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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Research on the oxidation of alloys supports the claim that natural scientists can and do use ideal type concepts when confronted with analytical or computational intractability. In opposition to those who collapse ideal types into 'standard' theoretical concepts, I argue ideal types possess a unique structure, function and axiology. In phenomenologically complex situations, scientists use these features to articulate experiment with theory generally and in particular to discover new boundary conditions. This conceptual articulation is achieved using models rather than (...) objective perceptual attributes alone. The analysis supports a claim of local rather than global identities of methodology. (shrink)

Countable homogeneous relational structures have been studied by many people. One area of focus is the Ramsey theory of such structures. After a review of background material, a partition theorem of Laflamme, Sauer, and Vuksanovic for countable homogeneous binary relational structures is discussed with a focus on the size of the set of unavoidable colors.

Analogues of Ramsey’s Theorem for infinite structures such as the rationals or the Rado graph have been known for some time. In this context, one looks for optimal bounds, called degrees, for the number of colors in an isomorphic substructure rather than one color, as that is often impossible. Such theorems for Henson graphs however remained elusive, due to lack of techniques for handling forbidden cliques. Building on the author’s recent result for the triangle-free Henson graph, we prove that (...) for each [Formula: see text], the k-clique-free Henson graph has finite big Ramsey degrees, the appropriate analogue of Ramsey’s Theorem. We develop a method for coding copies of Henson graphs into a new class of trees, called strong coding trees, and prove Ramsey theorems for these trees which are applied to deduce finite big Ramsey degrees. The approach here provides a general methodology opening further study of big Ramsey degrees for ultrahomogeneous structures. The results have bearing on topological dynamics via work of Kechris, Pestov, and Todorcevic and of Zucker. (shrink)

The universal homogeneous triangle-free graph, constructed by Henson [A family of countable homogeneous graphs, Pacific J. Math.38(1) (1971) 69–83] and denoted H3, is the triangle-free analogue of the Rado graph. While the Ramsey theory of the Rado graph has been completely established, beginning with Erdős–Hajnal–Posá [Strong embeddings of graphs into coloured graphs, in Infinite and Finite Sets. Vol.I, eds. A. Hajnal, R. Rado and V. Sós, Colloquia Mathematica Societatis János Bolyai, Vol. 10 (North-Holland, 1973), pp. 585–595] and culminating (...) in work of Sauer [Coloring subgraphs of the Rado graph, Combinatorica26(2) (2006) 231–253] and Laflamme–Sauer–Vuksanovic [Canonical partitions of universal structures, Combinatorica26(2) (2006) 183–205], the Ramsey theory of H3 had only progressed to bounds for vertex colorings [P. Komjáth and V. Rödl, Coloring of universal graphs, Graphs Combin.2(1) (1986) 55–60] and edge colorings [N. Sauer, Edge partitions of the countable triangle free homogenous graph, Discrete Math.185(1–3) (1998) 137–181]. This was due to a lack of broadscale techniques. We solve this problem in general: For each finite triangle-free graph G, there is a finite number T(G) such that for any coloring of all copies of G in H3 into finitely many colors, there is a subgraph of H3 which is again universal homogeneous triangle-free in which the coloring takes no more than T(G) colors. This is the first such result for a homogeneous structure omitting copies of some nontrivial finite structure. The proof entails developments of new broadscale techniques, including a flexible method for constructing trees which code H3 and the development of their Ramsey theory. (shrink)

We investigate the Ramsey theory of continuous graph-structures on complete, separable metric spaces and apply the results to the problem of covering a plane by functions. Let the homogeneity number[Formula: see text] of a pair-coloring c:[X]2→2 be the number of c-homogeneous subsets of X needed to cover X. We isolate two continuous pair-colorings on the Cantor space 2ω, c min and c max, which satisfy [Formula: see text] and prove: Theorem. For every Polish space X and every continuous (...) pair-coloringc:[X]2→2with[Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] There is a model of set theory in which[Formula: see text]and[Formula: see text]. The consistency of [Formula: see text] and of [Formula: see text] follows from [20]. We prove that [Formula: see text] is equal to the covering number of 2 by graphs of Lipschitz functions and their reflections on the diagonal. An iteration of an optimal forcing notion associated to c min gives: Theorem. There is a model of set theory in which ℝ2 is coverable byℵ1graphs and reflections of graphs of continuous real functions; ℝ2 is not coverable byℵ1graphs and reflections of graphs of Lipschitz real functions. Figure 1.1 in the introduction summarizes the ZFC results in Part I of the paper. The independence results in Part II show that any two rows in Fig. 1.1 can be separated if one excludes [Formula: see text] from row. (shrink)

Given a topological Ramsey space math formula, we extend the notion of semiselective coideal to sets math formula and study conditions for math formula that will enable us to make the structure math formula a Ramsey space and also study forcing notions related to math formula which will satisfy abstract versions of interesting properties of the corresponding forcing notions in the realm of Ellentuck's space. This extends results from to the most general context of topological Ramsey spaces. (...) As applications, we prove that for every topological Ramsey space math formula, under suitable large cardinal hypotheses every semiselective ultrafilter math formula is generic over math formula; and that given a semiselective coideal math formula, every definable subset of math formula is math formula-Ramsey. This generalizes the corresponding results for the case when math formula is equal to Ellentuck's space. (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 validity and utility of the proximate-ultimate distinction in biology have recently been under debate. Opponents of the distinction argue that it rules out individual-level organismic processes from evolutionary explanations, thereby leading to an unfounded separation between organismic causation and evolutionary causation. Proponents of the proximate-ultimate distinction, on the other hand, argue that it serves an important epistemological role in forming different kinds of explanation-seeking questions in biology. In this paper we offer an interpretation the proximate-ultimate distinction not only as (...) a means of forming explanation-seeking questions, but also as a distinction that can help highlight the way in which individual-level organismic processes can be evolutionary causes. We do this by interpreting the distinction between proximate and ultimate causes as a distinction between structuring and triggering causes. (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)

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)

The behavior of an organism, according to Merleau-Ponty, lays out a milieu through which significant phenomena of varying degrees of optimality elicit adjustment. This leads to the dialectical co-emergence of milieu and aptitude that is both the product and the condition of life. What is present as a norm soliciting optimization is species-specific, but it also depends on the needs of the organism and its prior experience. Although a rich entry point into biological phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty’s work does not adequately describe (...) milieu–aptitude development in interactions between organisms, but it can be assisted through employing Husserl’s three levels of analysis identified by Steinbock, extending all three modes into the biological world. In particular, generative analyses can address inter-organismal behavioral structures slighted in Merleau-Ponty’s work. Generative phenomenology is concerned with the cultural, historical, and intersubjective constitution of human experience and is generally thought to be solely of value in examining the structure of human phenomenality. However, the possibility of human generativity presupposes structures produced widely in the biological world. Ecological, embryogenic, and evolutionary development already depend on protocultural and historical processes creating and created through intercorporeal interaction. After developing the concept of biological generativity through a consideration of plant ecology, mammalian embryology, and insect mimicry, I conclude with implications for humans, who can participate in biological generativity not merely phenomenally, but phenomenologically. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

“Because those who come after us may not be like us, or because those like us may not come after us, or because after a time there may be none to come after us, mankind must now set to work to insure that those who come after us will be more unlike us. In this there is at work the modern intellect’s penchant for species suicide.” With these words Paul Ramsey brings to a conclusion his provocative and surprising study (...) of the problems we are encountering – and will encounter – as scientific advances make the genetic control of man a real possibility. Now, increased knowledge of chromosome structure has taken the alteration of the human race out of the realm of science fiction and placed it in the hands of laboratory scientists. Ramsey sees this advance in science and technology as a mixed blessing. He examines the ramifications of genetic control, not only the now common measures of birth control and artificial insemination, but also the effect on the genetic pool of the increasing numbers of genetically poor individuals. His concern for humanistic values informs each argument as he tackles such issues as asexual reproduction of men, frozen semen banks, and the breeding of human beings for special purposes. No less than the future of man as we know him hangs on these issues. One must pay particular attention to this book. (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)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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 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)

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)

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.

‘Epistemic structural realism’ (ESR) insists that all that we know of the world is its structure, and that the ‘nature’ of the underlying elements remains hidden. With structure represented via Ramsey sentences, the question arises as to how ‘hidden natures’ might also be represented. If the Ramsey sentence describes a class of realisers for the relevant theory, one way of answering this question is through the notion of multiple realisability. We explore this answer in the context (...) of the work of Carnap, Hintikka and Lewis. Both Carnap and Hintikka offer clear structuralist perspectives which, crucially, accommodate the openness inherent in theory change. Unfortunately there is little purchase for a viable form of realism in either case. Lewis’s approach, on the other hand, offers more scope for realism but, as we shall see, concerns arise as to whether a relevant form of structuralism can be maintained. In particular his thesis of Ramseyan humility undermines certain conceptions of scientific laws that the structural realist might naturally cleave to. Our overall conclusion is that the representational device of Ramsey sentence plus multiple realisability can accommodate either the structuralist or realist aspects of ESR but has difficulties capturing both. (shrink)

Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death (...) that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death—often labeled programmed cell death, PCD—originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality. (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)

Social cognition differs from general cognition in its focus on understanding, perceiving, and interpreting social information. However, we argue that the significance of domain‐general processes for controlling cognition has been historically undervalued in social cognition and social neuroscience research. We suggest much of social cognition can be characterized as specialized feature representations supported by domain‐general cognitive control systems. To test this proposal, we develop a comprehensive working model, based on an interactive activation and competition architecture and applied to the control (...) of action. As such, we label the model “ICON” (interactive activation and competition model for the control of action). We used the ICON model to simulate human performance across various laboratory tasks. Our simulations emphasize that many laboratory‐based social tasks do not require socially specific control systems, such as those that are argued to rely on neural networks associated with theory‐of‐mind. Moreover, our model clarifies that perceived disruptions in social cognition, even in what appears to be disruption to the control of social cognition, can stem from deficits in social representation instead. We advocate for a “default stance” in social cognition, where control is usually general, but representation is specific. This study underscores the importance of integrating social cognition within the broader realm of domain‐general control processing, offering a unified perspective on task processing. (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)

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)

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)

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)

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)