Recent studies have shown that the indigenous population has been subject to social exclusion (Medel, 2016; Tetreault,2012; Rionda,2010; Del Popolo et al.,2009; World Bank,2004; Uquillas et al.,2003; Appasamy,1996). However, in the case of Mexico, there is no indicator to measure the degree of social exclusion. This article presents a methodology for estimating social exclusion index (IES) by estimating main components. Our proposal is to incorporate the index of social exclusion as a factor that can explain the current status (...) of poverty in the localities that have a high concentration of indigenous population and high economic marginalization in the state of Veracruz, and thus analyze the scope social policy to combat poverty, as the case Development Program Priority Areas (PDZP). (shrink)

In Mexico, the Productive Organization Program for Indigenous Women (POPMI) seeks the empowerment of productive capacities in indigenous women. Our study analyzes POPMI outreach, focusing our attention on women beneficiaries who present a high degree of social exclusion and multidimensional poverty in the State of Veracruz. In the study area, the 542 indigenous women benefited in POPMI, presented a condition of multidimensional poverty and a degree of social exclusion: very high, high and medium, they represent only 22.19% (...) of the total beneficiaries of this program In 2010, since at the state level a total of 2,243 indigenous women were cared for. The results show that the localities where the condition of multidimensional poverty and very high, medium and high levels of social exclusion have been excluded in the coverage of POPMI. (shrink)

Mexico, with the commissioning of the "National Crusade Against Hunger Program" in 2013, aimed at serving the population that presents both extreme poverty and food deprivation. The article aims to analyze whether the criterion of the selection of the municipalities of the State of Veracruz incorporated in the National Crusade Against Hunger Program (PNCH) show complementarity with the efforts in the fight against poverty in the social expenditure strategy applied in the Priority Attention Zones Program (ZAP) and the Priority (...) Areas Development Program (PDZP) and, particularly, the indigenous municipalities that have a greater degree of social exclusion. The adjustment of a binary logistic regression model is presented, in order to assess the incidence of contextual factors to interpret the scope of the strategy adopted by the federal government in the fight against poverty and hunger. As a result, it is evident that there is no continuity in the fight against poverty, since the municipalities included in the strategy Priority Areas of Attention and Program of Development of Priority Zones are not considered in the selection of municipalities incorporated in the National Program of Crusade Against Hunger, a situation that identifies the relationship between programs is not complementary. (shrink)

The original – and often continuing – sin of countries with a settler colonial past is their brutal treatment of indigenous peoples. This challenging legacy continues to confront modern liberal democracies ranging from the USA and Canada to Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Duncan Ivison’s book considers how these states can justly accommodate indigenous populations today. He shows how indigenous movements have gained prominence in the past decade, driving both domestic and international campaigns for change. He examines (...) how the claims made by these movements challenge liberal conceptions of the state, rights, political community, identity and legitimacy. Interweaving a lucid introduction to the debates with his own original argument, he contends that we need to move beyond complaints about the ‘politics of identity’ and towards a more historically and theoretically nuanced liberalism better suited to our times. This book will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in political theory, historic injustice, Indigenous studies and the history of political thought. (shrink)

The importance of the working document is that it allows the analysis of the information and the status of cases associated with (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 as open data at the municipal, state and national level, with a daily record of patients, according to a age, sex, comorbidities, for the condition of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 according to the following characteristics: a) Positive, b) Negative, c) Suspicious. Likewise, it presents information related to the identification of an outpatient and / or hospitalized patient, attending to (...) their medical development, identifying: a) Recovered, b) Deaths and c) Active, in Phase 3 and Phase 4, in the five main population areas speaker of indigenous language in the State of Veracruz - Mexico. The data analysis is carried out through the application of a data mining algorithm, which provides the information, fast and timely, required for the estimation of Medical Care Scenarios of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19, as well as for know the impact on the indigenous language speaking population in Veracruz. For this purpose, the following study zones are presented: a) Totonacapan Zone, b) Huasteco from the Tantoyuca Zone, c) Otomi from the Inxhuatlan de Madero Zone, d) Nahuatl from the Zongolica Zone, e) Nahuatl from the Chicontepec Zone, f) Nahualt from the Pajapan Zone and g) Popoluca from the Soteapan Zone. This data article presents the information as of August 1, 2020 corresponding to the Totonacapan Area. (shrink)

The importance of the working document is that it allows the analysis of the information and the status of cases associated with (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 as open data at the municipal, state and national level, with a daily record of patients, according to a age, sex, comorbidities, for the condition of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 according to the following characteristics: a) Positive, b) Negative, c) Suspicious. Likewise, it presents information related to the identification of an outpatient and / or hospitalized patient, attending to (...) their medical development, identifying: a) Recovered, b) Deaths and c) Active, in Phase 3 and Phase 4, in the five main population areas speaker of indigenous language in the State of Veracruz - Mexico. The data analysis is carried out through the application of a data mining algorithm, which provides the information, fast and timely, required for the estimation of Medical Care Scenarios of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19, as well as for know the impact on the indigenous language speaking population in Veracruz. For this purpose, the following study zones are presented: a) Totonacapan Zone, b) Huasteco from the Tantoyuca Zone, c) Otomi from the Inxhuatlan de Madero Zone, d) Nahuatl from the Zongolica Zone, e) Nahuatl from the Chicontepec Zone, f) Nahualt from the Pajapan Zone and g) Popoluca from the Soteapan Zone. This data article presents the information as of August 1, 2020 corresponding to the Otomi of the Ixhuatlan de Madero area. (shrink)

The importance of the working document is that it allows the analysis of the information and the status of cases associated with (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 as open data at the municipal, state and national level, with a daily record of patients, according to a age, sex, comorbidities, for the condition of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 according to the following characteristics: a) Positive, b) Negative, c) Suspicious. Likewise, it presents information related to the identification of an outpatient and / or hospitalized patient, attending to (...) their medical development, identifying: a) Recovered, b) Deaths and c) Active, in Phase 3 and Phase 4, in the five main population areas speaker of indigenous language in the State of Veracruz - Mexico. The data analysis is carried out through the application of a data mining algorithm, which provides the information, fast and timely, required for the estimation of Medical Care Scenarios of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19, as well as for know the impact on the indigenous language speaking population in Veracruz. For this purpose, the following study zones are presented: a) Totonacapan Zone, b) Huasteco from the Tantoyuca Zone, c) Otomi from the Inxhuatlan de Madero Zone, d) Nahuatl from the Zongolica Zone, e) Nahuatl from the Chicontepec Zone, f) Nahualt from the Pajapan Zone and g) Popoluca from the Soteapan Zone. This data article presents the information as of August 1, 2020 corresponding to the Popoluca from the Soteapan Area. (shrink)

The importance of the working document is that it allows the analysis of the information and the status of cases associated with (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 as open data at the municipal, state and national level, with a daily record of patients, according to a age, sex, comorbidities, for the condition of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19 according to the following characteristics: a) Positive, b) Negative, c) Suspicious. Likewise, it presents information related to the identification of an outpatient and / or hospitalized patient, attending to (...) their medical development, identifying: a) Recovered, b) Deaths and c) Active, in Phase 3 and Phase 4, in the five main population areas speaker of indigenous language in the State of Veracruz - Mexico. The data analysis is carried out through the application of a data mining algorithm, which provides the information, fast and timely, required for the estimation of Medical Care Scenarios of (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19, as well as for know the impact on the indigenous language speaking population in Veracruz. For this purpose, the following study zones are presented: a) Totonacapan Zone, b) Huasteco from the Tantoyuca Zone, c) Otomi from the Inxhuatlan de Madero Zone, d) Nahuatl from the Zongolica Zone, e) Nahuatl from the Chicontepec Zone, f) Nahualt from the Pajapan Zone and g) Popoluca from the Soteapan Zone. This data article presents the information as of August 1, 2020 corresponding to the Huasteco Area. Keywords (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19, Algorithm (SARS-CoV-2) COVID-19, Mexico, identification of patients, Huasteco Area . (shrink)

In Mexico, the management of public resources has been questioned by the State, and mainly the results that the public administration at its three levels (federal, state and municipal), by the lack of transparency in the application and verification of public resources. The experience that gives us the operation of different emerging programs that focused on reducing social and economic inequality in the country, we can locate them as the first attempts in the search for a solution that is complex. (...) Moving from the role of the benefactor and welfare state to the promoter of the regions and in the recognition of the focalization of priority attention areas, the path that has been taken is not only the beginning. Recognizing the public nature of public finances as a promoter of social development, we must understand it as the one assumed by the State through social, political and economic co-responsibility to solve poverty and marginalization of its own public policy orientation and vision of solution has been made since the eighties. From the above, we can point out some preliminary conclusions including the study of the indigenous language-speaking population with a high level of social exclusion in the methodology for the definition of multidimensional poverty in Mexico, will allow the allocation of public resources in the fight against poverty to be effective since it will make it possible to identify to the target population that is subject to social exclusion and marginalization. This invites us to a final reflection: What to do to address the just social demands of the indigenous population that is immersed in poverty, marginalization and exclusion? What to do so that they do not leave their communities, and if they have already done so, how to attend to the needs of family groups that are due to the expense of a remittance that may never arrive? (shrink)

This article addresses the ethics of betel nut use in Taiwan. It first presents scientific facts about the betel quid and its consumption and the generally accepted negative health consequences associated with its use: oral and esophageal cancer, coronary artery disease, metabolic diseases, and adverse effects in pregnancy. It then analyzes the cultural background and economic factors contributing to its popularity in Asia. The governmental and institutional attempts to curb betel nut cultivation, distribution, and sales are also described. Finally, the (...) article analyzes the bioethical implications of this often-ignored subject from the perspectives of human dignity, the good of health, vulnerable groups, cultural diversity, informed consent, and ethical blind spots. (shrink)

Nepal has a diverse ethnic population, some of whom have indigenous knowledge. Their sociocultural knowledge has largely influenced their daily environmental sustainability practices as they highly respect Mother Nature. However, these days, in the name of modernization, people have slowly embraced Western culture and values by adding a disastrous footprint on the earth. They started to ignore the uniqueness of their indigenous knowledge, which prioritizes sustainability. Hence, this paper focuses on viewing indigenous knowledge as ecopreneurship and (...) developing ecopreneurship as an innovative pedagogy for sustainable development. This paper applies action research to intervene in the current pedagogical practice to introduce ecopreneurship as an innovative pedagogy. The participants of this research are the teachers of grade eight of a private school from Lalitpur. This paper concludes that when students explore their indigenous knowledge, it creates an attachment to their indigenous know-how. They learn to value their ancestors’ knowledge for their contribution to ecology, sustainability, and self-dependence. Furthermore, ecopreneurship enables their learning to be authentic and meaningful through their active involvement in producing eco-friendly material, which they showcased at the fair and motivated them to think and act as ecopreneurs for sustainable development. (shrink)

This project was provoked by the almost nonexistent pushback from the Democratic liberal establishment to the (2020) exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse, despite his acknowledged killing of two Black Lives Matters protesters against the police murder of George Floyd. It builds on three prior articles arguing for the revival of ancient Dionysian practice, Haitian Vodou, and Indigenous South American shamanism to empower leftist revolution. In essence, I propose an assemblage of spiritual practices that are accessible today for the neo-colonized 99% (...) of the global population, by synthesizing and reconstructing three democratic, lower-SES, Indigenous religions, all of which share a militant defiance of their respective tyrannical plutocracies. To avoid cultural appropriation, I center these reconstructed spiritual practices on the figure of the “mage,” a psychosocial healer loosely analogous to a shaman. And the mage’s signature activity, “magic,” I redefine naturalistically as free interpersonal performative action, practiced using two theoretical disciplines (philosophy and psychology) and two practical disciplines chosen by each mage. More precisely, Spirit/Dance channels the “spirits” of dead ancestors, historical figures, legendary heroes, mythical beings, and fictional characters, into the three ultimate objectives of “mindfulness” for psyches/souls, “liberation” for mindful bodies, and “social justice” for liberated communities, indirectly empowering long-term revolution. (shrink)

Calls for civility have been on the rise recently, as have presumptions that civility is both an academic virtue and a prerequisite for rational engagement and discussion among those who disagree. One imperative of epistemic decolonization is to unmask the ways that familiar conceptual resources are produced within and function to uphold a settler colonial epistemological framework. I argue that rhetorical deployments of ‘civility’ uphold settler colonialism by obscuring the systematic production of state violence against marginalized populations and Indigenous (...) peoples, relying on the colonial conceptual framework of ‘civilized’ vs ‘savage’, and excusing death-promoting rhetoric under the guise of liberal disagreement. (shrink)

This essay frames systemic patterns of mental abuse against women of color and Indigenous women on Turtle Island (North America) in terms of larger design-of-distribution strategies in settler colonial societies, as these societies use various forms of social power to distribute, reproduce, and automate social inequalities (including public health precarities and mortality disadvantages) that skew socio-economic gain continuously toward white settler populations and their descendants. It departs from traditional studies in gender-based violence research that frame mental abuses such as (...) gaslighting--commonly understood as mental manipulation through lying or deceit--stochastically, as chance-driven interpersonal phenomena. Building on structural analyses of knowledge in political epistemology (Dotson 2012, Berenstain 2016), political theory (Davis and Ernst 2017), and Indigenous social theory (Tuck and Yang 2012), I develop the notion of cultural gaslighting to refer to the social and historical infrastructural support mechanisms that disproportionately produce abusive mental ambients in settler colonial cultures in order to further the ends of cultural genocide and dispossession. I conclude by proposing a social epidemiological account of gaslighting that a) highlights the public health harms of abusive ambients for minority populations, b) illuminates the hidden rules of social structure in settler colonial societies, and c) amplifies the corresponding need for structural reparations. (shrink)

The "second-generation indigenization" hypothesis of Huntington's phenomenological observations on totalitarianism in Cold War regime collapse subtly portrayed the realpolitik interest groups' political influences with autocracy disbandment processes. The research puts democratization as the premise and globalization as purpose for the analysis, with the cultural anthropological psychopathology & criminological elements of genocide and crime against humanity explained, underlying some of the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s organizational behaviors. With the regionalism purposes & approaches to multilateralism by People's Republic of China (PRC), (...) the end of democratization is leveraged against the procedural means with power politics of declared “decmocracy”. Between quantitative autocratic controls and realpolitik local-regional interest groups, the connotation of democratization in liberal international globalization has either been used for militant purposes or pushed the landscape of regime collapse into realpolitik local groups and autocratic controls in the process of globalization, with a case study on a local branch of Argricultural Bank of China on supply-side hijacking by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC). With the industrial interests omposed on realpolitik local groups, autocratic regionalism becomes of the "best interest scenario" for the realpolitik local groups with psychopathological spread of the criminological behaviors, by the cyber organizational criminal operations correlated with PRC’s approaches to international relations and multilateralism through bilateral trade & finance in monetary and currency domains, developed into the digitization of economies with criminological schemes in telecommunication, information, and informatics systems. However, the diminishing autonomy & freedom of the territorial population in turn derogated the real economy that wielded the prisoners' dilemma between autocracy and totalitarianism in a negative sum game deterioration cycle, with the censorship practices by the illicit regimes for propaganda controls sustaining "ideology security". In the democratization process of the dictatorial regime, "second-generation indigenization" is thus mapped to the sectarian interests respondent to dictatorial propaganda generation, other than a natural phenomenon out of autonomy and freedom premises in decision theory. The article recaps the coup d'état between Xi Jinping and Bo Xilai before Xi took the autocratic power, and analyzes the human rights situation in the obstacle of democratization and by the coercion mechanism imposed on the mainland China civil society for the militant purposes, with its behaviral spread of censorship to the “internet platforms” in liberal democratic countries by financial interest incentives and avoidance from war threats, whereby military backends in the cyber systems already indicate otherwise. (shrink)

The crisis of our times is that we have science without wisdom. This is the crisis behind all the others. Population growth, the terrifyingly lethal character of modern war and terrorism, immense differences of wealth across the globe, annihilation of indigenous people, cultures and languages, impending depletion of natural resources, destruction of tropical rain forests and other natural habitats, rapid mass extinction of species, pollution of sea, earth and air, thinning of the ozone layer, above all global warming (...) - even the aids epidemic: all these relatively recent crises have been made possible by modern science and technology. Indeed, in a perfectly reasonable sense of "cause", they have been caused by modern science and technology. An essential step we need to take, in order to tackle these global problems more effectively, intelligently and humanely than we have done so far, is to create a new kind of academic inquiry which puts problems of living, and the pursuit of wisdom, at the heart of the enterprise. (shrink)

Within Michel Foucault’s own conceptualization of governmentality, there is little room for something like ‘ungovernable life’. The latter seems to hint at a form of social conduct beyond power-relations, which would offend Foucault’s basic philosophical postulates. I argue that this identification between governmentality and power as such demonstrates a one-sided focus on the history of Western power-relations. By opposing Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality to Ivan Illich’s critical history of government, I delineate indigenous struggles against governmentalization as a form of (...) ungovernable counter-conduct. Throughout his books from the 1970s to 1990s, Illich wrote a critical history of government surprisingly similar to Foucault’s, from the pastorate to modern political economy. However, rather than merely describing this history, Illich argued governmentalization alienated human beings from their autonomy. As a former missionary priest, he criticized the Church’s and modern governments’ attempts to subsume populations under a conduct of conducts. He advocated anticolonial resistance to subsumption under Western governmental regimes. In Illich’s appreciation of decolonized life, an ungovernable form of life can be discovered, which I defend with the example of Zapatismo and indigenous self-government through mandar obedeciendo. (shrink)

There is a growing trend across North America of women being criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes. Rather than being a series of aberrations resulting from institutional failures, we argue that this trend is part of a colonial strategy of administrative violence aimed at women of color and Native women across Turtle Island. We consider a range of medical and legal practices constituting gender-based administrative violence, and we argue that they are the result of non-accidental and systematic production of population-level (...) harms that cannot be disentangled from the goals of ongoing settler occupation and dispossession of Indigenous lands. While white feminist narratives of gender-based administrative violence in Latin America function to distance the places where such violence occurs from the ‘liberal democratic’ settler nation-states of the U.S. and Canada, we hold that administrative forms of reproductive violence against Latin American women are structurally connected to efforts in the U.S. and Canada to criminalize women of color and Indigenous women for their reproductive outcomes. The purpose of these systemically produced harms is to sustain cultures of gender-based violence in support of settler colonial configurations of power. (shrink)

This 4000 word entry to Routledge’s Handbook of Development Ethics (Jay Drydyk & Lori Keleher, eds., 2018) considers development within United States of America and Canada. Indigenous peoples and their nations are also featured. Canada and USA are both characterized by the UN Development Program as maintaining very high human development. Addressable weaknesses are nevertheless evident when performance is compared, for example, with OECD member nations. This entry focuses upon such comparison, noting characteristic political institutions and attendant social inequality (...) in the areas of social welfare, education and health. The histories of both nations over the past half-century suggest that cultural shifts within USA have displaced the ethos of social responsibility that the country had previously shared with Canada, replacing it with an ideal of self-reliance. The turn may be a factor in the USA’s increasing inequality and general weakness in social welfare programs since the 1980s. Events since 2016 especially also display a turn towards another ideal of self-reliance: isolationism. USA’s reduction in global commitments – to open trade, to limits on environmental impact, and especially, to immigration – contrast greatly with Canada’s evolving commitment to a global society and to a cultural ideal of multiple non-assimilated cultures within its borders, including cultures of new immigrant populations. Canada is by many measures a more equal society, but it shares with USA continued failings in development for aboriginal groups and vulnerability for that group and others. (shrink)

The study dealt with the present socio-economic status, perceptions and opportunities of maximizing the benefits of ecotourism to the local community. Responses from the local community, officials of the local government unit, and visitors using quantitative and qualitative method, particularly the inductive approach through survey, observation and interview was used. Local community involvement in tourism activity is limited to tour guiding, particularly the children, while the rest of the population are into farming, fishing and harvesting forest products. The park (...) was categorized as “Protected Landscape” under Republic Act 7586, now gaining its popularity and one of the fastest growing ecotourism sites in the Philippines is under the supervision of a private company. Visitor satisfaction and potential risk on environmental degradation were observed due to lack of regulation on the observance of carrying capacity. Tourism Action Plan for the destination was prepared but allocation for project for the local community that would contribute to their present socio-economic status was not evident. The geographical unit of the destination, its breath-taking view, the presence of various distinct flora and fauna made it to be labelled as the “Hidden Paradise and Mystical Eco-tourism in Nueva Ecija”. Sustainability in ecotourism, involves the participation of the communities that protect and manage the natural resources, cultural and indigenous knowledge and practices, environmental education and ethics. Community involvement equipped with proper education and conservation awareness, training, and employment opportunities may sustain the destination and enhance visitor satisfaction. (shrink)

Following the Special Autonomy Law in 2001, the number of Papuan students studying out of town soared, resulting integration into a new culture becomes inevitable. The authors were interested in exploring academic and social integration experiences amongst Papuan university students in Java. Semi-structured interview was used to collect data from six Papuan students (four males and two females). Data was analyzed using thematic analysis to identify factors influencing integration strategy and to explore how stereotypes affect the minority student’s acculturation strategy. (...) These factors included the student’s personality traits and motivation, prior contact with outgroup members, support from the university, academic barriers, and language/communication barriers. Additionally, the study found that negative stereotypes were more commonly experienced by indigenous Papuan students compared to mixed-Papuan students. This suggests that cultural background of the students may play a role in their integration experiences. While the sample size of this study was small and may not be representative of the broader population, the findings provide important implications for educational institutions. The study highlights the importance of involving ethnic minorities in shaping educational policies related to integration. By addressing the factors identified in this study, educational institutions can create a more positive environment for all students. (shrink)

When this article was first planned, writing was going to be exclusively about two things - the origin of life and human evolution. But it turned out to be out of the question for the author to restrict himself to these biological and anthropological topics. A proper understanding of them required answering questions like “What is the nature of the universe – the home of life – and how did it originate?”, “How can time travel be removed from fantasy and (...) science fiction, to be made scientific and practical?”, and “How can the proposed young age of genus Homo be made to actually be reasonable – when simply stating it would be solid ground for instant rejection and dismissal?” The result is that the article also talks about subjects like Artificial Intelligence, General Relativity, and cosmology. -/- From where did life originate? God? Evolution? Panspermia? If the tendency of humans and scientists to regard undiscovered science as pseudoscience can be overcome, Einstein gave another alternative to consider when he introduced General Relativity. Time isn’t linear – progressing in a straight line from past to present to future. That assumption ignores Relativity which states that space AND TIME are curved. Where did life and the genetic code come from? Can the answer build AI? -/- The first question can be answered by the section of this article titled SETI, Evolution, and Time which says life (possibly multicellular and intelligent) and the genetic code came from humans acquiring knowledge of these things over the centuries, then applying that knowledge – via terraforming, accumulation of raw materials like amino acids and nucleic acids, genetic engineering - to a time in the past when life didn’t exist. From that origin, life evolved through innumerable mutations and adaptations, with humans once again acquiring knowledge of it in cyclic (nonlinear) time. -/- The second question is answered by saying artificial intelligence (AI) as the product of life is only half of the equation. The other half refers to Relativity’s curved space-time and violation of the notion that time always travels from past to future. We have always lived in an artificially intelligent, non-probabilistic universe where everything in time and space is connected into one thing by quantum entanglement – making the brain and genes products of binary-digit activity or artificial intelligence (life is not merely dependent on biology’s “lock and key” mechanisms but also possesses AI). -/- The earliest documented representative of the genus Homo is Homo habilis, which evolved around 2.8 million years ago. Scientists used to believe there was a straight line from H. habilis to us, Homo sapiens. This article will use the “advanced” waves loved by Physics Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, view the history of science through the lens of Conic Sections applied to Relativity’s curved space-time, and incorporate the necessity of so-called imaginary time * – popularized by Prof. Stephen Hawking. While the evolutionary proposals are more in agreement with this early straight line than with modern theories, Albert Einstein’s General Relativity is used to transform the straight line into a curved line, ultimately concluding that Homo habilis (H. habilis) originated only (and unbelievably, as far as today’s science and technology is concerned) ~250,000 years ago. Other branches and dead ends of Homo – e.g. Neanderthals – are the result of mutations and adaptations, with the resultant modifications to anatomy and physiology. The surprisingly young age of H. habilis allows nearly 200,000 years for habilis, or one of its descendants, to reach Australia … if this country’s indigenous Aboriginal population did, as claimed, reach this “island continent” 60,000 years ago. -/- * The ultraviolet catastrophe, also called the Rayleigh–Jeans catastrophe, is a failure of classical physics to predict observed phenomena: it can be shown that a blackbody - a hypothetical perfect absorber and radiator of energy - would release an infinite amount of energy, contradicting the principles of conservation of energy and indicating that a new model for the behaviour of blackbodies was needed. At the start of the 20th century, physicist Max Planck derived the correct solution by making some strange (for the time) assumptions. In particular, Planck assumed that electromagnetic radiation can only be emitted or absorbed in discrete packets, called quanta. Albert Einstein postulated that Planck's quanta were real physical particles (what we now call photons), not just a mathematical fiction. From there, Einstein developed his explanation of the photoelectric effect (when quanta or photons of light shine on certain metals, electrons are released and can form an electric current). So it appears entirely possible that another supposed mathematical trickery (imaginary time and the y-axis of Wick rotation) will find practical application in the future. -/- The article includes mathematical references to cosmology (spoiler alert – you’ll read about things like Vector-Tensor-Scalar Geometry, topology, the “eternal present”, Einstein’s Unified Field, the inverse-square law, and there being no Big Bang and no multiverse - but there will also be no equations). -/- The other subheadings in this essay are – -/- NONLINEAR TIME AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING (about a 2009 electrical engineering experiment at America’s Yale University, and cosmic wormholes) -/- BITS AND TOPOLOGY (base-2 maths aka Binary digiTS, Mobius strips, and figure-8 Klein bottles) -/- WICK ROTATION, CAUSALITY, AND UNITING TIME (do past, present and future co-exist in an “eternal present”?) -/- DIGITAL BRAIN, DIGITAL UNIVERSE (if the brain and the universe are ultimately composed of binary digits, we'll someday be able to do the same things with the brain and universe that we now do with computers) -/- PROPOSAL: HUMAN AND ANIMAL INSTINCTS ARE THE RESULT OF THE UNIVERSE BEING UNIFIED BY BINARY DIGITS (AND TOPOLOGY) (If everything in the universe is ultimately composed of electronic BITS, then the universe must possess Artificial Intelligence - some prefer the term Cosmic Consciousness) -/- INFORMATION THEORY CONQUERS A RED GIANT (preserving Earth by keeping the Sun near today’s level of activity forever). 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Palawan is a land of promise, and of paradox. On maps, it appears on the edge of the Philippines, isolated. Indeed, it is a kind of last frontier. Its population remained tiny for centuries, the government offering homestead land in the 1950s practically for free to attract migrants from outside. The Palawan State University was established by law in 1965, but did not become operational until 1972. A commercial airport did not exist until the 1980s, and for many years, (...) flights were limited. Yet Palawan is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in the Philippines with the famous Tabon Cave human fossils. The oldest bone fragment here has been dated to be about 47,000 years. We know, too, that trade with China goes back several centuries. Today, Palawan seems to be making up for lost time with new commercial investments pouring in at breakneck speed. In particular, outsiders have rediscovered its potentials around logging, mining, fisheries, and tourism. This has caused concern among individuals and civil society organizations who want sustainable development, and see the commercial developments mainly as extractive, not just of natural resources but of the human. There’s very cheap labor available. And when potential investors marvel about cheap land, they’re actually talking about displacing earlier settlers, including indigenous people, from their lands. A subtle but still insidious aspect of the exploitation of human resources is a transformation of the very concept of human development. Using the rhetoric of modernity, residents in Palawan are reorienting the way they view themselves as well as their families and friends. The value of a human being now hinges on how they look, and the desired appearance is defined from the outside, as we see in this anthology of research reports coming from the Chemical Youth project of the University of Amsterdam and the University of the Philippines Diliman. We read about the importance of fair skin as a projection of cleanliness, of high social status (meaning someone not engaged in manual labor and therefore not exposed to the sun). We read of how “femininity” is defined around body contours, and cosmetics, and how hormones are used by male-to-female transgenders. We go beyond the visual, reading about the importance of controlling or enhancing body odors among tour guides, who interestingly are especially concerned about the bad odor management of their foreign customers, using car perfumes to keep their work manageable and we learn how difficult it is for security guards to stay alert during their long shifts. Energy drinks and cigarettes help them perform their duties. All these transformations through what the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has called “technologies of the self” are as paradoxical as Palawan. On the surface, the products—which are technologies—seem to be mainly in the realm of the self but are, in reality, pushed, through marketing, from the outside, in contexts of inequality and exploitative labour relations. Personal aspirations are not personal but are for predefined standards of modernity, related to work-related demands and expectations. The self must be made presentable to the tourist, to the customers in malls, and to those who may threaten the properties that young people protect. It is not surprising that these transformations become problematic for the “self.” The skin whiteners, the hormones, the body deodorants, and the energy drinks are expensive and can distort budgetary priorities. The money for tonic drinks, for example, could well go into more nutritious food. The tragedy, too, many of the products used are of doubtful safety and efficacy. Even the energy drinks have much too high levels of caffeine that can cause cardiac palpitations. Cosmetics and the skin whiteners imported from China and unregistered with the Food and Drug Administration may contain toxic chemicals like mercury. But even registered skin whiteners can be problematic, their so-called “skin-whitening effect” coming about because they take away the upper layers of the skin, leaving behind a red glow (seen as “whitening”) which is actually inflammation. The whitened skin fails to protect against the sun, leading to adverse effects such as black spots. Ultimately though, the problems come with the very definition of the self. As the reports show, young people use the chemicals with some ambivalence, knowing how expensive they are and experiencing some of the undesirable side effects. There is, too, doubt about whether what they’re doing is indeed “good,” captured by how IP women will put on cosmetics only when they’re away from home and about to go to work. The cosmetics have to be removed before they return home because they are not socially acceptable. The research reports are not for Palawan alone. It must make us more critical and discerning as we revisit concepts of development and exploitation, modernity and tradition, self and community. The chemicals, in many ways, are like the products used in precolonial barter trade. For the Chinese, the beeswax and the sea cucumbers, for the inhabitants of Palawan the ceramics, represented faraway lands. To have those products gave prestige. Today, the skin whiteners and tonic drinks and other chemicals described in this anthology represent modernity with promises of not just of a more attractive self, but of better jobs, a better life. We are proud to have worked with the Palawan State University, and the people of Palawan, to gather powerful narratives that will now challenge the outside, the purveyors of modernity, to be more critical and discerning, the chemicals now to be seen not just as stuff applied to the biological body, but as powerful shapers of social bodies. (shrink)

Sudan is the largest state in Africa geographically and has a population of about 41 million people, of which 70% are Sunni Muslims by religion. (CIA, 2006). The non-Muslim population resides mostly in Southern Sudan and is either Christian or of indigenous religions. Darfur consists of three provinces in the western part of Sudan: North ("Shamal") Darfur, West ("Gharb") Darfur, and South ("Janub") Darfur. The greater Khartoum province, an area nicknamed the "Arab Triangle," has become a developed (...) and industrialized part of the country. This financial development has been driven by Sudan's oil trade. However, oil has brought war, death, and hunger for a vast majority of the Sudanese living in the squalor of Africa. This paper outlines the historical background of Sudan, the history of the war in Sudan, the Darfur conflict, and the causes and effects of the Darfur crisis. It also examines the interests and interventions aimed at de-escalating the Darfur crisis. The conclusion reached is that solutions to the decade-old conflict in Sudan must adapt and change as necessary if they are to remain relevant and effective. -/- . (shrink)

Psychedelics are currently being studied intensively for the treatment of various psychiatric disorders. Ayahuasca, a plant-based extract originating from the Amazonian area, is traditionally consumed in ritualistic group events. The related indigenous traditions date back hundreds of years and have amassed vast amounts of knowledge on the therapeutic use of psychedelic and non-psychedelic plant-based substances. -/- These traditions require a prospective ceremony facilitator to undergo years of intensive training to acquire knowledge, mental power or self-confidence, stability, sensitivity, intuitive treatment (...) outcome prediction skills, musical skills, and sufficient physical strength. These qualities of a facilitator, in the presence of integrity and love, largely determine treatment outcomes. -/- In Europe, predominantly in the first decade of the 2000s and in the early 2010s, some individuals began building connections with diverse indigenous groups and syncretic churches of the Amazonia in an attempt to find cures for their treatment-resistant psychiatric conditions. Small circles of other patients in need of similar treatment formed around them. This led to the formation of decentralized, diverse local ceremony cultures that either followed the principles of the traditional lineages of their origin or synthesized various influences. -/- These unofficial ceremony contexts appeared to complement official healthcare systems, offering efficient methods unavailable in the medical context and correcting the consequences of medical malpractice and neglect. These ceremony contexts appeared highly communal, were largely based on volunteering, and contained mechanisms for self-correcting possible emerging issues. They seemed to function as systems for collecting, preserving, storing, and distributing knowledge of psychedelic therapy methods; in other words, systems for knowledge base building and innovation. -/- doi: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27385.85602. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds on the basis of contemporary ethnobiological research. I argue that ethnobiological accounts of taxonomic convergence-divergence patters challenge common philosophical models of the relation between folk concepts and natural kinds. Furthermore, I outline a positive model of taxonomic convergence-divergence patterns that is based on Slater's [2014] notion of “stable property clusters” and Franklin-Hall's [2014] discussion of natural kinds as “categorical bottlenecks.” Finally, I argue that this (...) model is not only helpful for understanding the relation between indigenous and scientific kinds but also makes substantial contributions to contemporary debates about natural kinds.to contemporary debates about natural kinds. (shrink)

Different cultures show different understandings of consciousness, soul, and spirit. Native indigenous traditions have recently seen a resurgence of interest and are being used in psychotherapy, mental health counselling, and psychiatry. The main aim of this review is to explore and summarize the native indigenous concepts of consciousness, soul, and spirit. Following a systematic review search, the peer-reviewed literature presenting research from 55 different cultural groups across regions of the world was retrieved. Information relating to native concepts of (...) consciousness, soul, and spirit were excerpted from the sources and contrasted. Contrasting these indigenous concepts revealed important implications for understanding consciousness within a cross-cultural perspective and has practical implications for applied approaches utilizing native indigenous traditions. (shrink)

Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of Critical-Range Utilitarianism which does not entail the Weak Sadistic Conclusion. (...) This is made possible by a fourth category of absolute value in addition to goodness, badness, and neutrality. (shrink)

Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing’s contributors describe ways of being that reflect a worldview that has guided humanity for 99% of human history; they describe the practical traditional wisdom stemming from Nature-based relational cultures that were or are guided by this worldview. Such cultures did not cause the kinds of anti-Nature and de-humanizing or inequitable policies and practices that now pervade our world. Far from romanticizing Indigenous histories, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom offers facts about (...) how human beings, with our potential for good and evil behaviors, can live in relative harmony again. Contributions cover views from anthropology, psychology, sociology, leadership, native science, native history, native art. (shrink)

In what follows we present group rights as portrayed in contemporary theoretical debates; compare this portrayal with some of the claims actually advanced by various indigenous groups throughout the world; and give reasons for preferring the practical to the theoretical treatments. Our findings suggest that liberal-individualist and corporatist accounts of group rights actually agree on the kind of importance that group interests have for persons and on what it is that groups who claim rights are concerned about. Both liberal-individualists (...) and corporatists locate the importance of group interests in the personal psychology of individual group members. As a result, both treat group interests (such as cultural integrity) as not only different in kind from individualized interests such as freedom of expression but as potentially in competition with them. In contrast, the real-world demands of indigenous groups place emphasis on concrete ways in which the preserving of communal life can be important to individuals’ well-being, in addition to the various spiritual and symbolic resources which such life may provide. These practical aspects of communal life make individuals’ group interests a lot like their individualized ones, and so suggest that group rights do not introduce new or distinctive theoretical questions. Instead, group rights are raise familiar questions about how individuals’ interests ought to be balanced against one another when they are in competition; what counts as an adequate institutional structure for the instantiation of a right; and who ought to be recognized as an authoritative judge of whether a right has been respected. (shrink)

Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a model of both successful integration and integration (...) failures. On the one hand, I argue that cross-cultural recognition of property clusters leads to an ontological overlap that makes knowledge integration often epistemically productive and socially useful. On the other hand, I argue that knowledge integration is limited by ontological divergence. Adequate models of Indigenous knowledge will therefore have to take integration failures seriously and I argue that integration efforts need to be complemented by a political notion of ontological self-determination. (shrink)

Population axiology concerns how to evaluate populations in terms of their moral goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. The task has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. So far, this field has largely ignored issues about uncertainty and the conditions that have been discussed mostly (...) pertain to the ranking of risk-free outcomes. Most public policy choices, however, are decisions under uncertainty, including policy choices that affect the size of a population. Here, we shall address the question of how to rank population prospects—that is, alternatives that contain uncertainty as to which population they will bring about—by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. We start by illustrating how well-known population axiologies can be extended to population prospect axiologies. And we show that new problems arise when extending population axiologies to prospects. In particular, traditional population axiologies lead to prospect-versions of the problems that they praised for avoiding in the risk-free settings. Finally, we identify an intuitive adequacy condition that, we contend, should be satisfied by any population prospect axiology, and show how given this condition, the impossibility theorems in population axiology can be extended to (non-trivial) impossibility theorems for population prospect axiology. (shrink)

Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in ques- tion may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and “person-affecting” theories. Each of these the- ories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no (...) coincidence: it can be proved, for various sets of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One’s choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up. (shrink)

I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. (...) I argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. (shrink)

History can be understood as involving a problematic interplay between the long-term legacy of human evolution, still tempered into the human body today, and the shorter-term heritage of civilization from its beginnings to the present. Each of us lives in a tension between our indigenous bodies and our civilized selves, between the philosophy of the earth and that which I characterize as “the philosophy of escape from the earth.” The standard story of civilization is one of linear upward progress, (...) a story that I contest with an alternative philosophy of history, picturing history instead as a set of concentric circles. I have devised a new philosophy of history with a three-part approach to understanding human development, taking civilization not as a linear advance of progress, but rather as a progress in precision, paradoxically counteracted by a regression in mind: history as a contraction of mind. I describe three stages in the contraction of mind: 1) animate mind as the evolved outlook of foraging life; 2) anthropocentric mind as representing the contracting transformation of consciousness produced by agriculturally-based civilization; 3) mechanico-centric mind as representing a further contraction from human-centered to a machine-centered consciousness, produced by the rise of modern civilization and the mechanical scientific worldview. Hence, this progressive contraction is marked by a turn from original practical and reverential attunement to the living earth in hunting and gathering societies, or animate mind, to a narrower focus of anthropocentric mind beginning with the development of early civilizations, where the human element became central and the wild devalued. And it moves to an even more narrow focus of mechanico-centric mind, expanding out of late medieval Europe and the development of modern science, where the machine became model of the ultimate, the objectivist filter through which the world is to be understood and made to fit. Far from controlling nature, humans have been consuming it in an unsustainable Malthusian-like trajectory whose limits are being reached in our time. (shrink)

Using the two cases of the Icelandic Health Sector Database and Russian initiatives in biobanking, the article criticizes the view of narratives and imaginaries as a sufficient and unproblematic means of shaping public understanding of genetics and justifying population-wide projects. Narrative representations of national biobanking engage particular imaginaries that are not bound by the universal normative framework of human rights, promote affective thinking, distract the public from recognizing and discussing tangible ethical and socioeconomic issues, and harm trust in science (...) and technology. In the Icelandic case, the presentation of the project in association with national imaginaries concealed its market identity and could lead to the commodification of biodata. In the Russian case, framing in terms of "genetic sovereignty" and "civilizational code" offers pretexts for state securitization. Adherence to normative framework of human rights and public discussion of genetics in an argumentative and factual mode can counter these trends. (shrink)

In this article, I propose to integrate indigenous knowledges in the Philosophy for/with Children theory and practice. I make the claim that it is possible to treat indigenous knowledges, not only as topics for philosophical dialogues with children but as presuppositions of the philosophical activity itself within the Community of Inquiry. Such integration is important for at least three (3) reasons: First, recognizing indigenous ways of thinking and seeing the world informs us of other non-dominant forms of (...) knowledges, methods to produce knowledge and criteria to determine knowledge. Second, the dominance of western standards of producing and determining knowledge, especially in non-western societies, needs to be reduced, balanced and informed by local knowledges and experiences. And third, indigenous knowledges reinforce a culturally responsive P4wC that responds to the challenges arising in multicultural and ethnically diverse classrooms. There are two (2) possible intersections where such integration may take place, namely: a) Epistemology, where I claim that the integration of a “presentational epistemology” immanent in indigenous patterns of thinking provides a counterweight to Lipman’s strong adherence to analytic-representational epistemology, and b) Pedagogy, which takes shape in an “indigenized” Community of Inquiry that highlights the values of interconnectedness, situatedness and relationality. (shrink)

Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This paper reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subaltern forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a demarcationist focus obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, (...) transdisciplinary philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production. (shrink)

The concept of population thinking was introduced by Ernst Mayr as the right way of thinking about the biological domain, but it is difficult to find an interpretation of this notion that is both unproblematic and does the theoretical work it was intended to do. I argue that, properly conceived, Mayr’s population thinking is a version of trope nominalism: the view that biological property-types do not exist or at least they play no explanatory role. Further, although population (...) thinking has been traditionally used to argue against essentialism about biological kinds, recently it has been suggested that it may be consistent with at least some forms of essentialism—ones that construe essential properties as relational. I argue that if population thinking is a version of trope nominalism, then, as Mayr originally claimed, it rules out any version of essentialism about biological kinds. (shrink)

Ethnobotanical research provides ample justification for comparing diverse biological nomenclatures and exploring ways that retain alternative naming practices. However, how (and whether) comparison of nomenclatures is possible remains a subject of discussion. The comparison of diverse nomenclatural practices introduces a suite of epistemic and ontological difficulties and considerations. Different nomenclatures may depend on whether the communities using them rely on formalized naming conventions; cultural or spiritual valuations; or worldviews. Because of this, some argue that the different naming practices may not (...) be comparable if the ontological commitments employed differ. Comparisons between different nomenclatures cannot assume that either the naming practices or the object to which these names are intended to apply identifies some universally agreed upon object of interest. Investigating this suite of philosophical problems, I explore the role grey nomenclatures play in classification. ‘Grey nomenclatures’ are defined as those that employ names that are either intentionally or accidentally non-Linnaean. The classification of the lichen thallus (a symbiont) has been classified outside the Linnaean system by botanists relying on the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). But, I argue, the use of grey names is not isolated and does not occur exclusively within institutionalized naming practices. I suggest, ‘grey names’ also aptly describe nomenclatures employed by indigenous communities such as the Samí of Northern Finmark, the Sherpa of Nepal, and the Okanagan First Nations. I pay particular attention to how naming practices are employed in these communities; what ontological commitments they hold; for what purposes are these names used; and what anchors the community’s nomenclatural practices. Exploring the history of lichen naming and early ethnolichenological research, I then investigate the stakes that must be considered for any attempt to preserve, retain, integrate, or compare the knowledge contained in both academically formalized grey names and indigenous nomenclatures in a way that preserves their source-specific informational content. (shrink)

Millstein (2009) argues against conceptual pluralism with respect to the definition of “population,” and proposes her own definition of the term. I challenge both Millstein's negative arguments against conceptual pluralism and her positive proposal for a singular definition of population. The concept of population, I argue, does not refer to a natural kind; populations are constructs of biologists variably defined by contexts of inquiry.

Contrary to political and philosophical consensus, we argue that the threats posed by climate change justify population engineering, the intentional manipulation of the size and structure of human populations. Specifically, we defend three types of policies aimed at reducing fertility rates: choice enhancement, preference adjustment, and incentivization. While few object to the first type of policy, the latter two are generally rejected because of their potential for coercion or morally objectionable manipulation. We argue that forms of each policy type (...) are pragmatically and morally justified tools for preventing the harms of global climate change. (shrink)

Contemporary biology has inherited two key assumptions from the Modern Synthesis about the nature of population lineages: sexual reproduction is the exemplar for how individuals in population lineages inherit traits from their parents, and random mating is the exemplar for reproductive interaction. While these assumptions have been extremely fruitful for a number of fields, such as population genetics and phylogenetics, they are increasingly unviable for studying the full diversity and evolution of life. I introduce the “mixture” account (...) of population lineages that escapes these assumptions by dissolving the Modern Synthesis’s sharp line separating reproduction and development and characterizing reproductive integration in population lineages by the ephemerality of isolated subgroups rather than random mating. The mixture account provides a single criterion for reproductive integration that accommodates both sexual and asexual reproduction, unifying their treatment under Kevin de Queiroz’s generalized lineage concept of species. The account also provides a new basis for empirically assessing the effect of random mating as an idealization on the empirical adequacy of population genetic models. (shrink)

This article contends that the environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) animals with heritable traits that are patented will present a challenge to the efforts of nations and indigenous peoples to engage in self‐determination. The environmental release of such animals has been proposed on the grounds that they could function as public health tools or as solutions to the problem of agricultural insect pests. This article brings into focus two political‐economic‐legal problems that would arise with the environmental release of (...) such organisms. To address those challenges, it is proposed that nations considering the environmental release of GE animals must take into account the underlying circumstances and policy failures that motivate arguments for the use of the modified animals. Moreover, countries must recognize that the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights place on them an obligation to ensure that GE animals with patented heritable traits are not released without the substantive consent of the nations or indigenous peoples that could be affected. (shrink)

Millstein argues against conceptual pluralism with respect to the definition of “population,” and proposes her own definition of the term. I challenge both Millstein’s negative arguments against conceptual pluralism and her positive proposal for a singular definition of population. The concept of population, I argue, does not refer to a natural kind; popula tions are constructs of biologists variably defined by contexts of inquiry.

Millikan’s (1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. MIT Press) selected effects theory of functions states that functions are effects for which the ancestors of a trait were selected for. As the function is an effect a thing’s ancestors produced, only things that are reproductions in some sense can have functions. Against this reproduction requirement, Garson (2019. What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter. Cambridge University Press) argues that not only processes of differential reproduction but (...) also processes of differential persistence can lead to new functions. Since such “persistence functions” have the same explanatory power as traditional selected effects functions, selected effects theorists should include them in their theory. In this paper, I will defend Millikan’s theory against this argument. I will show that the proponents of the generalized theory have yet to provide a working notion of populations that avoids a liberality problem. Further, I will argue that persistence functions are at best a marginal case of functions due to their restricted explanatory power. (shrink)

The paper, Some Indigenous Solutions to African Environmental Problems: An Appraisal, is written to examine the relevance of African Environmental Philosophies to addressing African environmental problems. African environmental problems include: water pollution, air pollution, land pollution, climate change, flood and many more. Researchers have shown that these problems are caused by phenomena like coal mining, nuclear waste, deforestation, overfishing, wars, etc. It is a known fact that attempts have been made over the years to resolve these problems, with pockets (...) of successes, yet more needs to be done. Nigeria’s Niger Delta Development Commission, Kenya’s Bio-safty Act 2009, The National Environment Policy of Ghana, Oil Pipeline Act 2004, Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection Act 2004 are a good example of such attempts with pockets of successes and challenges. This work uses the methods of rational speculation and critical analysis to examine aboriginal approaches to resolving African environmental challenges as recorded in Mark Omorovie Ikeke’s Philosophical Consciences, Caroline N. Mbonu’s Ecospiritualism, Thaddeus Metz’s Model Relationalism, and Chimakonam Jonathan Okeke’s Ohanifism. This work charged African environmental policymakers, Lecturers, and Students with the responsibility to understand and apply the theoretical foundation for sustainable living as recorded in the above philosophies. This is the time when Africans must use indigenous African methods and principles to proffer solutions to African environmental problems. (shrink)

The present study collected a larger set of three-dimensional data on human crania from the Kofun period (as well as from previous periods, i.e., the Jomon and Yayoi periods) in the Japanese archipelago (AD 250 to around 700) than previous studies. Three-dimensional geometric morphometrics were employed to investigate human migration patterns in finer-grained phases. These results are consistent with those of previous studies, although some new patterns were discovered. These patterns were interpreted in terms of demic diffusion, archaeological findings, and (...) historical evidence. In particular, the present results suggest the presence of a gradual geological cline throughout the Kofun period, although the middle period did not display such a cline. This discrepancy might reflect social changes in the middle Kofun period, such as the construction of keyhole-shaped mounds in the peripheral regions. The present study implies that a broader investigation with a larger sample of human crania is essential to elucidating macro-level cultural evolutionary processes. (shrink)