In his Edifying Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard published a sermon entitled ‘The Unchangeableness of God’ in which he reiterated the dogma which dominated Catholic, Protestant and even Jewish expressions of classical supernaturalist theology from the first century A.D. until the advent of process theology in the twentieth century. The dogma that as a perfect being, God must be totally unchanging in every conceivable respect was expressed by Kierkegaard in such ways as: He changes all, Himself unchanged. When everything seems stable and (...) in the overturn of all things, He remains equally unchanged; no change touches Him, not even the shadow of a change; in unaltered clearness He, the father of lights, remained eternally unchanged. 1. (shrink)

Originally titled “Is It Murder in Tennessee to Kill a Chimpanzee,” this article argues in some detail that typical legal definitions of “murder” as involving the intentional killing of “a reasonable being” would require classifying the intentional killing of chimpanzees as murder.

Recent theorizing about the cognitive underpinnings of dilemmatic moral judgment has equated slow, deliberative thinking with the utilitarian disposition and fast, automatic thinking with the deontological disposition. However, evidence for the reflective utilitarian hypothesis—the hypothesized link between utilitarian judgment and individual differences in the capacity for rational reflection has been inconsistent and difficult to interpret in light of several design flaws. In two studies aimed at addressing some of the flaws, we found robust evidence for a reflective minimalist hypothesis—high CRT (...) performers’ tendency to regard utility-optimizing acts as largely a matter of personal prerogative, permissible both to perform and to leave undone. This relationship between CRT and the “minimalist” orientation remained intact after controlling for age, sex, trait affect, social desirability, and educational attainment. No significant association was found between CRT and the strict utilitarian response pattern or CRT and the strict deontological response pattern, nor did we find any significant association between CRT and willingness to act in the utility-optimizing manner. However, we found an inverse association between empathic concern and a willingness to act in the utility-optimizing manner, but there was no comparable association between empathic concern and the deontological judgment pattern. Theoretical, methodological, and normative implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

In many learning or inference tasks human behavior approximates that of a Bayesian ideal observer, suggesting that, at some level, cognition can be described as Bayesian inference. However, a number of findings have highlighted an intriguing mismatch between human behavior and standard assumptions about optimality: People often appear to make decisions based on just one or a few samples from the appropriate posterior probability distribution, rather than using the full distribution. Although sampling-based approximations are a common way to implement Bayesian (...) inference, the very limited numbers of samples often used by humans seem insufficient to approximate the required probability distributions very accurately. Here, we consider this discrepancy in the broader framework of statistical decision theory, and ask: If people are making decisions based on samples—but as samples are costly—how many samples should people use to optimize their total expected or worst-case reward over a large number of decisions? We find that under reasonable assumptions about the time costs of sampling, making many quick but locally suboptimal decisions based on very few samples may be the globally optimal strategy over long periods. These results help to reconcile a large body of work showing sampling-based or probability matching behavior with the hypothesis that human cognition can be understood in Bayesian terms, and they suggest promising future directions for studies of resource-constrained cognition. (shrink)

This article examines several answers to the question, can lexical definitions be true or false.

The mammalian placenta exhibits elevated expression of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), but the evolutionary significance of this feature remains unclear. I propose that ERV‐mediated regulatory evolution was, and continues to be, an important mechanism underlying the evolution of placental development. Many recent studies have focused on the co‐option of ERV‐derived genes for specific functional adaptations in the placenta. However, the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements could potentially lead to the incorporation of entire gene regulatory networks, which, I argue, would facilitate relatively (...) rapid developmental evolution of the placenta. I suggest a model in which an ancient retroviral infection led to the establishment of the ancestral placental developmental gene network through the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements. Consequently, placental development would require elevated tolerance to ERV activity. This in turn would expose a continuous stream of novel ERV mutations that may have catalyzed the developmental diversification of the mammalian placenta. (shrink)

Common Truths brings together the best minds writing on one of today's most important and heated issues: natural law. This diverse group of thinkers addresses the theoretical, historical, and--in a section of particular importance--the legislative and juridical aspects of natural law. A revival of natural law concepts, the essayists argue, is crucial to the refurbishing of American civil society. Anyone wanting to understand what the natural law is and why it matters will find this engaging book indispensable.

We address the problem of musical variation (identification of different musical sequences as variations) and its implications for mental representations of music. According to reductionist theories, listeners judge the structural importance of musical events while forming mental representations. These judgments may result from the production of reduced memory representations that retain only the musical gist. In a study of improvised music performance, pianists produced variations on melodies. Analyses of the musical events retained across variations provided support for the reductionist account (...) of structural importance. A neural network trained to produce reduced memory representations for the same melodies represented structurally important events more efficiently than others. Agreement among the musicians' improvisations, the network model, and music‐theoretic predictions suggest that perceived constancy across musical variation is a natural result of a reductionist mechanism for producing memory representations. (shrink)

In this book, published in 1686, the scientist Robert Boyle attacked prevailing notions of the natural world which depicted 'Nature' as a wise, benevolent and purposeful being. Boyle, one of the leading mechanical philosophers of his day, believed that the world was best understood as a vast, impersonal machine, fashioned by an infinite, personal God. In this cogent treatise, he drew on his scientific findings, his knowledge of contemporary medicine and his deep reflection on theological and philosophical issues, arguing that (...) it was inappropriate both theologically and scientifically to speak of Nature as if it had a mind of its own: instead, the only true efficient causes of things were the properties and powers given to matter by God. As such, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature represents one of the subtlest statements concerning the philosophical issues raised by the mechanical philosophy to emerge from the period of the scientific revolution. (shrink)

The rapid advancement from single-gene testing to whole genome sequencing has significantly broadened the type and amount of information available to researchers, physicians, patients, and the public in general. Much debate has ensued about whether genomic test results should be reported to research participants, patients and consumers, and at what stage we can be sure that existing evidence justifies their use in clinical settings. Courts and judges evaluating the utility of these results will not be immune to this uncertainty. As (...) scholars increasingly explore the duty of care standards related to reporting genomic test results, it is timely to provide a framework for understanding how uncertainty about genetic and genomic tests influences evidentiary considerations in the court room. Here, we explore the subtleties and nuances of interpreting genetic data in an environment of substantial discord related to the value that individuals should place on genetic and genomic tests. In conjunction, we discuss the roles courts should play in qualifying experts, expert testimony, and genetic and genomic tests given the intricate and complex nature of genetic and genomic information. (shrink)