Species and the Good in Anne Conway's Metaethics

Anne Conway rejects the view that creatures are essentially members of any natural kind more specific than the kind 'creature'. That is, she rejects essentialism about species membership. This chapter provides an analysis of one of Anne Conway's arguments against such essentialism, which (as I argue) is drawn from metaethical rather than metaphysical premises. In her view, if a creature's species or kind were inscribed in its essence, that essence would constitute a limit on the creature's potential to participate in the divine good. It is this consideration that ultimately leads her to reject essentialism about species membership. The chapter concludes with an examination of some of the metaethical consequences of Conway's view as well as a lesson it can teach us about ideal adviser accounts of the good

Larval description and chaetotaxic analysis of dineutus sinuosipennis laporte, 1840, with a key for the identification of larvae of the tribe Dineutini (Coleoptera, Gyrinidae)

The larvae of the Malagasy whirligig beetle Dineutus sinuosipennis Laporte, 1840, identified using DNA sequence data, are described and illustrated for the first time, including detailed morphometric and chaetotaxic analyses of selected structures and a description of larval habitat. Larvae of the genus Dineutus Macleay, 1825 are diagnosed, and a key to identify the genera of the tribe Dineutini is presented. Larvae of Dineutus exhibit the characters traditionally recognized as autapomorphies of the Gyrinidae: body less sclerotized, egg bursters located on the parietal, one additional sensorial plate on the third antennomere, cardo and lacinia well developed, prementum completely divided, abdominal tracheal gills, and four terminal hooks on the pygopod. They also share with larvae of the other Dineutini genera these putative synapomorphies: numerous minute pore-like additional structures on the ultimate maxillary and labial palpomeres, coxal primary seta CO12 inserted submedially, and trochanteral primary seta TR2 absent. Larvae of Dineutus can be distinguished from those of other known genera of Dineutini by the posterior margin of the lacinia not dentate, tracheal gills plumose, parietal seta PA5 inserted relatively far from setae PA7–9, mandibular pores MNb and MNc inserted relatively far from each other, and tarsal seta TA1 inserted submedially.Fil: Michat, Mariano Cruz. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental y Aplicada; ArgentinaFil: Gustafson, Grey T.. University of Kansas; Estados UnidosFil: Bergsten, Johannes. Swedish Museum Of Natural History; Sueci

Altitude performance of a low-noise-technology fan in a turbofan engine with and without a sound suppressing nacelle

Test variables were inlet Reynolds number index (0.2 to 0.5), flight Mach number (0.2 to 0.8), and flow distortion (tip radial and combined circumferential - tip radial patterns). Results are limited to fan bypass and overall engine performance. There were no discernible effects of Reynolds number on fan performance. Increasing flight Mach number shifted the fan operating line such that pressure ratio decreased and airflow increased. Inlet flow distortion lowered stall margin. For a Reynolds number index of 0.2 and flight Mach number of 0.54, the sound suppressing nacelle lowered fan efficiency three points and increased specific fuel consumption about 10 percent

You Knew Him Well : The Galsworthy Letters and Trauma in Heart of Darkness

Edward Said’s dissertation-turned-monograph Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography (1966) was the first attempt in the realm of literary critique to apply Conrad’s personally letters to his fictions. Yet, since then, the multi-volume Collected Letters published in Cambridge University in 2008 has been but a resource for biographers and for a stray citation by an academic looking to ground a theory in a physical document. Considering the dearth of work looking into the Conrad letters, this essay traces the author’s understanding and processing of personal trauma through letters to Nobel Laureate John Galsworthy and use this theory to contextualize the disjointed reactions to traumatic episodes in Heart of Darkness. As Heart of Darkness is a novel controlled by and compelled forward through the exchange of letters —- from that which get’s Marlow his assignment to the packet he eventually returns to The Intended —- the novel serves as an exceptional vessel for applying Conrad’s personal correspondence to his literary style to develop a deeper understanding of his corpus. Bolstered by Eve Barnett’s Empire of Letters and her understanding of 18th Century epistolary convention, this paper serves as a template for how scholarship should begin to delve into the archive of Conrad’s letters to better understand the sailor-writer’s more-vexing stylistic conventions

Feminist Judgments at the International Criminal Court: The Case of Dominic Ongwen

Mr. Ongwen was convicted by Trial Chamber IX of the International Criminal Court on 4 February 2021 of 61 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Mr. Ongwen was found guilty of two counts of forced pregnancy as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. While it was the first conviction of forced pregnancy, the original judgment only briefly considered the gravity and harms of this crime. This work utilises evidence, which was available to Trial Chamber, including the testimony of the two victims as well as that of expert witnesses, to properly situate this crime and its impact as well as place the victims at the forefront of consideration. This work operates to alert academics, judicial officers and future legal chambers to the broad scope that can and should be contemplated when deliberating on the crime of forced pregnancy

Reason and Knowledge in Spinoza

This chapter investigates Spinoza's conception of reason, focusing on (i) the difference between reason and the imagination, and (ii) the difference between reason and intuitive knowledge. The central interpretive debate this chapter considers is about the scope of rational cognition. Some commentators have argued that it is only possible to have rational cognition of properties that are universally shared, whereas intuitive knowledge may grasp the essences of particular individuals. Another prominent interpretation is that reason differs from intuition only in virtue of its form or manner of apprehension, and not in virtue of the content or ideas it apprehends. However, authors on both sides of the debate have held that reason is incapable of grasping singular things. After summarizing the debate, this chapter presents an argument that Spinozan reason is not blind to particulars: it is (at least sometimes) capable of grasping the causal structure that characterizes an individual

The Metaphysics of Natural Right in Spinoza

In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), Spinoza argues that an individual’s natural right extends as far as their power. Subsequently, in the Tractatus Politicus (TP), he offers a revised argument for the same conclusion. Here I offer an account of the reasons for the revision. In both arguments, an individual’s natural right derives from God’s natural right. However, the TTP argument hinges on the claim that each individual is part of the whole of nature (totius naturae), and for this reason inherits part of the natural right of that whole. Using several analogous cases from the Ethics, I show that this form of argument from division is not compatible with Spinoza’s considered metaphysical views. The revised argument, by contrast, avoids the pitfalls of his earlier efforts. It also better reveals the deep roots by which the monistic metaphysics of the Ethics feeds into Spinoza’s conception of natural right

Review of the whirligig beetle genus Gyrinus of Venezuela (Coleoptera: Gyrinidae)

The Venezuelan species of the genus Gyrinus Geoffroy, 1762 are reviewed (Gyrinidae: Gyrininae: Gyrinini). The Venezuelan Gyrinus fauna is found to be comprised of nine species distributed among the subgenera Neogyrinus Hatch, 1926 and Oreogyrinus Ochs, 1935, although Gyrinus (Oreogyrinus) colombicus Régimbart, 1883 is known from imprecisely localized and potentially mislabeled specimens and the species presumably does not occur in Venezuela. Three new species are described: G. (Oreogyrinus) vinolentus sp. nov. from the Andes, and G. (Oreogyrinus) iridinus sp. nov. and G. (Neogyrinus) sabanensis sp. nov., from the Guiana Shield region. Two new synonymies are established: G. amazonicus Ochs, 1958 syn. nov. is synonymized with G. guianus Ochs, 1935, and G. racenisi Ochs, 1953 syn. nov. is synonymized with G. ovatus Aubé, 1838. Gyrinus (Oreogyrinus) feminalis Mouchamps, 1957, described from Venezuela from two female syntypes only, is considered as species inquirendum, as the types were not found. For each species a dorsal habitus, illustration of male and female genitalia, and distribution map are provided. A key and checklist for the Venezuelan Gyrinus species is included

Modelling Human Locomotion

This report is a coverage of my 16 weeks practical training at the Center for Sensori-Motor Interaction of the Aalborg University (Denmark). One of their research topics is on the ?eld of the biomedical modelling, where they want to answer the question of the functional behavior of the proprioceptive feedback system of the human body. A valid/good biomedical model could support their hypotheses which are results from different measurements. The original intention of the project was to build a complete walking lower body model to ?nd the reason for proprioceptive feedback during walking. In the middle of the project this original goal was a too high, because of the additional work of redesigning previous work of Huber [26]. The goal is adjusted to design the mechanical and muscle model and a well documented report, so a next project can continue immediately. The mechanical and muscle model appeared to work correct and are veri?ed with measured data. The forward activation of the muscle/mechanical model is not completely the same as expected. This is because the used method does not take co-activation of antagonistic muscle into account. For the continuation of this project a complete measured data set is necessary, because the veri?cation is not 100% valid. This performed veri?cation uses data that is not correlated in the sense that is measured at the same conditions and persons

Morphological phylogeny of Megachilini and the evolution of leaf-cutter behavior in bees (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae): Evolution of leaf-cutter behavior in bees

A unique feature among bees is the ability of some species of Megachile Latreille s.l. to cut and process fresh leaves for nest construction. The presence of a razor between the female mandibular teeth (interdental laminae) to facilitate leaf-cutting (LC) is a morphological novelty that might have triggered a subsequent diversification in this group. However, we have a limited understanding of the phylogeny of this group despite the large number of described species and the origins and patterns of variations of this mandibular structure are unknown. Herein, using a cladistic analysis of adult external morphological characters, we explored the relationships of all genera of Megachilini and the more than 50 subgenera of Megachile s.l. We coded 272 characters for 8 outgroups and 114 ingroup species. Depending on the weighting scheme (equal or implied weighting), our parsimony analyses suggested the monophyly of Megachile s.l. and that either Noteriades Cockerell or the clade Coelioxys Latreille + Radoszkowskiana Popov is the extant sister group of all other Megachilini. In addition, we conducted Bayesian total-evidence tip-dating analyses to examine other possible hypotheses of relationships and patterns of variation of the interdental lamina. Our analyses suggest that interdental laminae developed asynchronicaly from two different structures in the mandible, and differ in their phenotypic plasticity. Character correlation tests using phylogenetic pairwise comparisons indicated that the presence of interdental lamina is not associated with head size, mandible size and shape, and pubescence on the adductor interspace. We discuss the implications of our findings for the classification of Megachilini and the development of novel evolutionary, ecological, and functional hypotheses on this behavior. New taxa established are Pseudoheriadini Gonzalez & Engel, new tribe, Ochreriadini Gonzalez & Engel, new tribe, Cremnomegachile Gonzalez & Engel, new genus, Rozenapis Gonzalez & Engel, new genus, and Saucrochile Gonzalez & Engel, new genus, along with the following new combinations: Cremnomegachile dolichosoma (Benoist), new combination, Rozenapis ignita (Smith), new combination, and Saucrochile heriadiformis (Smith), new combination