'Food sovereignty' plays an increasingly important political role as a focus for grassroots agri-food organisations, such as La Via Campesina, in their attempts to contest the social injustices, health impacts and ecological damage resulting from the increasing global dominance of corporate/industrial agriculture. While not seeking to detract from the successes of such movements, there remain ethical, political and ecological concerns about just how the 'sovereignty' in food sovereignty is to be interpreted and what, if any, its relation to previous histories, (...) definitions and applications of political sovereignty might be. Sovereignty's role, for example, in settler colonialism and environmental destruction is rarely addressed in the food sovereignty literature, with advocates focusing instead on its definitional malleability and contemporary political utility. Yet critical appropriations of Schmitt's infamous definition of sovereignty help to specify its colonial, anti-political and anti-ecological modus operandi, and make clear certain dangers inherent in uncritically adopting the term. (shrink)

High levels of alexithymia are typically associated with impaired memory for emotional, but not neutral words. We conducted two experimental studies to establish if this effect generalises to non-v...

Physicist David Bohm and biochemist Ilya Prigogine began a dialogue that implied a deep, structuring, primordial harmony within life. In classical Chinese this harmony is referred to as Li, which also designates the elegant, natural pattern found in jade. This article emphasizes the ways that perception of primordial harmony gives way to a vision of possibility and to the creative intelligence and action necessary for meeting the challenges we face. Insights from Bohm, Prigogine, and others on releasing outmoded thinking (...) and actions are integrated with contemplative traditions, Eastern and Western philosophy, and pragmatic strategy making. (shrink)

How does science work? Does it tell us what the world is "really" like? What makes it different from other ways of understanding the universe? In Theory and Reality , Peter Godfrey-Smith addresses these questions by taking the reader on a grand tour of one hundred years of debate about science. The result is a completely accessible introduction to the main themes of the philosophy of science. Intended for undergraduates and general readers with no prior background in philosophy, Theory (...) and Reality covers logical positivism the problems of induction and confirmation Karl Popper's theory of science Thomas Kuhn and "scientific revolutions" the views of Imre Lakatos, Larry Laudan, and Paul Feyerabend and challenges to the field from sociology of science, feminism, and science studies. The book then looks in more detail at some specific problems and theories, including scientific realism, the theory-ladeness of observation, scientific explanation, and Bayesianism. Finally, Godfrey-Smith defends a form of philosophical naturalism as the best way to solve the main problems in the field. Throughout the text he points out connections between philosophical debates and wider discussions about science in recent decades, such as the infamous "science wars." Examples and asides engage the beginning student a glossary of terms explains key concepts and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of each chapter. However, this is a textbook that doesn't feel like a textbook because it captures the historical drama of changes in how science has been conceived over the last one hundred years. Like no other text in this field, Theory and Reality combines a survey of recent history of the philosophy of science with current key debates in language that any beginning scholar or critical reader can follow. (shrink)

This paper, while neutral on questions about the minimality of truth, argues for the non-minimality of truth-aptness.

Joint attention has been extensively studied in the developmental literature because of overwhelming evidence that the ability to socially coordinate visual attention to an object is essential to healthy developmental outcomes, including language learning. The goal of this study was to understand the complex system of sensory-motor behaviors that may underlie the establishment of joint attention between parents and toddlers. In an experimental task, parents and toddlers played together with multiple toys. We objectively measured joint attention—and the sensory-motor behaviors that (...) underlie it—using a dual head-mounted eye-tracking system and frame-by-frame coding of manual actions. By tracking the momentary visual fixations and hand actions of each participant, we precisely determined just how often they fixated on the same object at the same time, the visual behaviors that preceded joint attention and manual behaviors that preceded and co-occurred with joint attention. We found that multiple sequential sensory-motor patterns lead to joint attention. In addition, there are developmental changes in this multi-pathway system evidenced as variations in strength among multiple routes. We propose that coordinated visual attention between parents and toddlers is primarily a sensory-motor behavior. Skill in achieving coordinated visual attention in social settings—like skills in other sensory-motor domains—emerges from multiple pathways to the same functional end. (shrink)

Expands an inquiry to animals at large, investigating the evolution of experience with the assistance of far-flung species. Godfrey-Smith shows that the appearance of the first animal body form well over half a billion years ago was a profound innovation that set life upon a new path.

In this article I argue that evolutionary psychological strategies for making inferences about present-day human psychology are methodologically unsound. Evolutionary psychology is committed to the view that the mind has an architecture that has been conserved since the Pleistocene, and that our psychology can be fruitfully understood in terms of the original, fitness-enhancing functions of these conserved psychological mechanisms. But for evolutionary psychological explanations to succeed, practitioners must be able to show that contemporary cognitive mechanisms correspond to those that were (...) selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, that these present-day cognitive mechanisms are descended from the corresponding ancestral mechanisms, and that they have retained the functions of the ancestral mechanisms from which they are descended. I refer to the problem of demonstrating that these conditions obtain as “the matching problem,” argue that evolutionary psychology does not have the resources to address it, and conclude that evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is therefore impossible. (shrink)

ContentsThe Self-Images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory/Steve SmithThe End of the Cold War and International Relations: Some Analytic and Theoretical Conclusions/Fred HallidayInternational Relations and the Triumph of Capitalism/Richard LittleInternational Political Theory and the Idea of World Community/Chris BrownThe Political Theory of International Society/Robert H. JacksonInternational Political Theory and the Global Environment/Andrew HurrellPolitical Economy and International Relations/Susan StrangeRe-visioning Security/J. Ann TicknerThe Level of the Analysis Problem in International Relations Reconsidered/Barry BuzanThe Post-Positivist Debate: Reconstructing Scientific Enquiry and International (...) Relations Theory After Enlightenment's Fall/John A. VasquezNeo-realism in Theory and Practice/Andrew LinklaterInternational Politics and Political Theory/Jean Bethke ElshtainQuestions About Identity in International Relations/Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia EnloeInternational Relations and the Concept of the Political/R. B. J. WalkerDare Not to Know: International Relations Theory Versus the Future/Ken Booth. (shrink)

Reciprocal altruism involves foregoing an immediate benefit for the sake of a greater long-term reward. It follows that individuals who exhibit a stronger preference for future over immediate rewards should be more disposed to engage in reciprocal altruism – in other words, ‘patient’ people should be more cooperative. The present study tested this prediction by investigating whether participants’ contributions in a public-good game correlated with their ‘discount rate’. The hypothesis was supported: patient people are indeed more cooperative. The paper discusses (...) alternative interpretations of this result, and makes some suggestions for future research. (shrink)

Workplace ostracism is a prevalent and painful experience. The majority of studies focus on negative outcomes of ostracism, with less work examining employees’ potential adaptive responses to it. Further, scholars have suggested that such responses depend on employee attributions, yet little research has taken an attributional perspective on workplace ostracism. Drawing on sociometer theory and attribution theory we develop and test a model that investigates why and under what circumstances ostracized employees engage in adaptive responses to ostracism. Specifically, we argue (...) that ostracized employees feel greater levels of shame and, in turn, are motivated to engage in greater ingratiation behavior toward their ostracizers. However, we predict that perceptions of ostracizers’ competence and warmth shape different attributional processes, which influence the degree to which the ostracized employee experience shame and, in turn, is motivated to engage in ingratiation behavior. Results of a three-wave, time-lagged survey support our prediction that shame mediates the relationship between coworker ostracism and ingratiation behavior. Moreover, results support our three-way interaction, such that coworkers who report higher levels of ostracism and who perceive their coworkers as more (vs. less) competent and more (vs. less) warm report higher shame, and, in turn, ingratiation behavior. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as avenues for future research, are discussed. (shrink)

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself--as opposed to merely in our representations of the world--against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague properties and relations ; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague objects (...) ; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the world as a whole might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects. (shrink)

It is argued that Husserl was an “externalist” in at least one sense. For it is argued that Husserl held that genuinely perceptual experiences—that is to say, experiences that are of some real object in the world—differ intrinsically, essentially and as a kind from any hallucinatory experiences. There is, therefore, no neutral “content” that such perceptual experiences share with hallucinations, differing from them only over whether some additional non-psychological condition holds or not. In short, it is argued that Husserl was (...) a “disjunctivist”. In addition, it is argued that Husserl held that the individual object of any experience, perceptual or hallucinatory, is essential to and partly constitutive of that experience. The argument focuses on three aspects of Husserl’s thought: his account of intentional objects, his notion of horizon, and his account of reality. (shrink)

Explaining the maintenance of communicative behavior in the face of incentives to deceive, conceal information, or exaggerate is an important problem in behavioral biology. When the interests of agents diverge, some form of signal cost is often seen as essential to maintaining honesty. Here, novel computational methods are used to investigate the role of common interest between the sender and receiver of messages in maintaining cost-free informative signaling in a signaling game. Two measures of common interest are defined. These quantify (...) the divergence between sender and receiver in their preference orderings over acts the receiver might perform in each state of the world. Sampling from a large space of signaling games finds that informative signaling is possible at equilibrium with zero common interest in both senses. Games of this kind are rare, however, and the proportion of games that include at least one equilibrium in which informative signals are used increases monotonically with common interest. Common interest as a predictor of informative signaling also interacts with the extent to which agents’ preferences vary with the state of the world. Our findings provide a quantitative description of the relation between common interest and informative signaling, employing exact measures of common interest, information use, and contingency of payoff under environmental variation that may be applied to a wide range of models and empirical systems. © 2013 Godfrey-Smith, Martínez. (shrink)

I distinguish paradoxes and hypodoxes among the conundrums of time travel. I introduce ‘hypodoxes’ as a term for seemingly consistent conundrums that seem to be related to various paradoxes, as the Truth-teller is related to the Liar. In this article, I briefly compare paradoxes and hypodoxes of time travel with Liar paradoxes and Truth-teller hypodoxes. I also discuss Lewis’ treatment of time travel paradoxes, which I characterise as a Laissez Faire theory of time travel. Time travel paradoxes are impossible according (...) to Laissez Faire theories, while it seems hypodoxes are possible. (shrink)

The possible integration of genomic sequencing (including whole‐genome and whole‐exome sequencing) into the three contexts addressed in this special report—state‐mandated screening programs, clinical care, and direct‐to‐consumer services—raises related but distinct legal issues. This essay will outline the legal issues surrounding the integration of genomic sequencing into state newborn screening programs, parental rights to refuse and access sequencing for their newborns in clinical and direct‐to‐consumer care, and privacy‐related legal issues attending the use of sequencing in newborns.

Psychological terms, such as ‘mind’, ‘memory’, ‘emotion’ and indeed ‘psychology’ itself, have a history. This history, I argue, supports the view that basic psychological categories refer to historical and social entities, and not to ‘natural kinds’. The case is argued through a wide ranging review of the historiography of western psychology, first, in connection with the field’s extreme modern diversity; second, in relation to the possible antecedents of the field in the early modern period; and lastly, through a brief introduction (...) to usage of the words ‘soul’, ‘mind’, ‘memory’ and ‘emotion’. The discussion situates the history of psychology within a large historical context, questions assumptions about the continuity of meaning, and draws out implications for the philosophical and social constitution of ‘psychology’ and ‘the psychological’ from the existing literature. The historical evidence, this paper concludes, does not support the conventional presumption that modern psychological terms describe ‘natural kinds’. (shrink)

Ethical questions posed by emerging technologies call for greater understanding of their societal, economic, and environmental aspects by policymakers, citizens, and the engineers and applied scientists at the heart of their development and application. This article reports on the efforts of one research project that assessed the growth of critical thinking and awareness of these multiple aspects in undergraduate engineering and applied science students, with specific regard to nanotechnology. Students in two required courses, a first-year writing and engineering ethics course (...) and a second-year social science course, went through nanotechnology modules as a part of their regular coursework. In the first-year humanities course, we observed self-reported increases in risk awareness, significant educational impact of the module, and a greater awareness of nanotechnology’s applications and social context. In the second-year social science course, we noted changes in risk/benefit analysis as well as in the character and depth of students’ historical analysis, but no change in comparative awareness of other topics, including labor issues and corporate motivations. (shrink)

Notes: Papers from the McGill Bicentennial Hume Conference, McGill University, 1976 Subjects: Hume, David, 1711–1776--Congresses.

Ethical questions posed by emerging technologies call for greater understanding of their societal, economic, and environmental aspects by policymakers, citizens, and the engineers and applied scientists at the heart of their development and application. This article reports on the efforts of one research project that assessed the growth of critical thinking and awareness of these multiple aspects in undergraduate engineering and applied science students, with specific regard to nanotechnology. Students in two required courses, a first-year writing and engineering ethics course (...) and a second-year social science course, went through nanotechnology modules as a part of their regular coursework. In the first-year humanities course, we observed self-reported increases in risk awareness, significant educational impact of the module, and a greater awareness of nanotechnology’s applications and social context. In the second-year social science course, we noted changes in risk/benefit analysis as well as in the character and depth of students’ historical analysis, but no change in comparative awareness of other topics, including labor issues and corporate motivations. (shrink)

I critically discuss Strawson's transcendental argument against other minds scepticism, and look at the prospects for a naturalised version of it.

L’intervention que reprend cet article porte sur un cadre-dispositif singulier de thérapie familiale basé sur l’épistémologie psychanalytique groupale. Ce cadre est singulier dans la mesure où il a été tenté d’articuler un travail entre groupe de thérapeutes et néo-groupe. La réflexion développée ici s’origine dans la clinique des auteurs : lorsqu’ils parlent en groupe d’une famille, la règle d’association libre les amène fréquemment à évoquer une autre famille rencontrée précédemment en séance. Quelle est la nature et la fonction de cette (...) résonance? L’article pose l’hypothèse d’un nouveau contre-transfert : le contre-transfert transfamilial. Une vignette clinique permet d’illustrer le cheminement qui a conduit les auteurs à y aboutir. (shrink)

What if you're not who you think you are? What if you don't really know the people closest to you? And what if your most deeply-held beliefs turn out to be. wrong? In Stop Being Reasonable, philosopher Eleanor Gordon-Smith tells gripping true stories that show the limits of human reason. Susie realises her husband harbours a terrible secret, Dylan leaves the cult he's been raised in since birth, Alex discovers he can no longer return to his former identity after (...) impersonating someone else on reality TV. All of them radically alter their beliefs about the things that matter most. What makes them change course? What does this say about our own beliefs? And, in an increasingly divided world, what does it teach us about how we might change the minds of others? Stop Being Reasonable is a mind-changing exploration of the murky place where philosophy and real life meet. (shrink)

Intuitionism is most commonly defined in terms of various strong epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions, e.g., that true moral principles are synthetic a priori propositions, known by some special faculty of moral reflection, and the like. I shall not here be concerned with such views. Rather my focus will be upon the program for normative investigation which I have elsewhere argued is implicit in the intuitionists’ writings and which I take to be intuitionism's salient characteristic.

Is the set of all self-membered sets, S, a member of itself? In naive set theory, this is Russell’s hypodox. By the Laws of Excluded Middle and Non-contradiction, S is a member of itself xor it is not, but no principle of classical logic or naive set theory determines which. (Herein, ‘xor’ extends English with a specifically exclusive disjunction.) As a hypodox, the Truth-teller is a sentence that says of itself simply that it is true; by the above mentioned principles, (...) the Truth-teller is true xor not true, but no principle of classical logic or naive truth determines which. Many concepts that have paradoxes have related hypodoxes, although the focus here is on these two. I argue that the Truth-teller does not rely on a principle of truth, in particular it does not rely on the T-schema. I also argue that Russell’s hypodox does not rely on Comprehension. Yet I relate Russell’s paradox and hypodox based on involution functions. The Liar and the Truth-teller are also related by means of involutions. Relations based on these involution functions can be represented in duality squares. Although hypodoxes are not paradoxes, these involution functions and duality relations warrant some commonality in a correct solution to a paradox and its dual hypodox. Using this and some other premises, I provide novel arguments supporting non-classical solutions for the Liar paradox and the significance of Russell’s hypodox for solutions to Russell’s paradox. (shrink)

O texto aqui traduzido foi publicado originalmente na Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, em janeiro de 1901. Trata-se de um dos artigos publicados por Alain, pseudônimo utilizado por Émile Chartier. A tradução foi realizada pelo Grupo de Tradução do Departamento de Filosofia da Universidade de Brasília, coordenado pelo Professor Philippe Lacour. O grupo se propõe a traduzir regularmente obras de filosofia ainda inéditas em língua portuguesa e disponibilizá-las em periódicos de acesso livre. O trabalho de tradução é produzido de (...) maneira colaborativa através da plataforma digital TraduXio (https://traduxio.org/). (shrink)

Some time in the 1950’s I was invited to address a meeting of the English Institute which took place at Columbia University and, while I have but a dim recollection of the topic, a point came up in the discussion which I still remember very well and it bears very closely on the subject of this essay. I had said something in my opening remarks about how technical recent philosophy had become and what a formidable language was growing up around (...) it. In the audience was Marjorie Hope Nicholson, the distinguished literary scholar and author of, among others, that delightful book about science and literature, Newton Demands the Muse. She took the occasion to tell us that in her student days she could read and profit from philosophical works—Locke, Bergson, James—and went on to say that in her opinion any intelligent person could read these authors and others without having, as we would now say, “majored” in philosophy. She added, however, that she found herself no longer able to read with much comprehension the writing of the philosophers of the time because of the remoteness of the issues from concrete experience and the esoteric language in which they were presented. What Nicholson was perceiving, perhaps without knowing the background, was the about-face in philosophy that was taking place at the time. Largely in response to the charge that philosophy, unlike science, was making no “progress,” many philosophers decided to limit philosophy to areas—logic, semantics, semiotics—in which it was believed that progress was possible. One result was the abandoning of all the undeniably vague and stubborn issues—God, the self, freedom and determinism, values and facts and the like —that resist solutions of a scientific sort. Unfortunately for philosophers, these are the matters that interest everyone most. (shrink)

No one acquainted with the odyssey of Hegel’s thought in America can fail to take note of the progress that has been made over the past twenty-five years in the study and interpretation of his writings. New texts, new translations, and, above all, penetrating commentaries, have led to a better and more accurate understanding of Hegel’s philosophy and at the same time have served to overcome prejudices, a priori opinions about what he must have said, and plain errors in construing (...) his basic ideas. Much of the work that has made this progress possible has been done by members of the Hegel Society and contributors to The Owl. (shrink)