Advances in molecular biological research in the latter half of the twentieth century have made the story of the gene vastly complicated: the more we learn about genes, the less sure we are of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but the gene has also become curiously intangible. This collection of essays renews the question: what are genes? Philosophers, historians and working scientists re-evaluate the question in this volume, treating the gene as (...) a focal point of interdisciplinary and international research. It will be of interest to professionals and students in the philosophy and history of science, genetics and molecular biology. (shrink)

In order to formulate hypotheses about the evolutionary underpinnings that preceded the first glimmerings of language, mother-infant gestural and vocal interactions are compared in chimpanzees and humans and used to model those of early hominins. These data, along with paleoanthropological evidence, suggest that prelinguistic vocal substrates for protolanguage that had prosodic features similar to contemporary motherese evolved as the trend for enlarging brains in late australopithecines/early Homo progressively increased the difficulty of parturition, thus causing a selective shift toward females that (...) gave birth to relatively undeveloped neonates. It is hypothesized that hominin mothers adopted new foraging strategies that entailed maternal silencing, reassuring, and controlling of the behaviors of physically removed infants (i.e., that shared human babies' inability to cling to their mothers' bodies). As mothers increasingly used prosodic and gestural markings to encourage juveniles to behave and to follow, the meanings of certain utterances (words) became conventionalized. This hypothesis is based on the premises that hominin mothers that attended vigilantly to infants were strongly selected for, and that such mothers had genetically based potentials for consciously modifying vocalizations and gestures to control infants, both of which receive support from the literature. Key Words: bipedalism; brain size; chimpanzees; foraging; gestures; hominins; infant riding; motherese; prosody; protolanguage. (shrink)

There is a paradox lying at the heart of the study of heredity. To understand the ways in which features are passed down from one generation to the next, we have to dig deeper and deeper into the ultimate nature of things - from organisms, to genes, to molecules. And yet as we do this, increasingly we find we are out of focus with our subjects. What has any of this to do with the living, breathing organisms with which we (...) started? Organisms are living. Molecules are not. How do we relate one to the other? In Genetic Analysis, one of the most important empirical scientists in the field in the twentieth century attempts, through a study of history and drawing on his own vast experience as a practitioner, to face this paradox head-on. His book offers a deep and innovative understanding of our ways of thinking about heredity. (shrink)

This book contends that the forces of late modernism are being caught between a capital-driven globalization and a territorially rooted revival of tribalism and ultra-nationalism.

One would hardly be a human being if the good of others, or of society at large, could not weigh with one as a cogent reason for doing what will promote goodness. So one has not fully learned about living like a rational and moral being unless one has learned to appreciate that one ought to do things out of regard for others, and not only out of regard for oneself. In the first place, not everything done for oneself is (...) done for reasons of prudence. That one ought to insure one's house, save for one's old age, not put all one's money into one venture, are precepts of prudence. But it is not a precept of prudence, though it may be a good precept that someone ought to undergo a dangerous operation as a long shot to restoring his health rather than linger under a disability forever after. (shrink)

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the problems of Hume’s and Mill’s classical accounts is a principle of non-redundancy: only Boolean dependency structures from which no elements can be eliminated track causation. The first part of this article argues that the recent regularity-theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded an important type of redundancies: structural redundancies. Moreover, it is shown that (...) a regularity theory needs to be underwritten by a hitherto neglected metaphysical background assumption stipulating that the world’s causal makeup is not ambiguous. Against that background, the second part then develops a new regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making. (shrink)

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the problems of Hume’s and Mill’s classical accounts is a principle of non-redundancy: only Boolean dependency structures from which no elements can be eliminated track causation. The first part of this paper argues that the recent regularity theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded an important type of redundancies: structural redundancies. Moreover, it is shown (...) that a regularity theory needs to be underwritten by a hitherto neglected metaphysical background assumption stipulating that the world's causal makeup is not ambiguous. Against that background, the second part then develops a new regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making. (shrink)

Scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals are currently developing a variety of new devices under the category of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Current and future applications are both medical/assistive (e.g., for communication) and non-medical (e.g., for gaming). This array of possibilities comes with ethical challenges for all stakeholders. As a result, BCIs have been an object of both hope and concern in various media. We argue that these conflicting sentiments can be productively understood in terms of personhood, specifically the impact of BCIs (...) on what it means to be a person and to be recognized as such by others. To understand the dynamics of personhood in the context of BCI use and investigate whether ethical guidance is required, a meeting entitled "BCIs and Personhood: A Deliberative Workshop" was held in May 2018. In this article, we describe how BCIs raise important questions about personhood and propose recommendations for BCI development and governance. (shrink)

The dialectic discourse of the ‘gene’ as the unit of heredity deduced from the phenotype, whether an intervening variable or a hypothetical construct, appeared to be settled with the presentation of the molecular model of DNA: the gene was reduced to a sequence of DNA that is transcribed into RNA that is translated into a polypeptide; the polypeptides may fold into proteins that are involved in cellular metabolism and structure, and hence function. This path turned out to be more bewildering (...) the more the regulation of products and functions were uncovered in the contexts of integrated cellular systems. Philosophers struggling to define a unified concept of the gene as the basic entity of genetics confronted those who suggested several different ‘genes’ according to the conceptual frameworks of the experimentalists. Researchers increasingly regarded genes de facto as generic terms for describing their empiric data, and with improved DNA-sequencing capacities these entities were as a rule bottom-up nucleotide sequences that determine functions. Only recently did empiricists return to discuss conceptual considerations, including top-down definitions of units of function that through cellular mechanisms select the DNA sequences which comprise ‘genomic-footprints’ of functional entities. (shrink)

This article explores the structure of world order fromthe perspective of the Treaty of Westphalia, which is treated asthe benchmark for the emergence of the modern system of sovereignstates. Emphasis is placed on Westphalia as historical event, ideaand ideal, and process of evolution, and also on developments thatsupersede this framing of world politics, especially, globalizationand the megaterrorist challenge of September 11, 2001. At issue is whether the state system is resilient enough to adapt to new globalconditions or is in the (...) process of being supplanted, and whether thesequel to Westphalia is moving toward humane global governance orsome dysutopic variant, or both at once. (shrink)

The ArgumentWhereas eugenics aspired to redeem the human species by forcing it to face the realities of its biological nature, Zionism aspired to redeem the Jewish people by forcing it to face the realities of its biological existence. The Zionists claimed that Jews maintained their ancient distinct “racial” identity, and that their regrouping as a nation in their homeland would have profound eugenic consequences, primarily halting the degeneration they fell prey to because of the conditions imposed on them in the (...) past. Some Zionists believed in a Lamarckian driven eugenics that expected the “normalization” of Jewish life styles to change their constitution. Others believed that transforming conditions would shift selective pressures exerted on the Jewish gene pool. (shrink)

First published in 2004, this book is a rigorous textbook on the metaphysics of the mind for advanced students of philosophy, covering the background they need to understand the debates and bringing them to the frontiers of current research. It is also a monograph on the nature of de re and de se states of mind, incorporating material the author published in journals. The short file you will see is only a gateway to more than two dozen other files which (...) are rewrites of the book. (shrink)

Offers a reading of philosopher David Hume regarding his views on practical reason. Arguments of Hume for his conception of practical reason; View of Hume on the influencing motives of the will; Approach of Hume on the standards of practical reasoning.

This paper assesses recent trends in international law regarding the availability and character of reparations. Presently, reparations issues have arisen particularly in domestic societies searching for transitional justice in the aftermath of authoritarian rule. These issues are shaped by national legal systems, but are also influenced by international practice. In these transitional settings, the search for justice is affected by political preoccupations such as the persistent influence of displaced prior authoritarian leadership as well as by real and alleged limitations on (...) the financial capabilities of transitional states. No general approach can address the interplay between national and international law at this stage. Reliance must be placed on a case by case approach, considering matters of context such as the degree of suffering and disability inflicted on particular categories of claimants, the balance of claims versus the State’s demands for resources to fund sustainable and equitable development. Remoteness in time bears on the credibility of the claimants as present victims tend to be given priority over victims in the distant past when assessing relative merits. Scale and selectivity suggests that if the total of claims overwhelms the administrative capacity of the state, there will be a tendency to substitute apology and symbolic gestures for material ones, and award reparations based on individual need associated with the prior deprivation. International law informs background moral and political thinking about reparations, but practical considerations of capability and prudence are decisive in most instances, making the influence of international law indirect and sometimes marginal. (shrink)

Journal Name: The Law & Ethics of Human Rights Issue: Ahead of print.

Unlike old soldiers, the rhetoric of the great neither dies nor fades away. And so Hume's celebrated ‘is-ought’ passage still provokes debate.Hume was worried about the relation between ought statements and those supporting them: between ‘tolerence brings peace’ or ‘is God's will’, and ‘so one ought to be tolerant’. He denies the deducibility of the latter from the former, as the ‘ought’ expresses ‘a new relation or affirmation’, ‘entirely different from the others’. And this is commonly taken as saying that (...) the ought statement is ‘different’ and non-deducible, because it is no longer a ‘purely factual statement’, to wit one that makes another ordinarily testable truth claim.However, recent criticism, by W. D. Hudson and others, points out that Hume says other things seemingly inconsistent with this. In the passage, he mentions ‘ought’ and ‘virtue’ interchangeably, and ‘tolerance is virtuous’ as in the same boat as ‘one ought to be tolerant’. But, also, he treats the virtue of an action as sensibly discernible by the approbation which it evokes, and takes us to mean by a virtuous action that we will approve of it on contemplation. (shrink)

Developments in the sequencing of whole genomes and in simultaneously surveying many thousands of transcription and translation products of specific cells have ushered in a conceptual revolution in genetics that rationally introduces top-down, holistic analyses. This emphasized the futility of attempts to reduce genes to structurally discrete entities along the genome, and the need to return to Johannsen's definition of a gene as 'something' that refers to an invariant entity of inheritance and development. We may view genes either as generic (...) terms for units of inheritance whose referents are pragmatic ad hoc and context-dependent, or as (epistemologically) representing entities of cell functions. It is cellular functions that determine the structural referents along the DNA. Structures that happened to secure specific functions that were essential for or conducive to the survival of cells were selected for. With natural selection being the etiological background of genes as functions, genes obtain again their theoretical role as intervening variables, abstractive variables that purely 'summarize' characters. The importance of DNA sequences is that of all possible phenotypes these are the most basic ones from which we can read off the genotype directly. (shrink)

The term “exchange paradox” refers to a situation in which it appears to be advantageous for each of two holders of an envelope containing some amount of money to always exchange his or her envelope for that of the other individual, which they know contains either half or twice their own amount. We review several versions of the problem and show that resolving the paradox depends on the specifics of the situation, which must be disambiguated, and on the player's beliefs. (...) The latter psychological variables are part and parcel of the resolution. Assuming reasonable subjective distributions, exchanging cannot always be advantageous for both players. We suggest several deep-rooted psychological reasons for the considerable difficulty people demonstrably have in dealing with this problem. Implicit widespread and compelling assumptions—that affect judgement in diverse contexts—obstruct the solution. Analysing this paradox underscores the close connection between psychology and probability theory. (shrink)