This article is a response to Frank Hindriks’ “Restructuring Searle’s Making the Social World.”.

"The author tells a history of the study of cancer-causing viruses from the early twentieth century to the development of an HPV vaccine for cervical cancer in 2006. He profiles the "cancer virus hunters" who made breakthroughs in tumor virology"--.

Walters analyses Canadian and global information highway policy and practices from a philosophical, human rights framework that views freedom and well-being as the necessary conditions of human action.

This article discusses John Searle’s status function account of human rights and Åsa Burman’s “A Critique of the Status Function Account of Human Rights.” While recognizing the validity of part of the critique, based on the distinction between types and tokens, the author argues that, nonetheless, one is not compelled to accept Burman’s conclusion, that “one must give up the status function account of human rights to explain how a human right can exist without collective recognition”. Specifically, the author accepts (...) Burman’s critique of Searle’s attempt to preserve the intuition that human rights have existed without collective recognition, but concludes offering three ways to understand human rights even in the absence of collective recognition, all of which preserve the status function account. (shrink)

College of Medicine, University of South Alabama Mobile, AL 36688-0002, USA wbp501{at}jaguar1.usouthal.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Recent work in viral genomics has shown that bacteriophages exhibit a high degree of mosaicism, which is most likely due to a long history of prolific horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Given these findings, we argue that each of the most plausible attempts to properly classify bacteriophages into distinct species fail. Mayr's biological species concept fails because there is (...) no useful viral analog to sexual reproduction. Phenetic species concepts fail because they obscure the mosaicism and the rich reticulated viral histories. Phylogenetic species concepts, even when extended to take into account reticulation, fail because there is no non-arbitrary distinction between recombination events that create a new viral species and those that do not. There is good reason to think that bacteriophages, arguably the Earth's most abundant biological agent, evolve without forming species. Introduction The Biology of Viruses 2.1 Bacteriophage life cycles 2.2 Mechanisms of HGT The Species Problem and Species Concepts 3.1 Phenetic species concepts 3.2 The biological species concept 3.3 Phylogenetic species concepts 3.4 The ecological species concept 3.5 Homeostatic property cluster species Viruses and Species Taxonomy Reticular Phylogenies Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Rationalization is the adjustment of one's beliefs about politically relevant information, the better to fit one's political behavior or one's political attitudes. This reverses the usual causal order, in which it is assumed that people start with values, add what little factual information they have, and produce policy, partisan, or ideological “attitudes” as a result. If people actually work backwards from their political behavior to their attitudes, and from their attitudes to their beliefs about “the facts,” there are obvious and (...) troubling implications for democratic legitimacy, as well as for the academic study of democratic competence. I confine myself here to exploring some of the empirical evidence for rationalization, and to thinking about how to solve the resulting research problems, bracketing the normative issues. (shrink)

Recent work in viral genomics has shown that bacteriophages exhibit a high degree of mosaicism, which is most likely due to a long history of prolific horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Given these findings, we argue that each of the most plausible attempts to properly classify bacteriophages into distinct species fail. Mayr's biological species concept fails because there is no useful viral analog to sexual reproduction. Phenetic species concepts fail because they obscure the mosaicism and the rich reticulated viral histories. Phylogenetic (...) species concepts, even when extended to take into account reticulation, fail because there is no non-arbitrary distinction between recombination events that create a new viral species and those that do not. There is good reason to think that bacteriophages, arguably the Earth's most abundant biological agent, evolve without forming species.1. Introduction2. The Biology of Viruses2.1. Bacteriophage life cycles2.2. Mechanisms of HGT3. The Species Problem and Species Concepts3.1. Phenetic species concepts3.2. The biological species concept3.3. Phylogenetic species concepts3.4. The ecological species concept3.5. Homeostatic property cluster species4. Viruses and Species Taxonomy5. Reticular Phylogenies6. Conclusion. (shrink)

This article introduces the Normative Representativeness Requirement (NRR) on any moral objection to a decentralized, profit-oriented system of political economy. I develop and defend the NRR and then show why the most important recent critique of the profit system—which I call The Moderate Critique (developed by, for instance, Elizabeth Anderson)—fails to meet the NRR. This article also defends the radical claim that no objection to the profit system itself, rather than just key aspects or salient instances of it, succeeds in (...) meeting the NRR. Critics of the profit system should not seek an alternative to the profit system, but, at most, an alternative within it. (shrink)

The concept of population is central to ecology, yet it has received little attention from philosophers of ecology. Furthermore, the work that has been done often recycles ideas that have been developed for evolutionary biology. We argue that ecological populations and evolutionary populations, though intimately related, are distinct, and that the distinction matters to practicing ecologists. We offer a definition of ecological population in terms of demographic independence, where changes in abundance are a function of birth and death processes alone. (...) However, demographic independence is insufficient on its own so we supplement it with the idea of shared habitat. An ecological population is a group of organisms of the same species in a habitat that manifests DI. Given the importance of metapopulation dynamics to modern ecology, an account of ecological population must apply to this domain as well. Thus, we extend our definition of ecological population to the metapopulation. To facilitate the extension, we introduce the metahabitat—a collection of spatially segregated habitat patches shared by a single DI population. This enables us to diagnose some unhelpful trends in the metapopulation literature and emphasize the importance of habitat dynamics in pursuit of the goals of theoretical ecology and conservation biology. (shrink)

The tomb of the ancient Pharaoh, Tut-ankh-Amen, was opened some years ago. Lord Carnarvon, who financed the investigations, died shortly after the opening. Lord Westbury fell to his death from the high window of a London flat on February 21, 1930. His son, the Hon. Richard Bethell, had been found dead in his room the previous November. He was secretary to Mr. Howard Carter, one discoverer of Tut-ankh-Amen’s tomb. Many persons who had been connected with the excavations had died previously—M. (...) Benedite, for example, died after participating in the research, and Mrs. Greely committed suicide after visiting the tomb. The Hon. Richard Bethell was the thirteenth person connected with Tut-ankh-Amen's tomb, directly or indirectly, to die, and his father, Lord Westbury, was the fourteenth. The death of Lord Carnarvon, a few weeks after the tomb was opened, stirred the notion that a curse had been placed on the mummy of the Pharaoh, or in his tomb, to menace violators. Succeeding deaths kept the notion alive, and the thirteenth death, of the Hon. Richard Bethell, wrung an opinion from Dr. Mardus, the eminent French Egyptologist. He was convinced that the ancient Egyptians could surround “their mummies with some dynamic force.” Such a force lurked in the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen. Its nature was unknown, but it had manifested itself in the series of deaths. (shrink)

The recent conception of biodiversity proposed by James Maclaurin and Sterelny was developed mostly with macrobiological life in mind. They suggest that we measure biodiversity by dividing life into natural units (typically species) and quantifying the differences among units using phenetic rather than phylogenetic measures of distance. They identify problems in implementing quantitative phylogenetic notions of difference for non-prokaryotic species. I suggest that if we focus on microbiological life forms that engage in frequent, promiscuous lateral gene transfer (LGT), and their (...) associated reticulated phylogenies, we need to rethink the notion of species as the natural unit, and we discover additional problems with phylogenetic notions of distance. These problems suggest that a phenetic approach based on morphospaces has just as much appeal, if not more, for microbes as they do for multi-cellular life. Facts about LGT, however, offer no new insight into the additional challenge of reconciling units and differences into a single measure of biodiversity. (shrink)

Few ethics committees were in place when the New Jersey Supreme Court announced its ruling on the Quinlan case in 1976. Today, the vast majority of hospitals have formed ethics committees and their use in nursing homes and other healthcare facilities is growing. Given the increasing commitment to the use of ethics committees and their increasing influence on healthcare decision making, the careful evaluation of committee performance should be a high priority. Yet to date ethics committees appear to have undergone (...) relatively little scrutiny. While professional articles on ethics committees do appear and at least one journal sets aside a regular section for the discussion of “Ethics Committees at Work” articles to date have primarily been limited to essays, philosophical inquiries, reports, case studies, and, occasionally, surveys. The use of more structured research methodologies has been lacking. As a result, it is not yet clear, for example, what characteristics describe the best functioning ethics committee. Indeed, what constitutes best functioning lacks careful definition as well. Committee impact on medical decision making and patient outcomes, while discussed, has not been systematically measured and analyzed. (shrink)

The focus of this book is to explore teachers' evolving personal epistemologies, or the beliefs we hold about the origin and development of knowledge in the context of teaching. The chapters focus on a range of conceptual frameworks about how university and field-based experiences influence the connections between teachers' personal epistemologies and teaching practice. In an earlier volume we investigated ways in which we might change preservice teachers' beliefs and teaching practice (Brownlee, Schraw and Berthelsen, 2011). While we addressed the (...) nature of teachers' personal epistemology, learning and teaching practices, and approaches for changing beliefs throughout teacher education programs, the volume did not address conceptual frameworks for the development of teacher's personal epistemologies. The book is focused on teacher educators, teachers and teacher education programmers in universities with an overall aim of highlighting how we might support students to engage in learning that is challenging and to engage in professional experiences that promote changes in teaching practice. We argue that students need to be encouraged to question their beliefs and develop increasingly sophisticated beliefs about their knowledge and their students' knowledge that facilitate learning and intellectual growth. (shrink)

An attempt to argue that the introduction of the category of the absurd into Kierkegaard's discussion of truth as subjectivity in the Postscript is an altogether rigorous and logical move.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) may have been the most influential and insightful American thinker of the twentieth century. In dealing with the intricacies of human nature, society, politics, ethics, theology, racism and international relations, Niebuhr the teacher, preacher, philosopher, social critic and ethicist, was highly influential and difficult to ignore during the Second World War and Cold War eras because of his intellectual heft and the novel manner in which he addressed the economic, spiritual, social and political problems of his time. (...) This book distils Niebuhr's disparate and now difficult to access work into one volume, making it more easily accessible than ever before, at the same time bringing his work into the twenty first century. It argues that if he were alive today Niebuhr would be a champion of the U.N, a supporter of globalization, a fierce opponent of America's 2003 Iraq War (for all the reasons he opposed the Vietnam War), an advocate of the Responsibility to Protect, and a pragmatic hawk on China as it rises today. It also highlights his many contributions to international relations theory, from Realism to Liberalism to existentialism to the English School to constructivism. This is the first book that focuses exclusively on the international relations thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, one of Classical Realism's most important figures, one whom diplomat and Realist George Kennan called, "the father of us all.". (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against John Beatty’s position in his paper “The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis” by counterexample. Beatty argues that there are no distinctly biological laws because the outcomes of the evolutionary processes are contingent. I argue that the heart of the Caspar–Klug theory of virus structure—that spherical virus capsids consist of 60T subunits (where T = k 2 + hk + h 2 and h and k are integers)—is a distinctly biological law even if the existence of spherical (...) viruses is evolutionarily contingent. (shrink)

As individual subjects, creativity and personality have been the focus of much research and many publications. This Cambridge Handbook is the first to bring together these two topics and explores how personality and behavior affects creativity. Contributors from around the globe present cutting-edge research about how personality traits and motives make creative behavior more likely. Many aspects of personality and behavior are examined in the chapters, including genius, emotions, psychopathology, entrepreneurship, and multiculturalism, to analyse the impact of these on creativity. (...) The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and Personality Research will be the definitive resource for researchers, students and academics who study psychology, personality, and creativity. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 51, Issue 6, Page 555-573, December 2021. John Searle’s social ontology distinguishes between linguistic and non-linguistic institutional facts. He argues that every instance of the latter is created by declarative speech acts, while the former are exceptions to this far-reaching claim: linguistic phenomena are autonomous, their meaning is “built in,” and this is necessary, Searle argues, to avoid “infinite regress.” In this essay I analyze Searle’s arguments for this linguistic exceptionalism and reveal its flaws. (...) My method is to follow Searle’s argument closely and comprehensively so as to avoid, insofar as is possible, a selective reading of his argument in my favor. Against Searle’s position, I argue that linguistic phenomena are not exceptions to his general theory of institutional facts, for they too always require supplementary representations in order to exist. Language itself is analogous to all other institutions and infinite regress turns out to be unavoidable. (shrink)

In 1962, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug published their classic theory of virus structure. They developed their theory with an explicit analogy between spherical viruses and Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. In this paper, I use the spherical virus-geodesic dome case to develop an account of analogy and deductive analogical inference based on the notion of an isomorphism. I also consider under what conditions there is a good reason to claim an experimentally untested analogy is plausible.

This accessible book gives a new, detailed and elementary explanation of the Gödel incompleteness theorems and presents the Chaitin results and their relation to the da Costa-Doria results, which are given in full, but with no ...

Members of modern, digital societies experience a tremendous number and diversity of stimuli from sources such as computers, televisions, other electronic media, and various forms of advertising. In this paper, I argue that the presence of a wide range of stimulating items in modern societies poses a special risk to the welfare of members of modern societies. By considering the set of modern stimuli in a more comprehensive way than normative theorists have done so far—as part of a complex system (...) with which members of modern societies cannot reasonably avoid interacting—we can see why the perceptual and informational spaces in which modern life occurs can be sources of disvalue for members of modern societies. This seems true even though the technological innovations that produce these stimuli add great value to the lives of members of modern societies. (shrink)

Although the influence of affect on creativity has received some theoretical and empirical attention, the role of affect as a consequence of creative problem solving has been neglected. This study is the one of the first to examine empirically the affect that results from creative problem solving. In a 2 (group) × 3 (time period) × 2 (task) factorial design, 122 art and science students were randomly assigned to complete an art or science task and to report on the kind (...) and intensity of affect before, during, and after creative problem solving. It was predicted that art and science students would report different levels of affect only after the insight, not before or during, and that the effects of task, not just group, would contribute to affective variability between art and science students. Science students reported similar levels of (positive) affective intensity before and during creative insight as art students. It was only after the insight that art students reported more intense affective experiences than science students. Task differences accounted for a significant amount of variance in affective intensities, but primarily for art-oriented subjects. These findings suggest that viewing affect as a dependent variable of cognition, rather than primarily as an independent variable, is a direction that would benefit the field of empirical work on cognition and emotion. Current cognitive theories of emotion offer much potential in understanding the affective consequences of creative problem solving. (shrink)