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1
Metaethical relativism: Against the single analysis assumption. Göteborg: Göteborg University, 2007.
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Peschanskiy, Aleksey. Semi-Markov models of prevention of unreliable single-channel service system with losses. ru: INFRA-M Academic Publishing LLC., 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.12737/1870597.
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The monograph examines various maintenance strategies of a single-channel system with losses and unreliable recoverable service device under the assumption of a general type of random variables describing random processes occurring in the system. The apparatus for constructing models of the functioning of the system are semi-Markov processes with a measurable phase space of states and phase enlargement algorithms. Stationary probabilistic and economic indicators of the system are explicitly determined and the tasks of optimal frequency of maintenance of the device are solved.
For researchers, engineers and specialists in the field of metamathematic theory of reliability, system analysis. It can be useful for graduate students and students of relevant specialties of technical universities and universities.
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Braidotti, Rosi. Posthuman Feminist Theory. Edited by Lisa Disch and Mary Hawkesworth. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.013.35.
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This chapter maps the emergence of a posthuman turn in feminist theory, based on the convergence of posthumanism with postanthropocentrism. The former critiques the universalist posture of the idea of “Man” as the alleged “measure of all things.” The latter criticizes species hierarchy and the assumption of human exceptionalism. Although feminist posthuman theory benefits from multiple genealogical sources and cannot be reduced to a single or linear event, it can be analyzed in terms of its conceptual premises, the methodology and its implications for feminist political subjectivity and for sexual politics, notably in relation to nonhuman agents.
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Boyle, Katherine. The zooarchaeology of complexity and specialization during the Upper Palaeolithic in Western Europe. Edited by Umberto Albarella, Mauro Rizzetto, Hannah Russ, Kim Vickers, and Sarah Viner-Daniels. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199686476.013.2.
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Over the last twenty years attempts have been made to determine the nature of Upper Palaeolithic hunting specialization. This chapter traces assemblage structural ‘specialization’, where faunal assemblages are dominated by a single species, vs ‘diversity’, in which all recorded species are well represented, between 45,000 and 10,000 bp (Châtelperronian to Azilian), and demonstrates regularity in the archaeozoological record. It moves away from the assumption that assemblages with at least 90% of bones attributable to a single species result from specialized hunting strategies, and seeks explanations for patterns of diversification. The study also deals with the Late Glacial Maximum with its narrowing resource base and the Magdalenian of southwest France, when specialized reindeer hunting is traditionally considered of paramount importance. The chapter uses measures of diversity and evenness to quantify variation observed through time, highlighting a peak in single-species exploitation during the Middle Upper Palaeolithic. Finally, interpretations are offered for future consideration.
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Ford, Matthew. Technology and Culture. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190623869.003.0002.
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The prevailing assumption for many writers working on technology and change is that victory in war belongs to the masters of military innovation. If armed forces fail to act on this single insight then defeat in battle is all but certain. This chapter will discuss the various frameworks for helping to explain military innovation and conclude that existing top-down and bottom-up models of socio-technical change are insufficient. In its place this chapter outlines a mode of thinking about military innovation that draws on Science and Technology Studies. This in turn creates an opportunity for thinking about how power across the military-industrial complex is distributed.
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Boland, Lawrence A. Prologue. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190274320.003.0001.
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This chapter briefly discusses three key articles about equilibrium attainment that were all published in 1959. These three articles are Kenneth Arrow’s ‘Towards a theory of price adjustment’, Robert Clower’s ‘Ignorant monopolist’, and George Richardson’s ‘Equilibrium, expectations and information’. These articles and their three different perspectives on equilibrium models will often be referred to throughout this book. The chapter then discusses three aspects of general equilibrium theories: the idea that a general equilibrium produces a maximal social good; the single behavioural assumption of neoclassical explanations (essentially the idea that every market participant tries to maximize); and the recent development of Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium models.
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Meder, Björn, and Ralf Mayrhofer. Diagnostic Reasoning. Edited by Michael R. Waldmann. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199399550.013.23.
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This chapter discusses diagnostic reasoning from the perspective of causal inference. The computational framework that provides the foundation for the analyses—probabilistic inference over graphical causal structures—can be used to implement different models that share the assumption that diagnostic inferences are guided and constrained by causal considerations. This approach has provided many critical insights, with respect to both normative and empirical issues. For instance, taking into account uncertainty about causal structures can entail diagnostic judgments that do not reflect the empirical conditional probability of cause given effect in the data, the classic, purely statistical norm. The chapter first discusses elemental diagnostic inference from a single effect to a single cause, then examines more complex diagnostic inferences involving multiple causes and effects, and concludes with information acquisition in diagnostic reasoning, discussing different ways of quantifying the diagnostic value of information and how people decide which information is diagnostically relevant.
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Stearns, Peter N. Introduction. University of Illinois Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.5406/illinois/9780252037894.003.0001.
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This introductory chapter discusses societies that have deliberately undertaken a program of demilitarization, with deep consequences in public and political culture as well as statecraft. The developments have occurred in decades dominated by the arms races of the Cold War and the assumption of most governments that the logics of success and security called for more weapons. Exploring the history of explicit demilitarization raises two related issues, both of which provide context for future studies. First, demilitarization as a term can be validly applied to a number of patterns of change—there is no heroic single definition. Second, while contemporary demilitarization has some distinctive features, it links with and builds on earlier historical precedents of several types.
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Eisenberg, Melvin A. The Elements of a Contract. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199731404.003.0027.
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Chapter 27 concerns the elements of a contract. Contracts consist in large part of expressions, that is, manifestations consisting of words, acts, or both, which are either communicated by an addressor to an addressee or jointly produced by two (or occasionally more) contracting parties. It is sometimes assumed that where contractual expressions are embodied in a single writing the writing is the contract. That assumption is incorrect because contracts almost invariably include a number of additional elements—in particular, the implications of the parties’ expressions and any relevant usage, course of dealing, and course of performance. The context and purpose of a contract are not, strictly speaking, elements of a contract, but bear on its interpretation.
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Sangiovanni, Andrea. Beyond the Political–Orthodox Divide. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198713258.003.0011.
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This chapter urges us to abandon the belief that there is a single human rights practice. Belief in what is called the Single Practice Assumption gives rise to the misguided idea—common to both Orthodox and Political views of human rights—that a philosophical theory should aim to reconstruct the moral core to this practice, derive a ‘master list’ of human rights from that core, and then use that list as a critical standard to reform and improve the practice. It is argued instead that we need a concept of human rights broad enough to capture the diversity of ways in which the term ‘human rights’ is used across the world today. The chapter defends what it calls the Broad View—which subsumes Political and Orthodox views as special cases, deployed for different ends in different contexts—and ends by delineating a systematic methodology for deriving particular conceptions of human rights for the very different contexts in which human rights are invoked.
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Wedgwood, Ralph. Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198802693.003.0001.
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This chapter introduces the book’s central themes. Arguments are offered to support the assumption that there is a single concept of ‘rationality’, which applies univocally to mental states (like beliefs and intentions) and processes of reasoning (like choices and belief revisions), and plays a central role in epistemology, ethics, and the study of practical reason. It will be widely believed that ‘rationality’ is a normative concept: to think rationally is in a sense to think properly, or as one should think. The goal of the book is to defend this belief, and to explain how ‘rationality’ differs from other normative concepts. Although normative language is not the main topic, reflections on language will be methodologically important, to ensure that we are not misled by our linguistic intuitions.
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Dainotto, Roberto. Geographies of Historical Discourse. Edited by Paul Hamilton. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199696383.013.32.
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This chapter attempts to frame European Romanticism against the background of that ‘somewhat enigmatic event’ which, between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, was said by Foucault to have begun European modernity: the discovery of ‘the historicity of knowledge’. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the monogenetic assumption that humankind was of a single Adamitic origin, created by one God, and universally attending to one divinely ordained natural law, had already fallen into disrepute under the attack of Reason; once Reason too, along with its presumption of one ‘unchanging human nature’, was relativized after the European discoveries of different cultures and ancient civilizations, a new outlook on life, which Meinecke called historismus, ‘rose’ to change once and for all European culture’s very understanding of its world.
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Hansen, Nat. Just What Is It That Makes Travis’s Examples So Different, So Appealing? Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198783916.003.0006.
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Odd and memorable examples are a distinctive feature of Charles Travis’s work: cases involving squash balls, soot-covered kettles, walls that emit poison gas, faces turning puce, and ties made of freshly cooked linguine all figure in his arguments. One of Travis’s examples, involving a pair of situations in which the leaves of a Japanese maple tree are painted green, has spawned its own literature consisting of attempts to explain the meaning of color adjectives. For Travis, these examples play a central role in his arguments for occasion-sensitivity. But how, exactly, do these examples work? This chapter draws on recent experimental investigations of some of Travis’s examples to question an assumption at the heart of his own view of them—namely, that they are illustrations of a single, unified phenomenon.
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Brunsson, Nils. Responsibility as an Impediment to Influence—The Case of Budgeting. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199206285.003.0005.
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This chapter demonstrates that decision-makers may be more interested in the responsibility effects of their decisions than in the decision content, one reason being that there may be a connection between responsibility and influence: the assumption of responsibility can mean a loss of influence. An organizational management can increase its influence by avoiding decisions and the responsibility that goes with them. The chapter exemplifies this relationship by discussing a common type of decision process, namely budgeting. Budgeting is a common form of decision process in organizations. The budget is a decision on a grand scale: on one single occasion the organizational leadership makes decisions about virtually all operations over a future period, generally the coming year. The link between decisions and operations consists of money. However, the coupling between budget decisions and action is a very loose one.
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Paul, Torremans. Part VI The Law of Property, 31 The Transfer of Tangible Movables. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/law/9780199678983.003.0031.
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This chapter examines the legal system governing the transfer of tangible movables, with particular emphasis on assignments inter vivos of isolated or individual movables such as gifts and mortgages. The transfer of tangible movables has been one of the most intractable topics in English private international law. A common, albet fallacious, assumption is that all problems must be referred to one single law. This chapter considers the various theories dealing with the question of transfers, including the law of the domicile, the law of the situs, the law of the place of acting, and the proper law of the transfer. It also discusses the modern law governing derivative claims, retention of title clauses, attachment of movables by creditors, goods in transit, gifts, and cultural property. Finally, it addresses the issue of human rights relating to transfers.
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Goodin, Robert E., and Kai Spiekermann. Following Leaders. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823452.003.0011.
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The question of leadership is connected to many central debates in democratic theory. In this chapter, the focus is on leadership in terms of beliefs, not desires. Opinion leaders’ influence undermines the Independence Assumption. The first section looks at single opinion leaders, who, if their influence is strong and their competence limited, reduce group competence, often severely. The second section considers multiple correlated opinion leaders. The effects depend on the negative or positive correlation between the opinion leaders, the number of voters following each, and the competence of leaders. Multiple uncorrelated opinion leaders are the topic of the third section. Their influence can be relatively benign if they are many and if they are reasonably competent. Finally, a great many ‘local’ opinion leaders, as envisaged by Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet, can offset the negative epistemic impact of a few ‘big’ opinion leaders.
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Hu, Xuhui. Non-canonical objects, motion events, and verb/satellite-framed typology. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198808466.003.0007.
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Based on the Synchronic Grammaticalisation Hypothesis and the theory of the syntax of events, this chapter explores the syntactic nature of the Chinese non-canonical object construction. The object in this construction is introduced by a null P, which is incorporated into the verbal head position, and a lexical verb serves as a functional item, vDO. This account is extended to the analysis of the motion event construction in Chinese. It involves the incorporation of a P into the verbal head position filled with a vDO in the form of a lexical verb. The only difference is that this P is phonologically overt. Therefore, the [V+Path] chunk in Chinese is a single lexical item. This means that the Chinese motion event construction by nature patterns with its counterpart in verb-framed languages, a conclusion that goes against the common assumption that Chinese is a satellite-framed language.
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Meincke, Anne Sophie. Persons as Biological Processes. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779636.003.0018.
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Human persons exist longer than a single moment in time; they persist through time. However, so far it has not been possible to make this natural and widespread assumption metaphysically comprehensible. The philosophical debate on personal identity is rather stuck in a dilemma: reductionist theories explain personal identity away, while non-reductionist theories fail to give any informative account at all. This chapter argues that this dilemma emerges from an underlying commitment, shared by both sides in the debate, to an ontology that gives priority to static unchanging things. The claim defended here is that the dilemma of personal identity can be overcome if we acknowledge the biological nature of human persons and switch to a process-ontological framework that takes process and change to be ontologically primary. Human persons are biological higher-order processes rather than things, and their identity conditions can be scientifically investigated.
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Shields, Christopher. A Series of Goods. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198817277.003.0008.
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Aristotle criticizes Plato’s Form of the Good, insisting that goodness is not ‘something common, universal, and one’ (EN 1096a28). He rejects Plato’s univocity assumption to the effect that goodness admits of a single, non-disjunctive essence-specifying account, contending among other things that the Platonists themselves agree that there are no Forms set over ordered series, such as the series of natural numbers. Since good things are arranged as such a series, presumably from the highest good to the least good, it should follow as a direct consequence that there simply is no Form of the Good, even on the Platonists’ own terms. Yet both premises in this argument are perplexing. First, why should the Platonists allow no Forms set over items arranged in a series? Second, even granting that they do (or must), why should they also allow that good things form a series akin to the series of natural numbers?
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Plutynski, Anya. Cancer. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199967452.003.0002.
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Is cancer one or many? If many, how many diseases is cancer, exactly? I argue that this question makes a false assumption; there is no single “natural” classificatory scheme for cancer. Rather, there are many ways to classify cancers, which serve different predictive and explanatory goals. I consider two philosophers’ views concerning whether cancer is a natural kind, that of Khalidi, who argues that cancer is the closest any scientific kind comes to a homeostatic property cluster kind, and that of Lange, whose conclusion is the opposite of Khalidi’s; he argues that cancer is at best a “kludge” and that advances in molecular subtyping of cancer hail the “end of diseases” as natural kinds. I consider several alternative accounts of natural or “scientific” kinds, the “simple causal view,” the “stable property cluster” view, and “scientific kinds,” and argue that the diverse aims of cancer research require us to embrace a much more pluralistic view.
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Mitrović, Moreno. Configurational change in Indo-European coordinate constructions. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198747307.003.0002.
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This chapter presents a case study of word order change in coordinate constructions across a wide range of Indo-European languages. Early Indo-European languages had two available patterns of coordination at their disposal: one in which the coordinating particle was placed in first and another in which it was placed in the second position with respect to the second coordinand (‘Wackernagel effect’). Diachronically, the two competing configurations reduce to a single winning one, namely the head-initial one that all contemporary Indo-European languages retained. This is accounted for as the result of the loss of ‘Wackernagel movement’ and the development of a lexicalized J(unction)-morpheme. Resting on the notion of Junction, the analysis succeeds in explaining the bimorphemicity signature of initial conjunctions by deriving the morpheme count as a fusional exponent of two functional heads. The analysis stands on the assumption that narrow- and postsyntactic processes operate in derivationally delimited chunks, qua phases.
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Belnap, Nuel, Thomas Müller, and Tomasz Placek. Branching Space-Times. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190884314.001.0001.
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This book develops a rigorous theory of indeterminism as a local and modal concept. Its crucial insight is that our world contains events or processes with alternative, really possible outcomes. The theory aims at clarifying what this assumption involves, and it does it in two ways. First, it provides a mathematically rigorous framework for local and modal indeterminism. Second, we support that theory by spelling out the philosophically relevant consequences of this formulation and by showing its fruitful applications in metaphysics. To this end, we offer a formal analysis of modal correlations and of causation, which is applicable in indeterministic and non-local contexts as well. We also propose a rigorous theory of objective single-case probabilities, intended to represent degrees of possibility. In a third step, we link our theory to current physics, investigating how local and modal indeterminism relates to issues in the foundations of physics, in particular, quantum non-locality and spatio-temporal relativity. The book also ventures into the philosophy of time, showing how the theory’s resources can be used to explicate the dynamic concept of the past, present, and future based on local indeterminism.
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Watson, Francis, and Sarah Parkhouse, eds. Connecting Gospels. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198814801.001.0001.
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By the late second century, early Christian gospels had been divided into two groups by a canonical boundary that assigned normative status to four of them while consigning their competitors to the margins. The project of this volume is to find ways to reconnect these divided texts. The primary aim is not to address the question whether the canonical/non-canonical distinction reflects substantive and objectively verifiable differences between the two bodies of texts—although that issue may arise at various points. Starting from the assumption that, in spite of their differences, all early gospels express a common belief in the absolute significance of Jesus and his earthly career, the intention is to make their interconnectedness fruitful for interpretation. The approach taken is thematic and comparative: a selected theme or topic is traced across two or more gospels on either side of the canonical boundary, and the resulting convergences and divergences shed light not least on the canonical texts themselves as they are read from new and unfamiliar vantage points. The outcome is to demonstrate that early gospel literature can be regarded as a single field of study, in contrast to the overwhelming predominance of the canonical four characteristic of traditional gospels scholarship.
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Dzakiria, Hisham. Pragmatic Approach to Qualitative Case Study Research Learning by Doing: A Case of Distance Learning Research in Malaysia. UUM Press, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.32890/9789833827718.
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This book for anyone who wants to undertake an engaging, satisfying, productive, and a more successful career as a qualitative researcher. This book is intended to contribute to the popularisation of qualitative research in Malaysia. Qualitative studies in educational research are very limited in many countries; and to date, there has been very little work done using this form of educational inquiry in Malaysia. The dominant tradition has followed the positivist paradigm. A qualitative case study offers a different approach and generates a range of information of different qualities from that obtained using traditional approaches. This book provides both the theories and practical practices to undertake a qualitative study. The conception of this book began from the assumption that our world is interpreted through language as means of communication and understanding. Writing narratives of experience is becoming a common way of describing how people make sense of their experience or problems at hand. At the root of the naturalistic inquiry exhibited in this book, is an interest in understanding the experience of learners and the meanings they make of the distance learning experience at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). This study was designed as a single case focusing on distance learners of different backgrounds in UUM.
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Lawford-Smith, Holly. Not In Their Name. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198833666.001.0001.
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Given their size and influence, states are able to inflict harm far beyond the reach of a single individual. But there is a great deal of unclarity about exactly who is implicated in that kind of harm, and how we should think about both culpability and responsibility for it. The idea of popular sovereignty is dominant in classical political theory. It is a commonplace assumption that democratic publics both authorize and have control over what their states do; that their states act in their name and on their behalf. Not In Their Name approaches these assumptions from the perspective of social metaphysics, asking whether the state is a collective agent, and whether ordinary citizens are members of that agent. If it is, and they are, there is a clear case for democratic collective culpability. The book explores alternative conceptions of the state and of membership in the state; alternative conceptions of collective agency applied to the state; the normative implications of membership in the state; and both culpability (from the inside) and responsibility (from the outside) for what the state does. Ultimately, Not In Their Name argues for the exculpation of ordinary citizens and the inculpation of those working in public services, and defends a particular distribution of culpability from government to its members.
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Gamberini, Andrea. The City Commune and the Assumption of a Public Role. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198824312.003.0003.
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This chapter examines the affirmation of the commune in the context of the urban political scene: first as one of the many forces present in the city (together with the bishop and certain aristocratic families endowed with specific rights and powers), then as a single hegemonic force. In less than a century, the communal citizen passed from an extra legem condition to one of full recognition as a public power—something that took place thanks to a complex conceptual work of elaboration that owed much to the clash with Barbarossa and even more to the encounter with the Roman legal tradition. The chapter shows that it was, in fact, on this terrain that the doctores built the legal foundations of citizen autonomy: a process which, while slow and non-linear, gave rise to exceptional results.
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Lindsay, Keisha. In a Classroom of Their Own. University of Illinois Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252041730.001.0001.
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Many supporters of all-black male schools (ABMS) argue that they reduce black boys’ exposure to racist, “overly” feminized teachers. In casting black boys as victims of intersecting racial and gendered oppression, these supporters -- many of whom are black males -- demand an end to racism in the classroom and do so on the sexist assumption that women teachers are emasculating. This rationale for ABMS raises two questions that feminist theory has lost sight of. Why do oppressed groups articulate their experience in ways that challenge and reproduce inequality? Is it possible to build emancipatory political coalitions among groups who make such claims? This book answers these questions by articulating a new politics of experience. It begins by demonstrating that intersectionality is a politically fluid rather than an always feminist analytical framework. It also reveals a dialectical reality in which groups’ experiential claims rest on harmful assumptions and foster emancipatory demands. This book concludes that black male supporters of single-gender schools for black boys can build worthwhile coalitions around this complex reality when they interrogate their own as well as their critics’ assumptions and demands. Doing so enables these supporters to engage in educational advocacy that recognizes the value of public schools while criticizing the quality of such schools available to black boys and black girls.
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Striedter, Georg F., and R. Glenn Northcutt. Brains Through Time. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195125689.001.0001.
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Much is conserved in vertebrate evolution, but significant changes in the nervous system occurred at the origin of vertebrates and in most of the major vertebrate lineages. This book examines these innovations and relates them to evolutionary changes in other organ systems, animal behavior, and ecological conditions at the time. The resulting perspective clarifies what makes the major vertebrate lineages unique and helps explain their varying degrees of ecological success. One of the book’s major conclusions is that vertebrate nervous systems are more diverse than commonly assumed, at least among neurobiologists. Examples of important innovations include not only the emergence of novel brain regions, such as the cerebellum and neocortex, but also major changes in neuronal circuitry and functional organization. A second major conclusion is that many of the apparent similarities in vertebrate nervous systems resulted from convergent evolution, rather than inheritance from a common ancestor. For example, brain size and complexity increased numerous times, in many vertebrate lineages. In conjunction with these changes, olfactory inputs to the telencephalic pallium were reduced in several different lineages, and this reduction was associated with the emergence of pallial regions that process non-olfactory sensory inputs. These conclusions cast doubt on the widely held assumption that all vertebrate nervous systems are built according to a single, common plan. Instead, the book encourages readers to view both species similarities and differences as fundamental to a comprehensive understanding of nervous systems.
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Reber, Arthur S. The First Minds. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190854157.001.0001.
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The book presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are conscious, though it is a sentience of a primitive kind. They have minds, though they are tiny and limited in scope. There is nothing even close to this thesis in the current literature on consciousness. Hints that cells might be conscious can be found in the writings of a few cell biologists, but a fully developed theory has never been put forward before. Other approaches to the origins of consciousness are examined and shown to be seriously or fatally flawed, specifically ones based on: (a) the assumption that minds are computational and can be captured by an artificial intelligence (AI), (b) efforts to discover the neurocorrelates of mental experiences, the so-called Hard Problem, and (c) looking for consciousness in less complex species by identifying those that possess precursors of those neurocorrelates. Each of these approaches is shown to be either essentially impossible (the AI models) or so burdened by philosophical and empirical difficulties that they are effectively unworkable. The CBC approach is developed using standard models of evolutionary biology. The remarkable repertoire of single-celled species that micro- and cell-biologists have discovered is reviewed. Bacteria, for example, have sophisticated sensory and perceptual systems, learn, form memories, make decisions based on information about their environment relative to internal metabolic states, communicate with one another, and even show a primitive form of altruism. All such functions are indicators of sentience. Conversations with a caterpillar function as a literary vehicle Finally, the implications of the CBC model are discussed along with a number of related issues in evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, the possibility of sentient plants, the ethical repercussions of universal animal sentience, and the long-range impact of adopting the CBC stance.