In 1984, Edward O. Wilson proposed the idea that natural selection has resulted in an adaptive love of life-forms and life-like processes ('biophilia') in humans. To date, the idea of biophilia has been viewed as an ultimate explanation of many conservation attitudes in humans. In this paper, we contend that environmental ethics has little to gain from the biophilia hypothesis. First, the notion is open to various and even conflicting interpretations. Second, the empirical findings that do seem to corroborate a (...) more well-defined version of the biophilia hypothesis can often be accounted for by alternative hypotheses. Third, the evolutionary reasoning behind the biophilia hypothesis tends to be unclear, and sometimes even inaccurate. (shrink)

In 1984, Edward O. Wilson proposed the idea that natural selection has resulted in an adaptive love of life-forms and life—like processes ('biophilia') in humans. To date, the idea of biophilia has been viewed as an ultimate explanation of many conservation attitudes in humans. In this paper, we contend that environmental ethics has little to gain from the biophilia hypothesis. First, the notion is open to various and even conflicting interpretations. Second, the empirical findings that do seem to corroborate a (...) more well—defined version of the biophilia hypothesis can often be accounted for by alternative hypotheses. Third, the evolutionary reasoning behind the biophilia hypothesis tends to be unclear, and sometimes even inaccurate. (shrink)

Intelligent systems are faced with the problem of securing a principled (ideally, veridical) relationship between the world and its internal representation. I propose a unified approach to visual representation, addressing both the needs of superordinate and basic-level categorization and of identification of specific instances of familiar categories. According to the proposed theory, a shape is represented by its similarity to a number of reference shapes, measured in a high-dimensional space of elementary features. This amounts to embedding the stimulus in a (...) low-dimensional proximal shape space. That space turns out to support representation of distal shape similarities which is veridical in the sense of Shepard's (1968) notion of second-order isomorphism (i.e., correspondence between distal and proximal similarities among shapes, rather than between distal shapes and their proximal representations). Furthermore, a general expression for similarity between two stimuli, based on comparisons to reference shapes, can be used to derive models of perceived similarity ranging from continuous, symmetric, and hierarchical, as in the multidimensional scaling models (Shepard, 1980), to discrete and non-hierarchical, as in the general contrast models (Tversky, 1977; Shepard and Arabie, 1979). (shrink)

Literary racial impersonation occurs when a narrative work fails to express the perspective of a minority ethnic or racial group. Interestingly, even when these works express moral themes congenial to promoting empathetic responses towards these groups, they can be met with public outrage if the group’s perspective is portrayed inaccurately. My goal in this paper is to vindicate the intuition that failure to express the perspective of a minority group well renders the work defective, both aesthetically and morally. I argue (...) that available frameworks exploring the connections between aesthetic and moral realms of value are inadequate to analyzing this phenomenon and propose a novel connection between aesthetic and moral values. Specifically, I demonstrate that the primary defect of literary racial impersonation is aesthetic and contingently constitutes a moral defect in our current social context. (shrink)

I demonstrate that Bell's theorem is based on circular reasoning and thus a fundamentally flawed argument. It unjustifiably assumes the additivity of expectation values for dispersion-free states of contextual hidden variable theories for non-commuting observables involved in Bell-test experiments, which is tautologous to assuming the bounds of ±2 on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values. Its premises thus assume in a different guise the bounds of ±2 it sets out to prove. Once this oversight is ameliorated from Bell's argument by (...) identifying the impediment that leads to it and local realism is implemented correctly, the bounds on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values work out to be ±2√2 instead of ±2, thereby mitigating the conclusion of Bell's theorem. Consequently, what is ruled out by any of the Bell-test experiments is not local realism but the linear additivity of expectation values, which does not hold for non-commuting observables in any hidden variable theories to begin with. (shrink)

One of the central issues in political philosophy is the problem of perspective: if there is a dispute as to how justice is to be defined, or a dispute as to whether a particular situation is unjust, how do we determine who is right? I reject the claim that an idealized speech situation or a transcendental perspective can legitimately be invoked to resolve such disputes. In their place, I discuss critical theory's commitment to the position that all perspectives are ideo (...) logical, partial, and rooted in interests. I then discuss Lukács's notion that, given that ideology and interests are ineluctable, certain per spectives are epistemologically privileged (though not transcenden tal). I discuss the notion of the preferential option for the poor in liberation theology, as an instance of such a claim of epistemological privilege. I argue that this has implications for the concept of alterity, and specifically for the role of the Other in a community of discourse. Finally, I discuss Lyotard's notion of incommensurable phrase regi mens, and the particular kind of harm which is done by exclusion from a discursive community. Key Words: critical theory • epistemological privilege • liberation theology • Lukács • Lyotard. (shrink)

We consider a deterministic rewrite system for combinatory logic over combinators , and . Terms will be represented by graphs so that reduction of a duplicator will cause the duplicated expression to be "shared" rather than copied. To each normalizing term we assign a weighting which is the number of reduction steps necessary to reduce the expression to normal form. A lambda-expression may be represented by several distinct expressions in combinatory logic, and two combinatory logic expressions are considered equivalent if (...) they represent the same lambda-expression (up to --equivalence). The problem of minimizing the number of reduction steps over equivalent combinator expressions (i.e., the problem of finding the "fastest running" combinator representation for a specific lambda-expression) is proved to be NP-complete by reduction from the "Hitting Set" problem. (shrink)

Reading this book is, I imagine, very much like having a conversation with—by which I mean listening to—Gerald Edelman on topics of great interest: evolution; the brain; consciousness; and the nature and limits of human knowledge. Normally, this would be a great recommendation for a work, as one would assume the informality of style and intimacy of tone would make more accessible the ideas being conveyed. In this case, however, there are a couple of problems. The first is that, (...) at any point in this particular conversation, at most one person understands what is being said; the other problem is that it isn’t always Edelman. (shrink)

Roderick Chisholm has proposed a novel theory of reference and belief involving the undefined notion of directly attributing a property. He uses direct attribution to account for Castañeda’s “he, himself” puzzle and for beliefs de re. He affirms as an axiom of his theory principle P1: if x directly attributes z to y, then x is identical to y. I shall argue that principle P1 is defective in that it prevents the identification of x with y and thus renders Chisholm’s (...) theory incapable of expressing a wide range of psychological phenomena. Thus the theory is an inadequate model of psychological reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unknowing BarbaraLee Edelman (bio)There's something you should know about Barbara Johnson. Something you don't know. Something you can't know. Something that's hidden in plain sight. And Johnson, though never possessing that knowledge, indicates, time and time again, both its utter impossibility and the impossibility of ceasing to utter it—the impossibility that generates time as always already time again, as allegorical temporality, as the compulsion (implicit in the phrase (...) "you should know") to repeat our failure to know it and to call that failure knowledge itself. There's something you should know about Barbara Johnson, and it's something I'm here not to tell you. For telling, as Johnson allows us to see, obscures the unmasterable relation between what's told and the act of telling it. It distracts our attention, in other words, from something else always at work in its words to complicate or confound it, something we've come to identify as the rhetorical, the performative, or the literary, but something to which Johnson, by way of reference to Freud, gives another name as well: "Freud called this something the death instinct, but this death instinct is to be understood as what ceaselessly escapes the mastery of understanding and the binary logic of opposition by exhibiting some 'other' logic one can neither totally comprehend nor exclude." To which she then goes on to add: "Any statement that affirms, while using a logic different from the logic of binary opposition, will necessarily not conform to binary notions of 'clarity'" ["Nothing Fails Like Success" 13].Now consider the opening sentences of the headnote to the Norton Anthology of Criticism's selection from Barbara Johnson's work, a headnote that situates Johnson with the anonymous authority of a knowledge from on high, of the sujet supposé savoir, though that subject here, like its object, is Barbara Johnson, who wrote it herself: "Barbara Johnson is known as a translator in various senses of the word. She is the celebrated translator of Jacques Derrida's Dissemination; and she is also one of the earliest and most interesting translators of structuralist and poststructuralist theory into literary insights. Often praised for her 'lucidity' and 'clarity,' she has nevertheless emphasized, again and again, the unavoidability and necessity of linguistic complexity and difficulty in formulating intractable problems."1 Though this seems, on the face of it, clear enough, don't let that obscure its obscurity. For Johnson acknowledges—or confesses, or laments—that she's "often praised" for a "clarity" to which, as the earlier passage makes clear, the statements in deconstructive texts "will necessarily not conform." Are Johnson's texts not deconstructive then? Is her logic really binary? Or is some "other" logic operative here when she clearly affirms that deconstructive affirmations necessarily won't seem clear?To see this obscurity more clearly—to see it more clearly, that is, as obscurity—let me translate Johnson's comments into the logical pattern of a syllogism, although Johnson herself reminds us that "what is most radical in deconstruction" is precisely its incompatibility with familiar structures of binary logic ["Nothing" 12]. Describing that incompatibility, she writes, "while traditionalists say that a thing cannot be both A and not-A, deconstructors open up ways in which A is necessarily but unpredictably [End Page 89] already different from A" [14]. Let me frame this account of deconstruction as the major premise of a syllogism: "All deconstructive statements or texts affirm through a logic different from that of binary opposition.'" Johnson, in discussing the death instinct, has already provided our minor premise: "All statements or texts that affirm through a logic not that of binary opposition 'will necessarily not conform to binary notions of "clarity."'" Syllogistic logic, then, clearly affirms an inevitable conclusion: "All deconstructive statements or texts 'will necessarily not conform to binary notions of "clarity."'" But if this is so, why is Johnson herself "often praised" for being clear? Just what does she have in common with the logical clarity of a syllogism despite her repeated insistence on "linguistic complexity and difficulty"?Well, for one thing, she shares a name. My syllogism belongs to the type that's been known, since... (shrink)

Idealized mo dels of receptive elds (RFs) can be used as building blocks for the creation of p owerful distributed computation systems. The present rep ort concentrates on inv estigating the utility of collections of RFs in representing 3D objects under changing viewing conditions. The main requirement in this task is that the pattern of activity of RFs vary as little as p ossible when the object and the camera move relative to each other. I propose a method for representing (...) objects by RF activities, based on the observation that, in the case of rotation around a xed axis, dierences of activities of RFs that are prop erly situated with resp ect to that axis remain inv ariant. Results of computational exp eriments suggest that a representation scheme based on this algorithm for the choice of stable pairs of RFs would p erform consistently b etter than a scheme inv olving random sets of RFs. The proposed scheme may be useful under object or camera rotation, b oth for ideal Lam b ertian objects, and for real-world objects such as human faces. (shrink)

In a recent preprint James Owen Weatherall has attempted a simple local-deterministic model for the EPR-Bohm correlation and speculated about why his model fails when my counterexample to Bell's theorem succeeds. Here I bring out the physical, mathematical, and conceptual reasons why his model fails. In particular, I demonstrate why no model based on a tensor representation of the rotation group SU can reproduce the EPR-Bohm correlation. I demonstrate this by calculating the correlation explicitly between measurement results A = +1 (...) or -1 and B = +1 or -1 in a local and deterministic model respecting the spinor representation of SU. I conclude by showing how Weatherall's reading of my model is misguided, and bring out a number of misconceptions and unwarranted assumptions in his imitation of my model as it relates to the Bell-CHSH inequalities. (shrink)

Eigenfeatures are created by the principal component approach (PCA) used on objects described by a low-level code (i.e., pixels, Gabor jets). We suggest that eigenfeatures act like the flexible features described by Schyns et al. They are particularly suited for face processing and give rise to class-specific effects such as the other-race effect. The PCA approach can be modified to accommodate top-down constraints.

This book addresses the challenges of living together after empire in many post-colonial cities. It is organized in two sections. The first section focuses on efforts by people of multiple faiths to live together within their contexts, including such efforts within a neighborhood in urban Manchester; the array of attempts at creating multi-faith spaces for worship across the globe; and initiatives to commemorate divisive conflict together in Northern Ireland. The second section utilizes particular postcolonial methods to illuminate pressing issues within (...) specific contexts—including women’s leadership in an indigenous denomination in the variegated African landscape, and baptism and discipleship among Dalit communities in India. In the context of growing multiculturalism in the West, this volume offers a postcolonial theological resource, challenging the epistemologies in the Western academy. (shrink)

In a couple of recent preprints Moldoveanu has suggested that there are errors in my disproof of Bell's theorem. Here I show that this claim is false. In particular, I show that my local-realistic framework is incorrectly and misleadingly presented in both of his preprints. In addition there are a number of serious mathematical and conceptual errors in his discussion of my framework. For example, contrary to his claim, my framework is manifestly non-contextual. In particular, quantum correlations are understood within (...) it as purely topological effects, not contextual effects. (shrink)

In 1984 the renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote that we are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms. They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought. To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry (...) and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit. Splendor awaits in minute proportions.1 This poetical quote nicely captures the essence of Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis. While the notion .. (shrink)

The philosopher Donald Davidson has argued in an influential article, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme,” that there is no intelligible basis on which to distinguish between conceptual schemes that Kuhn and Feyerabend have treated as incommensurable or incompatible. He concludes that, given the underlying methodology of interpretation of speech behavior, we cannot be in a position to judge that others have concepts or beliefs radically different from our own. Thus, he adds, we cannot talk meaningfully about the (...) existence of conceptual schemes. I offer a historical rejoinder to Davidson, focusing on the famous seventeenth-century debate between Descartes and Gassendi regarding the use of the first-person pronoun. I show that, in this particular debate, their failure to translate the pronoun “I” was so basic and fundamental a failure that, although it turned on just one word, it forced Gassendi to question the longstanding Renaissance humanist principle of the intertranslatability of all natural languages. Could the Gassendi-Descartes debate similarly challenge Davidson’s assertion of the intertranslatability of all natural languages and his consequent denial of the existence of conceptual schemes? (shrink)

This essay on the life and work of Pamela Sue Anderson traces aspects of her scholarly work that I was very fortunate to share with her over twenty-six years. What brought us together was our commitment to feminism but also our strong interest in the work of Paul Ricoeur – which seemed to many people an odd combination, given Ricoeur’s silence on the topic of women and gender issues. Over the years, we met at conferences, read each other’s books, and (...) published articles in each other’s publications. My principal aim is to chart her own journey and her relation to the work of Paul Ricoeur. What was remarkable in Pamela’s work was her passionate commitment, which was especially contagious. Her early work on the philosopher Kant was rigorous in ways that helped to initiate a wealth of new scholarship and increased an awareness of Ricoeur’s Kantian influence. In relation to Ricoeur’s work, Pamela was intrigued by his silence on women, but she realized that, given his dialogical approach, she could attempt not only to introduce feminist insights but also to expand his ideas so as to incorporate philosophy of religion. First, she integrated Ricoeur’s approach of the hermeneutics of suspicion to assist in this task. Then she adapted his writings on hospitality. But it was only when Ricoeur turned his attention to human suffering and vulnerability in his later years – a topic that resonated deeply with Pamela – that she was moved to write specifically in ways that helped incorporate her insights with Ricoeur’s in constructive ways. Her final publications reflect her wise and thought-provoking conclusions. (shrink)

Merker's approach allows the formulation of an evolutionary view of consciousness that abandons a dependence on structural homology – in this case, the presence of a cerebral cortex – in favor of functional concordance. In contrast to Merker, though, I maintain that the emergence of complex, dynamic interactions, such as those which occur between thalamus and cortex, was central to the appearance of consciousness. (Published Online May 1 2007).

The idea for this collection of essays arose out of conversations I had with D. Z. Phillips in Claremont in 2000: a set of philosophical essays recognizing and arising out of something I took to be both interesting and good going on at University College, Swansea, roughly from the 1950s into the 1990s. I envisioned eight essays, each in some way taking up the work of one of eight individuals - Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, R. F. Holland, J. R. Jones, (...) H. O. Mounce, D. Z. Phillips, Ilham Dilman, and R. W. Beardsmore - each of whom taught at Swansea for a substantial period during those years, these being followed by a ninth essay providing something of an overview of the other eight essays and thereby of philosophy at Swansea during the same period. (shrink)

In the wake of revelations about the American Psychological Association's complicity in the military's enhanced interrogation program, some psychologists have called upon the association to sever its ties to national security agencies. But psychology's relationship to the military is no short-term fling born of the War on Terror. This article demonstrates that psychology's close relationship to national security agencies and interests has long been a visible and consequential feature of the discipline. Drawing on social scientific debates about the relationship between (...) national security agencies and the social sciences in the late 1960s and early 1970s, this article also provides cautionary lessons for psychologists confronting the torture controversy. It concludes that an ethically robust response to this controversy requires that psychologists engage in a sustained reckoning with the powerful institutional, epistemological, and financial incentives that have bound the discipline to the military and intelligence communities since World War I. (shrink)

Three centuries of history have made us take it for granted that mechanism and empiricism are natural allies. I want to suggest in this article that that alliance ought to surprise us a good deal more than it does, and that it arose out of contingent historical circumstance. This claim is perhaps best approached by considering initially a fundamental issue upon which the mechanists of the seventeenth century were themselves divided. In the “Proemial Discourse” to The Origin of Forms and (...) Qualities, According to the Corpuscular Philosophy, Robert Boyle confronted his readers with an issue which continues to confront modern interpreters of the history of the mechanical philosophy. Boyle stated that he intended to “write rather for the Corpuscularians in general, than any party of them.” What he knew and what modern commentators have since also realized is that the interprétation of the mechanical philosophy crucially depends on whether one chooses to take seriously the conflicts which existed among the seventeenth-century proponents of mechanism or whether one decides deliberately to ignore such conflicts of party. I propose in this article to examine the historical and philosophical consequences of viewing the mechanisms of the seventeenth-century natural philosophers from each of these standpoints. In pursuing this line of inquiry, I shall call attention to certain salient features of their thought which made it rationally justifiable for them either to write for corpuscularians in general or to write for a particular party, but rationally unjustifiable to do both. (shrink)

In the last decades of his life, Ricoeur was dismayed by the undiminishing amount of violence that humans inflicted on one another. He felt impelled to address this unjustified suffering. He moved from theoretical philosophical discussions to develop an ethical project directed toward a just society. I trace Ricoeur’s development, starting from Fallible Man and Freedom and Nature, by way of The Symbolism of Evil, Oneself as Another, and The Course of Recognition, as he delineates his project. In this journey, (...) Ricoeur emerges from the strict Protestant training of his youth to a more pluralist and inclusive ideal. During his elaboration of the ethical, as well as political and social conditions where human beings can flourish, Ricoeur does not appeal directly to religious terminology. Nonetheless, his work remains imbued with a deep love of humankind and wisdom, the roots of which remain entangled in his Christian background. (shrink)

I identify a number of errors in Richard Gill's purported refutation of my disproof of Bell's theorem. In particular, I point out that his central argument is based, not only on a rather trivial misreading of my counterexample to Bell's theorem, but also on a simple oversight of a freedom of choice in the orientation of a Clifford algebra. What is innovative and original in my counterexample is thus mistaken for an error, at the expense of the professed universality and (...) generality of Bell's theorem. (shrink)

In a recent arXiv preprint Richard Gill has criticized an experimental proposal published in a journal of theoretical physics which describes how to detect a macroscopic signature of fermionic sign changes. Here I point out that his worries stem from his own elementary algebraic and conceptual mistakes, and present several event-by-event numerical simulations which expose the vacuity of his claims by explicit computations.

ABSTRACTWomen television journalists have long faced criticism and harassment regarding their appearance. The normalization of social media engagement in newsrooms, where journalists are expected t...

Reviewing works by James Alison, Alistair McFadyen, Andrew Sung Park, Ted Peters, and Solomon Schimmel, the author suggests that the status and function of the discourse/doctrine of sin highlight tensions between theology and ethics in ways that suggest the character, limits, and promise of religious ethics. This literature commends attention to sin-talk because it helps religious ethicists to render more adequately the dynamics of human agency, sociality, and culture and because it raises questions about the nature and task of theology, (...) faith, and morality. Yet these volumes also indicate that religious ethics should pay more attention to particular sins. (shrink)

I have been anxious to improve the nick of time... to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.It is never too late to give up our prejudices.Inspired by Thoreau’s Walden and Other Writings, these epigraphs speak to the bridging potential I see in literature and art.1 Literature can link global issues of the day to human struggles that are anything but new, narratively fusing the past and (...) future together, helping the present to appear. When I make reference to aesthetic works in my classes, I am striving with my students to “improve the nick of time... [and] toe that line” of the present moment right there in the classroom. But what... (shrink)

This article provides a critical rereading of Andrea Dworkin’s infamous text Intercourse. I use Judith Butler’s post-structural theory to contest the common view that Dworkin forwards an immutable position on heterosexual intercourse. Instead, I argue that she identifies a particularly pernicious discourse used to represent vaginal penetration – the discourse of intercourse-as-violation. This discourse is important for feminists to consider because the codification of sex acts affects the codification of gendered social actors. The article continues to explore how Dworkin’s text (...) positions readers as gendered subjects in order to better understand why her work is seldom given careful contemplation. When read as positing an essentialist position on heterosex, heterosexed male readers are brought into social being as perpetrators of sexual violation while female readers are positioned as morally superior victims. This distasteful position is quickly rejected as readers form affective attachments to her work based in disindentification. (shrink)

In this article I consider instances in visual culture in which artists and filmmakers aestheticize women with damaged, missing or anomalous limbs. I focus upon Joel Peter Witkin’s photomontage Las Meninas (1987), Peter Greenaway’s film “A Zed and Two Noughts” (1985), Alison Lapper Pregnant a statue by Marc Quinn, Mathew Barney’s film “Cremaster” (2002), David Cronenberg’s “Crash” (1996), Luis Buñuel’s “Tristana” (1970) and David Lynch’s short film “The Amputee” (1973). I argue that although the artists and filmmakers reveal, rather than (...) disguise the damaged, anomalous or missing limb(s) of the women, thus valorising their particular embodiment, these women are paradoxically still portrayed as deviant and monstrous. (shrink)

A computational theory of consciousness should include a quantitative measure of consciousness, or MoC, that (i) would reveal to what extent a given system is conscious, (ii) would make it possible to compare not only different systems, but also the same system at different times, and (iii) would be graded, because so is consciousness. However, unless its design is properly constrained, such an MoC gives rise to what we call the boundary problem: an MoC that labels a system as conscious (...) will do so for some – perhaps most – of its subsystems, as well as for irrelevantly extended systems (e.g., the original system augmented with physical appendages that contribute nothing to the properties supposedly supporting consciousness), and for aggregates of individually conscious systems (e.g., groups of people). This problem suggests that the properties that are being measured are epiphenomenal to consciousness, or else it implies a bizarre proliferation of minds. We propose that a solution to the boundary problem can be found by identifying properties that are intrinsic or systemic: properties that clearly differentiate between systems whose existence is a matter of fact, as opposed to those whose existence is a matter of interpretation (in the eye of the beholder). We argue that if a putative MoC can be shown to be systemic, this ipso facto resolves any associated boundary issues. As test cases, we analyze two recent theories of consciousness in light of our definitions: the Integrated Information Theory and the Geometric Theory of consciousness. (shrink)

The place of play in the education of young children has been the focus of much interest in the past. But the findings from this research project demonstrate that there remains a significant amount of confusion about the role that play has in young children's education. In particular we found that there is a clear distinction between the rhetoric and reality of play in the reception class. Further, there was evidence of real anguish for some early years workers who were (...) failing to offer the play activities that they knew should be provided. These findings are particularly interesting at present, since the debate on the role of play has once again emerged as fundamental in the attempt to define a curriculum appropriate to the needs of the 3-6 year olds who, from the year 2000, will be required to work within the highly contentious Foundation Stage of the National Curriculum. (shrink)

Carol Gilligan has delineated two ethics, the ethic of rights and the ethic of care. In this article I argue that the two ethics are part of one overall system, the ethic of care functioning as a necessary base for the ethic of rights. I also argue that the system is seriously flawed. Because women are held accountable to both ethics and because the two ethics frequently conflict, women recurrently find themselves in a moral double bind.

Carol Gilligan has delineated two ethics, the ethic of rights and the ethic of care. In this article I argue that the two ethics are part of one overall system, the ethic of care functioning as a necessary base for the ethic of rights. 1 also argue that the system is seriously flawed. Because women are held accountable to both ethics and because the two ethics frequently conflict, women recurrently find themselves in a moral double bind.

But under the requirement of philosophic consistency, and the impact of the perfectly valid reflection that experience is always my experience, and never part of some object independent of me, the world shrinks to the extension of my experience only, and I am left with bundles of my sensations. What are the natural consequences of such an epistemological sophistication?One plausible and natural reaction is what one might call the ‘Indian’ one. It runs roughly as follows: my experience of the world (...) is, alas, only my experience. It is not ‘the real’. Moreover, the world disclosed in my experience is one of misery, precariousness, insecurity, which ends in old age and death and within which no secure, reliable, undeceptive goods can be found. The flux and precariousness which make it so unhappy a place, also make it most ill-suited to be an object of knowledge. — E. Gellner (1974: 114). (shrink)

Decision making in any brain is imperfect and costly in terms of time and energy. Operating under such constraints, an organism could be in a position to improve performance if an opportunity arose to exploit informative patterns in the environment being searched. Such an improvement of performance could entail both faster and more accurate (i.e., reward-maximizing) decisions. The present study investigated the extent to which human participants could learn to take advantage of immediate patterns in the spatial arrangement of serially (...) presented foods such that a region of space would consistently be associated with greater subjective value. Eye movements leading up to choices demonstrated rapidly induced biases in the selective allocation of visual fixation and attention that were accompanied by both faster and more accurate choices of desired goods as implicit learning occurred. However, for the control condition with its spatially balanced reward environment, these subjects exhibited preexisting lateralized biases for eye and hand movements (i.e., leftward and rightward, respectively) that could act in opposition not only to each other but also to the orienting biases elicited by the experimental manipulation, producing an asymmetry between the left and right hemifields with respect to performance. Potentially owing at least in part to learned cultural conventions (e.g., reading from left to right), the findings herein particularly revealed an intrinsic leftward bias underlying initial saccades in the midst of more immediate feedback-directed processes for which spatial biases can be learned flexibly to optimize oculomotor and manual control in value-based decision making. The present study thus replicates general findings of learned attentional biases in a novel context with inherently rewarding stimuli and goes on to further elucidate the interactions between endogenous and exogenous biases. (shrink)

Part I Introduction -/- Passion at a Distance (Don Howard) -/- Part II Philosophy, Methodology and History -/- Balancing Necessity and Fallibilism: Charles Sanders Peirce on the Status of Mathematics and its Intersection with the Inquiry into Nature (Ronald Anderson) -/- Newton’s Methodology (William Harper) -/- Whitehead’s Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics (QM): A Tribute to Abner Shimony (Shimon Malin) -/- Bohr and the Photon (John Stachel) -/- Part III Bell’s Theorem and Nonlocality A. Theory -/- Extending the Concept of an (...) “Element of Reality” to Work with Inefficient Detectors (Daniel M. Greenberger) -/- A General Proof of Nonlocality without Inequalities for Bipartite States (GianCarlo Ghirardi and Luca Marinatto) -/- On the Separability of Physical Systems (Jon P. Jarrett) -/- Bell Inequalities: Many Questions, a Few Answers (Nicolas Gisin) -/- B. Experiment -/- Do Experimental Violations of Bell Inequalities Require a Nonlocal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? II: Analysis a la Bell (Edward S. Fry, Xinmei Qu, and Marlan O. Scully) -/- The Physics of 2 = 1 + 1 (Yanhua Shih) -/- Part IV Probability, Uncertainty, and Stochastic Modifications of Quantum Mechanics -/- Interpretations of Probability in Quantum Mechanics: A Case of “Experimental Metaphysics” (Geoffrey Hellman) -/- “No Information Without Disturbance”: Quantum Limitations of Measurement (Paul Busch) -/- How Stands Collapse II (Philip Pearle) -/- Is There a Relation Between the Breakdown of the Superposition Principle and an Indeterminacy in the Structure of the Einsteinian Space-Time? (Andor Frenkel) -/- Indistinguishability or Stochastic Dependence? (D. Costantini and U. Garibaldi) -/- Part V Relativity -/- Plane Geometry in Spacetime (N. David Mermin) -/- The Transient nows (Steven F. Savitt) -/- Quantum in Gravity? (Michael Horne) -/- A Proposed Test of the Local Causality of Spacetime (Adrian Kent) -/- Quantum Gravity Computers: On the Theory of Computation with Indefinite Causal Structure (Lucien Hardy) -/- “Definability,” “Conventionality,” and Simultaneity in Einstein–Minkowski Space-Time (Howard Stein) -/- Part VI Concluding Words -/- Bistro Banter: A Dialogue with Abner Shimony and Lee Smolin -/- Unfinished Work: A Bequest (Abner Shimony) -/- Bibliography of Abner Shimony. (shrink)

A study of clinical medical ethicists was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision making in medicine and their various positions' relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study consisted of analyzing and interpreting data gathered from questionnaires from 52 clinical medical ethicists at 28 major health care centers in the United States. The study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists tend to be objectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value (...) judgments are knowledge claims capable of being true or false and therefore expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value structure or moral order in the world. In addition, the study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists are consistent in the philosophical foundations of their ethical decision making, i.e., in decision making regarding values they tend not to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values. (shrink)

Scholars have recently suggested the desirability of moving the migrant female subject to the center of the analysis of sex trafficking and other forms of women’s cross-border migration. At first glance, this seems to be a progressive move forward in empowering women and protecting their human rights, especially those who have been trafficked for the sex trade or have otherwise migrated for work in the sex industry. However, putting the victim of trafficking into the center of trafficking analysis also creates (...) new problems, especially for the formulation and implementation of law and public policy. In this paper, I will first discuss some of the factors that favor putting the female migrant subject at the center of anti-trafficking, such as recognition and respect for the autonomy of the person that is at the center of trafficking. I will then discuss some of the problems that such a reconfiguration would entail. (shrink)

This thesis challenges prevailing approaches to religiously-based or influenced laws , and proposes an alternative model that makes religious pluralism, gender, and moral identity central considerations. I focus my analysis around abortion as a case study in order to analyze the gendered dimensions of the issue in addition to other, more well-recognized problems with religious lawmaking. ;My overarching thesis is that the prevalent approaches to religious lawmaking in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, as well as in liberal and communitarian moral and (...) legal theory, are inadequate. Liberal approaches tend to protect religious pluralism at the expense of the religious identity of lawmakers, whereas communitarian proposals protect the religious morality of lawmakers at the expense of respect for religious pluralism. Both approaches are also inadequate, I contend, because they are premised upon faulty conceptions of moral identity, and fail to adequately consider the potential of religious lawmaking to perpetuate inequalities based on gender as well as religion. My arguments regarding deficiencies in these approaches are reinforced with empirical evidence regarding abortion views held by American religious groups, as well as the self-descriptions of a number of lawmakers regarding the influence of religion in their decision making. ;In developing alternative ethical and legal frameworks for addressing religious lawmaking, my analysis proceeds along both theoretical and practical lines. On the theoretical level, I propose that the conceptions of the social self and role-based morality developed by the twentieth century pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead, as supplemented by feminist and poststructuralist perspectives, provide the basis for a preferable ethical approach to religious lawmaking. ;On the practical level, I develop a legal framework that requires government in qualified challenges to religious lawmaking to show that the law can be fully supported on the basis of publicly accessible reasons and, in some instances, also by a compelling state interest. I explain how this proposal can accommodate the interests of religious lawmakers in relying on their religious convictions in their political and legal decision making, while insuring that the citizenship rights of their constituents are not thereby harmed. (shrink)

This essay illustrates the potential of religion to both oppress and empower women, focusing on the role of Buddhism in Thailand in relation to the trafficking of women for the sex industry. After describing a number of ways that traditional Thai Buddhist culture functions to legitimate the trafficking industry, and thereby deny the human rights of women involved in sexual slavery, I draw on the analogy of Christianity in relation to slavery in the ante-bellum American South to make the case (...) that Buddhist teachings have the potential to oppose and condemn practices of sexual slavery as well as to justify and legitimate them. The essay concludes by discussing what are perhaps the most effective sources for empowering women involved in trafficking within the Thai Buddhist tradition. (shrink)