Originally published in 1830, this book can be called the first modern work in the philosophy of science, covering an extraordinary range of philosophical, methodological, and scientific subjects. "Herschel's book . . . brilliantly analyzes both the history and nature of science."—Keith Stewart Thomson, American Scientist.

This casebook features ten distinctive and provocative essays in addition to a generous sampling of Ellison's comments on the novel. A number of the latter are from letters never before published; also published here for the first time is Part II of Ellison's "Working Notes on Invisible Man," an undated exposition of his authorial intentions, probably written in 1946 or 1947. The ten essays are a selection of the most perceptive and comprehensive essays written on Invisible Man during the last (...) thirty-five years, including an essay by Kenneth Burke, which began as a letter to Ellison about the novel, written before its publication in 1952. Also among the essays is Larry Neal's "Ellison's Zoot Suit," in which he finds the novel an exemplary enactment in fiction of the "black aesthetic." The essays explore topics of narrative form, classical and vernacular points of reference, and the relationship between the themes of love and politics. Taken together with Ellison's "Working Notes" and later commentary on the novel, these essays account for the continuing appeal of Invisible Man more than fifty years after its publication. An editor's introduction and a full bibliography accompany the essays, selections from Ellison's writings, and informal statements on his novel. The volume offers a rich variety of interpretations of Invisible Man for students and scholars of Ellison. (shrink)

This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the 2002 IRAS Star Island conference, the theme of which was “Is Nature Enough? The Thirst for Transcendence.” I had been asked to represent the position of those who would answer No to the question. I thought it would stimulate discussion if I presented my side of the debate in a somewhat provocative manner rather than use a more ponderous approach that would argue each point in a meticulous and protracted fashion. (...) Here I lay out a theological position that finds naturalism wanting in three ways: in terms of human spiritual needs, in terms of the mind's need for deep explanation, and in terms of the perennial human search for truth. Again, the style of presentation, like that of the original lecture, prohibits the kind of philosophical development that an adequate answer to each of the issues requires. The purpose is that of evoking discussion on a most important question. (shrink)

The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition’s arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition’s arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies. The difference between appropriate and inappropriate iron manning clarifies the limits of the virtue of open-mindedness.

Arguments are weakly meta-argumentative when they call attention to themselves and purport to be successful as arguments. Arguments are strongly metaargumentative when they take arguments (themselves or other arguments) as objects for evaluation, clarification, or improvement and explicitly use concepts of argument analysis for the task. The ambitious meta-argumentation thesis is that all argumentation is weakly argumentative. The modest meta-argumentation thesis is that there are unique instances of strongly meta-argumentative argument. Here, we show how the two theses are connected and (...) both are plausible. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of a fallacy we will call bothsiderism, which is to mistake disagreement on an issue for evidence that either a compromise on, suspension of judgment regarding, or continued discussion of the issue is in order. Our view is that this is a fallacy of a unique and heretofore untheorized type, a fallacy of meta-argumentation. The paper develops as follows. After a brief introduction, we examine a recent bothsiderist case in American politics. We use this as (...) a pivot point to survey the theoretical literature on the fallacy. The most prominent theory is that bothsiderism is a case of dialogue-shifting. This view fails, we maintain, to explain how bothsiderism might be persuasive. We argue, rather, bothsiderism is a kind of meta-argumentative fallacy. (shrink)

In A Third Window Robert Ulanowicz exposes the explanatory weaknesses of both classical and statistical methods in scientific inquiry. His book, however, does much more than that. While being completely grounded in empirical science, it also outlines a worldview, or a metaphysics, that renders intelligible the fact of chance and emergent novelty. Ulanowicz establishes his position by comparing his third window onto nature with two others conventional scientific approaches. The purpose of this essay is to point out the value of (...) Ulanowicz’s approach for improving the quality of conversation between science and theology. (shrink)

Three forms of the straw man fallacy are posed: the straw, weak, and hollow man. Additionally, there can be non-fallacious cases of any of these species of straw man arguments.

Written in debate format, this book covers developing fields such as social cognition, as well as classic areas such as memory, learning, perception and categorization. The links between emotion and memory, learning, perception, categorization, social judgements, and behavior are addressed.

Robert Russell's theological work has been a helpful stimulus to the task of understanding the meaning of divine action and providence in the age of science. He relates God's direct action "fundamentally" to the hidden domain of quantum events, and his theology of nature deserves careful attention. It is questionable, however, whether the term fundamental as applied to quantum events by physical science may be taken over by theology without more careful qualification than Russell offers.

The authors argue that the time is ripe for national and corporate leaders to move consciously towards the development of global ethics. This papers presents a model of global ethics, a rationale for the development of global ethics, and the implications of the model for research and practice.

Gur general vision of the world will undoubtedly affect our environmental ethics. Scientific materialism is the “general vision” that undergirds many scholarly and popular presentations of science today. It is questionable whether this materialist metaphysics can consistently sustain an environmental concern. If scientists influenced by the materialistic outlook, nonetheless, happen to be environmentalists, itis in spite of and not because of their materialist philosophies of nature. What we need, therefore, is a cosmological vision that is nlore consistently supportive of an (...) environmental ethic. Religious visions are often ambiguous in their attitude toward the natural environment. Alfred North Whitehead and his followers weave modem science, philosophical sophistication and religious cosmology into a metaphysical vision fully and consistently supportive of a vigorous environmental ethic. (shrink)

Free speech fallacies are errors of meta-argument. One commits a free speech fallacy when one argues that since there are apparent restrictions on one’s rights of free expression, procedural rules of critical exchange have been broken, and consequently, one’s preferred view is dialectically better off than it may otherwise seem. Free speech fallacies are meta-argumentative, since they occur at the level of assessing the dialectical situation in terms of norms of argument and in terms of meta-evidential principles of interpreting how (...) and why people follow (or fail to follow) argumentative rules. Our plan here is to begin with a brief explanation of meta-argument and meta-argumentative fallacy. We will then turn to the variety of forms of the free speech fallacy, which we will explain as meta-argumentatively erroneous. (shrink)

Evolutionary biology contributes much to our present understanding of life, and it promises also to deepen our understanding of human intelligence, ethics, and even religion. For some scientific thinkers, however, Darwin's science seems so impressive that it now supplants theology altogether by providing the ultimate explanation of all manifestations of life, not only biologically but also metaphysically. By focusing on human intelligence as an emergent aspect of nature this essay examines the question of whether theology can still have an explanatory (...) role to play alongside biology in attempts to understand mind. (shrink)

Evolutionary biology has considerably altered our understanding of life, and it now promises to enhance our understanding of human existence by providing new insights into the meaning of intelligence, ethical aspiration and religious life. For some scientific thinkers, especially those who espouse a physicalist worldview, Darwin’s science seems so impressive that it now replaces theology by providing the deepest available explanation of all manifestations of life, including human intelligence. By focusing on human intelligence this essay asks whether a theological perspective (...) on the universe can still have an illuminating role to play alongside of biology in contemporary attempts to understand human intelligence. (shrink)

The purpose of this thesis is to explain the moral content of the Confessions of St. Augustine. Accordingly, other works of the Saint, as well as commentators on the Confessions will be used solely to clarify the main moral tenets of this work. Since moral principles, moreover, are found not merely in the expressed ideas of St. Augustine, but are also embodied in his actions, moral principles will be gleaned and illustrated from both sources. When, moreover, the Confessions consider man, (...) they view him in the same theocentric fashion, in his relationship to God, and so reaffirm frequently that the happiness of man is inseparably linked with the knowledge and worship of God, the supreme Good and the cause of all moral good. (shrink)

Ten tekst przedstawia trzy różne sposoby, w jakie ludzie, którzy mieli kontakt z nauką, odpowiadają na następujące pytania: „Czy nauka jest zgodna z wiarą religijną?” oraz „Czy nauka nie wyklucza istnienia osobowego Boga?”. Pierwsza odpowiedź zakłada, że nauki przyrodnicze i wiara religijna wykluczają się wzajemnie. To jest sytuacja konfliktu. Jej przedstawiciele należą do dwóch głównych podgrup: sceptyków, którzy wierzą, że nauki przyrodnicze uczyniły wszystkie twierdzenia religijne niewiarygodnymi, oraz ludzi wiary, którzy odmawiają przyjęcia pewnych naukowych idei, takich jak kosmologia Wielkiego Wybuchu (...) i ewolucja biologiczna. W obecnym tekście konflikt dotyczy tylko naukowych sceptyków, którzy twierdzą, że metody i odkrycia naukowe zdezaktualizowały wiarę religijną i teologię. Drugi typ odpowiedzi na wymienione pytania utrzymuje, że nauka i wiara dotyczą różnych poziomów lub wymiarów rzeczywistości. Zgodnie z tym podejściem, nauka i teologia stawiają zupełnie inne rodzaje pytań, dlatego nie można ich traktować jako konkurencyjnych obszarów. W stanowisku kontrastu podkreśla się, że nie może być prawdziwego konfliktu między twierdzeniami nauk przyrodniczych a twierdzeniami wiary i teologii. Wiara i nauka nie rywalizują o jakiś wspólny cel, więc nie mogą wchodzić ze sobą w konflikt. Trzecim stanowiskiem jest konwergencja. Można je również nazwać „współbrzmieniem”, „współpracą”, „kontaktem” lub „konwersacją”. To stanowisko zgadza się z tezą „kontrastu”, według którego wiara religijna i nauki przyrodnicze są różnymi sposobami rozumienia świata, ale argumentuje zarazem, że te dwa obszary nieuchronnie oddziałują na siebie. Konwergencja promuje tę interakcję. Celem zwolenników konwergencji jest osiągnięcie syntezy, w której zarówno nauka, jak i wiara zachowują swoją tożsamość, a jednocześnie pozostają w ścisłym związku ze sobą we wspólnym dążeniu do inteligibilności i prawdy. Konwergencja zakłada, że odkrycia naukowe mają znaczenie dla wiary, innymi słowy, odkrycia naukowe mogą znacząco wpłynąć na to, jak myślimy o Bogu i sensie naszego życia. Konwergencja zakłada, że nauka i wiara, o ile nie są ze sobą mylone, mogą razem prowadzić do bogatszego spojrzenia na rzeczywistość. (shrink)

Has Darwinian science made natural theology obsolete, as many Christian scholars now believe? In this article, the author assumes that natural theology does not take place in a religious vacuum but instead borrows its sense of god from this or that specific faith tradition. Its task is not to arrive at an understanding of the divine mystery different from that of systematic or doctrinal theology. As the author shall argue here, however, the empirical grounding essential to natural theology must be (...) considerably more comprehensive and more profound than that provided by the natural sciences, mainly because the latter usually leave out any mention of the most striking of all natural phenomena – the human mind and its mysterious operations.The author maintains that an exclusively Darwinian narrative cannot fully explain why your mind is restless for truth or why you should trust your mind. The point of natural theology is to ask whether nature as a whole is intelligible apart from the reality of God. The author’s point is that an empirical survey of nature that restricts itself to following the modern scientific method’s habitual exclusion of thought from its survey of nature cannot succeed in making nature intelligible.Contribution: This article argues that evolutionary explanations alone are not enough to account for all that is happening in human understanding and knowing. In the light of evolutionary biology, we must note that even human intelligence, which formerly seemed to elevate our species to a perch above nature, now appears to be an unexceptional product of chance, deep time and natural selection. ‘Thought’, the name we may give to the most splendid of all evolutionary outcomes, is taken to be a product of impersonal natural selection and so also are our moral instincts. (shrink)

Although Michael Polanyi's model of science and his construal of the nature of the real are usually thought to be congenial to religion and although Polanyi himself says that “the stage on which we thus resume our full intellectual powers is borrowed from the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption” (Polanyi 1958, 324), theologians have given little attention to the model of God he presents. The metaphysical and theological vision unfolded in part 4 of Personal Knowledge is a thoughtful alternative (...) to materialist versions of neo‐Darwinism and provides a platform for revisiting four long‐standing controversies at the interface of science and religion: whether life and mind can be completely specified in terms of physical analysis, whether nature can be adequately understood without appeal to final causes, whether natural selection adequately explains life's diverse forms, and whether knowledge can be fully objectified. Through an exploration of Polanyi's contribution to these discussions, we undertake to show not only that his treatment of God as a cosmic field is strikingly original but also that in reinstating activity as a metaphysical category, he reconstructs our understanding of our creaturely hope and calling. (shrink)

Brings the thought and theology of Teilhard de Chardin into conversation with other significant religious thinkers, philosophers, and scientists.

We present a simple distributed concept that appears to insinuate SWARM behavior in a collection of mobile platforms. The control is based on the inter-mobile platform communication links’ signal-to-noise ratio. This double use of communications is a natural linkage for SWARM behavior.

In elite sport, the advantages demonstrated by expert performers over novices are sometimes due in part to their superior physical fitness or to their greater technical precision in executing specialist motor skills. However at the very highest levels, all competitors typically share extraordinary physical capacities and have supremely well-honed techniques. Among the extra factors which can differentiate between the best performers, psychological skills are paramount. These range from the capacities to cope under pressure and to bounce back from setbacks, to (...) the knowledge of themselves, opponents, and the domain, which experts access and apply in performance. In the companion chapter on breadth and depth of knowledge in expert sport (see Chapter 11), we discussed the forms or kinds of knowledge deployed by elite athletes, and described some lines of research which seek to tap and study such expert knowledge (McPherson & MacMahon, 2008; McRobert, Ward, Eccles & Williams, 2011). In this chapter we focus more directly on questions about methods for measuring or more accurately assessing expert knowledge, in particular addressing a wider range of methods to help us understand what experts know. Suggesting that sport researchers can productively adopt and adapt existing qualitative methodologies for integration with more standard quantitative methods, we introduce and survey a number of areas of qualitative research in psychology. (shrink)

Pragma-Dialectics (PD) is an approach to argumentation that can be described as disagreement-centric. On PD, disagreement is the condition which defines argument, it is the practical problem to be solved by it, and disagreement’s management is the ultimate source of argument’s normativity. On PD, arguing in the context of agreement is taken to be “incorrect” and arguments where agreement already reigns are “pointless.” Even the PD account of fallacies is disagreement-centered: a fallacy is something that impedes resolution of a dispute. (...) We argue here that the disagreement-focus of PD yields procedural errors of application in cases of arguments given explicitly for agreement-management, that there are explanations of fallacies better understood as agreement-focused (straw man and ad hominem in particular), and that there are unique meta-argumentative errors emergent in instances of agreement. (shrink)

Father McCormick, the President of the Missouri Province Philosophical Association and Professor of Philosophy at Marquette Univeristy, lucidly solves two more knotty problems of the novice metaphysician. The Editor.

As transnational interactions increase, cross-cultural conflict concerning ethical issues is inevitable. This article presents a model for assisting decision makers in selecting appropriate strategies for addressing cross-cultural ethical conflict. A theoretical framework for the model is developed based on the literature on international business ethics and on conflict resolution. The model is illustrated through several case examples. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross‐culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and is explained in (...) terms of radical re‐entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported. (shrink)