While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, and Leonardo Bich seek a more deflationary account of these normative phenomena. Critiques directed at both of these accounts of organismic normativity motivate the introduction of the precedential account of organismic normativity, (...) which I nevertheless locate within the enactivist approach, broadly construed. After detailing empirical evidence that would seem to vindicate the precedential account, I explore some of its implications. (shrink)

Key elements of John Searle’s articulation of the Standard Model of Social Ontology can be found within Max Weber’s ideal type of legal-rational authority. However, the fact that, for Weber, legal-rational authority is just one of three types of legitimate authority, along with traditional and charismatic authority, suggests limitations to the Standard Model’s scope of applicability. Where Searle takes himself to have provided an account of “the structure of human civilization,” Weber’s taxonomy suggests that Searle has only given us an (...) account of a way of being a civilization. This understanding of traditional authority also reveals why the Standard Model misconstrues the structure of ordinary, informal statuses, such as friendship. (shrink)

Do professional ethicists behave any morally better than other professors do? Do they show any greater consistency between their normative attitudes and their behavior? In response to a survey question, a large majority of professors (83 percent of ethicists, 83 percent of nonethicist philosophers, and 85 percent of nonphilosophers) expressed the view that “not consistently responding to student e-mails” is morally bad. A similarly large majority of professors claimed to respond to at least 95 percent of student e-mails. These professors, (...) and others, were sent three e-mails designed to look like queries from students. Ethicists’ e-mail response rates were not significantly different from the other two groups’. Expressed normative view correlated with self-estimated rate of e-mail responsiveness, especially among the ethicists. Empirically measured e-mail responsiveness, however, was at best weakly correlated with self-estimated e-mail responsiveness; and professors’ expressed normative attitude was not significantly correlated with empirically measured e-mail responsiveness for any of the three groups. (shrink)

This paper aims to uncover the explanatory profile of an idealized version of Karl Ernst von Baer’s notion of individuation, wherein the special develops from the general. First, because such sequences can only be exemplified by a multiplicity of causally-related events, they should be seen as the topics of historical why-questions, rather than initial condition why-questions. Second, because historical why-questions concern the diachronic unity or genidentity of the events under consideration, I argue that the von Baerian pattern elicits a distinctive (...) response to such questions, wherein we are inclined to simultaneously affirm and reject the temporal unity of these events. I buttress this claim by considering non-biological expressions of the von Baerian principle, drawn from institutional history and literature. In the second half of the paper, I consider the implications of my findings for ontogenetic and phylogenetic sequences. I argue that the explanatory profile of von Baer’s principle neatly describes the distinctive speciation events that characterize deep metazoan phylogeny, as described by Stuart Newman. I also argue that parallel considerations should move us to accept a sense in which ontogenetic stages are not diachronically unified. (shrink)

An abbreviated history of marriage helps motivate the question of whether ancient Roman marriage and contemporary love marriage could qualify as stages of the same (token) institution despite carrying significantly different functions, deontological powers, and constitutive rules. Having raised the question of institutional identity over time, I proceed to answer the question by appealing to Kurt Lewin's notion of genidentity. Lewin intends the notion of genidentity to track the spatiotemporal unfolding of different physical and biological processes, such as ontogenesis. I (...) extend the notion of genidentity to the institutional sphere by identifying two ‘re-anchoring mechanisms’ that would describe the conditions under which institutions with different characteristics could nevertheless qualify as the same institution across time. First, formal institutions can be re-anchored by way of a self-amending secondary rule. Second, informal institutions can be re-anchored by leveraging the inherent indeterminacy of the exemplars that indexically define them. I then argue ancient Roman marriage and contemporary love marriage are genidentical in virtue of the actions of a (mostly) informal re-anchoring mechanism. (shrink)

In Bernard Suits’ The Grasshopper and Return of the Grasshopper, game-play is claimed to be the ‘ideal of existence’ and the only activity that could sustain us through the ‘endless and endlessly boring summer’ of utopia. Christopher Yorke has challenged these claims by way of a constructive dilemma. If these games are sufficiently akin to the games we play, then they are not adequate to the task of rendering immortality tolerable. If these games are importantly different than the games we (...) play, then, in being ‘unknown and unknowable’, they would characterize a form of life that is importantly different from our own and, so, would be inappropriate objects of social and political aspiration. Against Yorke’s skepticism, I argue that the games that constitute the ideal of existence are intelligible to us because we already play what the Grasshopper calls ‘open games’. Steffen Borge concedes that utopian games are intelligible, but argues that such games would fail to ‘grab our minds and imagination’. In the second half of the paper, I contend, against Borge, that such open games are adequate to the task of sustaining the interest of an immortal community. (shrink)

John Searle (1932-) is one of the most famous living American philosophers. A pupil of J. L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s, he is currently Mills Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1995 John Searle published "The Construction of Social Reality", a text which not only promises to disclose the institutional backdrop against which speech takes place, but initiate a new 'philosophy of society'. Since then "The Construction of Social Reality" (...) has been subject to a flurry of criticism. While many of Searle's interlocutors share the sense that the text marks an important breakthrough, he has time and again accused critics of misunderstanding his claims. Despite Searle's characteristic crispness and clarity there remains some confusion, among both philosophers and sociologists, regarding the significance of his proposals. This book traces some of the high points of this dialogue, leveraging Searle's own clarifications to propose a new way of understanding the text. In particular, Joshua Rust looks to Max Weber in suggesting that Searle has articulated an ideal type. In locating The Construction of Social Reality under the umbrella of one of sociology's founding fathers, this book not only makes Searle's text more accessible to the readers in the social sciences, but presents Max Weber as a thinker worthy of philosophical reconsideration. Moreover, the recharacterization of Searle's claims in terms of the ideal type helps facilitate a comparison between Searle and other social theorists such as Talcott Parsons. (shrink)

Introduction -- Fundamental ontology : external realism and scientific naturalism -- Consciousness and materialist theories of mind -- Intentional mental states -- Reason and action -- From acts to speech acts : the intention to communicate -- From sounds to words : the intention to represent -- On the meaning of meaning : critical remarks -- The construction of social reality -- Topics concerning institutional reality : reasons, language, politics, and the background.

Is it possible to skillfully navigate personally transformative choices? While normative decision theory describes skillful planning rationality, L.A. Paul argues that personally transformative choices resist adjudication by these methods. This may suggest that we can’t distinguish between skillful and unskillful ways of approaching our transformative choices—that every such choice is a leap in the dark. However, I argue that there are more or less skillful ways of approaching personally transformative decision-making and that skillful transformative choice is narratively-inflected practical knowledge.

When considering the type of agency that supports group activity, social ontologists often think of full-fledged moral and intentional agency. However, many organism-agents found in the biological sphere fail not only to be morally responsible but also would seem incapable of the rational guidance characteristic of intentional agency. This raises the possibility that some groups may qualify as minimal agents without necessarily qualifying as moral or intentional agents. In this paper, I review conditions for minimal agency as set forth by (...) enactivists and draw from existing social ontological work to explore the extent to which these conditions might be satisfied by existing accounts of group agency. Although no account of group agency perfectly aligns with the enactivist conditions, I conclude that a suitably modified version of List and Pettit's account could. (shrink)

Technical artifacts do not seem particularly continuous with institutional statuses. If statuses are defined in terms of their constitutive rules, as Searle maintains, then disassociation is always possible – someone or something can satisfy those rules without being able to realize the functional effects that are associated with that status. The gap between technical artifacts and Searlean statuses suggests the possibility of an additional social kind, which I call, following Muhammad Ali Khalidi, a ‘real social kind’. However, the placement of (...) real social kinds between technical artifacts and statuses recommends a reconfiguration of Khalidi’s most abstract characterization of the notion. This reconfiguration also lends support to his surprising claim that money is a real social kind. (shrink)

A typical expository strategy for the predictive processing account begins with perception and then extends to other cognitive domains, such as action or non-human animal cognition. Because this standard, perception-first expository strategy begins at the end of an evolutionary process, it may introduce both diachronic and synchronic distortions into the overall account. As far as the diachronic distortion is concerned, because the perception-first strategy presupposes a highly decoupled cognitive architecture, it invites us to project this architecture onto the coupled cognitive (...) systems of our evolutionary ancestors and other non-human organisms. Turning to the synchronic distortion, as the perception-first strategy is extended to conative states, it invites a cognitivism that seeks to reconstrue motivational states as a species of belief. In this paper, I explore what a predictive processing account would look like if it began at the beginning, with the highly coupled representations carried by our evolutionary ancestors and other non-human organisms. I conclude by exploring the proposal’s implications for a non-cognitivist, predictive processing account of action. (shrink)

We raise and attempt to resolve the charge that the third noble truth of the core Buddhist teachings is redundant. If the second noble truth asserts a causal relation between craving and suffering, and if James Woodward’s interventionist account of causation is correct, we argue that these premises are sufficient to entail the difference-making described by the third noble truth. Thus, the third noble truth would be superfluous insofar as it merely makes explicit what must be the case, according to (...) a plausible theory of causation, if the second noble truth is true. Having raised the possibility that the third noble truth is redundant, we consider five possible responses to the charge, the last of which we endorse. Even if the redundancy charge is found not to stick, we believe an investigation into why this is so highlights features of the third noble truth that might be suppressed under standard glosses of its meaning. (shrink)

This paper is an investigation into the possibility of institutional agency and proceeds via the elaboration of two, nested claims. First, if genuine agency is attributable to certain social institutions, it would not be the full-blown, intentional agency that characterizes human activity, but would rather fall under a minimal modality of agency. Moreover, since enactivists aim to articulate minimal conceptions of agency that are applicable across the sphere of the living, this suggests that such accounts of minimal agency might additionally (...) be brought to bear onto some institutions. The second claim concerns which of two ideally typical enactivist accounts of minimal agency can more promisingly be applied to our institutions. Where some enactivists endorse a Jonasian account of minimal agency, which stresses a protentive, forward-looking orientation to a self-persistence goal, other enactivists apply a retentive ideal type of minimal agency, the norms of which are founded on a backward-looking responsiveness to precedent. By way of a critical analysis of structural functionalism, I argue that the retentive approach better explains the kind of agency that would be expressed by some institutions. I also claim that some philosophers, including Christian List, Philip Pettit and Ronald Dworkin, have independently come to the conclusion that institutional agency is retentive agency. (shrink)

Against the neo-Darwinian assumption that genetic factors are the principal source of variation upon which natural selection operates, a phenotype-first hypothesis strikes us as revolutionary because development would seem to constitute an independent source of variability. Richard Watson and his co-authors have argued that developmental memory constitutes one such variety of phenotypic variability. While this version of the phenotype-first hypothesis is especially well-suited for the late metazoan context, where animals have a sufficient history of selection from which to draw, appeals (...) to developmental memory seem less plausible in the evolutionary context of the early metazoans. I provide an interpretation of Stuart Newman’s account of deep metazoan phylogenesis that suggests that spandrels are, in addition to developmental memory, an important reservoir of phenotypic variability. I conclude by arguing that Gerd Müller’s “side-effect hypothesis” is an illuminating generalization of the proposed non-Watsonian version of the phenotype-first hypothesis. (shrink)

There is much in The Sensory Order that recommends the oft-made claim that Hayek anticipated connectionist theories of mind. To the extent that this is so, contemporary arguments against and for connectionism, as advanced by Jerry Fodor, Zenon Pylyshyn, and John Searle, are shown as applicable to theoretical psychology. However, the final section of this chapter highlights an important disanalogy between theoretical psychology and connectionist theories of mind.

Do philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave, on average, any morally better than do other professors? If not, do they at least behave more consistently with their expressed values? These questions have never been systematically studied. We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one's mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to (...) student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues, we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with the self-reports. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show unequivocally better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation. We discuss implications for several models of the relationship between philosophical reflection and real-world moral behavior. (shrink)

If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional ethicists—and political philosophers as a subgroup of ethicists—voted in eight years’ worth of elections. We compared ethicists’ and political philosophers’ voting rates with the voting rates of three other groups: philosophers not specializing in ethics, political (...) scientists, and a comparison group of professors specializing in neither philosophy nor political science. All groups voted at about the same rate, except for the political scientists, who voted about 10–15% more often. On the face of it, this finding conflicts with the expectation that ethicists will behave more responsibly than non-ethicists. (shrink)

We review and present a new meta‐analysis of research suggesting that ethicists in the United States appear to behave no morally better overall than do non‐ethicist professors. Measures include: returning library books, peer evaluation of overall moral behavior, voting participation, courteous and discourteous behavior at conferences, replying to student emails, paying conference registration fees and disciplinary society dues, staying in touch with one's mother, charitable giving, organ and blood donation, vegetarianism, and honesty in responding to survey questions. One multi‐measure study (...) found ethicists tending to embrace more stringent moral views, especially about meat eating and charitable donation. The same multi‐measure study found ethicists and other professors to show similarly small‐to‐medium correlations between their expressed normative attitudes and their self‐reported or directly measured behavior. (shrink)

If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behind clutter at the end of a session (versus leaving one's seat tidy). (...) By these three measures, audiences in ethics sessions did not appear to behave any more courteously than did audiences in non-ethics sessions. However, audiences in environmental ethics sessions did appear to leave behind less trash. (shrink)

Book Reviews Joshua Rust, Economics and Philosophy, FirstView Article.

In one of the first scenes of the True Detective pilot episode "The Long Bright Dark", detective Rust Cohle is being badgered by his partner Marty Hart about his beliefs. In True Detective, the optimism is embodied in Rust's partner, Marty. Pessimism is the reason that Rust is a better detective than Marty. He is deceived by illusions of his own making. Rust may have had this problem once, but, having given up his optimism, he is (...) never shocked by the depravity that he encounters as the investigation unfolds. Optimism and pessimism do not exhaust the characters Rust and Marty: "Hart and Cohle" sounds too much like "heart and soul" to be a coincidence. Before their final encounter with the sadistic murderer they have been pursuing, Rust Cohle is at the point of giving up. His pessimism has shriveled into hopelessness and despair. (shrink)

Eric Schwitzgebel, Fiery Cushman, and Joshua Rust have conducted a series of studies of the thought and behavior of professional ethicists. They have found no evidence that ethical reflection yields distinctive improvements in behavior. This work has been done on English-speaking ethicists. Philipp Schönegger and Johannes Wagner replicated one study with German-speaking professors. Their results are almost the same, except for finding that German-speaking ethicists were more likely to be vegetarian than non-ethicists. The present paper devises and evaluates (...) eleven psychological hypotheses (along with one from Schönegger and Wagner) aimed at explaining why ethical reflection might have motivational influence for this topic but not for others. Three hypotheses are judged to be plausible at this initial stage: generic emotional support, perception of cost as a source of emotional obstacles, and social categorization. (shrink)

To adequately model mathematical arguments the analyst must be able to represent the mathematical objects under discussion and the relationships between them, as well as inferences drawn about these objects and relationships as the discourse unfolds. We introduce a framework with these properties, which has been used to analyse mathematical dialogues and expository texts. The framework can recover salient elements of discourse at, and within, the sentence level, as well as the way mathematical content connects to form larger argumentative structures. (...) We show how the framework might be used to support computational reasoning, and argue that it provides a more natural way to examine the process of proving theorems than do Lamport’s structured proofs. (shrink)

Pedagogical intervention regarding engagement with natural, artistic and moral beauty can lead to an increase in trait hope. In a quasi‐experimental design with college students the intervention group showed significantly higher gain scores on trait hope than did the comparison group; the effect size was moderate. The experimental group also experienced significantly larger increases with engagement with moral beauty; the effect size was large. The discussion section focuses on integrating understanding beauty with moral education pedagogy, using a key element in (...) philosophical definitions of beauty: unity‐in‐diversity. It is hypothesized that such pedagogy will increase engagement with natural, artistic and moral beauty and thus raise trait hope. (shrink)

The objectives of this study were to develop a high-density chromosome bin map of homoeologous group 7 in hexaploid wheat, to identify gene distribution in these chromosomes, and to perform comparative studies of wheat with rice and barley. We mapped 2148 loci from 919 EST clones onto group 7 chromosomes of wheat. In the majority of cases the numbers of loci were significantly lower in the centromeric regions and tended to increase in the distal regions. The level of duplicated loci (...) in this group was 24% with most of these loci being localized toward the distal regions. One hundred nineteen EST probes that hybridized to three fragments and mapped to the three group 7 chromosomes were designated landmark probes and were used to construct a consensus homoeologous group 7 map. An additional 49 probes that mapped to 7AS, 7DS, and the ancestral translocated segment involving 7BS also were designated landmarks. Landmark probe orders and comparative maps of wheat, rice, and barley were produced on the basis of corresponding rice BAC/PAC and genetic markers that mapped on chromosomes 6 and 8 of rice. Identification of landmark ESTs and development of consensus maps may provide a framework of conserved coding regions predating the evolution of wheat genomes. (shrink)

Integrated information systems are increasingly used in schools, and the advent of the technology-rich classroom requires a new degree of ongoing classroom assessment. Able to track web searches, resources used, task completion time, and a variety of other classroom behaviors, technology-rich classrooms offer a wealth of potential information about teaching and learning. This information can be used to track student progress in languages, STEM, and in 21st Century skills, for instance. However, despite these changes, there has been little change in (...) the kind of data made available to teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Measuring and Visualizing Learning in the Information-Rich Classroom collects research on the implementation of classroom assessment techniques in technology-enhanced learning environments. Building on research conducted by a multinational and multidisciplinary team of learning technology experts, and specialists from around the globe, this book addresses these discrepancies. With contributions from major researchers in education technology, testing and assessment, and education psychology, this book contributes to a holistic approach for building the information infrastructure of the 21st Century school. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are increasingly integrated into the functioning of physical and digital products, creating unprecedented opportunities for interaction and functionality. However, there is a challenge for designers to ideate within this creative landscape, balancing the possibilities of technology with human interactional concerns. We investigate techniques for exploring and reflecting on the interactional affordances, the unique relational possibilities, and the wider social implications of AI systems. We introduced into an interaction design course (n = 100) nine (...) ‘AI exercises’ that draw on more than human design, responsible AI, and speculative enactment to create experiential engagements around AI interaction design. We find that exercises around metaphors and enactments make questions of training and learning, privacy and consent, autonomy and agency more tangible, and thereby help students be more reflective and responsible on how to design with AI and its complex properties in both their design process and outcomes. (shrink)

There is growing political pressure for farmers to use more sustainable agricultural practices to protect people and the planet. The farming press could encourage farmers to adopt sustainable practices through its ability to manipulate discourse and spread awareness by changing the salience of issues or framing topics in specific ways. We sought to understand how the UK farming press framed sustainable agricultural practices and how the salience of these practices changed over time. We combined a media content analysis of the (...) farming press alongside 60 qualitative interviews with farmers and agricultural advisors to understand whether the farming press influenced farmers to try more sustainable practices. Salience of sustainable agricultural practices grew between 2009 and 2020. Many of the practices studied were framed by the press around economic and agronomic aspects, and farmer respondents said the most common reasons for trying sustainable agricultural practices were for economic and agronomic reasons. The farming press tended to use more positive rather than negative tones when covering sustainable agricultural practices. Respondents used the farming press as a source of information, though many did not fully trust these outlets as they believed the farming press were mouthpieces for agribusinesses. Whilst a minority of farmers stated they were motivated to try a new sustainable agricultural practice after learning about it in the farming press, this was rare. Instead, the farming press was used by respondents to raise their awareness about wider agricultural topics. We reflect on the role and power given to agribusinesses by the farming press and what this means for agricultural sustainability. (shrink)

Today psychometrics plays an increasingly important role in all our lives as testing and assessment occurs from preschool until retirement. This book introduces the reader to the subject in all its aspects, ranging from its early history, school examinations, how to construct your own test, controversies about IQ and recent developments in testing on the internet. In Part one of _Modern Psychometrics_, Rust and Golombok outline the history of the field and discuss central theoretical issues such as IQ, personality (...) and integrity testing and the impact of computer technology and the internet. In Part two a practical step-by-step guide to the development of a psychometric test is provided. This will enable anyone wishing to develop their own test to plan, design, construct and validate it to a professional standard. This third edition has been extensively updated and expanded to take into account recent developments in the field, making it the ideal companion for those studying for the British Psychological Society’s Certificates of Competence in Testing. _Modern Psychometrics_ combines an up to date scientific approach to the subject with a full consideration of the political and ethical issues involved in the large scale implementation of psychometrics testing in today’s highly networked society, particularly in terms of issues of diversity and internationalism. It will be useful to students and practictioners at all levels who are interested in psychometrics. (shrink)

Short description: The conception of world-history is rooted in Christianity.

This article examines sexual identity formation among 346 lesbian-identified and 60 bisexual-identified women. On average, bisexuals come out at later ages and exhibit less “stable” identity histories. However, variations in identity history among lesbians and bisexuals overshadow the differences between them and demonstrate that coming out is not a linear, goal-oriented, developmental process. Sexual identity formation must be reconceptualized as a process of describing one's social location within a changing social context. Changes in sexual identity are, therefore, expected of mature (...) individuals as they maintain an accurate description of their position vis-à-vis other individuals, groups, and institutions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Since the 1970s there has been a significant paradigm shift in psychology away from behaviourism and towards cognitive psychology. Indeed a recent survey discovered that by 1983 more than half American psychologists were describing their approaches as cognitive. However, while behaviourism has had an identifiable philosophical ‘line’ in positivism, reductionism and the hypothetico‐deductive model, such a framework has been noticeably lacking from cognitive psychology. A view of cognitive psychology based on functionalism and ideas from systems analysis is put forward.

Insulin is a member of a family of hormones, growth factors and neuropeptides which are found in both vertebrates and invertebrates. A common ‘insulin fold’ is probably adopted by all family members. Although the specificities of receptor binding are different, there is possibility of co‐evolution of polypeptides and their receptors.

Abstract Studies of irrationality in cognitive psychology have usually looked at areas where humans might be expected to be rational, yet appear not to be. In this paper the other extreme of human irrationality is examined: the delusion as it occurs in psychiatric illness. A parallel is suggested between the delusion as an aberration of cognition and some illusions which result from aberrations within optics. It is argued that, because delusions are found predominantly within certain limited areas of cognitive functioning, (...) they may represent a form of mental aberration which may tell us something about the abstract properties of mind. Possible implications of this model for several areas of cognitive science are discussed. (shrink)