This paper proposes a model of human uniqueness based on an unusual distinction between two contrasted kinds of political competition and political status: (1) antagonistic competition, in quest of dominance (antagonistic status), a zero-sum, self-limiting game whose stake—who takes what, when, how—summarizes a classical definition of politics (Lasswell 1936), and (2) synergistic competition, in quest of merit (synergistic status), a positive-sum, self-reinforcing game whose stake becomes “who brings what to a team’s common good.” In this view, Rawls’s (1971) famous virtual (...) “veil of ignorance” mainly conceals politics’ antagonistic stakes so as to devise the principles of a just, egalitarian society, yet without providing any means to enforce these ideals (Sen 2009). Instead, this paper proposes that human uniqueness flourished under a real “adapted veil of ignorance” concealing the steady inflation of synergistic politics which resulted from early humans’ sturdy egalitarianism. This proposition divides into four parts: (1) early humans first stumbled on a purely cultural means to enforce a unique kind of within-team antagonistic equality—dyadic balanced deterrence thanks to handheld weapons (Chapais 2008); (2) this cultural innovation is thus closely tied to humans’ darkest side, but it also launched the cumulative evolution of humans’ brightest qualities—egalitarian team synergy and solidarity, together with the associated synergistic intelligence, culture, and communications; (3) runaway synergistic competition for differential merit among antagonistically equal obligate teammates is the single politically selective mechanism behind the cumulative evolution of all these brighter qualities, but numerous factors to be clarified here conceal this mighty evolutionary driver; (4) this veil of ignorance persists today, which explains why humans’ unique prosocial capacities are still not clearly understood by science. The purpose of this paper is to start lifting this now-ill-adapted veil of ignorance, thus uncovering the tight functional relations between egalitarian team solidarity and the evolution of human uniqueness. (shrink)

Although the brain enables us to perceive the external world and our body, it remains unknown whether brain processes themselves can be perceived. Brain tissue does not have receptors for its own activity. However, the ability of humans to acquire self-control of brain processes indicates that the perception of these processes may also be achieved by learning. In this study patients learned to control low-frequency components of their EEG: the so-called slow cortical potentials (SCPs). In particular ''probe'' sessions, the (...) patients estimated the quality of the SCP shift they had produced in the preceding trial. The correspondence between the recorded SCP amplitudes and the subjective estimates increased with training. The ability to perceive the SCPs was related to the ability to control them; this perception was not mediated by peripheral variables such as changes in muscle tonus and cannot be reduced to simple vigilance monitoring. These data provide evidence that humans can learn to perceive the neural activity of their brain. Alternative interpretations are discussed. (shrink)

In this article we explore the possibility of viewing complex systems, as well as the models we create of such systems, as operating within a particular type of economy. The type of economy we aim to establish here is inspired by Jacques Derrida’s reading of George Bataille’s notion of a general economy. We restrict our discussion to the philosophical use of the word ‘economy’. This reading tries to overcome the idea of an economy as restricted to a single logos or (...) master narrative. At the same time, however, Derrida illustrates that we always operate from a restricted framework and as such something will always escape and interrupt our understanding of the world. In this paper we will propose that one could use Derrida’s reading of Bataille, along with notions such as différance, in order to move towards an understanding of complex systems as existing within certain sets of possibilities and constraints. We argue that this view of an economy agrees with the work of Edgar Morin on complexity and his conceptualization of general complexity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 14.1 (2004) 47-54 [Access article in PDF] Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research*(A Recommended Manuscript) Adopted on 16 October 2001Revised on 20 August 2002 Ethics Committee of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai, Shanghai 201203 Human embryonic stem cell (ES) research is a great project in the frontier of biomedical science for the twenty-first century. Be- cause the research involves (...) the use of human embryos, it triggers serious debate on ethical issues. Opponents consider the embryo to be an early form of human life that should be respected and not destroyed. However, the majority of scientists support embryonic stem cell research, believing that it offers good prospects for the treatment of diseases that have remained incurable until now and so will benefit humankind. The Ethics Committee of the Department of Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of the Chinese National Human Genome Center at Shanghai seriously discussed the ethical debate initiated by embryonic stem cell research. We concluded that we should support the scientists of our country in actively carrying out human embryonic stem cell research for the noble cause of "medicine being a beneficent art." For the healthy and orderly development of human embryonic stem cell research in our country, we put forward the following recommended Ethical Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research as a reference for leaders, administrative departments, and related scientists. Preface Article 1. Human embryonic stem cells are the primitive cells that play the main role in the growth and development of a human body. These [End Page 47] primitive cells have the potential for infinite proliferation, self-renewal, and multi-directional differentiation. If scientists can discover the mechanism of differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, it will be possible to induce differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to form various types of human cells for clinical cell therapy. If human embryonic stem cell research can be integrated with modern biomedical engineering techniques, it also will be possible to make repair and replacement of human tissues and organs a reality. Article 2. There are two ways to classify human embryonic stem cells. One way is to classify them according to their potential for differentiation. There could be three kinds of stem cells: totipotent stem cells, pluripotent stem cells, and unipotent stem cells.A totipotent stem cell has the potential to develop into a whole individual. It can differentiate into the more than 200 cell types in the whole body, construct any tissue or organ of the body, and finally develop into a whole individual. The fertilized egg and the cleavage cells at the very early stage of embryonic development are totipotent stem cells.A pluripotent stem cell has the potential to differentiate into many cell types derived from the three embryonic layers. However, it has lost the capacity to develop into a complete organism.A unipotent stem cell is derived from the further differentiation of the pluripotent stem cell. It can differentiate only into one cell type such as a hematopoietic stem cell, neural stem cell, and others.The other way is to classify human stem cells according to their source. There could be two kinds of human stem cells: embryonic stem cells and tissue stem cells (also called adult stem cells). The former involves experimentation with embryos, which has serious ethical implications. Ethical issues associated with the latter are mainly expressed in the various opinions regarding the allocation of health resources. Article 3. Human embryonic stem cells are the group of cells called the blastocyst inner cell mass during the early stage of embryonic development. They are the main source of totipotent stem cells, and hence the focal and hot point in stem cell research. Studies on the clinical application of embryonic stem cells probably will involve use of the somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT) technique, which destroys the early human embryo. At present, the ethical and moral debate is very serious in human embryonic stem cell research regarding whether the research will develop... (shrink)

Interest in philosophical anthropology in the early twelfth century was limited to the logical question of how to think and speak about dead humans. This question was prompted by the logic of living and dead humans based on the doctrine of substance found in Aristotle’s Categories and in the division of substance, as outlined by Porphyry to exemplify the logic of genus and species relations in the Isagoge. Abelard held the view that there is no such thing as (...) a dead human, and this provoked an intense response from his contemporaries. Abelard’s contemporaries, including Alberic of Paris and other anonymous authors, mounted a number of arguments against Abelard’s views. The stakes were high for them: as realists about species and genera, Abelard’s denial that there are dead humans threatened their entire interpretation of the structure of species and genera, and thereby their theory of universals. (shrink)

In the Confucian tradition, sages are moral reference points. They may serve as models against which we measure our own behaviours, and help us imagine how we can improve the quality of our moral lives. This defining feature of Confucian philosophy has persisted though the subsequent development of the tradition to the present. Yet, little has been said about the important epistemological issues that underlie the Confucian modelling process. In order to uphold sages as moral reference points, people need to (...) recognize sages as sages and to deem the ways in which their lives embody virtue as desirable. This paper draws on a form of knowing, namely, knowing-as, to illuminate the process of learning from sages in the Confucian tradition. It will also help us better understand the process of modelling more generally. (shrink)

The relationship of humans to other primates – both in terms of abilities and evolution - has been an age-old topic of dispute in science. In this paper the claim is made that the different views of authors are based not so much on differences in empirical evidence, but on the ontological stances of the authors and the underlying ground narratives that they use. For comparing and reconciling the views presented by the representatives of, inter alia, cognitive ethology, comparative (...) psychology, and zoosemiotics, an overarching approach of multi-constructivism is introduced. The paper proposes an analytic model that distinguishes four logical possibilities in representing anthropological difference: Gradualism, Transformativism, Unitarism, and Pluralism. Using this typology, the views of C. Darwin, F. de Waal, M. Tomasello, and T. A. Sebeok regarding the similarities and differences between human and animal capacities for cognition, culture and communication are analyzed. The results indicate systematic differences in the selected narratives by these authors that can be related to the types of underlying ontologies. (shrink)

The lack of consensus on how to characterize humans’ capacity for belief reasoning has been brought into sharp focus by recent research. Children fail critical tests of belief reasoning before 3 to 4 years (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001; Wimmer & Perner, 1983), yet infants apparently pass false belief tasks at 13 or 15 months (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005; Surian, Caldi, & Sperber, 2007). Non-human animals also fail critical tests of belief reasoning but can show very complex social behaviour (...) (e.g., Call & Tomasello, 2005). Fluent social interaction in adult humans implies efficient processing of beliefs, yet direct tests suggest that belief reasoning is cognitively demanding, even for adults (e.g., Apperly, Samson & Humphreys, 2005). We interpret these findings by drawing an analogy with the domain of number cognition, where similarly contrasting results have been observed. We propose that the success of infants and non-human animals on some belief reasoning tasks may be best explained by a cognitively efficient but inflexible capacity for tracking belief-like states. In humans this capacity persists in parallel with later-developing, more flexible but more cognitively demanding theory of mind abilities. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility for a means of bringing about novelty which does not rely on kairological philosophies based on an event. In contrast to both common sense and contemporary philosophical understandings of the term where for novelty to arise there must be some break in the repetition of the structure, this paper argues that it is possible for novelty to come about through small-scale experimentation. This is done by relying on the philosophical notion of ‘economy’ in order to (...) understand how we think about the world. In this regard, our thinking about the world depends upon acknowledging certain possibilities at the expense of others. History can then be seen as the distribution of emphasis which allows for these past possibilities and the future potentiality they may hold. Novelty, defined here as a rereading of history, is precisely the disruption of these possibilities and a challenge to the memory of the system. The conclusion to this paper argues that experimentation is an important means by which we can bring novelty into the world. (shrink)

In this paper I argue, first, that ecologists have routinely treated humans—or more specifically, anthropogenic causal factors—as disturbing conditions. I define disturbing conditions as exogenous variables, variables “outside” a model, that when present in a target system, inhibit the applicability or accuracy of the model. This treatment is surprising given that humans play a dominant role in many ecosystems and definitions of ecology contain no fundamental distinction between human and natural. Second, I argue that the treatment of (...) class='Hi'>humans as disturbing conditions is an idealization: since it is, and has long been, known that humans are pervasive, this treatment amounts to an intentionally introduced theoretical distortion. Finally, characterizing this treatment as idealization forces us to confront the question of its justification, and so, drawing on three different kinds of idealization, I evaluate how this treatment may be justified. (shrink)

(2013). Why humans are (sometimes) less rational than other animals: Cognitive complexity and the axioms of rational choice. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 1-26. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.713178.

In this paper I will examine two responses to the argument from marginal cases; the argument from kinds and the similarity argument. I will argue that these arguments are insufficient to show that all humans have moral status but no animals do. This does not prove that animals have moral status but it does shift the burden of proof onto those who want to maintain that all humans are morally considerable, but no animals are.

Is the tendency to morally prioritize humans over animals weaker in children than adults? In two pre-registered studies (N = 622), 5- to 9-year-old children and adults were presented with moral dilemmas pitting varying numbers of humans against varying numbers of either dogs or pigs and were asked who should be saved. In both studies, children had a weaker tendency to prioritize humans over animals than adults. They often chose to save multiple dogs over one human, and (...) many valued the life of a dog as much as the life of a human. While they valued pigs less, the majority still prioritized ten pigs over one human. By contrast, almost all adults chose to save one human over even one hundred dogs or pigs. Our findings suggest that the common view that humans are far more morally important than animals appears late in development and is likely socially acquired. (shrink)

Greetings, and may this letter find you at peace and in prosperity! Forgive my writing to you out of the blue. Though you and I have never met, we are not strangers. We are, in a certain sense, the closest of kin. I am one of your possible futures.

Many prescriptions offered in the literature for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations raise ethical concerns, yet creativity researchers rarely discuss ethics. We identify four categories of behavior proffered as a means for fostering creativity that raise serious ethical issues: breaking rules and standard operating procedures; challenging authority and avoiding tradition; creating conflict, competition and stress; and taking risks. We discuss each category, briefly identifying research supporting these prescriptions for fostering creativity and then we delve into ethical issues associated with (...) engaging in the prescribed behavior. These four rubrics illustrate ethical issues that need to be incorporated into the creativity and innovation literature. Recommendations for how organizations can respond to the ethical issues are offered based on practices of exemplary organizations and theories of organizational ethics. A research agenda for empirically investigating the ethical impact these four categories of behavior have on organizations concludes the article. (shrink)

The possibility of extended cognition invites the possibility of extended knowledge. We examine what is minimally required for such forms of technologically extended knowledge to arise and whether existing and future technologies can allow for such forms of epistemic extension. Answering in the positive, we explore some of the ensuing transformations in the ethical obligations and personal rights of the resulting ‘new humans.’.

Humans routinely make many decisions collectively, whether they choose a restaurant with friends, elect political leaders or decide actions to tackle international problems, such as climate change, that affect the future of the whole planet. We might be less aware of it, but group decisions are just as important to social animals as they are for us. Animal groups have to collectively decide about communal movements, activities, nesting sites and enterprises, such as cooperative breeding or hunting, that crucially affect (...) their survival and reproduction. While human group decisions have been studied for millennia, the study of animal group decisions is relatively young, but is now expanding rapidly. It emerges that group decisions in animals pose many similar questions to those in humans. The purpose of the present issue is to integrate and combine approaches in the social and natural sciences in an area in which theoretical challenges and research questions are often similar, and to introduce each discipline to the other’s key ideas, findings and successful methods. In order to make such an introduction as effective as possible, here, we briefly review conceptual similarities and differences between the sciences, and provide a guide to the present issue. (shrink)

Developments in medical science have afforded us the opportunity to improve and enhance the human species in ways unthinkable to previous generations. Whether it's making changes to mitochondrial DNA in a human egg, being prescribed Prozac, or having a facelift, our desire to live longer, feel better and look good has presented philosophers, medical practitioners and policy-makers with considerable ethical challenges. But what exactly constitutes human improvement? What do we mean when we talk of making "better" humans? In this (...) book Michael Hauskeller explores these questions and the ideas of human good that underpin them. Posing some challenging questions about the nature of human enhancement, he interrogates the logic behind its processes and examines the justifications behind its criteria. Questioning common assumptions about what constitutes human improvement, Hauskeller asks whether the criteria proposed by its advocates are convincing. The book draws on recent research as well as popular representations of human enhancement from advertising to the internet, and provides a non-technical and accessible survey of the issues for readers and students interested in the ethics and politics of human enhancement. (shrink)

The “immersion conception” concerned with the virtual reality was discussed and criticised mainly in the 1990's. However, there were anticipations of the impendent creation of the tools for reality simulation and of the following preference of such reality at the expense of “basic” reality. An individual was meant to be shaped by the artificial experience of virtual world. The “immersion conception” has been overcome due to new relationships between humans and computers and by different “augmentation” conceptions corresponding much more (...) to our present condition. Man has never been trapped by an artificial experience coming from living in virtual reality generated by computers. More likely we are trapped by our own constructions of reality. We have always to keep in mind the relativity of the value of the natural experience of basic reality. (shrink)

Various potential strategic interactions between a “strong” Artificial intelligence and humans are analyzed using simple 2 × 2 order games, drawing on the New Periodic Table of those games developed by Robinson and Goforth. Strong risk aversion on the part of the human player leads to shutting down the AI research program, but alternative preference orderings by the human and the AI result in Nash equilibria with interesting properties. Some of the AI-Human games have multiple equilibria, and in other (...) cases Pareto-improvement over the Nash equilibrium could be attained if the AI’s behavior towards humans could be guaranteed to be benign. The preferences of a superintelligent AI cannot be known in advance, but speculation is possible as to its ranking of alternative states of the world, and how it might assimilate the accumulated wisdom of humanity. (shrink)

The case in favor of gene therapy is quite simple. Gene therapy is likely to improve the health and well-being of some people that are among the worst off in society, namely patients with painful and life-threatening diseases. However, two types of objection have been raised.

Logic-Based Therapy, a mode of philosophical counseling I invented beginning in the mid 1980s, under the auspices of Cognitive Behavior Therapy founder Albert Ellis, takes metaphysical security as a sin qua non for human happiness. The goal of LBT is to help people overcome irrational thinking that leads to metaphysical insecurity and to help build constructive, philosophical thinking that promotes metaphysical security. However, the advent of augmented and digital reality are beginning to present new challenges to obtaining metaphysical security. Applying (...) the tenets of LBT, this paper examines the implications for attaining metaphysical security in this brave new world of advancing technologies. (shrink)

Humans are not model epistemic citizens. Our reasoning can be careless, our beliefs eccentric, and our desires irrational. Quassim Cassam develops a new account of self-knowledge which recognises this feature of human life. He argues that self-knowledge is a genuine cognitive achievement, and that self-ignorance is almost always on the cards.

A rational process for assessment of environmental policy options should be based on an appreciation of how humans value nature. Increased understanding of values will also contribute to the development of appropriate ways for us to relate to and manage natural areas. Over the past two decades, environmental philosophers have examined the notion that there is an intrinsic value in nature. Economists have attempted to define and measure the market and nonmarket economic values associated with decisions concerning natural areas. (...) Psychologists have tried to assess the extent to which people believe in an intrinsic value in nature, and have also begun to work with economists to improve nonmarket valuation techniques. I briefly review the contributions made to our understanding of natural area value by environmental philosophy, psychology and economics, and develop a model that integrates insights from these disciplines. Components in the model include cognitions, held values, assigned values and various modes of value expression. I make recommendations for future validation, development and use of the model. (shrink)