Toddler on tour

Well, I can't imagine this sounding anything but irritating BUT we just came home from a hot, exotic, holiday-of-a-lifetime, and I need to shout about it before the effects fade along with my tan.

Noder Dame review

Of Maureen O'Malley's 'Philosophy of Microbiology' here.

Conference Announcement

Inheritance and Cooperation

June 25^th & 26^th, Balliol College Oxford

Heredity is understood to be a core ingredient of evolution by natural selection, and is standardly thought of as mediated by the passing of genes from parents to their offspring. Genetic inheritance underpins the theory of kin selection, which stands as a leading explanation for the evolution of cooperation. Organisms can be selected to help their relatives, because those relatives inherited some of the same genes from the common ancestor. We say that helping relatives then boosts the organism's indirect fitness. However, cooperation takes place in many scenarios in which there is no recourse to explanation in terms of indirect fitness benefits, because the participants lack a common genetic inheritance: between species; between unrelated humans; between genes; to name a few.

We are becomingly increasingly aware of the action of systems of inheritance that are not genetic. Organisms inherit, for example, epigenetic marks, niches, symbionts, culture. We are learning more and more about non-standard genetic inheritance systems such as lateral gene transfer, meiotic driver genes and transposable elements.

What happens to our ability to explain the occurrence of cooperation if we expand our conception of inheritance? Might we throw light on the possibility of cooperation between partners that fail to share a common genetic inheritance? Can other inheritance systems play an analogous explanatory role to that played by genes in kin selection theory? Are all inheritance systems equal, in this sense, or do they vary in ways that systematically affect their influence upon cooperation?

The aim of this conference is to pull together people who research different sorts of inheritance systems, or explore the impact of those systems on cooperation, to see if anything general can be extracted about the ways in which inheritance influences cooperation.

Confirmed speakers: 

Francesca Merlin (Philosophy, Paris)

Heikki Helanterä (Biology, Helsinki)

Rachael Brown (Philosophy, Macquarie)

Simon Powers (Biology, Lausanne)

Maria Kronfeldner (Philosophy, Bielefeld)

Tobias Uller (Biology, Lund/Oxford)

Jonathan Birch (Philosophy, LSE)

Well this is depressing......

Over at Daily Nous there is a discussion taking place about the ethics and etiquette of using parenting duties as an excuse to duck out of certain academic duties,

Evolution of a mama

Yesterday I sat in the sunshine having a picnic with my nearly two year old. Today I'm sitting in the sun alone, at university parks, reading about philosophy of microbiology. On days like these, when the sun is shining and my night wasn't disturbed, and nobody is ill and all my deadlines are more than 24 hours away, I feel like I'm winning, like I'm having it all. Unfortunately, for every day like this I have about a months worth of frazzled, perma-late, failing to keep up.

Exciting news

We're moving to Leeds! I've accepted a permanent position as Lecturer in Philosophy, to start September 2016.

We have a little while then to tie-up loose ends in Oxford, to fantasize about snow-topped moors and research toddler-friendly hang-outs. I expect Leeds has changed since my days as an undergraduate there, though possibly not as much as I have.  The department's faculty are the warmest, nicest bunch of superstellar philosophy heroes you'll ever meet. There is one question that can't be answered for several years to come, however........is  the bear going to develop a Northern accent?!!?!  There is only one way to find out..................

On biological individuality

I went to Cambridge to chat to the Moral Sciences Club - where I met some of the nicest, most interesting young philosophers I've had the privilege to hang out with recently - and thanks to them you can now listen to my squawking over the interweb, here.

Situation vacant

Drs Clarke and Duca are soliciting applications for the following role:

Wife

Duties to include: 

Choosing and buying Christmas and other required gifts.
Writing and sending Christmas cards.
Organisation of social life.
General emotional care taking.
Laundry.
Shopping - groceries and clothes.

Plus....all the other stuff our mums used to do that we don't have time for.

Nb conjugal duties will be waived.

Pay: miserable.

We look forward to reading your application.

The Evolution of Cooperation

Here is the text of my article which appears in The Philosophers' Magazine's latest issue, 'The Nature of Life'.


The front door is unfamiliar, just one more chunk of wood among the countless doors that I pass by unthinkingly every day. I hesitate, listen for sounds of life from within, but everything is quiet, and the door yields soundlessly to my touch. It takes a while to find a light switch, but once I do a warm glow illuminates the flat. I potter for a while before settling, perusing the book shelf, scanning the title of the novel by the bed, noting the dubstep on the cd rack, wondering if the fridge will yield milk, or beer, or only mould. ‘This lamp is nice,’ I think, ‘maybe it would suit my own house,’ before showering, lathering my skin with a stranger’s scent, and then climbing into her bed to go to sleep.

On motherhood and viciousness

Mother: serene archetype of blissed-out altruism, right? Selfless, nurturing, loving, she is the graceful heroine of catholic theology, she is the earth, she is nature, the great universal, connecting us all up into one great loved-up family. Right?


I wonder how many fathers, how many mother’s mothers and most of all, how many mothers-in-law would (truthfully) corroborate this picture?  See the thing is, and here I'm going to say the unsayable as only a signed-up member of the said-about can, new mothers aren't in fact very nice at all. We are, at least some of the time, grumpy, irrational, self-important tinder-boxes. In our worst moments, we are paranoid, resentful, hateful, defensive, vicious bitches. Especially to each other, although I'd wager the poor old mothers-in-law come a close second. Any casual glance at mumsnet will confirm this for the uninitiated. Just try typing 'I don't want to breastfeed' into google to see how quickly the mummy trolls come out to play.


My thought for the day is, How come motherhood wields so much power to bring people together, but also to push them apart?