Disgust is reasoned to operate in conjunction with the immune system to help protect the body from illness. However, less is known about the factors that impact the degree to which individuals invest in pathogen avoidance (disgust) versus pathogen management (prophylactic immunological activity). Here, we examine the role that one’s control over pathogen contact plays in resolving such investment trade-offs, predicting that (a) those from low control environments will invest less in pathogen-avoidance strategies and (b) investment in each of these (...) two strategies will occur in a compensatory fashion (i.e. they will be traded off with one other). Across four studies, we found support for these predictions, using a variety of manipulations and measures. By providing novel insights into how one’s control over pathogen exposure influences disgust sensitivity and immune system activity, the current research poses an important contribution to the literature on disgust, pathogen avoidance, and the immune system. (shrink)

This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars of constitutional theory, with backgrounds in law, philosophy, and political science. Its 60 chapters not only offer an exceptional survey of the field but also provide a major contribution to it. The book explores three main areas. Firstly, the values upheld by a constitution, including rights, freedom, equality, dignity and well-being. Secondly, the modalities of a constitutional system, such as the separation of powers, democratic representation, and the rule of law. Finally, the (...) institutions through which it operates, both legal and political; including courts, elections, parliaments and international organisations. It also considers the challenges confronting constitutional arrangements from growing inequality, populism, climate change and migration. (shrink)

The book is aimed at students and scholars of law, politics and philosophy. Of unprecedented breadth, it offers both a survey of, and an original contribution to, the field by some the world's leading scholars of constitutional theory.

We have modified Aristotelian syllogistic logic in for use in introductory philosophy courses. Although the scope of Aristotle's syllogistic is narrowed by our modifications, its pedagogical value is increased in one crucial way: in 4-6 hours of class time, students with no background in argumentation progress to the point where they can evaluate the structure of condensed and extended arguments. Because the mechanics of the program are readily grasped, it is possible to focus class time on important, abstract notions such (...) as validity, soundness, relevance, etc. If successfully implemented, the program encourages good habits for analysing, assessing and formulating arguments. (shrink)

Public attention on embryo research has never been greater. Modern reproductive medicine technology and the use of embryos to generate stem cells ensure that this will continue to be a topic of debate and research across many disciplines. This multidisciplinary book explores the concept of a 'healthy' embryo, its implications on the health of children and adults, and how perceptions of what constitutes child and adult health influence the concept of embryo 'health'. The concept of human embryo health is considered (...) from preconception to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to recent foetal surgical approaches. Burgeoning capacities in both genetic and reproductive science and their clinical implications have catalysed the necessity to explore the concept of a 'healthy' embryo. The authors are from five countries and 13 disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, biological sciences and medicine, ensuring that the book has a broad coverage and approach. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

This paper is a review essay of two collections of essays focused on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. The review focuses on three core themes. First, it discusses those papers that explore the central role that the relationship between practices and institutions plays in MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. Second, it turns to those papers that examine the foundational role that human needs play in MacIntyre’s ethics. Third, it places in dialogue those papers that defend MacIntyre’s politics as a form of (...) ‘revolutionary Aristotelianism’ with those that contest the soundness of this categorization. (shrink)

The essay argues that the most influential liberal accounts of moral theory (utilitarianism and deontology) assume that human material nature is the seat of desire, and that desire is essentially unsociable. Moral systems are then interpreted as a means of counteracting the essentially self-interested desires that are assumed to ordinarily drive human beings. The essay challenges the normative presuppositions of these arguments. It maintains that liberal moral philosophy must be interpreted in the historical context of the rise of a competitive (...) market society. It then contends that contra liberal moral theory, human beings are neither essentially egoistic nor altruistic, but interdependent. Moral theory is better seen as following from a recognitions of this material interdependence than as an ideal limit on ?naturally? self-interested and competitive behaviour. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the normative foundations and political implications of David Held's cosmopolitan social democracy are insufficient as solutions to the moral and social problems he criticizes. The article develops a life-grounded alternative critique of globalization that roots our ethical duties towards each other in consciousness of our shared needs and capabilities. These ethical duties are best realized in political projects aimed at fundamental long-term transformations in the principles that govern major socio-economic institutions.

This essay focuses on the purported duty—defended by Walter Benjamin but widely assumed in much political theory and practice—of the living to redeem the suffering of those who died as a consequence of oppression, exploitation, and political violence. I consider the cogency and ethical value of this duty from the perspective of a politics grounded in the equal life-value of human beings. For both metaphysical and ethical reasons I conclude that this duty does not obtain, first because the dead cannot (...) experience redemption, and secondly because it is politically counterproductive: it personalizes a pathological form of political resistance which may easily incite further violence and thus perpetuate human suffering and oppression. (shrink)

The article is a critical examination of Marcuse's speculations about the possibility of determining a biological foundation for ethical norms. It considers three key objections to this project: that Marcuse fails to adequately define needs, that he misinterprets Freud, and that, details aside, he fundamentally misunderstands what a `biological' foundation for ethics would entail. The objections are accepted, to varying degrees, as regards the content of Marcuse's argument. The article concludes, however, with a different account of biological foundations designed to (...) rescue the deeper aims of Marcuse's project. Key Words: biology • ethics • foundation • Herbert Marcuse • needs • socialism. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 5, Page 704-705, August 2012.

This essay is a review ofKarl Marx and Contemporary Philosophy. While the text will provide even knowledgeable Marxist readers with new insights on key texts and concepts in Marx, it nevertheless fails to intervene in crucial contemporary philosophical debates. The book is concerned less with the contemporary significance of Marxist philosophyas philosophyand more with re-reading classical Marxist texts in a contemporary context. This job it does well, but leaves the more important question of what Marxists have to say about fundamental (...) philosophical problems today unaddressed for the most part. (shrink)

An essay exploring the failure of the Freethought Movement to repell the Religious Right in American politics.

Key Enlightenment minds are often juxtaposed with their iconic foes, religious conservatives. When discussing the subject of women’s rights, however, this comparison creates a false impression that Enlightenment male thinkers held ideas very much opposed to a dogmatic institution such as the Catholic Church. Ironically, and damaging to their legacy of prejudice-free rationalism, nearly all of the philosophes, many of whom were “freethinking” atheists, viewed woman’s intellectual nature and societal purpose through a prejudice-tainted glass, not unlike the most conservative establishments (...) of their time. Indeed, when it came to the perception of women, the philosophes had less in common with a virulently secular feminist such as Nicholas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, than they do with modern conservative Christians who believe women should be treated more fairly, but still cling to gender stereotypes. (shrink)

This paper explores the power of theatre to engage the public and my personal journey using theatre as a research tool in reproductive science. I argue that the capacity of theatre to simultaneously engage the minds and hearts of audience members qua research participants affords audience members the capacity to provide researchers with insightful comments informed by the scientific, social and tacit knowledge derived from the performance, integrated with their lived experience. Theatre is a particularly important research strategy when investigating (...) public understandings and desires about complex issues such as those related to reproductive and genetic science. (shrink)

This paper will examine the loss of confidence in secular bases for the normative understanding of, and response to, the fundamental social and political problems. The recent arguments of Richard Falk in favour of a religious foundation for a humane globalization will be taken as paradigmatic. While the paper agrees that the normative core of major world religions supports Falk's particular conclusion that religion can provide the content for a universal critique of inhumane global governance, it will conclude that the (...) universal claim that global human solidarity today can only be built on the basis of religious faith does not follow. The paper will contend that the required normative foundation for the positive project of constructing global human solidarity is neither religious nor secular, but synthetic, embracing both—in what I will call, following the work of John McMurtry—the “life-ground of value.”. (shrink)

Alex Broadbent’s Philosophy of Epidemiology is the latest volume in Palgrave Macmillan’s New Directions in the Philosophy of Science series. Other monographs in the series focus on mathematics, biology, astronomy, et al.—the usual topics of discourse when philosophers engage science. The present volume is a welcome addition not just to the series but also for the field of epidemiology. As Broadbent notes, “Although a few philosophers have studied epidemiology, there have been no philosophical studies of epidemiology” . There is one (...) now.As noted in the book’s foreword, the core theme of Philosophy of Epidemiology “has to do with the nature and role of explanation and prediction in epidemiological analyses” . These are practical matters which are familiar to epidemiologists, but being largely mechanical in nature, “this explains why philosophers of science have neglected epidemiology” .Broadbent is a young philosopher, trained at Cam .. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s discourse-theoretic reconstruction of the normative foundations of democracy assumes the formal separation of democratic political practice from the economic system. Democratic autonomy presupposes a vital public sphere protected by a complex schedule of individual rights. These rights are supposed to secure the formal and material conditions for democratic freedom. However, because Habermas argues that the economy must be left to function according to endogenous market dynamics, he accepts as a condition of democracy (the formal separation of spheres) a (...) social structure that is in fact anti-democratic. The value of self-determination that Habermas’s theory of democracy presupposes is contradicted by the actual operations of capitalist markets. Further democratic development demands that the steering mechanisms of the capitalist market be challenged by self-organizing civic movements. (shrink)

Robert Pippin helped revolutionize the interpretation of Hegel in the English-speaking world. Reviving and developing the early American pragmatist treatment of Hegel as a philosopher whose metaphy...

Theories of the structure of affect make competing predictions about whether people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Considerable evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur has accumulated in the past 15 years, but holes in the case remain. I describe those holes and suggest strategies for testing them in future research. I also explore the possibility that the case may never be closed, in part because the competing hypotheses may not be entirely falsifiable. Fortunately, hypotheses need (...) not be falsifiable to be useful. Research on mixed emotions has been generative and the body of research will continue to shed light on the structure of affect. (shrink)

Theories of the structure of affect make competing predictions about whether people can feel happy and sad at the same time. Considerable evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur has accumulated in the past 15 years, but holes in the case remain. I describe those holes and suggest strategies for testing them in future research. I also explore the possibility that the case may never be closed, in part because the competing hypotheses may not be entirely falsifiable. Fortunately, hypotheses need (...) not be falsifiable to be useful. Research on mixed emotions has been generative and the body of research will continue to shed light on the structure of affect. (shrink)

Tim Ingold draws a sharp line between animism and hylomorphism, that is, between his relational ontology and a rival genealogical ontology. He argues that genealogical hylomorphism collapses under a fallacy of circularity, while his relationism does not. Yet Ingold fails to distinguish between vicious or fallacious circles, on the one hand, and virtuous or hermeneutic circles, on the other. I demonstrate that hylomorphism and Ingold’s relational animism are both virtuously circular. Hence, there is no difference between them on this count. (...) A path thus opens for what I call hylomorphic animism. While Ingold’s relational animism leads into obscurity, hylomorphic animism is able to explain the differences in power between material things. (shrink)

I argue that Husserlian phenomenology is metaphysically neutral, in the sense of being compatible with multiple metaphysical frameworks. For example, though Husserl dismisses the concept of an unknowable thing in itself as “material nonsense”, I argue that the concept is coherent and that the existence of such things is compatible with Husserl’s phenomenology. I defend this metaphysical neutrality approach against a number of objections and consider some of its implications for Husserl interpretation.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Concept of Brain Death and its Appeal A Critique of Brain Death What Kind of Entity Are We? Persistent Vegetative State References Further Reading.

These essays, by widely respected scholars in fields ranging from social and political theory to historical sociology and cultural studies, illuminate the significance of the public/private distinction for an increasingly wide range of ...

Hernandez et al.’s review provides clear evidence that positive affect can contribute to well-being and fits nicely within the positive psychology framework. The emergence of positive psychology has been valuable for understanding well-being, but I suggest that a balanced psychology can prove even more valuable in the years to come. A balanced psychology requires giving as much attention to negative emotion as to positive emotion. It also requires considering whether there are circumstances in which positive emotions can be detrimental and (...) negative emotions can be beneficial. Along those lines, evidence reviewed here indicates that healthy coping with severe stressors involves experiencing a combination of positive and negative emotions. (shrink)

The exhibition Off Beat: Jeff Nuttall and the International Underground showcases the archive of Jeff Nuttall, a painter, poet, editor, actor and novelist. As the exhibition illustrates, Nuttall was a central figure in the International Underground during the 1960s through to the early 1970s. During this time he collaborated with a vast network of avant-garde writers from across the globe, as well as editing the influential publication My Own Mag between 1963 and 1967.

This paper proposes that, in many cases, conversational norms permit gaslighting when socially subordinate speakers report systemic injustice. Section 1 introduces gaslighting and the kinds of cases on which I focus—namely, cases in which multiple people gaslight. I give examples and statistics to suggest that these cases are common in response to reports of race- or gender-based injustice; and I appeal to scholarship on epistemologies of ignorance to suggest that this kind of gaslighting is common because it is systematically produced (...) by dominant epistemic systems. Section 2 draws on Lynne Tirrell’s account of language games that’ve been influenced by oppression to make the case that conversational norms make gaslighting “appropriate” when socially subordinate speakers report systemic injustice. Together, these points make the case that the kind of gaslighting discussed in this paper (i) occurs systematically and (ii) is mutually reinforcing with systems of ignorance. The discussion is meant to help us understand and address the conditions that make gaslighting commonplace. If it’s true that gaslighting occurs systematically in part thanks to our warped conversational norms, then we may be able to mitigate the prevalence of gaslighting by attending to these norms. (shrink)

In 2020, COVID-19, the Australia bushfires, and other global threats served as vivid reminders that human and nonhuman fates are increasingly linked. Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pandemics, climate change, and other global threats which, in turn, contribute to biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and nonhuman suffering. Jeff Sebo argues that humans have a moral responsibility to include animals in global health and environmental policy. In particular, we should reduce our use of animals as part of our pandemic (...) and climate change mitigation efforts and increase our support for animals as part of our adaptation efforts. Applying and extending frameworks such as One Health and the Green New Deal, Sebo calls for reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and considering human and nonhuman needs holistically. Sebo also considers connections with practical issues such as education, employment, social services, and infrastructure, as well as with theoretical issues such as well-being, moral status, political status, and population ethics. In all cases, he shows that these issues are both important and complex, and that we should neither underestimate our responsibilities because of our limitations, nor underestimate our limitations because of our responsibilities. Both an urgent call to action and a survey of what ethical and effective action requires, Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves is an invaluable resource for scholars, advocates, policy-makers, and anyone interested in what kind of world we should attempt to build and how. (shrink)

In this paper I ask how we should treat other beings in cases of uncertainty about sentience. I evaluate three options: an incautionary principle that permits us to treat other beings as non-sentient, a precautionary principle that requires us to treat other beings as sentient, and an expected value principle that requires us to multiply our subjective probability that other beings are sentient by the amount of moral value they would have if they were. I then draw three conclusions. First, (...) the precautionary and expected value principles are more plausible than the incautionary principle. Second, if we accept a precautionary or expected value principle, then we morally ought to treat many beings as having at least partial moral status. Third, if we morally ought to treat many beings as having at least partial moral status, then morality involves more cluelessness and demandingness than we might have thought. (shrink)

Anthropologist Tim Ingold promotes Indigenous animism as a salve for perceived failures in modern science, failures he claims also hobbled his own early work. In fact, both Ingold’s early and later work rely on modern scientific ideas and images. His turn to animism marks not an exit from the history of European science, but an entrance into, and imaginative elaboration of, distinctly Neoplatonic themes within that history. This turn marks, too, a clear but unacknowledged departure from systematic social analysis. By (...) re-embracing social analysis, Ingold would overcome the obscurity that now hobbles his later work. (shrink)

Anfang einer unvollendeten Selbstdarstellung, von G. Simmel.--Bausteine zur Biographie, von M. Landmann.--Graphologische Analyse, von A. Gaugler.--Zur Dialektik der Simmelschen Konzeptioneiner formalen Soziologie, von H. J. Lieber und P. Furth.--Plan einer Gesamtausgabe der Werke Georg Simmels, von H. Müller.--Simmels Briefe. An P. Ernst [et. al.]--Georg Simmel-Bibliographie, von K. Gassen (p.[313]-365).