This work tests two conflicting views about double standards: whether they reflect evolved sex differences in behavior or a manipulative morality serving male interests. Two questionnaires on jealous reactions to mild (flirting) and serious (cheating) sexual transgressions were randomly assigned to 172 young women and men. One questionnaire assessed standards for appropriate behavior and perceptions of how young women and men usually react. The second asked people to report how they had reacted or, if naive, how they would react. The (...) questions concerned anger at and blame of partner and rival and the self-oriented responses of loss of self-esteem, feelings of hurt, and fear of losing the partner. As predicted by the idea of manipulative morality, both sexes advanced sets of double standards that serve the interests of their own sex at the expense of the opposite sex. Much of the data contradict the idea of a match between double standards and evolved sex differences. First, subjects who set self-serving double standards did not perceive gender differences in jealous reactions. Second, there were few gender differences in judgments regarding jealous responses. Third, in contrast with the familiar double standard, women were more aggressively reactive to a flirting rival than men. Fourth, self-reports of the strength of aggressive jealous reactions suggest that women’s behavior is stronger than the prescriptions for it. These data suggest that double standards represent a communication strategy which assists men’s control of women. The data on jealous reactions were interpreted in terms of the degree of threat to fitness posed by infidelity in different situations. (shrink)

A set of approximately 500 words taken from the literature on emotion was examined. The overall goal was to develop a comprehensive taxonomy of the affective lexicon, with special attention being devoted to the isolation of terms that refer to emotions. Within the taxonomy we propose, the best examples of emotion terms appear to be those that (a) refer to internal, mental conditions as opposed to physical or external ones, (b) are clear cases of stares, and (c) have affect as (...) opposed to behavior or cognition as a predominant (rather than incidental) referential focus. Relaxing one or another of these constraints yields poorer examples or nonexamples of emotions; however, this gradedness is not taken as evidence that emotions necessarily defy classical definition. (shrink)

Hume seems to tell us that our ideas are copies of our corresponding impres-sions, that we have an idea of necessary connection, but that we have no corresponding impression, since nothing can be known to be really necessarily connected. The paper considers two ways of reinterpreting the doctrine of the origins of ideas so as to avoid the apparent inconsistency. If we see the doctrine as concerned primarily with establishing conditions under which we possess an idea, there is no need (...) for an idea’s “corresponding” impression to be one of which the idea is true. It would be enough that the impression be in some way appropriate for making us master of the idea. Alternatively, if we see the doctrine as concerned primarily with fixing the content of ideas, we might see it operating in the case of causation rather as it must in the case of secondary qualities, conceived in a certain distinctive way. Even if there is “really” no red in the objects , we may regard the idea of red as properly ascribed to any object apt to cause typical sensations in us . Likewise, we may regard the idea of necessary connection as properly ascribed to any pair of objects apt to cause typical habits in us . This view may do justice to Hume’s wish to affirm both that there is such a thing as necessity, resident in the mind, and that there are no knowable necessary connections.Hume parece nos dizer que nossas idéias são cópias de nossas impressões correspondentes, que temos uma idéia de conexão necessária, mas que não temos nenhuma impressão correspondente, visto que nada pode ser conhecido como estando realmente conectado necessariamente. O artigo considera dois modos de se reinterpretar a doutrina das origens das idéias de forma a evitar a aparente inconsistência. Se interpretarmos a doutrina como dizendo respeito fundamentalmente ao estabelecimento das condições sob as quais possuímos uma idéia, não há nenhuma necessidade de uma impressão “correspondente” da idéia ser aquela da qual a idéia é verdadeira. Seria suficiente que a impressão fosse, de alguma maneira, apropriada para que apreendêssemos a idéia. Caso contrário, se interpretarmos a doutrina como interessada fundamentalmente em fixar o conteúdo das idéias, poderíamos ver isto como operando no caso de causação mais propriamente que no caso de qualidades secundárias, concebido de certo modo característico. Mesmo que “realmente” não exista vermelho nos objetos , nós podemos considerar a idéia de vermelho como bem aplicada a qualquer objeto capaz de causar sensações típicas em nós . Igualmente, podemos considerar a idéia de conexão necessária como bem aplicada a qualquer par de objetos apropriado para nos causar hábitos típicos . Esta visão pode fazer justiça à intenção de Hume de afirmar tanto que há tal coisa como necessidade, residente na mente, como que não há nenhuma relação necessária que se possa conhecer. (shrink)

Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.

Artificial life uses computer models to study the essential nature of the characteristic processes of complex adaptive systems proceses such as self-organization, adaptation, and evolution. Work in the field is guided by the working hypothesis that simple computer models can capture the essential nature of these processes. This hypothesis is illustrated by recent results with a simple population of computational agents whose sensorimotor functionality undergo open-ended adaptive evolution. These might illuminate three aspects of complex adaptive systems in general: punctuated equilibrium (...) dynamics of diversity, a transition separating genetic order and disorder, and a law of adaptive evolutionary activity. (shrink)

The dynamical patterns in mental phenomena have a characteristic suppleness&emdash;a looseness or softness that persistently resists precise formulation&emdash;which apparently underlies the frame problem of artificial intelligence. This suppleness also undermines contemporary philosophical functionalist attempts to define mental capacities. Living systems display an analogous form of supple dynamics. However, the supple dynamics of living systems have been captured in recent artificial life models, due to the emergent architecture of those models. This suggests that analogous emergent models might be able to explain (...) supple dynamics of mental phenomena. These emergent models of the supple mind, if successful, would refashion the nature of contemporary functionalism in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This book is a must-read for researchers interested in taking a high-level, non-mechanistic approach to answering age-old fundamental questions in the brain ...

Ligation is a form of chemical self-assembly that involves dynamic formation of strong covalent bonds in the presence of weak associative forces. We study an extremely simple form of ligation by means of a dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) model extended to include the dynamic making and breaking of strong bonds, which we term dynamically bonding dissipative particle dynamics (DDPD). Then we use a chemical genetic algorithm (CGA) to optimize the model’s parameters to achieve a limited form of ligation of trimers—a (...) proof of principle for the evolutionary design of self-assembling chemical systems. (shrink)

This experiment examined the effects of three elements comprising Jones' (1991) moral intensity construct, (social consensus, personal proximity, and magnitude of consequences) in a cross-cultural comparison of ethical decision making within a human resource management (HRM) context. Results indicated social consensus had the most potent effect on judgments of moral concern and judgments of immorality. An analysis of American, Eastern European, and Indonesian responses also indicted socio-cultural differences were moderated by the type of HRM ethical issue. In addition, individual differences (...) in personal ethical ideology (relativism and idealism) varied reliably with moral judgments after controlling for issue characteristics and socio-cultural background. (shrink)

An innocent form of emergence—what I call "weak emergence"—is now a commonplace in a thriving interdisciplinary nexus of scientific activity—sometimes called the "sciences of complexity"—that include connectionist modelling, non-linear dynamics (popularly known as "chaos" theory), and artificial life.1 After defining it, illustrating it in two contexts, and reviewing the available evidence, I conclude that the scientific and philosophical prospects for weak emergence are bright.

Those interested in the relationship betw een environment structure and behavior — the topic of this special issue of Adaptive Behavior — w ill find much of value in Peter Godfrey-Smith's new book, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (hereafter CFMN; all page citations are to CFMN unless otherw ise indicated). The w riting is clear and concise, aptly balancing precision and breadth, and a host of relevant issues are raised and advanced. Although my comments here w ill (...) focus only on the book's fundamental conceptual framew ork for how organisms relate to their environments, I enthusiastically recommend the entire book. (shrink)

Individual differences in ethical ideology are believed to play a key role in ethical decision making. Forsyths (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) is designed to measure ethical ideology along two dimensions, relativism and idealism. This study extends the work of Forsyth by examining the construct validity of the EPQ. Confirmatory factor analyses conducted with independent samples indicated three factors – idealism, relativism, and veracity – account for the relationships among EPQ items. In order to provide further evidence of the instruments (...) nomological and convergent validity, correlations among the EPQ subscales, dogmatism, empathy, and individual differences in the use of moral rationales were examined. The relationship between EPQ measures of idealism and moral judgments demonstrated modest predictive validity, but the appreciably weaker influence of relativism and the emergence of a veracity factor raise questions about the utility of the EPQ typology. (shrink)

There is a long history of cryptographic hash functions, i.e. functions mapping variable-length strings to fixed-length strings, and such functions are also expected to enjoy certain security properties. Hash functions can be effected via modular arithmetic, permutation-based schemes, chaotic mixing, and so on. Herein we introduce the notion of an artificial-life (ALife) hash function (ALHF), whereby the requisite mixing action of a good hash function is accomplished via ALife rules that give rise to complex evolution of a given system. Various (...) security tests have been run, and the results reported for examples of ALHFs. (shrink)

We demonstrate a method for optimizing desired functionality in real complex chemical systems, using a genetic algorithm. The chemical systems studied here are mixtures of amphiphiles, which spontaneously exhibit a complex variety of self-assembled molecular aggregations, and the property optimized is turbidity. We also experimentally resolve the fitness landscape in some hyper-planes through the space of possible amphiphile formulations, in order to assess the practicality of our optimization method. Our method shows clear and significant progress after testing only 1 % (...) of the possible amphiphile formulations. (shrink)

Abstract:Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research.The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real (...) task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, personal debt loads have increased dramatically. Lower income earners borrow money to purchase basic goods and services, so their debt is frequently non-discretionary. The impact of non-discretionary personal debt on debtors can be as, if not more, harmful than government regulations that have been declared unconstitutional. In this regard, the impact of personal debt is tantamount to the impact of a civil rights violation. What separates the impact of unconstitutional state action from that of personal (...) debt is the assumption that only the latter are the result of consensual transactions. Consent, however, is not a dyadic phenomenon, it exists in gradations. The quality of consent is weakened when the agent is making choices in response to pressures, and the empiricalquestion of the extent to which a consent transaction is unforced is distinct from the normative question of whether a transaction is legitimate, or fair. It is necessary to devise a new taxonomy of language to clearly distinguish the empirical and normative questions. This elucidates the fact that lower income people are under more pressure to borrow money than are upper income individuals to pay progressive rates of income tax. To argue that the latter are ‘coerced,’ is to admit that the low income individual’s decision to borrow is similarly forced. This admission suggests that a significant portion of citizens of market-based economies (notably Canada and the U.S.) are being forced to endure harms tantamount to civil rights violations. The admission also suggests that free markets harbour forces that undermine individual autonomy, and the absence of corrective state regulation exacerbates the problem. (shrink)

Evolvability is the capacity to create new adaptations, and especially new kinds of adaptations, through the evolutionary process. Evolvability is important both as a theoretical issue in biology and as a practical issue in evolutionary computation. But it is difficult to study evolvability, in part because it is difficult to..

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Weak emergence is the view that a system’s macro properties can be explained by its micro properties but only in an especially complicated way. This paper explains a version of weak emergence based on the notion of explanatory incompressibility and “crawling the causal web.” Then it examines three reasons why weak emergence might be thought to be just in the mind. The first reason is based on contrasting mere epistemological emergence with a form of ontological emergence that involves irreducible downward (...) causation. The second reason is based on the idea that attributions of emergence are always a reflection of our ignorance of non-emergent explanations. The third reason is based on the charge that complex explanations are anthropocentric. Rather than being just in the mind, weak emergence is seen to involve a distinctive kind of complex, macro-pattern in the mind-independent objective micro-causal structure that exists in nature. The paper ends by addressing two further questions. One concerns whether weak emergence applies only or mainly to computer simulations and computational systems. The other concerns the respect in which weak emergence is dynamic rather than static. (shrink)

Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline is the first systematic study of Kant's reception and influence on the visual arts and art history. Arguing against Kant's transcendental approach to aesthetic judgment, Cheetham examines five "moments" of his influence. The final chapter focuses on Kant's "image," both in contemporary and posthumous portraits, with respect to his status as the image of philosophy within a disciplinary hierarchy. In Cheetham's reading, Kant emerges as a figure who has constantly erected and crossed (...) the borders among art, its history, and philosophy. (shrink)

Driven by the demographic tsunami of a rapidly aging population, costs of universal healthcare in Japan have grown at an unprecedented rate. These trends are mirrored elsewhere, so industrialized countries are asking if Japan will become a global test case for healthcare delivery.

Mobile devices with health apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, crowd-sourced information, and other data sources have enabled research by new classes of researchers. Independent researchers, citizen scientists, patient-directed researchers, self-experimenters, and others are not covered by federal research regulations because they are not recipients of federal financial assistance or conducting research in anticipation of a submission to the FDA for approval of a new drug or medical device. This article addresses the difficult policy challenge of promoting the welfare and interests of (...) research participants, as well as the public, in the absence of regulatory requirements and without discouraging independent, innovative scientific inquiry. The article recommends a series of measures, including education, consultation, transparency, self-governance, and regulation to strike the appropriate balance. (shrink)

Therehasbeenevidencefortheverybrief,temporalquantizationofperceptualexperienceatregularintervalsbelo w100msforseveraldecades.Webrieflydescribehowearlierstudiesledtotheconceptof“psychologicalmoment”ofbe tween50and60msduration.Accordingtohistoricaltheories,withinthepsychologicalmomentalleventswouldbepro cessedasco-temporal.Morerecently,alinkwithphysiologicalmechanismshasbeenproposed,accordingtowhichthe 50–60mspsychologicalmomentwouldbedefinedbytheupperlimitrequiredbyneuralmechanismstosynchronizeandthe rebyrepresentasnapshotofcurrentperceptualeventstructure.However,ourownexperimentaldevelopmentsalsoid entifyamorefine-scaled,serializedprocessstructurewithinthepsychologicalmoment.Ourdatasuggeststhatnot alleventsareprocessedasco-temporalwithinthepsychologicalmomentandinstead,someareprocessedsuccessivel y.Thisevidencequestionstheanalogrelationshipbetweensynchronizedprocessandsimultaneousexperienceandop ensdebateontheontologyandfunctionof“moments”inpsychologicalexperience.

Huston Smith has argued that the universal source of wholeness, which he refers to as the primordial tradition, is essential to a meaningful life. Indeed embracing this tradition is, said Smith, an act of rejoining the human race. Our current forms of organized religion offer us ritualized expressions of this tradition, yet often fail to provide us with transpersonal growth; it is this transpersonal growth that reconnects us with the source of religion. This essay differentiates mainstream religion from a way (...) that we can begin to construct a physical theory of the primordial tradition–a necessary first step toward reclaiming the source of religion. (shrink)

Aristotle sometimes claims that the perception of special perceptibles by their proper sense is unerring. This claim is striking, since it might seem that we quite often misperceive things like colours, sounds and smells. Aristotle also claims that the perception of common perceptibles is more prone to error than the perception of special perceptibles. This is puzzling in its own right, and also places constraints on the interpretation of. I argue that reading Alexander of Aphrodisias on perceptual error can help (...) to make good sense of both of Aristotle’s claims. (shrink)

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment as it develops from Heidegger's early writings to his later work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language and history. 'Unconcealment' is the idea that what entities are depends on the conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept, central to Heidegger's work, also applies to worlds in a dual sense: first, a condition of entities manifesting themselves is the existence of a world; and second, worlds themselves are disclosed. (...) The unconcealment or disclosure of a world is the most important historical event, and Heidegger believes there have been a number of quite distinct worlds that have emerged and disappeared in history. Heidegger's thought as a whole can profitably be seen as working out the implications of the original understanding of unconcealment. (shrink)

This paper describes and defends the view that minimal chemical life essentially involves the chemical integration of three chemical functionalities: containment, metabolism, and program (Rasmussen et al. in Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter, 2009a ). This view is illustrated and explained with the help of CMP and Rasmussen diagrams (Rasmussen et al. In: Rasmussen et al. (eds.) in Protocells: bridging nonliving and living matter, 71–100, 2009b ), both of which represent the key chemical functional dependencies among containment, metabolism, and (...) program. The CMP model of minimal chemical life gains some support from the broad view of life as open-ended evolution, which I have defended elsewhere (Bedau in The philosophy of artificial life, 1996 ; Bedau in Artificial Life, 4:125–140, 1998 ). Further support comes from the natural way the CMP model resolves the puzzle about whether life is a matter of degree. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

Calling for an expanded framework of EuroAmerican science's methodology whose perspective acknowledges both quantitative/etic and qualitative/emic orientations is the broad focus of this article. More specifically this article argues that our understanding of shamanic and/or other related states of consciousness has been greatly enhanced through ethnographic methods, yet in their present form these methods fail to provide the means to fully comprehend these states. They fail, or are limited, because this approach is only a “cognitive interpretation” or “metanarrative” of the (...) actual experience and not the experience itself. Consequently this perspective is also limited because the researcher continues to assess his or her data through the lens of their symbolic constructs, thereby preventing them from truly experiencing shamanic and psi/spirit approaches to knowing since the data collection process does not “in and of itself” affect the observer. We, therefore, need expanded ethnographic methods that include within their approaches an understanding of methods and techniques to experientially encounter these states of consciousness—and become transformed by them. Our becoming transformed and then recollecting our ethnoautobiographical experiences is the means toward a new kind of science and its methods of inquiry that this article seeks to encourage. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new solution to the old problem of how best to understand the meaning of the word ‘logos’ in the extant writings of Heraclitus, especially in fragments DK B1, B2 and B50. On the view I defend, Heraclitus was neither using the word in a perfectly ordinary way in these fragments, as some have maintained, nor denoting by it some kind of general principle or law governing change in the cosmos, as many have claimed. Rather, (...) I argue, Heraclitus deliberately traded on the ordinary use of the word in his time (to refer to a written or spoken presentation of things as ‘thus and so’) to denote the world’s constant presentation of itself as ‘thus and so’ to all of us in our experience – a kind of cosmic self-revelation. I show how this captures the sense in which ‘the logos’ is said to be ‘common’ (xunos) and to be the kind of thing most people fail to comprehend even before hearing Heraclitus’ own account, all without detaching Heraclitus’ use of the word from its ordinary contemporary meaning. This interpretation suggests Heraclitus was a thinker more centrally concerned with human (mis)understanding than with speculative cosmology. (shrink)