Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations

Central effects of baroreceptor activation in humans: Attenuation of skeletal reflexes and pain perception

Activating the arterial baroreceptors blunts pain sensation and produces other forms of central nervous system inhibition in animals. These effects may be important to blood pressure regulation but have not been rigorously verified in humans. We describe a noninvasive behaviorally unbiased method for baroreceptor stimulation and the application of this method to measurement of baroreceptormediated attenuation of pain perception and of the Achilles tendon reflex. The findings are relevant to basic mechanisms of blood pressure stabilization and cardiovascular reactivity and may also have implications for noncompliance with antihypertensive medications and for the pathophysiology of essential hypertension

Nozick Revisited: The Formation of the Right-Based Dimension of his Political Theory

Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is still infl uential today among right-wing (neo-)libertarian thinkers. The latter are engaged in the current debate on distributive justice, insistently defending the minimal state and the case against social justice on the grounds of inviolable individual rights. The premises of their defense are explicitly derived from Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Therefore, if one is interested in challenging the right-wing libertarian arguments today, one should be interested in revisiting Nozick, refuting the key elements of his theory. That is what this article does: it re-examines the formation of the moral dimension of Nozick’s political theory. It argues that this dimension consists of the idea of absolute individual rights and is formed upon the premises of full self-ownership and the moral inviolability of persons. Both premises are problematical because they are abstracted from any epistemological principle of self-realization