A unified interpretation of the evolution of species, humanity, and society.

Philippe Descola has become one of the most important anthropologists working today, and Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed (...) as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference to be, however, not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies”— animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers nothing short of a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh. (shrink)

First devised as after-dinner entertainment at a decennial meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists in Great Britain, and first published by Prickly Pear Press in 1993, this expanded edition of _Waiting for Foucault_ represents some of the brightest anthropological satire—mixed in with some of the most serious intellectual issues in the human sciences. Whether he's summing up the state of the discipline or ruminating on the ancients, Sahlins delivers a strong mixture of wit and wisdom.

John Locke is known within anthropology primarily for his empiricism, his views of natural laws, and his discussion of the state of nature and the social contract. Marilyn Strathern and Marshall Sahlins, however, have offered distinctive, novel, and broad reflections on the nature of anthropological knowledge that appeal explicitly to a lesser-known aspect of Locke’s work: his metaphysical views of relations. This paper examines their distinctive conclusions – Sahlins’ about cultural relativism, Strathern’s about relatives and kinship – (...) both of which concern the objectivity of anthropological knowledge. Although Locke’s own views of relations have been neglected by historians of philosophy in the past, recent and ongoing philosophical discussions of Locke on relations create a productive trading zone between philosophy and anthropology on the objectivity of anthropological knowledge that goes beyond engagement with the particular claims made by Sahlins and Strathern. (shrink)

Notice --- Hobbes and Adams as Thucydideans --- Ancient Greece --- Alternative Concepts of the Human Condition --- Medieval Monarchy --- Renaissance Republics --- Founding Fathers --- The Moral Recuperation of Self-Interest --- Other Human Worlds --- Now is the Whimper of Our Self-Contempt --- Culture is the Human Nature.

This is a volume on the concepts, theories, models and social consequences of creativity. It contains articles by well-known cognitive scientists, economists, mathematicians, philosophers and psychologists.

We use Homer and Sun Tzu as a background to better understand and reformulate confrontation, anger and violence in medicine, contrasting an unproductive ‘love of war’ with a productive ‘art of war’ or ‘art of strategy’. At first glance, it is a paradox that the healing art is not pacific, but riddled with militaristic language and practices. On closer inspection, we find good reasons for this cultural paradox yet regret its presence. Drawing on insights from Homer's The Iliad and The (...) Odyssey, we argue for better understanding of confrontation, anger, bullying, intimidation and violence in medicine in order to change the culture. For example, equating medicine with war is not a given condition of medicine but a convenient metaphor with historical origins and a historical trajectory. Other, non-martial metaphors, such as medicine as collaboration, may be more appropriate in an age of team-based care. Taking lessons from Homer, we suggest three key ways in which cold-hearted confrontation and anger in medicine can be transformed into productive, warm-hearted engagement: the transformation of angry impulse into reflection, moral courage and empathy. Thinking with Homer can offer an aesthetically and morally charged alternative to the current body of literature on topics, such as anger in doctors, and how this may be ‘managed’, without recourse to an instrumental economy where emotions are viewed as commodities, and emotional responses can be ‘trained’ through communication skills courses. (shrink)

The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals (...) for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?"Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment," examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment," address more specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment," contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag. (shrink)

The theories of inclusive fitness and multilevel selection provide alternative perspectives on social evolution. The question of whether these perspectives are of equal generality remains a divisive issue. In an analysis based on the Price equation, Queller argued (by means of a principle he called the separation condition) that the two approaches are subject to the same limitations, arising from their fundamentally quantitative-genetical character. Recently, van Veelen et al. have challenged Queller’s results, using this as the basis for a broader (...) critique of the Price equation, the separation condition, and the very notion of inclusive fitness. Here we show that the van Veelen et al. model, when analyzed in the way Queller intended, confirms rather than refutes his original conclusions. We thereby confirm (i) that Queller’s separation condition remains a legitimate theoretical principle and (ii) that the standard inclusive fitness and multilevel approaches are indeed subject to the same limitations. (shrink)

Women are routinely subjected to penetrating surveillance during pregnancy. On the surface, this may appear to flow from a cultural commitment to protect babies – a cultural practice of “better safe than sorry” that is particularly vigilant given the vulnerability of fetuses and babies. In reality, pregnancy occasions incursions against human rights and well-being that would be anathema in other contexts. Our cultural practices concerning risk in pregnancy are infused with oppressive norms about women’s responsibility for pregnancy outcomes and the (...) demands of extreme self-sacrifice from women to protect their fetuses. Of particular concern is our culture’s willingness to enforce norms concerning risk during pregnancy using coercive measures including forced cesarean sections and criminal penalties for exposing fetuses to risk. This chapter will consider assaults on self-determination, bodily integrity and privacy inherent in such interventions, as well as the structural violence and “mangled pieties” that buttress such practices in our unjust society. (shrink)

Physicians generally recommend that patients resuscitated with naloxone after opioid overdose stay in the emergency department for a period of observation in order to prevent harm from delayed sequelae of opioid toxicity. Patients frequently refuse this period of observation despiteenefit to risk. Healthcare providers are thus confronted with the challenge of how best to protect the patient’s interests while also respecting autonomy, including assessing whether the patient is making an autonomous choice to refuse care. Previous studies have shown that physicians (...) have widely divergent approaches to navigating these conflicts. This paper reviews what is known about the effects of opioid use disorder on decision-making, and argues that some subset of these refusals are non-autonomous choices, even when patients appear to have decision making capacity. This conclusion has several implications for how physicians assess and respond to patients refusing medical recommendations after naloxone resuscitation. (shrink)

Studies on informed consent to medical research conducted in low or middle-income settings have increased, including empirical investigations of consent to genetic research. We investigated voluntary participation and comprehension of informed consent among women involved in a genetic epidemiological study on breast cancer in an urban setting of Nigeria comparing women in the case and control groups.

Taking as its starting point Miri Gur-Arye’s critical discussion of a legal duty to report crime, this paper sketches an idealising conception of a democratic republic whose citizens could be expected to recognise a civic responsibility to report crime, in order to assist the enterprise of a criminal law that is their common law. After explaining why they should recognise such a responsibility, what its scope should be, and how it should be exercised, and noting that that civic responsibility must (...) include a responsibility to report one’s own crimes; it discusses whether that civic responsibility could ground at least a limited legal duty to report certain types of crime. It then turns to the question of whether a civic responsibility to assist the criminal law’s enterprise of bringing wrongdoers to account could include a responsibility to arrest suspected or known offenders if the police cannot or will not do so—a responsibility to make a citizen’s arrest, and the legal power to discharge that responsibility: how far should citizens feel entitled, or duty-bound, thus to ‘take the law into their own hands’? (shrink)

Mammals have an XX:XY system of chromosomal sex determination in which a small heterochromatic Y controls male development. The Y contains the testis determining factor SRY, as well as several genes important in spermatogenesis. Comparative studies show that the Y was once homologous with the X, but has been progressively degraded, and now consists largely of repeated sequences as well as degraded copies of X linked genes. The small original X and Y have been enlarged by cycles of autosomal addition (...) to one partner, recombination onto the other and continuing attrition of the compound Y. This addition–attrition hypothesis predicts that the pseudoautosomal region of the human X is merely the last relic of the latest addition. Genes (including SRY) on the conserved or added region of the Y evolved functions in male sex determination and differentiation distinct from the general functions of their X‐linked partners. Although the gonadogenesis pathway is highly conserved in vertebrates, its control has probably changed radically and rapidly in vertebrate – even mammalian – evolution. (shrink)

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model. Empirical studies (...) show that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences. Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians' behaviors. (shrink)

Malevolence and cruelty are commonly attributed to a failure of moral reasoning or a lack of moral imagination. We present the contrasting viewpoint – immorality as an active, creative, or resourceful act. More specifically, we develop the concept of "immoral imagination" (Jacobs, 1991) and explore how it can enter into Rest's (1986) four processes of decision making: sensitivity, judgment, intention, and implementation. The literature on revenge and workplace deviance illustrates these processes.

Gordon's emphasizes that the process of prosecution is crucial to the idea of crime. One who commits a public wrong is properly called to public account for it, and the criminal trial constitutes such a public calling to account. The state is the proper prosecutor of crimes: since a crime is ‘our’ wrong, rather than only the victim's wrong, it is appropriate that we should prosecute it, collectively. The case is not simply V the victim, or P the plaintiff, against (...) D the defendant. It is brought, as the Americans properly have it, by ‘the People’, or by ‘the Commonwealth’, against the defendant. This is a useful way in which to think about crimes and criminalisation. This chapter tries to develop this conception of public wrongs a little further, which also involves complicating it more than a little. It works from a version of liberal communitarianism that rejects the metaphysical version of the individualist's ‘unencumbered self’; but the account sketched here should be compatible with all but the most radically individualist kinds of liberal theory. (shrink)

The aims of this study were to examine the effectiveness of a range of smartphone apps for managing symptoms of anxiety and depression and to assess the utility of a single-case research design for enhancing the evidence base for this mode of treatment delivery. The study was serendipitously impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed for effectiveness to be additionally observed in the context of significant community distress. A pilot study was initially conducted using theSuperBetter app to evaluate the proposed (...) methodology, which proved successful with the four finishing participants. In the main study, 39 participants commenced, with 29 finishing the intervention phase and completing post-intervention measures. At 6-month follow-up, a further three participants could not be contacted. This study used a digitally enhanced, multiple baseline across-individuals single-case research design. Participants were randomly assigned to the following apps:SuperBetter,Smiling Mind,MoodMission,MindShift, andDestressify. Symptomatology and life functioning were measured at five different time points: pre-baseline/screening, baseline, intervention, 3-week post-intervention, and 6-month follow-up. Detailed individual perceptions and subjective ratings of the apps were also obtained from participants following the study’s completion. Data were analyzed using visual inspection, time-series analysis, and methods of statistical and clinical significance. Positive results were observed for all apps. Overall, more favorable outcomes were achieved by younger participants, those concurrently undertaking psychotherapy and/or psychotropic medication, those with anxiety and mixed anxiety and depression rather than stand-alone depression, and those with a shorter history of mental illness. Outcomes were generally maintained at 6-month follow-up. It was concluded that a diverse range of evidence-based therapies offered via apps can be effective in managing mental health and improving life functioning even during times of significant global unrest and, like all psychotherapies, are influenced by client features. Additionally, this single-case research design is a low-cost/high value means of assessing the effectiveness of mental health apps.Clinical Trial Registration: The study is registered with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, which is a primary registry in the World Health Organization Registry Network, registration number ACTRN12619001302145p. (shrink)

The recent Minnesota case of In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes illustrates an emerging class of cases where a dispute between a family proxy and a hospital over “medical futility” requires legal resolution. The case was further complicated by the patient’s spouse who fraudulently claimed to be the patient’s designated health care proxy and who misrepresented the patient’s previously expressed treatment preferences. Barnes demonstrates the degree of significant administrative and institutional support to the health care team, ethics consultants, and (...) futility committees that is required when a futility dispute escalates to the need for judicial resolution. An institutional futility policy, especially one that is endorsed by other regional medical centers and organizations, is an important foundation for a hospital that seeks judicial support in a dispute over medical futility in end of life care. (shrink)

The fourth volume in the Criminalization series, this volume explores some of the most general principles and theories of criminalization. It includes not only philosophical work, but also historical, legal, and sociological investigations into criminalization, clarifying the state of the discipline today.

Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico's significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric (...) at the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought. (shrink)

Futility disputes are increasing and courts are slowly abandoning their historical reluctance to engage these contentious issues, particularly when confronted with inappropriate surrogate demands for aggressive treatment. Use of the judicial system to resolve futility disputes inevitably brings media attention and requires clinicians, hospitals, and families to debate these deep moral conflicts in the public eye. A recent case in Minnesota, In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes, explores this emerging trend and the complex responsibilities of clinicians and hospital administrators (...) seeking to replace an unfaithful surrogate demanding aggressive therapy. Use of the courts requires the coordinated commitment of significant institutional resources, management of intense media scrutiny and individual and organizational courage to enter the unpredictable world of litigation. Given the dearth of legislative guidance on medical futility, individual clinicians and institutions will continue to bear the difficult responsibility for resolution of individual futility disputes. The Barnes case illustrates how one institution successfully used the judicial system to replace an unfaithful surrogate, cease the provision of inappropriate aggressive care, and stimulate a community dialogue about appropriate care at the end of life. (shrink)

Most writing on informed consent in Africa highlights different cultural and social attributes that influence informed consent practices, especially in research settings. This review presents a composite picture of informed consent in Nigeria using empirical studies and legal and regulatory prescriptions, as well as clinical experience. It shows that Nigeria, like most other nations in Africa, is a mixture of sociocultural entities, and, notwithstanding the multitude of factors affecting it, informed consent is evolving along a purely Western model.Empirical studies show (...) that 70–95% of Nigerian patients report giving consent for their surgical treatments. Regulatory prescriptions and adjudicated cases in Nigeria follow the Western model of informed consent. However, adversarial legal proceedings, for a multiplicity of reasons, do not play significant roles in enforcing good medical practice in Nigeria. Gender prejudices are evident, but not a norm. Individual autonomy is recognized even when decisions are made within the family. Consent practices are influenced by the level of education, extended family system, urbanization, religious practices, and health care financing options available. All limitations notwithstanding, consent discussions improved with increasing level of education of the patients, suggesting that improved physician's knowledge and increasing awareness and education of patients can override other influences.Nigerian medical schools should restructure their teaching of medical ethics to improve the knowledge and practices of physicians. More research is needed on the preferences of the Nigerian people regarding informed consent so as to adequately train physicians and positively influence physicians’ behaviors. (shrink)