S. Smith

This early work by Sydney Smith was originally published in 1854 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy' is a collection of lectures delivered by Smith at the Royal Institution in the years 1804, 1805, and 1806. Sydney Smith was born on 3rd June 1771 in Woodford, Essex, England. Smith's first book 'Six Sermons, preached in Charlotte Street Chapel, Edinburgh' was published in 1800. He married Catharine Amelia Pybus in the same year and the couple settled in Edinburgh. While there, he helped set up the 'Edinburgh Review' and became its first editor in 1802. He continued to write articles for the review for the next quarter of the century which were a key element to the publication's success.

The influential threat simulation theory asserts that dreaming yields adaptive advantage by providing a virtual environment in which threat-avoidance may be safely rehearsed. We have previously found the incidence of biologically threatening dreams to be around 20%, with successful threat avoidance occurring in approximately one-fifth of such dreams. TST asserts that threat avoidance is over-represented relative to other possible dream contents. To begin assessing this issue, we contrasted the incidence of ‘avoidance’ dreams with that of their opposite: ‘approach’ dreams. Because TST states that the threat-avoidance function is only fully activated in ecologically valid contexts, we also performed this contrast for populations living in both high- and low-threat environments. We find that ‘approach’ dreams are significantly more prevalent across both contexts. We suggest these results are more consistent with the view that dreaming is generated by reward-seeking systems than by fear-conditioning systems, although reward-seeking is clearly not the only factor determining the content of dreams

n this chapter, I argue that evolutionary explanations are not appropriate for understanding contemporary human behavior. It follows that public policy that is concerned with human beings cannot be based on such accounts. Human behavior, I argue, is always proximately caused in specific contexts. While evolutionary accounts seek to show that extant human behavior is related to the behavior of our prehistoric ancestors, such accounts face insurmountable obstacles. I discuss some difficulties presented by the proximate/ultimate distinction as well as the challenge of individuating behaviors. On each of these fronts, there are difficulties. For these reasons and others, I argue that evolutionary accounts of human behavior cannot provide what is needed for public policymaking.

This paper addresses the question of what organisms are and therefore what kinds of biological entities qualify as organisms. For some time now, the concept of organismality has been eclipsed by the notion of individuality. Biological individuals are those systems that are units of selection. I develop a conception of organismality that does not rely on evolutionary considerations, but instead draws on development and ecology. On this account, organismality and individuality can come apart. Organisms, in my view, are as Godfrey-Smith puts it “essentially persisters.” I argue that persistence is underpinned by differentiation, integration, development, and the constitutive embeddedness of organisms in their worlds. I examine two marginal cases, the Portuguese Man O’ War and the honey bee colony, and show that both count as organisms in light of my analysis. Next, I examine the case of holobionts, hosts plus their microsymbionts, and argue that they can be counted as organisms even though they may not be biological individuals. Finally, I consider the question of whether other, less tightly integrated biological systems might also be treated as organisms.

Some things are living and some are not. Under the heading “living things” come entities at various levels of biological organization. Some are called “organisms.” However, the term “organism” does not pick out organismal entities uniformly—that is, among all the things that are considered to be whole living systems, some are regarded as indisputably organisms, and others are accorded only qualified organismic status. Perhaps this is because it is not clear why some biological systems should count as organisms and others should not.

In this article I argue that evolutionary psychological strategies for making inferences about present-day human psychology are methodologically unsound. Evolutionary psychology is committed to the view that the mind has an architecture that has been conserved since the Pleistocene, and that our psychology can be fruitfully understood in terms of the original, fitness-enhancing functions of these conserved psychological mechanisms. But for evolutionary psychological explanations to succeed, practitioners must be able to show that contemporary cognitive mechanisms correspond to those that were selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, that these present-day cognitive mechanisms are descended from the corresponding ancestral mechanisms, and that they have retained the functions of the ancestral mechanisms from which they are descended. I refer to the problem of demonstrating that these conditions obtain as “the matching problem,” argue that evolutionary psychology does not have the resources to address it, and conclude that evolutionary psychology, as it is currently understood, is therefore impossible.

Particular visions of urban development are often codified in multi-year resource management policies. These policies, and the negotiations leading to them, are based in specific problem frames and narratives with long legacies. As conditions change and knowledge improves, there is often a need to revisit how problems, opportunities, and development pathways were defined historically, and to consider the viability of alternative pathways for development. In this article, we examine the case of agriculture near Metropolitan Phoenix, in the Central Arizona region, to highlight how frames and narratives embedded in policy can reinforce particular development pathways, even as information, conditions, and values evolve. Using expert interviews and secondary data, we document alternative frames and narratives that may offer different pathways for development and sustainability in the region. By highlighting alternative narratives, we demonstrate the uncertainties and limitations associated with all narratives about development pathways, and explore the possibilities that narrative shifts can alter future outcomes

In this article the focus is on ritual theory and its relevance for pastoral care during the grief process. For these purposes the first task at hand is finding an appropriate description of what ritual implies, especially in the context of pastoral care. It includes studying different descriptions from different study fields to provide a broad theoretical view of ritual and to identify relevant perspectives. This view is narrowed to ritual as performance as well as legitimisation of experience. Concerning the pastoral aspect of grief care the research mainly focuses on the work of the Dutch practical theologian, Corja Menken-Bekius and the American practical theologian David Hogue. Menken-Bekius' works on ritual from a clinical pastoral perspective while Hogue gives a neuropsychological perspective. Included in the processing of these two views are the works of anthropologist, Roy Rappaport and psychologist, Onno Van der Hart. Finding a description of ritual is not an easy task. The one offered is created with careful consideration of the inclusions and exclusions within the 'idea' of ritual. Meaning is subjective when it comes to ritual. A general meaning might be ascribed to a specific ritual, yet each individual might have a different experience and might attach different meanings. This happens unwittingly and unwillingly. What is found to be important in the rituals proposed in this article, is the ability of rituals to provide a framework of order within a situation of chaos and that it also creates a moment of remembrance