying the foundations of the discipline, major theories of mental architecture, the principal areas of research, and extensions of AI such as artificial life. With a focus on theory rather than technical and applied issues, the volume will be valuable not only to people working in AI, but also to those in other disciplines wanting an authoritative and up-to-date introduction to the field. (shrink)

Prediction is more than testing established theory by examining whether the prediction matches the data. To show this, I examine the practices of a community of scientists, known as threaders, who are attempting to predict the final, folded structure of a protein from its primary structure, i.e., its amino acid sequence. These scientists employ a careful and deliberate methodology of prediction. A key feature of the methodology is calibration. They calibrate in order to construct better models. The construction leads (...) to knowledge of how to construct or build an object. Thus, prediction serves a cognitive goal of model construction and not just model or theory testing. The kind of knowledge that results is relevantly different than theoretical knowledge. (shrink)

We study model theoretic tree properties and their associated cardinal invariants. In particular, we obtain a quantitative refinement of Shelah’s theorem for countable theories, show that [Formula: see text] is always witnessed by a formula in a single variable and that weak [Formula: see text] is equivalent to [Formula: see text]. Besides, we give a characterization of [Formula: see text] via a version of independent amalgamation of types and apply this criterion to verify that some examples in the literature are (...) indeed [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

This paper begins by exploring the anti-colonial work of Tunisian scholar Albert Memmi in his classic book The Colonizer and the Colonized and determining whether the characteristics of colonization that he names can be successfully applied to the current relationship between modern humans and the “natural world”. After considering what we found to be the five key characteristics: manufacturing the colonial, alienation and unknowability, violence, psychological strategies (bad faith), and language, history, and metaphor we draw clear parallels, through selected examples, (...) to the exploitative relationships enacted in many realms of the modern human/nature relationship. In so doing the paper posits that the beings that comprise the “natural world” are colonized. It then continues from that position to explore the possibility of cultivating practices of listening to the voices of these colonized others to inform anti-colonial ecopedagogy as allies. We employ the term “shut-up” as an anti-colonial gesture to remind ourselves as much as others of the importance of first listening to the colonized other before engaging in “post-colonial” theorizing about prospective relationships or liberatory solutions “for” them. Given the fast-paced and cacophonic urban life many humans increasingly inhabit, and the disciplined and reiterative practice(s) required to learn to listen to other voices, we suggest caution and care when importing postcolonial theory into “environmental” contexts and seek to instigate further discussion as to how we might enact solidarity with other beings as anti-colonial allies in education. To this end, we conclude the paper with some educational implications based on research at a place-based school and focus on the role history, language and metaphor play in manufacturing a colonial relationship, but also provide a potential means for changing relationships with the diverse beings with whom we share the planet. (shrink)

There is currently an important debate about whether philosophical intuitions are intended as evidence for the theories philosophers promote. On one side are those who argue that philosophers do rely on intuitions as evidence; on the other side are those who deny any such role for philosophical intuitions. This paper argues that both sides of this debate are partially right and partially wrong. Intuitive judgments do not, as psychological states, function as evidence in most well-known philosophical thought experiments. Philosophers nevertheless (...) strongly depend upon these intuitive judgments. Where both sides go awry is in assuming that the importance of intuitive judgments rests solely upon their role as evidence. We need to distinguish between evidence, as such, from various nonevidential psychological states that are needed for something else to serve as evidence. The paper calls these latter conditions “evidence facilitators” and argues that intuitive judgments belong in this category. (shrink)

A major debate in the philosophy of biology centers on the question of how we should understand the causal structure of natural selection. This debate is polarized into the causal and statistical positions. The main arguments from the statistical side are that a causal construal of the theory of natural selection's central concept, fitness, either (i) leads to inaccurate predictions about population dynamics, or (ii) leads to an incoherent set of causal commitments. In this essay, I argue that neither (...) the predictive inaccuracy nor the incoherency arguments successfully undermine the causal account of fitness. 1 Introduction2 The Importance of Trait Fitness3 Trait Fitness is not a Silver Bullet4 The Fundamental Incoherency Argument5 Car Racing and Trait Fitness Reversals6 Population Subdivisions and Evolution7 The STP and the Argument for the Incoherency of the Causal Account of Fitness8 Conclusions. (shrink)

Recent evolutionary perspectives on guilt tend to focus on how guilt functions as a means for the individual to self-regulate behavior and as a mechanism for reinforcing cooperative tendencies. While these accounts highlight important dimensions of guilt and provide important insights into its evolutionary emergence, they pay scant attention to the large empirical literature on its maladaptive effects on individuals. This paper considers the nature of guilt, explores its biological function, and provides an evolutionary perspective on whether it is an (...) individual-level or group selected trait. After surveying philosophical and psychological analyses of guilt, we consider which psychological mechanisms underlie the capacity to experience and act from guilt and whether they point to an emergence of guilt in early humans or to guilt having a longer phylogenetic history. Because guilt is a characteristically social emotion, we then examine its contemporary role in social and legal contexts, which may p... (shrink)

A major debate in the philosophy of biology centers on the question of how we should understand the causal structure of natural selection. This debate is polarized into the causal and statistical positions. The main arguments from the statistical side are that a causal construal of the theory of natural selection's central concept, fitness, either (i) leads to inaccurate predictions about population dynamics, or (ii) leads to an incoherent set of causal commitments. In this essay, I argue that neither (...) the predictive inaccuracy nor the incoherency arguments successfully undermine the causal account of fitness. 1 Introduction2 The Importance of Trait Fitness3 Trait Fitness is not a Silver Bullet4 The Fundamental Incoherency Argument5 Car Racing and Trait Fitness Reversals6 Population Subdivisions and Evolution7 The STP and the Argument for the Incoherency of the Causal Account of Fitness8 Conclusions. (shrink)

Population-level theories of evolution—the stock and trade of population genetics—are statistical theories par excellence. But what accounts for the statistical character of population-level phenomena? One view is that the population-level statistics are a product of, are generated by, probabilities that attach to the individuals in the population. On this conception, population-level phenomena are explained by individual-level probabilities and their population-level combinations. Another view, which arguably goes back to Fisher but has been defended recently, is that the population-level statistics are sui (...) generis, that they somehow emerge from the underlying deterministic behavior of the individuals composing the population. Walsh et al. label this the statistical interpretation. We are not willing to give them that term, since everyone will admit that the population-level theories of evolution are statistical, so we will call this the emergentist statistical interpretation. Our goals are to show that: This interpretation is based on gross factual errors concerning the practice of evolutionary biology, concerning both what is done and what can be done; its adoption would entail giving up on most of the explanatory and predictive projects of evolutionary biology; and finally a rival interpretation, which we will label the propensity statistical interpretation succeeds exactly where the emergentist interpretation fails. (shrink)

Haack, S. Is truth flat or bumpy?--Chihara, C. S. Ramsey 's theory of types.--Loar, B. Ramsey 's theory of belief and truth.--Skorupski, J. Ramsey on Belief.--Hookway, C. Inference, partial belief, and psychological laws.--Skyrms, B. Higher order degrees of belief.--Mellor, D. H. Consciousness and degrees of belief.--Blackburn, S. Opinions and chances.--Grandy, R. E. Ramsey, reliability, and knowledge.--Cohen, L. J. The problem of natural laws.--Giedymin, J. Hamilton's method in geometrical optics and Ramsey 's view of (...) theories. (shrink)

Abstract Philosophers have paid little attention to the kind of reduction involved in transforming an analytically intractable equation into solvable form. I argue that this practice is important because it involves the design of a basic level theory for use in a specific domain. The design process can lead to the construction of a new theory. As a result of my analysis, theory design emerges as an important category of analysis for scientific methodology. Similarities between design in (...) technology and science are explored to illuminate the heuristic function of such reductions. (shrink)

We introduce the class of unshreddable theories, which contains the simple and NIP theories, and prove that such theories have exactly saturated models in singular cardinals, satisfying certain set-theoretic hypotheses. We also give criteria for a theory to have singular compactness.

By stressing the act rather than the relation of approximation, I argue that the magnitude of the error introduced should not be used as the sole criterion for judging the worth of the approximation. Magnitude is a necessary but not sufficient condition for such a judgement. Controllability, the absence of cancelling errors, and the approximation's justification are also important criteria to consider when praising or blaming an approximation. Boltzmann's discussion of the types of approximations used in the kinetic theory (...) of gases at the turn of the century illustrates the use of these criteria. (shrink)

In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, the question of 'just war' has become a hotly contested issue, and this classic text on war and the ethics of modern statecraft written at the height of the Vietnam era in 1968 speaks to a new generation of readers. In defending just war against Christian pacifism, Ramsey joins a line of theological reasoning that traces its antecedents to Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Ramsey argues that decisions regarding war must (...) be governed by 'political prudence.' Whether a particular war should be fought, and at what level of violence, depends, Ramsey writes, on one's count of the moral costs and benefits. Characterized by a sophisticated yet back-to-basics approach, his analysis begins with the assumption that force is a fact in political life which must either be reckoned with or succumbed to. He then grapples with modern challenges to traditional moral principles of 'just conduct' in war, the 'morality of deterrence,' and a 'just war theory of statecraft.'. (shrink)

In accounting for the way we explain and predict behavior, two major positions are the theory-theory and the simulation theory. Recently, several authors have advocated a hybrid position, where elements of both theory and simulation are part of the account. One popular strategy for incorporating simulation is to note that we sometimes assign mental states to others by performing cognitive operations in ourselves that mirror what has occurred in the target. In this article, I argue that (...) this way of thinking about simulation is misguided. The confusion stems from a failure to appreciate how the application of any internal theory, including folk psychology, requires the employment of other cognitive sub-systems and mechanisms. Just as we need to use our visual system to see what another person is seeing, so too we sometimes need to use our own internal sub-systems to ascertain facts about another's mental states. In many such cases, our cognitive mechanisms are used more as ?fact-finders? rather than as simulators. After spelling all this out, I offer two ways to demarcate cognitive processes that are real simulation from those that are simply used in the application of a theory. (shrink)

We use exact saturation to study the complexity of unstable theories, showing that a variant of this notion called pseudo-elementary class (PC)-exact saturation meaningfully reflects combinatorial dividing lines. We study PC-exact saturation for stable and simple theories. Among other results, we show that PC-exact saturation characterizes the stability cardinals of size at least continuum of a countable stable theory and, additionally, that simple unstable theories have PC-exact saturation at singular cardinals satisfying mild set-theoretic hypotheses. This had previously been open (...) even for the random graph. We characterize supersimplicity of countable theories in terms of having PC-exact saturation at singular cardinals of countable cofinality. We also consider the local analog of PC-exact saturation, showing that local PC-exact saturation for singular cardinals of countable cofinality characterizes supershort theories. (shrink)

This argument explores transcultural commonalities among civic arguments from divination in global antiquity. In the ancient world, proponents engaged in kisceral arguments deriving from divinatory signs: arguments ex divinatione regarding prospective civic action. Under ideal circumstances, their aim was to help insure that the collective action of human political organizations was aligned with the natural synchrony of the cosmos. Thus, civic arguments from divination were employed to anticipate the future’s course based on the signs the system produced holistically. In ancient (...) Mesopotamia, China, and Rome, divination was employed as a tool for aligning the order of human society to that of a conception of metaphysical or cosmic order. By comparing these argumentative examples and rationales, we see a broader context for the way in which humans made arguments toward political futurity outside more conventional syllogistic formulations concerning causation. Rather, the argumentative strategies of many ancient cultures embraced an understanding of the future as the logical outcome of a holistic dynamism in kairotic time. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmployees who possess cross-cultural capabilities are increasingly sought after due to unparalleled numbers of cross-cultural interactions. Previous research has primarily focused on the bright side of these capabilities, including important individual and work outcomes. In contrast, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the cross-cultural capability of cultural intelligence can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Applying the general theory of confluence, we propose that expatriates high in CQ excel in customer relationship performance, while simultaneously behaving (...) opportunistically. We also suggest that ethical relativism moderates these relationships. Using mixed methods, four separate studies generally support our predictions while also deepening our understanding of various forms of opportunism and the mechanism behind two seemingly opposing effects. Conceptual and managerial implications of CQ for opportunism, customer relationship performance, and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper will examine the circumstances that inspired the famous utterance attributed to the haruspex Spurinna, ‘Beware the Ides of March!'1 Recently the argument has been made that this warning to Caesar was based upon an astrological calculation, rather than on the usual arts of an haruspex who read signs of the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals or by interpreting bolts of lightning and portents . As intriguing as this astrological theory is, I am convinced that (...) it is fatally flawed, and I intend to show why it must ultimately be rejected. The question is not merely an academic one, having to do with the methods employed by a particular seer on a given occasion. Rather, if it can be established as even probable that Spurinna based his prophecy upon an astrological calculation, which helped convince the conspirators that Caesar was vulnerable to attack on the Ides as being an unlucky day for him according to the stars, then we are presented with a very significant and hitherto unsuspected instance of astrology influencing the course of public affairs at Rome several decades before astrology came into its own under the early emperors. According to such a reconstruction, astrology played a key role in determining the date of one of the most fateful murders in Roman history. It is the contention of this paper, on the contrary, that there is no reason whatsoever to attribute Spurinna's prophecy to an astrological calculation. (shrink)

This paper will examine the circumstances that inspired the famous utterance attributed to the haruspex Spurinna, ‘Beware the Ides of March!'1Recently the argument has been made that this warning to Caesar was based upon an astrological calculation, rather than on the usual arts of an haruspex who read signs of the future by inspecting the entrails of sacrificial animals (exta) or by interpreting bolts of lightning (fulgura) and portents (ostenta). As intriguing as this astrological theory is, I am convinced (...) that it is fatally flawed, and I intend to show why it must ultimately be rejected. The question is not merely an academic one, having to do with the methods employed by a particular seer on a given occasion. Rather, if it can be established as even probable that Spurinna based his prophecy upon an astrological calculation, which helped convince the conspirators that Caesar was vulnerable to attack on the Ides as being an unlucky day for him according to the stars, then we are presented with a very significant and hitherto unsuspected instance of astrology influencing the course of public affairs at Rome several decades before astrology came into its own under the early emperors. According to such a reconstruction, astrology played a key role in determining the date of one of the most fateful murders in Roman history. It is the contention of this paper, on the contrary, that there is no reason whatsoever to attribute Spurinna's prophecy to an astrological calculation. (shrink)

This article, based on archival research and oral interviews, examines the personal and professional impact of desegregation on African American teachers in an urban southern setting by focusing on the life stories of two public school teachers, Kathleen Crosby and Bertha Maxwell-Roddey. Both taught in segregated schools, helped to desegregate Charlotte's public schools, and later forged successful career paths as administrators from 1946 to 1986. Focusing on the motivating factors and educational theories of these exemplary womanist teachers offers a window (...) into the lives of educators who forged new avenues for advancement in the urban South. This article also analyzes how the professional careers of Crosby and Maxwell-Roddey are emblematic of Tamera Beabuboeuf-Lafontant's theoretical concepts of womanist teaching. Patricia Hill Collins also argues that womanists strive to ensure group survival while pushing for institutional social change. Desegregation-era teachers such as Crosby and Maxwell-Roddey exemplify this dual purpose by expanding their mandate to serve to encompass political action as they challenged discriminatory school administrators and parents. These teachers practiced a form of caring activism that not only encouraged gender equality, but also adopted concepts of cultural nationalism to help Black children develop a positive self-identity (Beauboeuf-Lafonfant 2005, Collins 2000). (shrink)

Fitness plays many roles throughout evolutionary theory, from a measure of populations in the wild to a central element in abstract theoretical presentations of natural selection. It has thus been the subject of an extensive philosophical literature, which has primarily centered on the way to understand the relationship between fitness values and reproductive outcomes. If fitness is a probabilistic or statistical quantity, how is it to be defined in general theoretical contexts? How can it be measured? Can a single (...) conceptual model for fitness be offered that applies in all biological cases, or must fitness measures be case-specific? Philosophers have explored these questions over the last several decades, largely in the context of an influential definition of fitness proposed in the late 1970s: the propensity interpretation. This interpretation as first described undeniably suffers from significant difficulties, and debate regarding the tenability of amendments and alternatives to it remains unsettled. (shrink)

Niche construction theory concerns how organisms can change selection pressures by altering the feature–factor relationship between themselves and their environment. These alterations are standardly understood to be brought about through two kinds of organism–environment interaction: perturbative and relocational niche construction. We argue that a reconceptualization is needed on the grounds that if a niche is understood as the feature–factor relationship, then there are three fundamental ways in which organisms can engage in niche construction: constitutive, relational, and external niche construction. (...) We further motivate our reconceptualization by showing some examples of organismic activities that fall outside of the current categorization of niche construction, but nonetheless should be included. We end by discussing two objections to niche construction and show how our reconceptualization helps to undercut these objections. 1Introduction2Niche Construction Theory 2.1The standard account of niche construction2.2Two problems with the standard account of niche construction3Three Kinds of Niche Construction 3.1Constitutive niche construction3.2Relational niche construction3.3External niche construction4Conceptual Improvement on Niche Construction Theory 4.1Constitutive niche construction4.2Relational niche construction4.3External niche construction5The Status of Niche Construction Theory within Evolutionary Theory 5.1Is niche construction a helpful addition to evolutionary theory?5.2Is niche construction an evolutionary process?6Conclusion. (shrink)

Recently, Sean Cordell has raised a problem for Aristotelians who seriously consider social roles: When the demands of the role conflict with the demands of morality, which norms ought one follow? However, this problem, which I call the role dilemma, is not specific to Aristotelians. Classical Confucians face a similar problem. How do Confucians resolve conflicts between the demands of humaneness (ren 仁) and the demands of social roles and the social norms (li 礼) that govern these roles? Confucians who (...) favor humaneness, maintaining that other demands are defeasible, offer an externalism about roles. This response is similar to the Aristotelian argument that the demands of human excellence trump other demands. Consequently, Confucian externalism collapses into a virtue ethic. Confucians who favor the demands of li offer an internalism about roles. However, internalism is undesirable because it implies relativism and condones oppressive social institutions. The Confucian role ethicist must offer a tenable solution that steers clear of the pitfalls of both externalism and internalism. Although I do not advance a solution here, I believe a tenable alternative exists. The goals of this paper, instead, are to demonstrate that classical Confucians face the role dilemma and to initiate a discussion about the theoretical apparatus required of Confucian role ethics in order to distinguish it from other ethical theories. I conclude with some programmatic remarks about additional questions and problems that ought to be addressed. (shrink)

I argue that numerical and causal accuracy arguments can be successful only if: (1) the theories in use are known to be true, (2) computational difficulties do not exist, and (3) the experimental data are stable and resolved. When any one or more of these assumptions are not satisfied, additional justificational considerations must be invoked. I illustrate the need for range of validity and intelligibility claims with examples drawn from chemical kinetics. My arguments suggest that the realist and anti-realist accounts (...) of justification are incomplete. Finally, I sketch some reasons why additional justificatory criteria are needed. (shrink)