Shors & Matzel's target article is a thought-provoking attempt to reconceptualise long-term potentiation as an attentional or arousal mechanism rather than a memory storage mechanism. This is incompatible with the facts of the neurobiology of attention and of the behavioural neurophysiological properties of hippocampal neurons.

In the mid-eighteenth century David Hume argued that successful prediction tells us nothing about the truth of the predicting theory. But physical theory routinely predicts the values of observable magnitudes within very small ranges of error. The chance of this sort of predictive success without a true theory suggests that Hume's argument is flawed. However, Colin Howson argues that there is no flaw and examines the implications of this disturbing conclusion; he also offers a solution to one of the (...) central problems of Western philosophy, the problem of induction. (shrink)

The agent-structure problem is a much discussed issue in the field of international relations. In his comprehensive analysis of this problem, Colin Wight deconstructs the accounts of structure and agency embedded within differing IR theories and, on the basis of this analysis, explores the implications of ontology - the metaphysical study of existence and reality. Wight argues that there are many gaps in IR theory that can only be understood by focusing on the ontological differences that construct the theoretical (...) landscape. By integrating the treatment of the agent-structure problem in IR theory with that in social theory, Wight makes a positive contribution to the problem as an issue of concern to the wider human sciences. At the most fundamental level politics is concerned with competing visions of how the world is and how it should be, thus politics is ontology. (shrink)

Should cognitive scientists be any more embarrassed about their lack of a discipline-fixing definition of cognition than biologists are about their inability to define “life”? My answer is “no”. Philosophers seeking a unique “mark of the cognitive” or less onerous but nevertheless categorical characterizations of cognition are working at a level of analysis upon which hangs nothing that either cognitive scientists or philosophers of cognitive science should care about. In contrast, I advocate a pluralistic stance towards uses of the term (...) ‘cognition’ that eschews the urge to treat cognition as a metaphysically well-defined “natural” kind. (shrink)

The interpretation of functional imaging experiments is complicated by the pluripotency of brain regions. As there is a many-to-one mapping between cognitive functions and their neural substrates, region-based analyses of imaging data provide only weak support for cognitive theories. Price and Friston argue that we need a ‘cognitive ontology’ that abstractly categorizes the function of regions. I argue that abstract characterizations are unlikely to be cognitively interesting. I argue instead that we should attribute functions to regions in a context-sensitive manner. (...) I review recent meta-analyses that approach fMRI data in this light and argue that they have revisionary potential. (shrink)

Nanotechnology thrives in the realm of the virtual. Throughout its history, the field has been shaped by futuristic visions of technological revolution, hyperbolic promises of scientific convergence at the molecular scale, and science fiction stories of the world rebuilt atom by atom. Even today, amid the welter of innovative nanomaterials that increasingly appear in everyday consumer products—the nanoparticles enhancing our sunscreens, the carbon nanotubes strengthening our tennis rackets, the antimicrobial nano-silver lining our socks, the nanofilms protecting our wrinkle-free trousers—the public (...) rhetoric of nanotechnology constantly reminds us that such precision-engineered materials merely represent a trace or a premonition of the amazing future still to come... (shrink)

In recent years there has been a bold revival in the field of natural theology, where “natural theology” can be understood as the attempt to demonstrate that God exists by way of reason, evidence, and argument without the appeal to divine revelation. Today's practitioners of natural theology have not only revived and recast all of the traditional arguments in the field, but, by drawing upon the findings of contemporary cosmology, chemistry, and biology, have also developed a range of fascinating new (...) ones. -/- Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology brings together twenty experts working in the field today. Together, they practice natural theology from a wide range of perspectives, and show how the field of natural theology is practiced today with a degree of diversity and confidence not seen since the Middle Ages. Aimed primarily at advanced undergraduates and graduate students, the volume will also be of interest to researchers in philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and religious studies, as an indispensable resource on contemporary theistic proofs. (shrink)

This paper is about the underlying logical principles of scientific theories. In particular, it concerns ex contradictione quodlibet (ECQ) the principle that anything follows from a contradiction. ECQ is valid according to classical logic, but invalid according to paraconsistent logics. Some advocates of paraconsistency claim that there are ‘real’ inconsistent theories that do not erupt with completely indiscriminate, absurd commitments. They take this as evidence in favor of paraconsistency. Michael (2016) calls this the non-triviality strategy (NTS). He argues that this (...) strategy fails in its purpose. I will show that Michael's criticism significantly over-reaches. The fundamental problem is that he places more of a burden on the advocate of paraconsistency than on the advocate of classical logic. The weaknesses in Michael's argument are symptomatic of this preferential treatment of one viewpoint in the debate over another. He does, however, make important observations that allow us to clarify some of the complexities involved in giving a logical reconstruction of a theory. I will argue that there are abductive arguments deserving of further consideration for the claim that paraconsistent logic offers the best explanation of the practice of inconsistent science. In this sense, the debate is still very much open. (shrink)

Debates over the relative priority of experience and language have been among some of the most vexed, but also generative, disputes in pragmatist philosophy over the past few decades. These debates have, however, run into the ground such that both positions find themselves at a definitive standstill. I argue for a rejuvenation of pragmatism by way of moving beyond both the experience option (here represented by Dewey) and the linguistic turn in pragmatism (here represented by Brandom). We can move beyond (...) these two categories, I argue, by resuscitating the categorical conception that has always been at the heart of pragmatism all along: action or, as I prefer to put it, conduct. In this paper, I develop an argument for “conduct pragmatism” on the basis of a return to William James’s earliest statements of pragmatism, statements that indeed occur prior to the official announcement of “pragmatism” in 1898. I draw on a dispute with Charles Sanders Peirce over the best interpretation of pragmatism as well as on a number of James’s early psychological writings from the 1880s leading up to the Principles of Psychology of 1890. These texts definitively establish that the early James was what I call a “conduct pragmatist” well before his radical empiricism facilitated what was only a late turn toward the “experience pragmatism” that would come to impress Dewey and later scholars of classicopragmatism. The early James thus represents, I argue, a promising seed for a new third generation of pragmatism that may find its way beyond the endings of both experientialism and lingualism, as well as their impasses with one another. (shrink)

This deep presence of Foucault’s influence across contemporary theoretical landscapes signals a need for self-reflectiveness that has largely (though not entirely) been missing in contemporary uses of Foucault. While scholarship in a Foucauldian vein is obviously alive and well, scholarship on Foucauldian methodology is not. This paper develops a distinction between two methodological features of Foucault’s work that deserve to be disentangled: I parse the methods (e.g., genealogy, archaeology) and concepts (e.g., discipline, biopower) featured in Foucault’s texts. Following this, I (...) use the terms of this distinction to develop a detailed survey of two quite different contemporary uses of Foucault. My two test cases for comparison are the works of Giorgio Agamben and Ian Hacking, two contemporary theorists who demonstrate a productive engagement with central features of Foucault’s work. (shrink)

Separated from its anchorage in religion, ethics has followed the social sciences in seeing human beings as fundamentally characterized by self-interest, so that altruism is either naively idealistic or arrogantly self-sufficient. Colin Grant contends that, as a modern secular concept, altruism is a parody on the self-giving love of Christianity, so that its dismissal represents a social levelling that loses the depths that theology makes intelligible and religion makes possible. The Christian affirmation is that God is characterized by self-giving (...) love, then expected of Christians. Lacking this theological background, the focus on self-interest in sociobiology and economics, and on human realism in the political focus of John Rawls or the feminist sociability of Carol Gilligan, finds altruism naive or a dangerous distraction from real possibilities of mutual support. This book argues that to dispense with altruism is to dispense with God and with the divine transformation of human possibilities. (shrink)

Property rights are the rules governing ownership in society. This Element offers an analytical framework to understand the origins and consequences of property rights. It conceptualizes of the political economy of property rights as a concern with the follow questions: What explains the origins of economic and legal property rights? What are the consequences of different property rights institutions for wealth creation, conservation, and political order? Why do property institutions change? Why do legal reforms relating to property rights such as (...) land redistribution and legal titling improve livelihoods in some contexts but not others? In analyzing property rights, the authors emphasize the complementarity of insights from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, including Austrian economics, public choice, and institutional economics, including the Bloomington School of institutional analysis and political economy. (shrink)

This paper seeks to demonstrate that propositions 23–27 of the Euclidian Optics originated in the context of geometrical astronomy. These entries, which deal with the geometry of spheres and rays, present material that overlaps considerably with propositions 1–3 of Aristarchus of Samos’ On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon. While all these theorems deal with material that could conceivably be native to celestial illumination, the proofs do not work for binocular vision. It therefore seems probable that (...) the proofs were borrowed from Aristarchus or, more likely, some common astronomical predecessor. As an extension of this observation, this paper argues that the Optics displays a far less unified purpose than has typically been assumed. Instead, it reflects a conglomerate of concerns, goals and dependencies, insofar as it presents multiple proofs that emerge from a set of geometrical concerns not directly related to vision as a physical phenomenon. These entries complicate the idea that the Optics is about explaining light, sight or false appearances in any straightforward sense. Instead, the text is oriented toward a somewhat more diffuse goal: simply to articulate the geometry of vision and rays. Optics as a discipline should should therefore be understood not as a purely mathematical explanation of vision, but as a target-field of explanation constituted by features and boundaries derived from extra-visual geometric concerns. (shrink)

According to Stephen Law’s “X-claim argument,” the theist’s acquiring (what I call) an “x-claim defeater” automatically provides the theist with a reason to give up her x-claim belief. Contrary to Law, I argue that, even if the theist acquires such a defeater, it does not follow that the theist ought to give up her x-claim belief. This is because the degree of justification possessed by the theist’s belief may be sufficient to epistemically insulate itself against the x-claim defeater that was (...) initially brought against it. Hence, the theist may be justified in maintaining her x-claim belief. (shrink)

"After the first 40 pages I was hooked, and it has been a long time since I have been unable to put a book down unitl it was finished. I would highly recommend this book. Colin Feltham has brought together all the elements that have or do influence counselling, including placing counselling in a social context. As far as this publication goes I have actually put my money where my mouth is and paid for a copy of my own." (...) --Gladeana McMahon in British. (shrink)

The term ‘space’ is inherently geographical. Educational provision and activity takes place within spaces ranging from a room at home or in a school to a campus to an administrative area which could be a state within a country, a whole country or a group of countries. Such spaces are known as geographical surfaces. Within these spaces the process of learning and teaching takes place at particular points that are often nodes in a network which may be formal, such as (...) a group of schools or universities, or non-formal, such as in cyberspace. Understanding what goes on depends on the scale at which it is observed, ranging from individuals to global outreach. Altogether, this constitutes the geography of educational reality. This comprehensive volume includes a theoretical background, plus a sample of situations including school level, policy and administration, inequitable access, education hubs, and small states. It offers an introduction to a relatively neglected member of the family of education foundation disciplines, the geography of education. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Comparative Education. _. (shrink)

In his Epistemic Justification , Swinburne offers a sophisticated and intuitively plausible causal-doxastic analysis of the basing relation that has escaped the attention of those working on this relation, where the basing relation can be understood as the relation that holds between a reason and one’s belief when the belief is held for that reason. In this paper, I aim to fill this lacuna in the literature by arguing that, despite its initial plausibility, Swinburne’s analysis of the basing relation is (...) subject to a simple counterexample and so must be rejected. (shrink)

A number of counterexamples have recently been leveled against Alvin Plantinga's Proper Functionalism, counterexamples aimed at showing that Plantinga's theory fads to provide sufficient conditions for warrant — that elusive epistemic property which together with true belief yields knowledge Among these counterexamples, Laurence Bonjour s is perhaps the most formidable and, if successful, shows that Proper Functionalism is simply too weak to serve as an acceptable theory of warrant In this paper, I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, BonJour's counterexample (...) is not successful More exactly, I argue that, once it is recognized that a defeasibility constraint is deeply embedded within Plantinga's proper function condition for warrant — a constraint which says, in effect, that a belief B is warranted for an agent S only of S does not possess any defeaters against B — BonJour's counterexample to Proper Functionalism can be handled quite straightforwardly. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between online dispute resolution (ODR) and trust. We discuss what trust is, why trust is important, and how trust develops. Our claim is that efforts to implement online dispute resolution on a site or service in a manner that promotes trust need to consider ODR as just one tool in a broader toolbox of trust-building tools and techniques. These techniques are amongst others marketing, education, trust seals, and transparency. By evaluating ODR in its proper context (...) as one component of a larger trust strategy, we can more accurately set expectations for its results and position our projects for success. (shrink)

In 1959, Richard Feynman suggested that the most compelling reason to pursue nanoscale research might be ‘just for fun.’ This article traces a history of playful images and ludic practices in nanotechnology. Two case studies—nanocars and nanosoccer—exemplify the ways in which scientific research mobilizes speculative futures, less through engineering design or stepwise protocol than through the recreational dynamics of play. Although such molecular toys might appear frivolous, they index the increasingly widespread conditions of play labor, or ‘playbor’, shaping today’s technoculture. (...) Exploring the processes of transmutation and transvaluation by which technological imaginaries are rendered operative, this article tells a story of how the nanoworld became an everyday reality by becoming a game. (shrink)

Aristotle determines eristic argument as argument which either operates upon the basis of acceptable premisses (endoxa) and merely give the impression of being deductive, or argument which truly is deductive but operates upon the basis of premisses which seem to be acceptable, but are not (or, again, argument which uses both of these mechanisms). I attempt to understand what Aristotle has in mind when he says that someone is deceived into accepting premisses which seem to be acceptable but which are (...) really not, and how this disqualifies such arguments from being dialectical. In the first section of the paper I interpret Aristotle’s notion of endoxa in terms of a relational concept of acceptability. Real Índoxa are propositions which are accepted by a qualified group or individual. False endoxa may also be accepted by someone or some group, and may even be true, but they are used to serve the purposes of eristical argumentation, which departs from certain standards of dialectical argumentation articulated in the notion of endoxa as a norm for premiss-acceptance. In particular, eristic arguments may even be valid in the sense of a syllogismos while still failing to be proper dialectical arguments. In the second part of the paper I consider how this can be, in examining certain types of fallacies in the Sophistical Refutations and the relationship between fallacious argumentation and false endoxa. (shrink)

This paper argues that neither a general right to exclude migrants nor a general right to migrate freely exists. The extent of the right to exclude or the right to migrate freely must instead, in the majority of cases, be determined indirectly by examining whether a given immigration law or policy would result in the violation of migrants right to exclude migrants is constrained by what the author calls the indirect principle of freedom of migration. Under this principle, if an (...) immigration law or policy cannot be imposed without violating a migrant's basic rights, then the law or policy cannot be legitimately implemented. The argument for this principle is undertaken both conceptually and substantively. It is then defended against the objections that on the one hand, it may not have enough critical force, and on the other, it may be overly restrictive of states’ power to exclude migrants. (shrink)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks are due to the authors and publishers of the following books for permission to reproduce copyright material : JP Sartre— Words ...

The criminal conviction of Amway Corporation for evasion of Canadian customs duties not only belies the high ethical profession of its president, Richard DeVos, but his reissuing of the book which makes this profession, without mentioning the conviction, supports the view that ultimately ethics and business are pulling in opposite directions.

The claim of neutrality made on behalf of “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” has been re-enforced by Kay Mathiesen’s creation of “TheAltruist’s Dilemma.” That this represents a neutral variation on “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” is compromised, however, by the failure of “The Altruist’s Dilemma” to deal with altruism in a full sense. The difference illustrates how, in contrast to its professed neutrality, “ThePrisoner’s Dilemma” involves very definite views of humanity and the nature of life itself. This is confirmed by Mathiesen’s misreading of O. (...) Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”. (shrink)

Two substantive comments are made. The first is methodological, and concerns Heyes's proposals for a critical test for theory of mind. The second is theoretical, and concerns the appropriateness of asking questions about theory of mind in nonhuman primates. Although Heyes warns against the apparent simplicity of the theory of mind hypothesis, she underplays the linguistic implications.

Charles Hartshorne is usually regarded as the developer of the theological approach initiated by Alfred North Whitehead. Justification for this view is to be found not only in the central focus of Hartshorne's voluminous writings, but also in his own references to Whitehead's accomplishments. He notes that Whitehead did not regard himself as a theologian, but rather saw his task as that of attempting to reconcile the professedly neutral burgeoning fields of science and the wider ideals necessary to civilized human (...) life. It is in the context of this pursuit that Whitehead makes his extremely suggestive, but tantalizingly vague, comments which provide a foundation for theological reconstruction. According to this approach, two dimensions, or natures, must be distinguished in God, a conceptual primordial nature which structures the possibilities for life and a concrete consequential nature which receives the actualities which result from the possibilities that are realized. (shrink)