This volume provides a guide to the discussion among biologists and philosophersabout the role of concepts such as function and design in an evolutionary understanding oflife.

Chemical engineering - as a recognised skill in the workplace, as an academic discipline, and as an acknowledged profession - is scarcely a century old. Yet from a contested existence before the First World War, chemical engineering had become one of the 'big four' engineering professions in Britain, and a major contributor to Western economies, by the end of the twentieth century. The subject had distinct national trajectories. In Britain - too long seen as shaped by American experiences - the (...) emergence of recognised chemical engineers was the result of professional aspirations and contingency, and shaped by a shifting ecology of institutions, firms and government. Drawing upon extensive archival research, this book examines the evolution of technical practice, working environment and social interactions of chemical engineering. It will be of considerable interest to historians, sociologists of the professions, and to practitioners themselves. (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to how he is often read, Spinoza did not believe that the mind and the body were numerically identical. This means that we must find some alternative reading for his claims that they are 'one and the same thing'.

Department of Political Studies, Queen's University, 99 University Avenue, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6. Email: farrelly{at}queensu.ca ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Should we invest more public funding in basic aging research that could lead to medical interventions that permit us to safely and effectively retard human aging? In this paper I make the case for answering in the affirmative. I examine, and critique, what I call the Fairness Objection to making aging research a greater (...) priority than it currently is. The Fairness Objection presumes that support for aging research is limited to a simplistic utilitarian justification. That is, a mode of justification that is aggregative and permits imposing high costs on a few so that small benefits could be enjoyed by numerous recipients. I develop two arguments to refute the Fairness Objection. The Fairness Objection mischaracterizes the utilitarian argument for retarding human aging. It does so by invoking the fallacious conceptual distinction between "saving lives" and "extending lives", as well as making a number of mistaken assumptions concerning the likely benefits of retarding human aging. Secondly, I argue that the case for tackling aging can be made on contractualist , in addition to utilitarian, grounds. Because the harms of senescence are "morally relevant" to the harms of disease, contractualists can permit aggregation within lives. And thus no one could reasonably reject, I contend, a principle that makes the aspiration to tackle human aging more of a priority than it currently is. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Ralph Dahrendorf survived incarceration in a German concentration camp in 1944. He later took degrees in sociology at Hamburg University and the London School of Economics and spent some time as one of Germany's European Commissioners, although he was critical of aspects of the bureaucracy. Dahrendorf was Director of the London School of Economics for ten years and gave the Reith Lectures in 1974. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1977, knighted in 1982 and became Member (...) of the House of Lords in 1993. Dahrendorf retired to Germany. Obituary by Colin Crouch FBA. (shrink)

We study companies that do not produce a sustainability report in contexts where institutionalisation is assumed. Based on a careful analysis of interaction patterns between non-reporting companies, sustainability interest groups, and peer organisations, we find patterns of discursive and material isomorphism that suggest sustainability reporting is confined to an issues-based field, rather than spreading as an institutionalised practice across the business community. We argue that the issues-based field exerts only weak pressure for sustainability reporting, and that encouraging more firms to (...) report rests on understanding what influences companies to interact more widely to become part of this field. (shrink)

What will the demands of distributive justice be in the postgenetic revolutionary world? Will genetic inheritance be regarded as socially distributed goods? This may seem a more reasonable position to assert as biotechnology progresses further toward human genetic manipulation.

In a well-known paper, Timothy Williamson claimed to prove with a coin-flipping example that infinitesimal-valued probabilities cannot save the principle of Regularity, because on pain of inconsistency the event ‘all tosses land heads’ must be assigned probability 0, whether the probability function is hyperreal-valued or not. A premise of Williamson’s argument is that two infinitary events in that example must be assigned the same probability because they are isomorphic. It was argued by Howson that the claim of isomorphism fails, but (...) a more radical objection to Williamson’s argument is that it had been, in effect, refuted long before it was published. (shrink)

Alan Musgrave has consistently defended two positions that he regards as commonsensical: critical realism and critical rationalism. In this volume a group of internationally-renowned authors discuss themes that are relevant in one way or another to Musgrave’s work. Rather than a standard celebratory festschrift, this book offers a new examination of topics of current interest in philosophy. The contributory essays are followed by responses from Alan Musgrave himself.

This paper explores how managers and professionals from two functional areas, finance and accountancy and human resource management, perceive, think about and act upon ethical conundrums at work. The study is based on 43 interviews in which respondents were asked to report on ethical issues and incidents they had experienced at work. A conceptual framework is presented which is used to analyse the critical incidents.

Can the reality of complex moral situations be represented by means other than those of imaginative literature?If we could readily agree with Martha Nussbaum that "certain novels are, irreplaceably, works of moral philosophy" (148), then we might already have an answer to the question of whether or not literature matters. It would matter to us to the exact extent that it might help to make our lives richer, better and fuller. Nussbaum, though, refers only to "certain novels" and not to (...) literature in general. She readily admits that not all novels will suit her interests (45). For every novel that is a major work of moral philosophy, there may be more that are morally indifferent or even reprehensible and damaging. .. (shrink)

Paradoxically, the rise of neoliberal economic thinking and its rejection of concepts of both state intervention in the economy and the pursuit of purposes bybusiness that are not directly related to profit maximization, has been accompanied by intensified social criticism of business and concerns about sustainability. The article explores the implications of these paradoxes and relates them to active consumerism and to the issue of market externalities.

Hayek and the Efficient Market Hypothesis are often seen as proposing a similar theory of prices. Hayek is seen as proposing to understand prices as information conveyer, incorporating inform...

George Berkeley's two major works, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, are presented here, together with perhaps the most searching examination his ideas received during his lifetime, that of the American Samuel Johnson, who corresponded with Berkeley during his stay in the country.

The main function of vision in many animals is to control movement. In rodents, some visuomotor acts require the construction of models of the external world while others rely on Gibsonian invariants. Such findings support Norman's dual processing approach but it is not clear that the two types of processing rely on homologs of visual processing streams described in primates.

An argument has been recently proposed by Watkins, whose objective is to show the impossibility of a statistical explanation of single events. This present paper is an attempt to show that Watkins's argument is unsuccessful, and goes on to argue for an account of statistical explanation which has much in common with Hempel's classic treatment.

βριс φυτεει τραννον βριс κτλ. Thus the MSS, Schol. and Stobaeus 4.8. 11 . βριν φυτεει τυραννον βριс κτλ. Thus Blaydes, followed recently by R. P. Winnington-Ingram, JHS 91 , 126 = Sophocles. An interpretation , p. 192 ; R. D. Dawe, Sophoclis Tragoediae , i. 156 and Sophocles. Oedipus Rex , pp. 18, 61,182 f. ; R. W. B. Burton, The Chorus in Sophocles' Tragedies , p. 164 ; J. Diggle, CRn.s. 32, 14.

Kyburg’s opposition to the subjective Bayesian theory, and in particular to its advocates’ indiscriminate and often questionable use of Dutch Book arguments, is documented and much of it strongly endorsed. However, it is argued that an alternative version, proposed by both de Finetti at various times during his long career, and by Ramsey, is less vulnerable to Kyburg’s misgivings. This is a logical interpretation of the formalism, one which, it is argued, is both more natural and also avoids other, widely-made (...) objections to Bayesianism. (shrink)

We have previously built a small IKg ([Angle 89] and [Brooks 89]) six legged walking robot named Genghis. It was remarkably successful as a testbed to develop walking and learning algorithms. It encouraged us to build a more fully engineered robot with higher performance. We are building two copies of the robot, both 1.6Kg in mass. Their generic name is Attila. Attila has 24 actuators and over 150 sensors, all connected via a local network (the I2C bus) to 11 onboard (...) computers. (shrink)

The problem with idealization is not just that, when idealizing, scientists ask us to suppose false things. Many people do that. No, the puzzling thing about idealizers—unlike astrologers, spodomancers, and homeopaths—is that it is worth listening to them. Supposing that populations of rabbits are in- finite is useful for a variety of ecological explanations. Yet we are not up to our necks in rabbits; the puzzle is why it should be useful to suppose that we are.

In the Lectures on Religious Belief Wittgenstein is reported as saying that the non-believer cannot contradict the believer. This claim may seem both to run against our experience, particularly if we are apostates, and to offer a protection to the believer from the most direct criticism. Such claims, and others which are less clear but just as surprising, combine to suggest that much of what Wittgenstein has to say about religion and religious belief is obscurantist, and he acknowledges that some (...) say this of him. (shrink)

Can memory be cast as a system that meshes events to actions? This commentary considers the concepts of mesh versus association, arguing that thus far the distinction is inadequate. However, the goal of shifting to an action-based view of memory has merit, most notably in emphasizing memory as a skill and in focusing on processes as opposed to structures.

In Minds and Bodies, one of philosophy's most dynamic and versatile thinkers gathers nearly forty review essays written over the past twenty years for publications of a nonspecialized kind. They cover biography, particularly of Russell and Wittgenstein; philosophy of mind, especially consciousness; and ethics, with an emphasis on applied ethics. Lucid and accessible, these essays together form a vivid picture of contemporary philosophy for the general reader, and will be welcomed by those within the philosophical community for their crisp critical (...) insights and rigorous assessments. (shrink)