e emergence of theoretical ecology during the twentieth century advanced our understanding of what kinds of things might exist in our world. In particular, it suggested that objects like “ecological communities” and “ecosystems” might exist. In developing those ideas, ecology offered a new set of things we might care about or care for, and that development has both stimulated and challenged en...

“The idea evolved that lesions have lives, just as human beings have; that lesions look very different at different times in their lives just as human beings do; and that stages in the lives of lesions can be described and depicted roughly as early, fully developed, and late, just as human beings can be described and depicted as infantile, mature, and old.” A. Bernard Ackerman, M.D. From The Li...

This article explores the workings of power in dog training cultures through an analysis UK manuals from mid-19th century to present. We focus on gundog and companion cultures, investigating dog-human relations they assume, changing conceptions human-animal represent, inequalities which are embedded. Rather than thinking about practices terms a shift dominance positive training, or instrumental...

Cognitive agents form beliefs representing the world, evaluate the world as represented, form plans for making the world more to their liking, and perform actions executing the plans. Then the cycle repeats. This is the doxastic-conative loop, diagrammed in figure one. Both human beings and the autonomous rational agents envisaged in AI are cognitive agents in this sense. The cognition of a cog...

The pleasure principle (PP) may be a verifiable fundamental law of the living matter in the universe, and this law might then be used for forecasting human self-evolution. I do not pretend to “prove” PP, but argue that it must be regarded as a scientific hypothesis. Accordingly, I formulate verifiable and falsifiable postulates of PP. Their confirmation would allow the construction of a new sci...