Book Reviews RICHARD HARRIES, Religious Studies, FirstView Article.

This book presents an alternative to conventional ideas about the evolution of the human intellect.

In this bold work of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard W. Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science.

"Intelligence" has long been considered to be a feature unique to human beings, giving us the capacity to imagine, to think, to deceive, to make complex connections between cause and effect, to devise elaborate stategies for solving problems. However, like all our other features, intelligence is a product of evolutionary change. Until recently, it was difficult to obtain evidence of this process from the frail testimony of a few bones and stone tools. It has become clear in the last 15 (...) years that the origins of human intelligence can be investigated by the comparative study of primates, our closest non-human relatives, giving strong impetus to the case for an "evolutionary psychology", the scientific study of the mind. (shrink)

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According to Peter Singer, virtually all of us would be forced by adequate reflection on our own convictions to embrace a radical conclusion about giving. The following principle, he says, is “surely undeniable” -- at least once we reflect on secure convictions concerning rescue, as in his famous case of the drowning toddler.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.

To explain social learning without invoking the cognitively complex concept of imitation, many learning mechanisms have been proposed. Borrowing an idea used routinely in cognitive psychology, we argue that most of these alternatives can be subsumed under a single process, priming, in which input increases the activation of stored internal representations. Imitation itself has generally been seen as a This has diverted much research towards the all-or-none question of whether an animal can imitate, with disappointingly inconclusive results. In the great (...) apes, however, voluntary, learned behaviour is organized hierarchically. This means that imitation can occur at various levels, of which we single out two clearly distinct ones: the a rather detailed and linear specification of sequential acts, and the a broader description of subroutine structure and the hierarchical layout of a behavioural Program level imitation is a high-level, constructive mechanism, adapted for the efficient learning of complex skills and thus not evident in the simple manipulations used to test for imitation in the laboratory. As examples, we describe the food-preparation techniques of wild mountain gorillas and the imitative behaviour of orangutans undergoing to the wild. Representing and manipulating relations between objects seems to be one basic building block in their hierarchical programs. There is evidence that great apes suffer from a stricter capacity limit than humans in the hierarchical depth of planning. We re-interpret some chimpanzee behaviour previously described as and suggest that all great apes may be able to imitate at the program level. Action level imitation is seldom observed in great ape skill learning, and may have a largely social role, even in humans. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging inquiry Richard W. Miller provides new resources for coping with the most troubling types of moral conflict: disagreements in moral conviction, conflicting interests, and the tension between conscience and desires. Drawing on most fields in philosophy and the social sciences, including his previous work in the philosophy of science, he presents an account of our access to moral truth, and, within this framework, develops a theory of justice and an assessment of the role of morality in (...) rational choice. In Miller's view, we are often in a position to claim that our moral judgments are true descriptions of moral facts. But others, relying on contrary ways of moral learning, would reject truths that we are in a position to assert, in dissent that does not depend on irrationality or ignorance of relevant evidence or arguments. With this mixed verdict on "moral realism," Miller challenges many received views of rationality, scientific method, and the relation between moral belief and moral choice. In his discussion of justice, Miller defends the adequacy, for modern political choices, of a widely shared demand that institutions be freely and rationally acceptable to all. Drawing on social research and economic theories, he argues that this demand has dramatically egalitarian consequences, even though it is a premise of liberals and conservatives alike. In the final chapters, Miller investigates the role and limits of morality in the choice of conduct, arguing for new perspectives on reason and impartiality. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In this book Marx is revealed as a powerful contributor to the debates that now dominate philosophy and political theory.

Past criticisms to the contrary, methodological individualism in the social sciences is neither trivial nor obviously false. In the style of Weber's sociology, it restricts the ultimate explanatory repertoire of social science to agents' reasons for action. Although this restriction is not obviously false, it ought not to be accepted, at present, as a regulative principle. It excludes, as too far-fetched to merit investigation, certain hypotheses concerning the influence of objective interests on large-scale social phenomena. And these hypotheses, in fact, (...) merit empirical consideration. The attractiveness of methodological individualism as a regulative principle depends on two independent confusions, the conflation of an agent's reasons for action with the beliefs, needs, desires, or goals which are the reasons why he acted as he did, and the identification of explaining a phenomenon and describing its causes. (shrink)

Descartes claims in the Third Meditation that ideas of sense might be materially false. While an accurate interpretation of this claim has the potential of providing some valuable insights into Descartes's theory of ideas in general and his understanding of the epistemic status of sensations in particular, the explanation Descartes provides of the material falsity of ideas is itself obscure and misleading, making accurate interpretation difficult. In this paper an interpretation of material falsity is offered which identifies the fault of (...) materially false ideas in the logical incoherence of their objective content. The implications of this interpretation are also discussed. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging inquiry Richard W. Miller provides new resources for coping with the most troubling types of moral conflict: disagreements in moral conviction, conflicting interests, and the tension between conscience and desires. Drawing on most fields in philosophy and the social sciences, including his previous work in the philosophy of science, he presents an account of our access to moral truth, and, within this framework, develops a theory of justice and an assessment of the role of morality in (...) rational choice. In Miller's view, we are often in a position to claim that our moral judgments are true descriptions of moral facts. But others, relying on contrary ways of moral learning, would reject truths that we are in a position to assert, in dissent that does not depend on irrationality or ignorance of relevant evidence or arguments. With this mixed verdict on moral realism, Miller challenges many received views of rationality, scientific method, and the relation between moral belief and moral choice. In his discussion of justice, Miller defends the adequacy, for modern political choices, of a widely shared demand that institutions be freely and rationally acceptable to all. Drawing on social research and economic theories, he argues that this demand has dramatically egalitarian consequences, even though it is a premise of liberals and conservatives alike. In the final chapters, Miller investigates the role and limits of morality in the choice of conduct, arguing for new perspectives on reason and impartiality. (shrink)

Investigators of animal behavior since the eighteenth century have sought to make their work integral to the enterprises of natural history and/or the life sciences. In their efforts to do so, they have frequently based their claims of authority on the advantages offered by the special places where they have conducted their research. The zoo, the laboratory, and the field have been major settings for animal behavior studies. The issue of the relative advantages of these different sites has been a (...) persistent one in the history of animal behavior studies up to and including the work of the ethologists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

In this bold work, of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science. By questioning both positivism and its leading critics, he develops new solutions to the most urgent problems about justification, explanation, and truth. Using a wealth of examples from both the natural and the social sciences, Fact and Method applies the new account of scientific reason to specific questions of method in virtually every field of inquiry, including biology, physics, history, (...) sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and literary theory. Explicit and up-to-date analysis of leading alternative views and a wealth of examples make it an ideal introduction to the philosophy of science, as well as a powerful attempt to change the field. Like the works of Hempel, Reichenbach, and Nagel in an earlier generation, it will challenge, instruct, and help anyone with an interest in science and its limits. For the past quarter-century, the philosophy of science has been in a crisis brought on by the failure of the positivist project of resolving all basic methodological questions by applying absolutely general rules, valid for all fields at all times. Professor Miller presents a new view in which what counts as an explanation, a cause, a confirming test, or a compelling case for the existence of an unobservable is determined by frameworks of specific substantive principles, rationally adopted in the light of the actual history of inquiry. While the history of science has usually been the material for relativism, Professor Miller uses arguments of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, and others both to undermine positivist conceptions of rationality and to support the positivists' optimism that important theoretical findings are often justifiable from all reasonable perspectives. (shrink)

Clearly, Marx thought he was promoting democratic values. In the Manifesto, the immediate goal of socialism is summed up as “to win the battle of democracy.” Marx sees the reduction of individuality as one of the greatest injuries done by a system in which most people buy and sell their labor power on terms over which they have little control. As they supervised translations and re-issues of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels singled out just one point as a major topic (...) on which their view in 1848 had been superseded. The forms of government needed to be changed to give people more control over the state, a change in structure pioneered by the Paris Commune. (shrink)

Chimpanzee and hunter-gatherer intergroup aggression differ in important ways, including humans having the ability to form peaceful relationships and alliances among groups. This paper nevertheless evaluates the hypothesis that intergroup aggression evolved according to the same functional principles in the two species—selection favoring a tendency to kill members of neighboring groups when killing could be carried out safely. According to this idea chimpanzees and humans are equally risk-averse when fighting. When self-sacrificial war practices are found in humans, therefore, they result (...) from cultural systems of reward, punishment, and coercion rather than evolved adaptations to greater risk-taking. To test this “chimpanzee model,” we review intergroup fighting in chimpanzees and nomadic hunter-gatherers living with other nomadic hunter-gatherers as neighbors. Whether humans have evolved specific psychological adaptations for war is unknown, but current evidence suggests that the chimpanzee model is an appropriate starting point for analyzing the biological and cultural evolution of warfare. (shrink)

Traditional spiritual literature contains rich anecdotal reports of spontaneously arising experiences occurring during meditation practice, but formal investigation of such experiences is limited. Previous work has sometimes related spontaneous experiences to the Indian traditional contemplative concept of kundalini. Historically, descriptions of kundalini come out of Tantric schools of Yoga, where it has been described as a “rising energy” moving within the spinal column up to the brain. Spontaneous meditation experiences have previously been studied within Buddhist and Christian practices and within (...) eclectic groups of contemplative practitioners. Prior explorations of kundalini have emphasized extreme experiences, sometimes having clinical consequences. We conducted a first such investigation of kundalini-related experiences within a sample of meditators from a single Tantric Yoga tradition that emphasizes the role of kundalini. We developed a semi-structured questionnaire to conduct an exploratory pilot investigation of spontaneous sensory, motor and affective experiences during meditation practice. In addition to identifying the characteristics of subjective experiences, we measured quantity of meditation, supplemental practices, trait affect and trait mindfulness. We administered it to 80 volunteers at two Ananda Marga retreats. Among reported experiences, we found the highest prevalence for positive mood shifts, followed by motor and then sensory experiences. The frequency of spontaneous experiences was not related to the quantity of practiced meditation or trait measures of mindfulness and affect. Self-reports included multiple descriptions of rising sensations, sometimes being directly called kundalini. Experiences with rising sensations were complex and many included references to positive affect, including ecstatic qualities. There were also reports of spontaneous anomalous experiences. These experiences of rising sensations resemble prior clinical descriptions that were considered kundalini-related. The individuals who reported rising sensations could not be distinguished from other participants based on the incidence of experiences, quantity of meditation practice, or trait measures of mindfulness and affect. In contrast, greater amount of Tantric Yoga meditation practice was associated with greater positive affect, less negative affect and greater mindfulness. Further study of these exploratory findings and how they may be related to spiritual and well-being goals of meditation is warranted along with scientific investigation of purported kundalini phenomena. (shrink)

Parallels in anatomy between humans and domesticated mammals suggest that for the last 300,000 years, Homo sapiens has experienced more intense selection against the propensity for reactive aggression than any other species of Homo. Selection against reactive aggression, a process that can also be called self-domestication, would help explain various physiological, behavioral and cognitive features of humans, including the unique system of egalitarian male hierarchy in mobile hunter-gatherers. Here I review nine leading proposals that could potentially explain why self-domestication occurred (...) in H. sapiens, whether by selecting in favor of cooperation and tolerance or by selecting against aggressiveness. To account for the domestication syndrome, proposals must explain what led to a decline in fitness of highly aggressive males, and why the explanatory factor applies only to H. sapiens rather than to other species of Homo. The proposed explanations invoke genetic group selection; group-structured culture selection (also known as cultural group selection); social selection by female mate choice; social selection by male partner choice; increased self-control; cooperative breeding; high population density; use of lethal weapons; and language-based conspiracy. Most proposals face difficulties in accounting for the origins and/or maintenance of self-domestication. I conclude that the evolution of language-based conspiracy, which is a form of collective intentionality, was the key factor initiating and maintaining self-domestication in H. sapiens, because it is the most convincing mechanism for explaining the selective pressure against individually powerful fighters. Sophisticated language enabled males of low fighting prowess to coordinate in executing physically aggressive and domineering alpha males. This system is known today as a leveling mechanism in small-scale societies. Group-structured culture selection possibly accelerated the process. (shrink)

Comparative analysis of the behavior of modern primates, in conjunction with an accurate phylogenetic tree of relatedness, has the power to chart the early history of human cognitive evolution. Adaptive cognitive changes along this path occurred, it is believed, in response to various forms of complexity; to some extent, theories that relate particular challenges to cognitive adaptations can also be tested against comparative data on primate ecology and behavior. This paper explains the procedures by which data are employed, and uses (...) the best currently available evidence to derive a proposal for some of the stages through which human cognition evolved, before the last common ancestor with a nonhuman, and the reasons that cognitive adaptations were favored in primate evolution. (shrink)

Type II DNA topoisomerase activity is required to change DNA topology. It is important in the relaxation of DNA supercoils generated by cellular processes, such as transcription and replication, and it is essential for the condensation of chromosomes and their segregation during mitosis. In mammals this activity is derived from at least two isoforms, termed DNA topoisomerase IIα and β. The α isoform is involved in chromosome condensation and segregation, whereas the role of the β isoform is not yet clear. (...) DNA topoisomerase IIβ was first reported in 1987. Here we review the research on DNA topoisomerase IIβ over the last 10 years. BioEssays 20:215–226, 1998.© 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Following from the critiques of moral relativism advanced by philosophers such as Gilbert Harman and J.L. Mackie, the author explores philosophical challenges that educators face in philosophy courses. Specifically, the author accounts for the new wave of moral relativism and its effects on classroom discussions in philosophy courses. The purpose of this paper is to outline various pedagogical approaches that help with identifying student relativism. Unlike philosophical relativism, student relativism can be identified as an unreflective response to or attitude towards (...) moral philosophical issues. The author contends that the proper identification of student relativism will allow educators to effectively respond to and be able to decipher its philosophical validity in order to improve students’ ability to comprehend philosophical discourse. In addition to the identification of various aspects student relativism the author seeks to qualify the ways in which it functions in student college life. (shrink)

Chakras are a basic concept of yoga but typically are ignored by scientific research on yoga, probably because descriptions of chakras can appear like a fanciful mythology. Chakras are commonly considered to be centers of concentrated metaphysical energy. Although clear physiological effects exist for yoga practices, no explanation of how chakras influence physiological function has been broadly accepted either in the scientific community or among yoga scholars. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that yoga is based on subjective experience, (...) and practitioners often shun objective descriptions. This essay builds on earlier work hypothesizing that intercellular gap junction connections provide a physiological mechanism underlying subtle energy systems described in yoga as well as other disciplines such as acupuncture. Three physical aspects of chakras are distinguished that are integrated through gap junction mechanisms and are proposed to have arisen during embryological development. Furthermore, electrical conductance associated with a high concentration of gap junctions could generate phenomena that, when subjectively experienced, have the radiant qualities attributed to chakras. This theory provides a scientific rationale for previously unexplained details of chakra theory and offers a new orientation to conceptualizing and studying such subjective phenomena. (shrink)

There are close affinities between James' theory of time as discussed in A Pluralistic Universe and the so-called epochal theory of time offered by Alfred North Whitehead. In this paper I examine James' theory and compare it with the views of Henri Bergson.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 1-2, Page 189-199, June 2022.