Research on cognitive processes has primarily focused on cognitive control and inhibitory processes to the detriment of other psychological processes, such as defense mechanisms, which can be used to modify aggressive impulses as well as self/other images during interpersonal conflicts. First, we conducted an in-depth theoretical analysis of three socio-cognitive models and three psychodynamic models and compared main propositions regarding the source of aggression and processes that influence its enactment. Second, 32 participants completed the Hostile Expectancy Violation Paradigm in which (...) scenarios describe a hostile vs. non-hostile social context followed by a character's ambiguous aversive behavior. The N400 effect to critical words that violate expected hostile vs. non-hostile intent of the behavior was analyzed. Prepotent response inhibition was measured using a Stop Signal task and DMs were assessed with the Defense Style Questionnaire. Results showed that reactive aggression and HIA were not significantly correlated with response inhibition but were significantly positively and negatively correlated with image distorting defense style and adaptive defense style, respectively. The present article has highlighted the importance of integrating socio-cognitive and psychodynamic models to account for the full complexity underlying psychological processes that influence reactive aggressive behavior. (shrink)

This dissertation explores arguments and questions related to moral error theory – the idea that morality inevitably involves a fundamental and serious error such that moral judgments and statements never come out true. It is suggested that the truth of error theory remains a non-negligible possibility, and that we for this reason should take a version of moral fictionalism seriously. I begin by defining error theory as the claim that moral judgments are beliefs with moral propositions as content, moral utterances (...) are assertions of moral propositions, and no positive moral proposition is true. Second, after giving an account of J.L. Mackie’s error theory, I argue that neither Richard Joyce’s nor Jonas Olson’s argument for error theory gives us strong reasons to believe it. According to Joyce, moral discourse presupposes non-institutional desire-transcendent reasons and non-institutional categorical requirements. I challenge this claim by arguing that morality can be understood as an institution, and that the assumption that there are non-institutional moral reasons and requirements can be understood as entering pragmatically into moral conversations. According to Olson, moral discourse involves a commitment to irreducibly normative favoring relations between facts and actions. I challenge this claim by challenging Olson’s response to Stephen Finlay’s argument against absolutist accounts of moral discourse. Third, I discuss two objections to error theory, and argue that neither gives us strong reasons to reject it. According to the first objection, which is suggested by Terence Cuneo, error theory entails epistemic error theory, which has problematic consequences. After indicating some possible responses on part of the epistemic error theorist, I challenge the entailment claim by defending Hilary Kornblith’s account of epistemic reasons as hypothetical reasons. According to the second objection, error theory entails normative error theory, which cannot be believed. Although he does not defend this objection, Bart Streumer has given an argument for the unbelievability claim. I challenge Streumer’s argument by suggesting that we might have hypothetical reasons to believe normative error theory and that, properly understood, Streumer’s conclusion is not as radical as it may first appear. Fourth, I discuss what practical implications the discovery that error theory is true would have for first-order moral thinking and discourse. I argue that if this practice is overall non-morally valuable to us, we ought to revise engagement in it on the model of role-playing in live action role-playing games if we find out that error theory is true. Some have claimed that Richard Joyce’s fictionalism encounters problems. I argue that by incorporating the suggestion that engagement in revised moral practice is modeled on role-playing, fictionalism can escape these problems and preserve the benefits of first-order moral practice. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that the incidence of research misconduct is not in decline despite efforts to improve awareness, education and governance mechanisms. Two responses to this problem are favoured: first, the promotion of an agent-centred ethics approach to enhance researchers’ personal responsibility and accountability, and second, a change in research culture to relieve perceived pressures to engage in misconduct. This article discusses the challenges for both responses and explains how normative coherence through values alignment might assist. We argue that research integrity (...) and research ethics convey mixed messages, which are likely to contribute to a form of normative confusion. For the successful adoption of an agent-centred approach, normative coherence is needed between the two. To facilitate normative coherence, we propose that research ethics and research integrity be underpinned by a shared set of moral values that can be enacted via codes and guidelines and imbue research environments. Furthermore, to facilitate culture change, the same normative coherence is necessary at all levels of an institution. Only via values alignment between institutional aims, management, institutional practices and researchers can an ethical culture become truly embedded in research institutions. (shrink)

Andy Egan has recently produced a set of alleged counterexamples to causal decision theory in which agents are forced to decide among causally unratifiable options, thereby making choices they know they will regret. I show that, far from being counterexamples, CDT gets Egan's cases exactly right. Egan thinks otherwise because he has misapplied CDT by requiring agents to make binding choices before they have processed all available information about the causal consequences of their acts. I elucidate CDT in a way (...) that makes it clear where Egan goes wrong, and which explains why his examples pose no threat to the theory. My approach has similarities to a modification of CDT proposed by Frank Arntzenius, but it differs in the significance that it assigns to potential regrets. I maintain, contrary to Arntzenius, that an agent facing Egan's decisions can rationally choose actions that she knows she will later regret. All rationality demands of agents it that they maximize unconditional causal expected utility from an epistemic perspective that accurately reflects all the available evidence about what their acts are likely to cause. This yields correct answers even in outlandish cases in which one is sure to regret whatever one does. (shrink)

This paper describes the development and implementation of a character education program at the University of Navarra. The Leadership as Service Program has been developed in collaboration with the Oxford Character Project, and has adapted its Global Leadership Initiative to the Spanish context. The purpose of the Leadership as Service Program is to help students develop a sense of personal purpose, and virtues that are specific to leadership, such as prudence, humility, gratitude, resilience, and service. The methodology of the program (...) follows the seven strategies of character education and includes a mentoring program. In order to adapt the Global Leadership Initiative to the Spanish context, the Leadership as Service Program was integrated as much as possible into the fabric of the University of Navarra by means of (1) facilitating a new initiative to develop workshops on purpose; (2) incorporating an existing mentoring program; (3) positioning local actors as experts, and (4) dialogue with stakeholders within the university. First results indicate that the Leadership as Service Program makes a valuable contribution to the ethical and professional development of students, which corroborates with the findings of the Oxford Global Leadership Initiative. (shrink)

To investigate possible cognitive factors influencing the cross-cultural incidence of spirit possession concepts and to develop a more refined understanding of the precise contours of 'intuitive mind-body dualism', two studies were conducted that explored adults' intuitions about the relationship between minds and bodies. Specifically, the studies explored how participants reason about the effects of a hypothetical mind-migration across a range of behaviours. Both studies used hypothetical mind-transfer scenarios in which the mind of one person is transferred into the body of (...) another person. Participants were asked to reason about the new post-transfer person's behaviours and aptitudes. In Study 1, participants were provided with a scale on which they indicated their answers; in Study 2, participants responded to open-ended questions. In both studies, the majority of participants reasoned that while the post-transfer person's performance on physical tasks would be similar to the host performance on mental tasks would be similar to the person whose mind has been transferred. Further, participants tended to assume a complete displacement of minds, such that the post-transfer person's performance on mental task items was reasoned to be identical to incoming person's performance normally. The relevance of these findings for explaining the variable incidence and spread of different possession concepts is discussed. (shrink)

This article draws attention to the importance of enchantment in business ethics research. Starting from a Weberian understanding of disenchantment, as a force that arises through modernity and scientific rationality, we show how rationalist business ethics research has become disenchanted as a consequence of the normalization of positivist, quantitative methods of inquiry. Such methods absent the relational and lively nature of business ethics research and detract from the ethical meaning that can be generated through research encounters. To address this issue, (...) we draw on the work of political theorist and philosopher, Jane Bennett, using this to show how interpretive qualitative research creates possibilities for enchantment. We identify three opportunities for reenchanting business ethics research related to: moments of novelty or disruption; deep, meaningful attachments to things studied; and possibilities for embodied, affective encounters. In conclusion, we suggest that business ethics research needs to recognize and reorient scholarship towards an appreciation of the ethical value of interpretive, qualitative research as a source of potential enchantment. (shrink)

Facts about the evolutionary origins of morality may have some kind of undermining effect on morality, yet the arguments that advocate this view are varied not only in their strategies but in their conclusions. The most promising such argument is modest: it attempts to shift the burden of proof in the service of an epistemological conclusion. This paper principally focuses on two other debunking arguments. First, I outline the prospects of trying to establish an error theory on genealogical grounds. Second, (...) I discuss how a debunking strategy can work even under the assumption that noncognitivism is true. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure the work of moral philosopher John Mackie (1917-1981), A World Without Values is a collection of essays on moral skepticism by leading contemporary philosophers, some of whom are sympathetic to Mackie s ...

Professional control in the selection of treatment options for patients is changing. In light of social and legal developments emphasising patient choice and autonomy, and restricting medical paternalism and judicial deference, this article examines how far patients and families can demand NHS treatment in England and Wales. It considers situations where the patient is an adult with capacity, an adult lacking capacity and a child. In all three cases, there is judicial support for professional autonomy, but there are also inconsistencies (...) that have potential to elevate the importance of patient and family preferences. In combination, they may be perceived by healthcare professionals as an obligation to follow patient preferences, even where doing so conflicts with other professional obligations. It is argued that a more nuanced approach to shared decision-making could help clarify the boundaries of decision-making responsibility. (shrink)

I argue that one central aspect of the epistemology of causation, the use of causes as evidence for their effects, is largely independent of the metaphysics of causation. In particular, I use the formalism of Bayesian causal graphs to factor the incremental evidential impact of a cause for its effect into a direct cause-to-effect component and a backtracking component. While the “backtracking” evidence that causes provide about earlier events often obscures things, once we our restrict attention to the cause-to-effect component (...) it is true to say promoting (inhibiting) causes raise (lower) the probabilities of their effects. This factoring assumes the same form whether causation is given an interventionist, counterfactual or probabilistic interpretation. Whether we think about causation in terms of interventions and causal graphs, counterfactuals and imaging functions, or probability raising against the background of causally homogenous partitions, if we describe the essential features of a situation correctly then the incremental evidence that a cause provides for its effect in virtue of being its cause will be the same. (shrink)

Suppose that the human tendency to think of certain actions andomissions as morally required – a notion that surely lies at the heart of moral discourse – is a trait that has been naturallyselected for. Many have thought that from this premise we canjustify or vindicate moral concepts. I argue that this is mistaken, and defend Michael Ruse's view that the moreplausible implication is an error theory – the idea thatmorality is an illusion foisted upon us by evolution. Thenaturalistic fallacy (...) is a red herring in this debate,since there is really nothing that counts as a ‘fallacy’ at all. If morality is an illusion, it appears to followthat we should, upon discovering this, abolish moraldiscourse on pain of irrationality. I argue that thisconclusion is too hasty, and that we may be able usefullyto employ a moral discourse, warts and all, withoutbelieving in it. (shrink)

Cet article propose de situer l’originalité de la justice transformatrice dans le paysage plus général des théories de la justice. Il suggère que la justice transformatrice est à découvrir dans sa spécificité, venue des mouvements anti-racistes africains-américains, mais qu’elle s’inscrit aussi dans toute une série de questions très anciennes, qui s’en trouvent relancées sur de nouvelles pistes. C’est désormais à l’échelle planétaire qu’il faut élever le slogan Pas de paix sans justice, et devant les impasses des politiques répressives, la justice (...) transformatrice fraie des voies qu’il est urgent d’expérimenter activement. (shrink)

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John Mackie’s moral error theory is so closely associated in people’s minds with his arguments from relativity and from queerness that one might overlook the fact that there may be numerous other, and possibly better, ways of establishing that metaethical position. Perhaps, indeed, there are even further resources for arguing for a moral error theory to be unearthed in Mackie’s own book. I have in mind Mackie’s thesis of moral objectification: that the “objective prescriptivity” with which our moral judgments are (...) imbued is the result of our “tendency to read our feelings into their objects” (1977: 42). Mackie invokes Hume’s famous projectivist image of the human mind’s “great propensity to spread itself on external objects,” and, indeed, it is in his book-length analysis of Hume’s moral theory (Mackie 1980) that the topic receives a more careful discussion than in Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. In both books he musters some considerations in favor of the thesis, and reveals to us that he thinks that “it is very largely correct” (1980: 72). (shrink)

This paper concerns the relation between two metaethical theses: moral naturalism and moral skepticism. It is important that we distinguish both from a couple of methodological principles with which they might be confused. Let us give the label “Cartesian skepticism” to the method of subjecting to doubt everything for which it is possible to do so—usually by introducing alternative hypotheses that are consistent with all available evidence (e.g., brains in vats). Let us give the label “global naturalism” to the principle (...) that requires of any item which we admit into our ontology that it “fits” (in some manner or cluster of manners to be specified) with our naturalistic scientific worldview. One might be both a Cartesian skeptic and a global naturalist, if the latter principle is something that has survived the former test procedure. Alternatively, one might have adopted global naturalism for some other reason, while having little patience for the Cartesian method of doubt. Moral naturalism is the metaethical view that moral entities (e.g., properties like goodness and evil) fit within the scientific image of the world. The moral naturalist will probably be a global naturalist, but need not be: It is consistent with allowing non-natural entities into one’s ontology that one happens to think that moral properties are of the natural variety. Moral skepticism denies that moral entities fit within our scientific worldview. One way of denying moral naturalism is to be a moral error theorist: to hold that our moral discourse attempts to make reference to moral properties, but these properties do not exist.1 Another way of denying moral naturalism is to be a noncognitivist: to hold that our moral discourse was never really in the business of referring to moral facts or properties in the first place, and ipso facto such facts or properties are not naturalistic. In this paper, the label “moral skepticism” denotes the disjunction of these two theses. Neither the error theorist nor the noncognitivist must be committed to global naturalism, but usually will be; indeed, this commitment will often be a motivating factor of their metaethical views.. (shrink)

This essay discusses and criticizes Richard Swinburne's inductive argument for the existence of God. In his The Existence of God, Swinburne aims at showing that the existence of God is more probable than not. This is an argument taking into consideration the premises of all traditional arguments for the existence of God. Swinburne uses the phenomena and events that constitute the premises of these arguments as evidence in an attempt to show that his hypothesis is more probably true than nor. (...) Swinburne pursues this task by way of applying Bayes' theorem. The aim of this essay is normative - to judge the strength of Swinburne's argument for the existence of God. My primary objections towards Swinburne is that he professes a subjective concept of probability, that he relies too heavily on simplicity as a virtue of plausible and probable hypotheses and that his concept of God involves an incoherent picture of God's nature. I question not only the actual success of Swinburne's project but what his argument, if it had been successful, would have been able to establish. (shrink)

Que se passe-t-il pour la théorie qui se met à l’écoute des savoir-sentir des danseureuses? À bien tendre l’oreille, il apparaît que « le corps » – obsession contemporaine – n’est pas toujours le domaine privilégié d’investigation de la danse. Il y a tout un monde de sentis intérieurs ou atmosphériques, nanoscopiques ou collectifs, qui se déclarent lorsqu’on s’efforce de se défaire de l’écran de fumée dressé par lecorps, concept qui, trop facilement et quoi qu’on fasse, traîne derrière lui la (...) douloureuse histoire de sa séparation d’avec l’esprit et l’intériorité – suivant le schéma des dualismes modernes qui vont du schisme nature/culture aux délétères binarismes de genre, de race et d’espèces. Cet article, écrit depuis les temps troubles du Capitalocène et de la sixième extinction de masse, part à la recherche des stratégies philosophiques (chez Erin Manning) et chorégraphiques (chez Steve Paxton) qui se sont développées pour renommer les mouvementements qui inquiètent le corps sé... (shrink)

La justice transformatrice opère à trois niveaux interconnectés : macropolitiquement, elle œuvre à l’abolition du capitalisme carcéral ; micropolitiquement, elle développe des formes d’entraide communautaire pour prévenir les violences ; et nanopolitiquement, elle invente une forme de justice à ras du sol pour médier les relations interpersonnelles. Ces trois niveaux se répondent de manière fractale et créent un sens de la communauté/sous-communalité comme cet endroit, précaire, bricolé, en constant effort de réinvention, où nous nous rendons capables de rendre des comptes (...) de ce que nous nous faisons. (shrink)

To reject a false theory on the basis of an unsound argument is, in my opinion, as much an intellectual sin as to embrace a false theory. Thus, although I am no fan of any particular form of moral rationalism—and, indeed, on occasion have gone out of my way to criticize it—when rationalism is assailed for faulty reasons I find myself in the curious position of leaping to its defense (which goes to show that in philosophy it isn’t the case (...) that one’s enemy’s enemy is one’s friend). This puts me at something of a dialectical disadvantage, since my “defense” of moral rationalism has strict limits: I will defend it against specific kinds of criticism, but I have no interest in defending it simpliciter. It is important to bear in mind that what is in dispute between Shaun Nichols and myself is not the truth or falsity of moral rationalism, but rather what kind of evidence bears on the matter. (shrink)

This paper presents the early findings of research into the experiences of pain for those who live with chronic pain and engage in BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, sadism and masochism), explored using a critical crip approach rooted in crip theory and feminist disability studies. The research took the form of a series of interviews with eight disabled people living with chronic pain who experience pain in their BDSM practices, developing a narrative of experiences. The majority of those (...) living with chronic pain, or who have diagnoses of chronic illnesses causing chronic pain, are women. Chronic pain is frequently assumed to be similar to acute pain; however, thinking through pain in terms of normativity and able-bodymindedness reveals the ableist structures that underpin normative attitudes towards pain and those who are in pain. Pain is understood as dehumanising—and thus the person living with chronic pain is understood as not human, abnormal, and disabled. The disabled body, the body in pain, is a horrifying object of abjection, and the non-disabled observer assumes that to be in pain is to suffer; therefore, living with chronic pain is understood as an ontological impossibility and must be stopped. BDSM is a series of practices forming a space in which the people living with chronic pain in this study are able to engage with their somatic experience in ways that do not expect normalcy, while being disabled and living with chronic pain gives them space to explore non-normative sexual practices. (shrink)

In this chapter, I propose the mechanism of cognitive enhancement based on studies of cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training. I argue that there are mechanistic differences between cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training due to their different enhancing effects. I also suggest possible mechanisms for cognitive-enhancing drugs and behavioral training and for the synergistic effects of their simultaneous application.

In The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi unfolds a political and clinical diagnosis of contemporary society, stating that the crisis we experience today is a permanent state of absent social autonomy and political agency. This crisis is not solely economic but is caused by semio-capitalism impacting all spheres of human life, affecting sensibility in particular—the linguistic and physical-sensuous link between the individual and the world. Taking up the term sensibility as a bodily basis of experience and as (...) an aesthetic notion, in this article I will explore the relation between individual and collective bodies, the crisis as a suspension of change, and literature, focusing on the Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s 2017 lunatic and fragmented novel of love and economy The Crisis Notebooks, but also with reference to some of her other work. I argue that the bodily experience of crisis, as expressed in this novel, leads to an inhibited social sensibility but also, paradoxically, to a radical openness towards the world. With reference to the Danish literary scholar Anne Fastrup’s interpretation of French vitalism’s idea of sensibility in The Movement of Sensibility, I suggest that a more ambiguous, material notion of both a constructive and a destructive sensibility is crucial for its understanding, and hence—for an understanding of the relationship between body and crisis as expressed in The Crisis Notebooks. Finally, I suggest that an aesthetic notion of sensibility can provide a prism through which relations between today’s financial mechanisms and a sociocultural experience of crisis are rendered visible—if not sensuous—and it is from here that alternatives to the crisis can be found, felt, formulated or fabulated. (shrink)

Contemporary policy debates about managing the enormous volume of online content have taken a renewed focus on upload filtering, automated detection of potentially illegal content, and other “proactive measures”. Often, policymakers and tech industry players invoke artificial intelligence as the solution to complex challenges around online content, promising that AI is a scant few years away from resolving everything from hate speech to harassment to the spread of terrorist propaganda. Missing from these promises, however, is an acknowledgement that proactive identification (...) and automated removal of user-generated content raises problems beyond issues of “accuracy” and overbreadth--problems that will not be solved with more sophisticated AI. In this commentary, I discuss how the technical realities of content filtering stack up against the protections for freedom of expression in international human rights law. As policymakers and companies around the world turn to AI for communications governance, it is crucial that we recall why legal protections for speech have included presumptions against prior censorship, and consider carefully how proactive content moderation will fundamentally re-shape the relationship between rules, people, and their speech. (shrink)

The strong links between cities and queer culture and its expression have occupied numerous scholars, including Henning Bech and Matt Houlbrook. Indeed, London has been viewed as a focal point of British queer urban culture for over 200 years and, as this article demonstrates, the advent of the Second World War did not preclude this centrality but ensured that the city became a focal point for service personnel on leave. Yet, the emphasis placed on the metropolises in analysing space and (...) queer expression has rendered invisible the use of more transient spaces outside of the city. This article seeks to examine these ‘alternative’ or opportunistic sites of expression, using oral testimony from queer men who served with the British Armed Forces during the Second World War. The memories of these servicemen and the significance they place on space/locations demonstrate the need to engage with subjective sites or ‘geographies’ of queerness both inside and outside of the city between 1939 and 1945. (shrink)

Through a discussion of the work of Marie Cardinal and Annie Ernaux, this article aims to problematize the anglophone academic world's tendency to associate French feminisms predominantly with avant-garde or highly theoretical texts. The work of Ernaux and Cardinal is presented alongside a discussion of its reception by readers and critics in France, and by academics in English-speaking countries. The first part of the article identifies aspects of Ernaux's and Cardinal's works which cannot be encompassed within a critical framework based (...) on the dichotomy between naïve realism on the one hand and the politically and linguistically radical text on the other. Ernaux's plain language, for instance, is clearly very unlike the linguistic experimentation of ‘feminine writing’; nonetheless the emphasis on social class in her writing constitutes a political intervention which is at least equally valid. The reception study in the second part of the article provides further evidence of the relevance to gender politics in France of Cardinal's The Words to Say It (1975) and texts published by Annie Ernaux in the 1980s and 1990s. The ambivalent response of critics seems to indicate the troubling nature of writing which combines the codes of realism and autobiography (or autobiographical fiction in Cardinal's case) with the depiction of taboo subjects such as menstruation, or a daughter's response to her mother's debilitating illness and death. The article also charts the widespread popularity of these texts in France, particularly with women readers, and gives some examples of the pleasures described in letters to the authors. In conclusion, we argue that the ambivalent space between popular and high culture occupied (albeit differently) by Ernaux and Cardinal may be particularly effective in terms of gender politics, and that even in the late 1990s, the personal may be as political as ever. (shrink)

This article uses the work of Judith Butler as a platform upon which to unpack the consequences of women living in a patriarchy and the slender performance that I argue we are unwittingly engaged in. In this critical approach to the gender divide and the political dimensions of anorexia in the 21st century, this article aims to highlight some of the key concerns arising out of society’s stereotypes and norms for women and how the struggle to both conform and resist (...) these are played out on their bodies. Turning to the work of Marion Woodman and the concept of a ‘ritual of transformation’, I explore Butler’s notion of re-citation through the use of ritual, a rite aimed at liberation and a reconnection to our matriarchal lineage. This ritual can be found in the most mundane of tasks and through repetition we have the power to both conceive of new ways of living and strengthen our subversive possibilities. This ritual becomes an act which places critical agency back in our hands, something removed as we are shepherded by consumerism and mass-capitalism. It’s through a framework of Feminist Liberation Theology and Body Theology that this all takes place. If, as Butler says, our behaviour creates our reality then we must change our behaviour! (shrink)

Through most of the 20th Century, the influence of Darwin on the philosophical field of ethics was negligible. Things changed noticeably in the last couple of decades or so of that century, and now “evolutionary ethics”—which had lain dormant since Darwin’s contemporary Herbert Spencer—is a lively and hotly debated topic. There are several Darwinian theses that might have bearing on moral philosophy.

The Punishment of Dirce was a theme that intrigued both artists and patrons of the Roman period. It appeared in diverse locations and media, notably as a wall painting in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii and the Toro Farnese once displayed in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. In all representations, Dirce struggles with the bull that will trample her to death. Traditional studies of this imagery have focused on the formal characteristics of these representations, studying issues of (...) workshop practice and the relationship between originals and copies. Scholars seldom analyze the meaning of the myth in depth. While most studies note that Dirce often appears in the guise of a maenad, they dismiss this observation. Additionally, it is rarely noted that Dirce's semi-nudity has any role in this story. In fact, her nudity is highly significant, for it was not part of the literary accounts. This study offers a fresh interpretation of Dirce's punishment considering the function of gender. Using literary sources such as Euripides, Plautus, Lucian, and Petronius, as well as visual images in a variety of media including wall painting, sculpture, gems, medals, and lamps, it is argued that artists and patrons combined maenadism and nudity to portray Dirce as a specifically female social transgressor. As a semi-nude maenad, the queen abandons accepted female decorum. These attributes allow the viewer readily to identify Dirce as guilty of hubris against family and society. (shrink)

Anthropocentric and individualistic foundations result in forest management policy based on linear, single?dimensional, marginal analysis detrimental to the well?being of the forest ecosystem. Recent theories from the fields of ethics, economics, and policy analysis find that nonlinear, multidimensional analysis is possible, provided one can divorce oneself from anthropocentric and individualistic tendencies. Deep policy is introduced as a policy perspective that encourages questioning the fundamental values upon which policy decisions are made, just as deep ecology encourages a similar questioning of ecological (...) values. An experiment is proposed for forest management in the Pacific Northwest, in which a self?realizing Forest Board demonstrates punctuated equilibrium in forest management policy. (shrink)

Philosophers can learn a lot about scientific methodology when great scientists square off to debate the foundations of their discipline. The Leibniz/newton controversy over the nature of physical space and the Einstein/bohr exchanges over quantum theory provide paradigm examples of this phenomenon. David Howie’s splendid recent book describes another philosophically laden dispute of this sort. Throughout the 1930s, R. A. Fisher and Harold Jeffries squabbled over the methodology for the nascent discipline of statistics. Their debate has come to symbolize the (...) controversy between the “frequentist” and “Bayesian” schools of statistical thought. Though much has been written about the Fisher/jeffreys exchange, Howie’s book is now the definitive treatment of the subject. Though billed as a piece of history of science, it brims with philosophical insights. (shrink)