This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that disability is typically a bad thing for those who are disabled. Our purpose in this essay is to critique this view and defend a more nuanced picture of the relationship between disability and well-being. We first examine four interpretations of the above view and argue that it is false on each interpretation. We then ask whether disability is thereby a neutral trait. Our view is that most disabilities are neutral in one sense, though we cannot (...) make simple generalizations about disability's relationship to well-being in other important senses. After defending this view, we discuss its practical implications for selective abortion for disability, nondisabled people's interactions with disabled people, and the use of QALYs in health policy. (shrink)

Two experiments investigated the impact of affect on the working self-concept. Following an affect induction, participants completed the Twenty Statements Test (TST) to assess their working self-concepts. Participants in predominantly happy and angry states used more abstract statements to describe themselves than did participants in predominantly sad and fearful states. Evaluations of the statements that participants generated (Experiment 2) demonstrate that these effects are not the result of (1) participants describing positively and negatively valenced information at different levels of abstraction, (...) or (2) valence-based affective priming. Further, half of the participants in Experiment 2 were led to attribute their affect to the manipulation prior to completing the TST. This manipulation eliminated the influence of affect on the working self-concept. Taken together, these results are consistent with theory and research on the informative functions of affect. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that disability is a harm or “bad difference” because having a disability restricts valuable options in life. In his recent essay “Disability, Options and Well-Being,” Thomas Crawley offers a novel defense of this style of reasoning and argues that we and like-minded critics of this brand of argument are guilty of an inconsistency. Our aim in this article is to explain why our view avoids inconsistency, to challenge Crawley's positive defense of the Options Argument, and to (...) suggest that this general line of reasoning employs a double standard. (shrink)

Waiting time is widely used in health and social policy to make resource allocation decisions, yet no general account of the moral significance of waiting time exists. We provide such an account. We argue that waiting time is not intrinsically morally significant, and that the first person in a queue for a resource does not ipso facto have a right to receive that resource first. However, waiting time can and sometimes should play a role in justifying allocation decisions. First, there (...) is a duty of fairness prohibiting line-cutting where a sufficiently just queue exists. Second, waiting time has several morally attractive features that can justify its incorporation into allocation schemes. Where candidates are in relevantly similar circumstances, allocating by waiting time is relatively efficient, maximizes distribution equality relative to other Pareto efficient distributions, and treats candidates fairly. The claim that allocation using waiting time is fair is controversial. Some have claimed that formal lotteries are a fairer way to select among equal beneficiaries. We argue that lotteries are no fairer than allocation based on waiting time when it is equiprobable how a prospective queue will be ordered. In practice, lotteries share many of the disadvantages of queues; which is fairer will depend on contingent features of the allocation scenario. The upshot is that first-come, first-served is in fact a just way to allocate resources in many of the cases where it seems pre-theoretically compelling, and waiting time has unique normative properties which frequently justify its incorporation into resource allocation schemes. (shrink)

One widely used method for allocating health care resources involves the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to rank treatments in terms of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained. CEA has been criticized for discriminating against people with disabilities by valuing their lives less than those of non-disabled people. Avoiding discrimination seems to lead to the ’QALY trap’: we cannot value saving lives equally and still value raising quality of life. This paper reviews existing responses to the QALY trap and argues that all (...) are problematic. Instead, we argue that adopting a moderate form of prioritarianism avoids the QALY trap and disability discrimination. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic that struck New York City in the spring of 2020 was a natural experiment for the clinical ethics services of NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP). Two distinct teams at NYP’s flagship academic medical centers—at NYP/ Columbia University Medical Center (Columbia) and NYP/ Weill Cornell Medical Center (Weill Cornell)—were faced with the same pandemic and operated under the same institutional rules. Each campus used time as an heuristic to analyze our collective response. The Columbia team compares consults during the pandemic with (...) the same period during the year prior. The Weill Cornell service describes the phases of the pandemic to depict its temporal evolution and subsequent ethical challenges. Both sites report that the predominant ethical challenges centered around end-of-life decision making, setting goals of care, and medical futility, all complicated by resource allocation questions and the ambiguity of state law under crisis standards of care. The Columbia campus saw a statistically significant increase in ethics consultations provided to Hispanic patients, perhaps reflective of the disproportionate burden of COVID-19 suffered by this demographic. While Weill Cornell and Columbia saw a surge in clinical ethics consultations, the two services assumed a more expansive role than one normally played in institutional life. Serving as intermediaries between frontline clinicians and senior hospital administrators, consultants provided critical intelligence to hospital leadership about the evolution of the pandemic, disseminated information to clinicians, and attended to the moral distress of colleagues who were asked to provide care under truly extraordinary circumstances. The COVID-19 surge in New York City revealed latent capabilities in ethics consultation that may prove useful to the broader clinical ethics community as it responds to the current pandemic and reconceptualizes its potential for future service. (shrink)

The spring, summer, and fall 2006 editions of Critical Inquiry hosted a heated exchange between Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek regarding the proper definition of the Lacanian Real. Žižek claims "the Real is the inexorable abstract spectral logic of capital that determines what goes on in social reality". In response, Laclau states that Žižek's "spectral logic of capital" is a gross distortion of Lacanian theory: "The Real is not a specifiable object endowed with laws of movement on its own but, (...) on the contrary, something that only exists and shows itself through its disruptive effects within the Symbolic". Laclau's formulation of the Real, however, forecloses the possibility of... (shrink)

Post-abortion care research is increasingly being conducted in low- and middle-income countries to help reduce the high burden of unsafe abortion. This study aims to help address the evidence gap about ethical challenges that researchers in LMICs face when carrying out PAC research with adolescents. Employing an explorative qualitative approach, the study identified several ethics challenges encountered by PAC researchers in Zambia, including those associated with seeking ethics and regulatory approvals at institutional and national levels. Persistent stigma around abortion and (...) community perceptions that PAC studies encourage adolescents to seek abortion affected adolescents’ right to exercise their autonomy and to make decisions as well as exposed adolescents to social stigmatization risks. Challenges with recruitment was reported to result in abandoning of studies, thereby undermining development of PAC services that are more responsive to adolescent needs. Training needs identified included knowledge of best practices for conducting and disseminating PAC research. Strategies for addressing the ethical challenges included trust building and using less value-laden terminology when seeking permission and consent. It is essential to the future of PAC research in Zambia and globally that these important challenges be addressed through the development of comprehensive ethics guidance. (shrink)

In the final minutes of the Season 3 finale of Sons of Anarchy, it appears that Jax Teller has betrayed the MC and lived up to his nickname: “The Rat Prince.” But it is actually a set‐up to reduce the jail time for SAMCRO members. The life of freedom and camaraderie that J.T. sought when forming the MC became increasingly impossible due to the means he needed to employ to secure the club's success. The social order he founded turned out (...) to be incompatible with the very values he intended for it to foster. Jax's inward struggles offer an accurate depiction of the nuances at the heart of Machiavellian politics. He values the club beyond self‐interest, and his “public‐spiritedness” ultimately redeems his actions. Even as he engages in deceit and violence, Jax expresses sentiments closely aligned with his father's concern for the well‐being of the club and lives its members. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThe sea anemone Nematostella vectensis has developed into a model organism for studying genome evolution and animal development.

Do the conditions under which promises are made determine whether they ought to be kept? Philosophers have placed a number of conditions on promising which, they hold, must be met in order to make promise‐keeping obligatory. In so doing, they have distinguished valid promises from invalid promises and justified promises from promises that are not justified. Considering such conditions, one by one, we argue that they are mistaken. In the first place, the conditions they lay down are not necessary for (...) either valid or justified promise‐making. In the second place, promises need not meet such conditions in order to create moral obligations. In general, such analyses of promising fail because they suffer from a confusion between promise‐making and promise‐keeping. Philosophers have wrongly supposed that obligations to keep promises are dependent upon, or derivable from, the quality of the promises themselves, at the time they are made, instead of focusing on conditions that must be satisfied at the time when promises are supposed to be kept. It is not the quality of a promise that determines an obligation to keep it but the rightness or wrongness of performing the promised act. (shrink)

The death of Imre Lakatos on February 2, 1974 was a personal and philosophical loss to the worldwide circle of his friends, colleagues and students. This volume reflects the range of his interests in mathematics, logic, politics and especially in the history and methodology of the sciences. Indeed, Lakatos was a man in search of rationality in all of its forms. He thought he had found it in the historical development of scientific knowledge, yet he also saw rationality endangered everywhere. (...) To honor Lakatos is to honor his sharp and aggressive criticism as well as his humane warmth and his quick wit. He was a person to love and to struggle with. PAUL K. FEYERABEND ROBERT S. COHEN MARX W. WARTOFSKY TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface VII JOHN WORRALL / Imre Lakatos : Philosopher of Mathematics and Philosopher of Science JOSEPH AGASSI / The Lakatosian Revolution 9 23 D. M. ARMSTRONG / Immediate Perception w. W. BAR TLEY, III/On Imre Lakatos 37 WILLIAM BERKSON / Lakatos One and Lakatos Two: An Appreciation 39 I. B. COHEN / William Whewell and the Concept of Scientific Revolution 55 L. JONATHAN COHEN / How Can One Testimony Corroborate Another? 65 R. S. COHEN / Constraints on Science 79 GENE D'AMOUR/ Research Programs, Rationality, and Ethics 87 YEHUDA ELKANA / Introduction: Culture, Cultural System and Science 99 PA UL K. (shrink)

With increased frequency, reproductive technologies are placing prospective parents in the position of choosing whether to bring a disabled child into the world. The most well-known objection to the act of “selecting against disability” is known as the Expressivist Argument. The argument claims that such acts express a negative or disrespectful message about disabled people and that one has a moral reason to avoid sending such messages. We have two primary aims in this essay. The first is to critically examine (...) the standard Expressivist Argument, which we analyze in terms of the expression of ableist attitudes. We distinguish three interpretations of the argument and argue that each version faces serious objections. Our second aim is to articulate two closely related arguments that also pertain to expressed ableist attitudes. The Expressive Harms Argument maintains that there is a moral reason to avoid actions that give rise to the perception of ableist attitudes in cases where this is likely to have negative consequences for disabled people. The Ableist Motivation Argument speaks against selecting against disability in cases where one would be motivated by ableist attitudes. While these two arguments face various objections, we seek to establish that they are more promising than the most natural interpretations of the Expressivist Argument. (shrink)

Signal transduction pathways constructed around a core module of three consecutive protein kinases, the most distal being a member of the extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK) family, are ubiquitous among eukaryotes. Recent work has defined two cascades activated preferentially by the inflammatory cytokines TNF‐α and IL‐1‐β, as well as by a wide variety of cellular stresses such as UV and ionizing radiation, hyperosmolarity, heat stress, oxidative stress, etc. One pathway converges on the ERK subfamily known as the ‘stress activated’ protein kinases (...) (SAPKs, also termed Jun N‐terminal kinases, JNKs), whereas the second pathway recruits the p38 kinases. Upstream inputs are diverse, and include small GTPases (primarily Rac and Cdc42; secondarily Ras) acting through mammalian homologs of the yeast Ste20 kinase, other kinase subfamilies (e.g. GC kinase) and ceramide, a putative second messenger for certain TNF‐α actions. These two cascades signal cell cycle delay, cellular repair or apoptosis in most cells, as well as activation of immune and reticuloendothelial cells. (shrink)

Pavlovian cues predict the occurrence of motivationally salient outcomes, thus serving as an important trigger of approach and avoidance behavior. The amygdala is a key substrate of Pavlovian conditioning, and the nature of its contribution varies by the motivational valence of unconditioned stimuli. The literature on aversive Pavlovian learning supports a serial-processing model of amygdalar function, while appetitive studies suggest that Pavlovian associations are processed through parallel circuits in the amygdala. It is proposed that serial and parallel forms of information (...) processing can be attributed to differential recruitment of amygdalar nuclei, with emphasis placed on the lateral amygdala. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 177-180.

This book is an important contribution to the Values literature on the meanings of work. These essays explore the philosophical, ethical, religious, and social foundations that underscore so much of the current thinking and concern about work satisfaction and the place of work in the search of meaning. Various points of view are presented and these include among others historical perspectives, empirical studies and cross-cultural explorations. The result is a compelling and critical volume which challenges many basic cultural and empirical (...) assumptions and raises many questions about values and value-based decisions. (shrink)

Complexity is pleased to announce the installment of Prof Hiroki Sayama as its new Chief Editor. In this Editorial, Prof Sayama describes his feelings about his recent appointment, discusses some of the journal’s journey and relevance to current issues, and shares his vision and aspirations for its future.

Imagery has played an important, albeit controversial, role in the study of memory psychophysics. In this commentary we critically examine the available data bearing on whether pictorial based depictions of remembered perceptual events are activated and scanned in each of a number of different psychophysical tasks.

This paper examines the seasonality of induced abortion in North Carolina between 1980 and 1993. Distinct seasonal patterns are found, with a peak in February and a valley in September. These patterns correspond to the implicit seasonality of conceptions associated with the seasonality of birth pattern. One notable difference from the general pattern is among unmarried women aged 18 and younger. They have the February peak and an additional peak in August that may be associated with the summer vacation from (...) school. (shrink)