Drawing on original ethnobotanical and anthropological research among Indigenous peoples across the Amazon, we examine synergies and dissonances between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge about the environment, resource use, and sustainability. By focusing on the sensory dimension of Indigenous engagements with the environment—an approach we have described as “sensory ecology” and explored through the method of “phytoethnography”—we promote a symmetrical dialogue between Indigenous and scientific understandings around such phenomena as animal–plant mutualisms, phytochemical toxicity, sustainable forest management in “multinatural” landscapes, and (...) the emergence of new diseases like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). Drawing examples from our own and other published works, we explore the possibilities and limitations of a “parallax view” attempting to hold Indigenous and scientific knowledge in focus simultaneously. As the concept of “bioeconomy” emerges as a key alternative for sustainable development of the Amazon, we encourage a critical and urgent engagement between dominant Western conceptions and Indigenous Amazonian knowledge, practices, and cultural values. Cognitive science, which has long contributed to studies of Indigenous categorization and conceptualization of the natural world, continues to play an important role in building bridges of mutual communication and respect between Indigenous and scientific approaches to sustainability and biodiversity conservation. (shrink)

This book is unique in presenting an interdisciplinary conversation between jurists and logicians. It brings together scholars from both law and philosophy and looks at the application of 'the new logics' to law and legal ordering, in a number of legal systems. The first Part explores the ways in which the new logics shed light on the functioning of legal orders, including the structure of legal argumentation and the rules of evidence. The second addresses how non-classical logics can help us (...) to understand the interactions between multiple legal orders, in a range of contexts including domestic and international law. The final Part examines particular issues in the applicability of non-classical logics to legal reasoning. This book will be of interest to jurisprudence and logic scholars and students who want to deepen their understanding of relationships between law and legal reasoning, and learn about recent developments in formal logic. (shrink)

Several scholars have recognized the limitations of theories of moral reasoning in explaining moral behavior. They have argued that moral behavior may also be influenced by moral identity, or how central morality is to one’s sense of self. This idea has been supported by findings that people who exemplify moral behavior tend to place more importance on moral traits when defining their self-concepts (Colby & Damon, 1995). This paper takes the next step of examining individual variation in a construct highly (...) associated with immoral behavior — psychopathy. In Study 1, we test the hypothesis that individuals with a greater degree of psychopathic traits have a weaker moral identity. Within a large online sample, we found that individuals who scored higher on a measure of psychopathic traits were less likely to base their self-concepts on moral traits. In Study 2, we test whether this reduced sense of moral identity can be attributed to differences in moral judgment, which is another factor that could influence immoral behavior. Our results indicated that the reduced sense of moral identity among more psychopathic individuals was independent of variation in moral judgment. These results suggest that individuals with psychopathic traits may display immoral behavior partially because they do not construe their personal identities in moral terms. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

As a way of contributing to bioethics' understanding of itself, and, more particularly, to invigorate conversation about how we can best educate future colleagues, we present here a sketch of the quarter-century-old graduate concentration in medical ethics housed in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Our hope is to incite other programs to share their histories, strategies, problems, and aspirations, so as to help the field as a whole get a clearer sense of how we are (...) putting together our future, and of how we might best go about this important job. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 3, Page 46-48, March 2012.

THE ART OF CAUSAL CONJECTURE Glenn Shafer Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction........................................................................................ ...........1 1.1. Probability Trees..........................................................................................3 1.2. Many Observers, Many Stances, Many Natures..........................................8 1.3. Causal Relations as Relations in Nature’s Tree...........................................9 1.4. Evidence............................................................................................ ...........13 1.5. Measuring the Average Effect of a Cause....................................................17 1.6. Causal Diagrams..........................................................................................20 1.7. Humean Events............................................................................................23 1.8. Three Levels of Causal Language................................................................27 1.9. An Outline of the Book................................................................................27 Chapter 2. Event Trees............................................................................................... .....31 2.1. Situations and Events...................................................................................32 2.2. The Ordering of Situations and Moivrean Events.......................................35 2.3. Cuts................................................................................................ ..............39 2.4. Humean Events............................................................................................43 (...) 2.5. Moivrean Variables......................................................................................49 2.6. Humean Variables........................................................................................53 2.7. Event Trees for Stochastic Processes...........................................................54 2.8. Timing in Event Trees.................................................................................56 2.9. Intersecting Event Trees...............................................................................60 2.10. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................61 Chapter 3. Probability Trees...........................................................................................63 3.1. Some Types of Probability Trees.................................................................64 ii 3.2. Axioms for the Probabilities of Moivrean Events.......................................68 3.3. Zero Probabilities....................................................................................... ..70 3.4. A Sample-Space Analysis of the Event-Tree Axioms.................................72 3.5. Probabilities and Expected Values for Variables.........................................74 3.6. Martingales......................................................................................... .........79 3.7. The Expectation of a Variable in a Cut........................................................83 3.8. Conditional Expected Value and Conditional Expectation.........................87 Chapter 4. The Meaning of Probability...........................................................................91 4.1. The Interpretation of Expected Value..........................................................92 4.2. The Interpretation of Expectation................................................................95 4.3. The Long Run..............................................................................................98 4.4. Changes in Belief.........................................................................................101 4.5. The Empirical Validation of Probability......................................................106 4.6. The Diversity of Uses of Probability...........................................................108 4.7. Notes on the Literature.................................................................................110 Chapter 5. Independent Events.......................................................................................113 5.1. Independence........................................................................................ .......114 5.2. Weak Independence.....................................................................................118 5.3. The Principle of the Common Cause...........................................................121 5.4. Conditional Independence............................................................................128 5.5. Notes on the Literature.................................................................................133 Chapter 6. Events Tracking Events.................................................................................135 6.1. Tracking............................................................................................ ...........137 6.2. Tracking and Conditional Independence.....................................................142 6.3. Stochastic Subsequence...............................................................................143 6.4. Singular Diagrams for Stochastic Subsequence...........................................147 6.5. Conjunctive and Interactive Forks...............................................................149 Chapter 7. Events as Signs of Events..............................................................................153 iii 7.1. Sign................................................................................................ ..............154 7.2. Weak Sign................................................................................................ ....159 7.3. The Ethics of Causal Talk............................................................................160 7.4. Screening Off...............................................................................................16 2 Chapter 8. Independent Variables...................................................................................167 8.1. Unconditional Independence........................................................................170 8.2. Conditional Independence............................................................................175 8.3. Independence for Partitions.........................................................................177 8.4. Independence for Families of Variables......................................................182 8.5. Individual Properties of the Independence Relations...................................186 Chapter 9. Variables Tracking Variables........................................................................189 9.1. Tracking and Conditional Independence: A Summary...............................190 9.2. Strong Tracking............................................................................................ 192 9.3. Strong Tracking and Conditional Independence..........................................198 9.4. Stochastic Subsequence...............................................................................201 9.5. Functional Dependence................................................................................203 9.6. Tracking in Mean.........................................................................................204 9.7. Linear Tracking............................................................................................ 207 9.8. Tracking by Partitions..................................................................................210 9.9. Tracking by Families of Variables...............................................................212 Chapter 10. Variables as Signs of Variables...................................................................215 10.1. Sign................................................................................................ ............219 10.2. Linear Sign................................................................................................ .222 10.3. Scored Sign................................................................................................ 225 10.4. Families of Variables.................................................................................227 Chapter 11. AnTheory of Event Trees.............................................................229 11.1. Event Trees as Sets of Sets........................................................................230 11.2. Event Trees as Partially Ordered Sets........................................................232 iv 11.3. Regular Event Trees...................................................................................240 11.4. The Resolution of Moivrean Variables......................................................244 11.5. Humean Events and Variables...................................................................246 Chapter 12. Martingale Trees..........................................................................................247 12.1. Examples of Decision Trees......................................................................249 12.2. The Meaning of Probability in a Decision Tree.........................................253 12.3. Martingales......................................................................................... .......257 12.4. The Structure of Martingale Trees.............................................................261 12.5. Probability and Causality...........................................................................265 12.6. Lower and Upper Probability.....................................................................269 12.7. The Law of Large Numbers.......................................................................272 12.8. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................274 Chapter 13. Refining............................................................................................ ...........275 13.1. Examples of Refinement............................................................................277 13.2. A Constructive Definition of Finite Refinement.......................................281 13.3. Axioms for Refinement..............................................................................282 13.4. Lifting Moivrean Events and Variables.....................................................288 13.5. Refining Martingale Trees.........................................................................288 13.6. Grounding........................................................................................... .......294 Chapter 14. Principles of Causal Conjecture..................................................................299 14.1. The Diversity of Causal Explanation.........................................................302 14.2. The Mean Effect of the Happening of a Moivrean Event..........................305 14.3. The Effect of a Humean Variable..............................................................311 14.4. Attribution and Generality.........................................................................316 14.5. The Statistical Measurement of the Effect of a Cause...............................319 14.6. Measurement by Experiment.....................................................................320 14.7. Using Our Knowledge of How Things Work............................................322 v 14.8. Sampling Error...........................................................................................329 14.9. The Sampling Frame..................................................................................329 14.10. Notes on the Literature.............................................................................330 Chapter 15. Causal Models.............................................................................................3 31 15.1. The Causal Interpretation of Statistical Prediction....................................333 15.2. Generalizing to a Family of Exogenous Variables....................................337 15.3 Some Joint Causal Diagrams......................................................................339 15.4. Causal Path Diagrams................................................................................342 15.5. Causal Relevance Diagrams.......................................................................346 15.6. The Meaning of Latent Variables..............................................................352 15.7. Notes on the Literature...............................................................................357 Chapter 16. Representing Probability Trees...................................................................359 16.1. Three Graphical Representations...............................................................361 16.2. Skeletal Simplifications.............................................................................368 16.3. Martingale Trees in Type Theory...............................................................371 Appendix A. Huygens’s Probability Trees.....................................................................379 Huygens’s Manuscript in Translation..................................................................380 Appendix B. Some Elements of Graph Theory..............................................................385 B1. Undirected Graphs........................................................................................385 B2. Directed Graphs............................................................................................38 6 Appendix C. Some Elements of Order Theory...............................................................393 C1. Partial and Quasi Orderings.........................................................................393 C2. Singular and Joint Diagrams for Binary Relations.......................................394 C3. Lattices............................................................................................ .............395 C4. The Lattice of Partitions of a Set..................................................................396 Appendix D. The Sample-Space Framework for Probability.........................................399 D1. Probability Measures....................................................................................399 D2. Variables........................................................................................... ...........400 vi D3. Families of Variables...................................................................................401 D4. Expected Value............................................................................................402 D5. The Law of Large Numbers.........................................................................405 D6. Conditional Probability................................................................................406 D7. Conditional Expected Value........................................................................407 Appendix E. Prediction in Probability Spaces................................................................409 E1. Conditional Distribution...............................................................................411 E2. Regression on a Single Variable...................................................................412 E3. Regression on a Partition or a Family of Variables......................................415 E4. Linear Regression on a Single Variable.......................................................418 E5. Linear Regression on a Family of Variables................................................422 Appendix F. Sample-Space Concepts of Independence.................................................425 F1. Overview............................................................................................ ...........426 F2. Independence Proper.....................................................................................432 F3. Unpredictability in Mean..............................................................................434 F4. Simple Uncorrelatedness..............................................................................437 F5. Mixed Uncorrelatedness...............................................................................438 F6. Partial Uncorrelatedness...............................................................................440 F7. Independence for Partitions..........................................................................442 F8. Independence for Families of Variables.......................................................445 F9. The Basic Role of Uncorrelatedness.............................................................448 F10. Dawid’s Axioms.........................................................................................449 Appendix G. Prediction Diagrams..................................................................................453 G1. Path Diagrams............................................................................................ ..454 G2. Generalized Path Diagrams..........................................................................462 G3. Relevance Diagrams.....................................................................................466 G4. Bubbled Relevance Diagrams......................................................................475 Appendix H. Abstract Stochastic Processes...................................................................479 vii H1. Probability Conditionals and Probability Distributions...............................477 H2. Abstract Stochastic Processes......................................................................479 H3. Embedding Variables and Processes in a Sample Space.............................480 References.......................................................................................... ..............................491. (shrink)

Justifying involuntary psychiatric treatment on the basis of a judgment that a person lacks capacity is usually expressed in terms of a person’s ability to make a decision about his or her health and treatment. Typically, this relates to the ability to refuse treatment. Exactly what “capacity” means, however, and how one determines when another individual lacks capacity, or lacks sufficient capacity, in this context is particularly controversial, with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities insisting (...) that involuntary treatment be abandoned altogether and capacity tests avoided.Capacity is a concept that has multiple meanings and applications across different disciplines and... (shrink)

A long history of research has revealed many neurophysiological changes and concomitant behavioral impacts of sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and circadian rhythms. Little research, however, has been conducted in the area of computational cognitive modeling to understand the information processing mechanisms through which neurobehavioral factors operate to produce degradations in human performance. Our approach to understanding this relationship is to link predictions of overall cognitive functioning, or alertness, from existing biomathematical models to information processing parameters in a cognitive architecture, leveraging (...) the strengths from each to develop a more comprehensive explanation. The integration of these methodologies is used to account for changes in human performance on a sustained attention task across 88 h of total sleep deprivation. The integrated model captures changes due to time awake and circadian rhythms, and it also provides an account for underlying changes in the cognitive processes that give rise to those effects. The results show the potential for developing mechanistic accounts of how fatigue impacts cognition, and they illustrate the increased explanatory power that is possible by combining theoretical insights from multiple methodologies. (shrink)

Historians of Reformational philosophy often claim that Abraham Kuyper obtained the idea of sovereignty in its own sphere from Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer. But very little historical research has been done on Groen’s sources for and development of this idea. The first use of the Dutch phrase souvereiniteit in eigen sfeer is much earlier than previously thought; it was used in 1853 by J.I. Doedes, an associate of the “ethical theologian” Daniël Chantepie de la Saussaye. Groen became aware of the (...) ideas of Franz von Baader through journals founded by them, and by reading and corresponding with them and others, such as J.H. Gunning Jr. and Friedrich Fabri. Groen himself owned some of Baader’s books. He also relied strongly on the work of the jurist Friedrich Julius Stahl, who was 37 years younger than Baader but taught for a while at the same Munich university and shared Baader’s anti-revolutionary ideas. (shrink)

Lang, B. Philosophy and the manners of art.--Hofstadter, A. Freedom, enownment, and philosophy.--Mehta, J. L. A stranger from Asia.--Fox, D. A. A passage past India.--Rucker, D. Philosophy and the constitution of Emerson's world.--Schneider, H. W. The pragmatic movement in historical perspective.--Barnes, H. E. Reflections on myth and magic.--Cauvel, J. The imperious presence of theater.--Seay, A. Musical conservatism in the fourteenth century.--Hochman, W. R. The enduring fascination of war.--Davenport, M. M. J. Glenn Gray and the promise of wisdom.

Este estudio pasa revista a la política oficial del estado bizantino con respecto a la región situada entre Antioquía y el Monte Sinaí, haciendo énfasis en la prudencia adoptada por lo general en la estrategia imperial así como, a partir de finales del siglo X, en la voluntad del gobierno a favor de una coexistencia pacífica con el califato fatimí y el respeto a las relaciones comerciales. La destrucción de la iglesia del Santo Sepulcro por el califa al- H.a-kim en (...) 1009 no alteró este estado de cosas, en el que la piedra angular de la política de contención entre el Cairo y Constantinopla estaba representada por la ciudad de Alepo, y no por Jerusalén. Incluso en esta, los dos poderes estaban inclinados a dejar la iniciativa a los partidos locales, más que en reivindicar el control directo. Las comunicaciones entre los territorios gobernados por musulmanes o bizantinos fueron así por lo general bastante regulares. Durante el parón relativo que experimentaron en la primera mitad del siglo XI, los peregrinajes a tierra santa aumentaron, y puede haber sido esencialmente para impresionar a los peregrinos (tanto los procedentes de Bizancio como, especialmente, aquellos que viajaban desde el Occidente cristiano) por lo que los emperadores invirtieron abundantes recursos en la reconstrucción de la iglesia del Santo Sepulcro entre las décadas de 1030- 1040. La intervención militar a favor de las poblaciones cristianas de Siria meridional y Palestina no estaba en su agenda. Estas conclusiones se obtienen a partir del cotejo de evidencias diversas, que eran ya bien conocidas por separado, pero que raramente habían sido contrastadas en conjunto. El estudio resalta el valor del comercio para los fatimíes y los bizantinos a la vez, la veneración por los Santos Lugares entre los bizantinos y occidentales, así como el deseo del emperador de hacer patente su preocupación por el Santo Sepulcro sin poner en riesgo sus relaciones con los fatimíes. (shrink)

A lot of people owe kind words to Tom Murray. Not because they hurt his feelings, or because he is easily the nicest guy in bioethics. The debt stems from the palpable silence that accompanied the release of Murray's trenchant and beautiful book, TheWorthofaChild. Somehow, in the shuffle to write and rewrite books about cloning and octuplets and $50,000 eggs, Murray's astonishingly comprehensive treatment of the meaning of the parent–child relationship passed undetected across the radar screens of virtually everyone who (...) writes about reproduction and genetics. In the year since I read TheWorthofaChild, I have paused dozens of times while reading or listening to scholars lament the dearth of careful work on the changing nature of baby-making. Each time this happens I grow more surprised that Murray's Child, which is handsomely bound, well-indexed, and published in the best style by University of California Press, isn't mentioned. This review is one scholar's attempt to right the balance. TheWorthofaChild by Thomas Murray is the most rigorous, most even-handed, and most comprehensive book ever written about the ethical issues associated with making a baby. It is also a very good read, a sensitive and moving portrayal of the struggle to be good at making and raising a child. (shrink)

Having seen the development of Shepard's program at close hand, I have been inspired by the sophistication of his results. However, his program deals with only half of what is needed: Shepard's research tells what the perception/cognitive process is about, it does not tell how that process is implemented. True, Shepard has recourse to the “how” of process in evolution, but that is not the “how” of everyday implementation. For that we need to know the brain processes (...) with which we can implement Shepard's insights. [Shepard]. (shrink)

This book is the result of an idea launched by the present editors of providing a gift to Dr. Runner in the form of a Festschrift written by former students. The response was overwhelming. Glenn Andreas, one of Dr. Runner's closest friends, and Paul Schrotenboer, secretary of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod, enthusiastically joined us, together with Bernard Zylstra of the Institute for Christian Studies and Harry Van Dyke of the Free University of Amsterdam, to form a committee for this (...) purpose... Upon the appearance of this publication the editors wish to express their sincere thanks to the members of the committee for the advice and encouragement they gave and for the work they have done. (shrink)

Hunting is a complex phenomenon. l examine it from four different perspectives-animal liberation, the land ethic, primitivism, and ecofeminism-and find no moral justification for sport hunting in any of them. At the same time, however, I argue that there are theoretical flaws in each of these approaches. Animal liberationists focus too much on the individual animal and ignore the difference between domestic and wild animals. Leopold’s land ethic fails to come to terms with the self-domestication of humans. I argue that (...) the holism of the land ethic does not in itself justify hunting as a human act of predation appropriate to the demands of wild biotic communities. Primitivists, such as Paul Shepard and Ortega y Gasset, mistakenly argue that hunting is an essential part of human nature and hence part of a healthy return to a natural way of life. Their argument marginalizes women’s relations to nature. Finally, I take seriously the ecofeminist claim that sport hunting is a symptom ofpatriarchy’s fixation on death and violence, although I criticize the more radical claim that women are closer to nature than men. Hunting should be investigated within the broader context of patriarchal social relations between men and women. As an act of violence it constitutes one element of a cultural matrix which is destructive to hoth women and nature. (shrink)

Shepard's analysis of how shape, motion, and color are perceptually represented can be generalized. Apparent motion and shape may be associated with a group of spatial transformations, accounting for rigid and plastic motion, and perceived object color may be associated with a group of illuminant transformations, accounting for the discriminability of surface-reflectance changes and illuminant changes beyond daylight. The phenomenological and mathematical parallels between these perceptual domains may indicate common organizational rules, rather than specific ecological adaptations. [Barlow; Hecht; Kubovy (...) & Epstein; Schwartz; Shepard; Todorovic]. (shrink)

Shepard claims that color constancy needs linear basis-function spectra, and infers the illuminant before removing its dependency. However, of the models of color constancy that have exact (and reasonable) spectral regimes, some do not need linear basis-function expansions of reflectance and illuminant spectra, some do not solve for the illuminant, and some estimate only partial object-reflectance information for single or multiple objects. [Shepard].