Many academics extol chaos theory and the science of complexity as significant scientific advances with application in such diverse fields as biology, anthropology, economics, and history. In this paper we focus our attention on structure‐within‐chaos and the dynamic self‐organization of complex systems in the context of social philosophy. Although the modern formulation of the science of complexity has developed out of late‐twentieth‐century physics and computational mathematics, its roots may extend much deeper into classical thinking. We argue here that the essential (...) ideas and predictions of the science of complexity are found within the social ordering principle of li (the rites) in Confucius's Analects. (shrink)

Primal emergence -- Out of the dreamtime -- The quickening of chemistry -- Ecology emergent -- Intimate ark : sex and emergence -- Social order in nature : between conflict and cooperation -- Self within world -- From self to sage -- From self to no-self to all-self -- Anti-sage : from cult to empire -- Into Indra's net.

The interconnections between self and surroundings in Daoist thought have been explored in the past in a variety of contexts. This paper, however, explores the Daoist version of the relational self from the general perspective of chaos theory and, more specifically, examines the role of the self in creating emergent form and dynamism in nature and society. The fractal self and world merge through the disciplined effort of the sage until the effort becomes effortless. Both self and world are transformed (...) and become one through the emergent moment. This moment represents a new opportunity for subsequent patterns, or attractors, to emerge. We suggest that the self folds itself into the world, creating and being created by a new attractor, or pattern, in the organization of nature, which we argue is Dao. Our current investigation addresses the following aspects of chaos theory and its relation to Daoism: (1) the Daoist notion of wuwei as perfect congruence; (2) yin and yang at the edge of chaos; (3) the emergent nature of the myriad things; and (4) a Daoist warning against fractal disconnections in the world. Finally, we conclude that the self has the potential to become the world. To approach this amplified condition, the self must dedicate itself to and risk open engagement with events across the complexity of nature. Through openly engaging the world, the self is transformed, leaving the world forever changed. (shrink)

Many academics extol chaos theory and the science of complexity as significant scientific advances with application in such diverse fields as biology, anthropology, economics, and history. In this paper we focus our attention on structure‐within‐chaos and the dynamic self‐organization of complex systems in the context of social philosophy. Although the modern formulation of the science of complexity has developed out of late‐twentieth‐century physics and computational mathematics, its roots may extend much deeper into classical thinking. We argue here that the essential (...) ideas and predictions of the science of complexity are found within the social ordering principle of li (the rites) in Confucius's Analects. (shrink)

Our universe, science reveals, began in utter simplicity, then evolved into burgeoning complexity. Starting with subatomic particles, dissimilar entities formed associations—binding, bonding, growing, branching, catalyzing, cooperating—as “self” joined “other” following universal laws with names such as gravity, chemical attraction, and natural selection. Ultimately life arose in a world of dynamic organic chemistry, and complexity exploded with wondrous new potential. Fast forward to human evolution, and a tension that had existed for billions of years now played out in an unprecedented arena (...) of conscious calculation and cultural diversity. Cooperation interleaving with competition; intimacy oscillating with integrity—we dwell in a world where yin meets yang in human affairs on many levels. In The Fractal Self, John Culliney and David Jones uncover surprising intersections between science and philosophy. Connecting evidence from evolutionary science with early insights of Daoist and Buddhist thinkers, among others, they maintain that sagely behavior, envisioned in these ancient traditions, represents a pinnacle of human achievement emerging out of our evolutionary heritage. They identify an archetype, “the fractal self,” a person in any walk of life who cultivates a cooperative spirit. A fractal self is a sage in training, who joins others in common cause, leads from within, and achieves personal satisfaction in coordinating smooth performance of the group, team, or institution in which he or she is embedded. Fractal selves commonly operate with dedication and compassionate practice in the service of human society or in conserving our planet. But the competitive side of human nature is susceptible to greed and aggression. Self-aggrandizement, dictatorial power, and ego-driven enforcement of will are the goals of those following a self-serving path—individuals the authors identify as antisages. Terrorist leaders are an especially murderous breed, but aggrandizers can be found throughout business, religion, educational institutions, and governments. Humanity has reached an existential tipping point: will the horizon already in view expand with cooperative progress toward godlike emergent opportunities or contract in the thrall of corrupt oligarchs and tribal animosities? We have brought ourselves to a chaotic edge between immense promise and existential danger and are even now making our greatest choice. (shrink)

One of the most classic ontological problems of philosophy is the question of why there exists something instead of nothing. In John L. Culliney and David Jones’s The Fractal Self: Science, Philoso...

We use κ-free but not Whitehead Abelian groups to constructElementary Classes (AEC) which satisfy the amalgamation property but fail various conditions on the locality of Galois-types. We introduce the notion that an AEC admits intersections. We conclude that for AEC which admit intersections, the amalgamation property can have no positive effect on locality: there is a transformation of AEC's which preserves non-locality but takes any AEC which admits intersections to one with amalgamation. More specifically we have: Theorem 5.3. There is (...) an AEC with amalgamation which is not (N₀, N₁)-tame but is 2(N0, ∞)-tame; Theorem 3.3. It is consistent with ZFC that there is an AEC with amalgamation which is not (≤ N₂, ≤ N₂)-compact. (shrink)

John Lachs, one of American philosophy's most distinguished interpreters, turns to William James, Josiah Royce, Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, and George Santayana to elaborate stoic pragmatism, or a way to live life within reasonable limits. Stoic pragmatism makes sense of our moral obligations in a world driven by perfectionist human ambition and unreachable standards of achievement. Lachs proposes a corrective to pragmatist amelioration and stoic acquiescence by being satisfied with what is good enough. This personal, yet modest, (...) philosophy offers penetrating insights into the American way of life and our human character. (shrink)

In this book John Ziman seeks the answers to crucial questions facing scientists who need to change the direction of their careers.

In The life of Richard Owen by his grandson there is an inference to the effect that Owen had objected to his name being used to authorize various statements that Whewell was drafting in opposition to the Vestiges. The inference is drawn from letters that Whewell wrote to Owen on 13 and 15 February 1845. Corroboration of this would corne from a letter of Owen to Whewell, dated 14 February 1845, if extant. Among the Whewell papers at Trinity College, Cambridge, (...) there are several letters from Owen to Whewell, none of which bears that date. There is one, however, dated 14 February 1844 which, on doser inspection, turns out to be the missing link in their correspondance. The evidence for the misdating is not merely that the letter falls naturally into a later sequence. The conclusion is inescapable because Owen refers to an ‘opinion which I have always entertained, and still do strongly, on the subject of a refutation of “Vestiges”’. Since the first edition of Chambers's book did not appear until October 1844, the letter must belong to the following year. My object in this paper is to examine the implications of this letter for a reconstruction of Owen's attitude to that book which Adam Sedgwick could so detest for, among many things, its ‘gross views of physiology’. (shrink)

selves than we care about others, so we are more likely to attend to and interpret our own activities than we are likely to attend to and interpret the activities of others. Yet, it is also a common notion that a person has the least knowledge of his or her own biases or prejudices, and that it is often a naive observer, who can better interpret the meaning of someone's actions when such biases are involved.

Sometimes Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) discuss the philosopher’s contribution to bioethics as a largely theoretical or apriori one that arrives from out of the blue—like Parfit’s identity theory—...

Despite existing international, regional and national guidance on how to obtain valid consent to health-related research, valid consent remains both a practical and normative challenge. This challenge persists despite additional evidence-based guidance obtained through conceptual and empirical research in specific localities on the same subject. The purpose of this paper is to provide an account for why, despite this guidance, this challenge still persist and suggest conceptual resources that can help make sense of this problem and eventually mitigate it’. This (...) paper argues that despite the existence of detailed official guidance and prior conceptual and empirical research on how to obtain valid consent, the question of ‘how to obtain and ascertain valid consent to participation in health-related research’ cannot always be fully answered by exclusive reference to pre-determined criteria/guidance provided by the guidelines and prior research’. To make intelligible why this is so and how this challenge could be allayed, the paper proposes six concepts. The first five of these are intended to account for the persistent seeming inadequacies of existing guidelines. These are fact-skepticism; guideline insufficiency; generality; context-neutrality and presumptiveness. As an outcome of these five, the paper analyzes and recommends a sixth, called bioethical reflexivity. Bioethical reflexivity is reckoned as a handy tool, skill, and attitude by which, in addition to guidance from context-specific research, the persisting challenges can be further eased. Existing ethical guidelines on how to obtain valid consent to health-related research are what they ought to be – general, presumptive and context-neutral. This explains their seeming inadequacies whenever they are being applied in concrete situations. Hence, the challenges being encountered while obtaining valid consent can be significantly eased if we appreciate the guidelines’ nature and what this means for their implementation. There is also a need to cultivate reflexive mindsets plus the relevant skills needed to judiciously close the unavoidable gaps between guidelines and their application in concrete cases. This equally applies to the gaps which cannot be filled by reference to additional guidance from prior conceptual and empirical research in specific contexts. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

The article presents information on the capabilities of Dretske-style analysis of knowing (DAK) and of several competing analyses with respect to accounting for the apparent facts. It informs that the DAK can ground plausible verdicts about knowledge and ignorance in cases involving lotteries. It further informs that the knowledge-efficacy donor imply the implausible thesis.

This paper argues for a theory of the rule of law that is inclusive of sentient non-human animals. It critiques the rule of law theories of Fuller, Waldron, and Allan, by showing that their theories presuppose that the legal subject is a person who can be guided by legal norms. This unduly excludes non-human animals, as well as certain humans who do not have rational capacities. If we view the basic idea of the rule of law as restraining arbitrary power, (...) then rule of law theories need to give an account of who can be a potential victim of such power. Non-human animals and humans, whether endowed with rational capacities or not, can all be victims of arbitrary power. So, we need a new rule of law theory which is inclusive of all sentient animals, humans and non-human alike. This paper sets out such an inclusive theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 107-108 [Access article in PDF] Sixth International Conference of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies John Berthrong Boston University The society's sixth international conference, held 5-12 August 2000, was an exceptionally successful event for the five hundred plus participants. In great measure the success was due to the conference's scenic and user-friendly location at the Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma,Washington, and to the untiring work of (...) Professor Paul Ingram and his staff. The spirit of Mount Rainier towered over the whole event, reminding us that both Buddhism and Christianity have a stake in global healing.One of the most enjoyable aspects of the conference was how well the various panels, presentations, plenary programs, and workshops matched the announced theme of the conference. Although I cannot speak for all the participants, in my extensive sampling of the events, care was given in addressing the question of global healing from a diverse set of spiritual perspectives and academic disciplines.Whether you attended the section on meditation or the erudite papers on orthodoxy, the presenters strove to show how their work could be understood as a way to promote global healing.Nowhere was this attention to the theme of the conference more clearly demonstrated than in the evening plenaries. I confess that I am not a fan of evening meetings. However, in each case the various panels presented their analysis as a gift to the larger mosaic of the conference. The evenings began with Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne and Dr. Cecil Murray addressing nonviolent struggle for economic justice. This was followed by presentations on the Earth Charter; gender, justice, and oppression in Buddhism and Christianity; and consumerism and ecology. I would also be remiss if I did not note that we were treated to wonderful musical performances not only at the opening and closing ceremonies but during all the other plenaries as well.One of the most noteworthy features of the work of the society over the last two decades has been its conviction that erudite scholarship and the actual profession and practice of religion are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the society was founded on the belief that dialogue between Buddhists and Christians is a good thing in and of itself. The workshop on the interior dialogue of meditation was a gentle refutation to those in the academic world who maintain that only analysis of isolated religious practices or texts makes any sense. The society has always urged its members to bring their practices as well as their ideas to the dialogical encounter. [End Page 107]Music played a moving role in the life of the conference. The plenary sessions took place in the magnificent new music center at PLU, wherein resides a huge concert organ.We were literally moved by the organ's powerful rendition of the classic works of the Western religious musical tradition. Matching the organ was the gentle call of the shakuhachi. An organ and a shakuhachi may seem mismatched in theory and performance--much less sheer volume for the bamboo flute--but they blended into a symphony of shared sacred music.Having praised the thematic attentiveness, musical brilliance, and spiritual depth of the conference, I must likewise highlight the academic integrity of the papers. Many of the professorial types mentioned over and over again how pleased they were with the thoughtfulness of the academic presentations. Here we need not only to thank the authors but also the conference planning committee for its ability to select the best representatives of erudite, informed, and engaged models of academic scholarship. Those who were not present will simply have to wait for many of these fine papers to be published in various scholarly journals. Another helpful detail was the conference bookstore, which stocked many of the recent publications of the participants.The only criticism I heard during the whole conference was that it was, alas, a bit too long. In this busy world it is difficult for most people to block out a whole week for one conference. I mention this only in... (shrink)

Holt's most direct and radical challenge to the educational status quo and a clarion call to parents to save their children from schools of all kinds.

Among various kinds of disclosures typically required in research as well as in clinical scenarios, risk information figures prominently. A key question is, what kinds of risk information would the reasonable person want to know? I will argue, however, that the reasonable person construct is and always has been incapable of settling this very question. After parsing the nebulous if not “contentless” character of the reasonable person, I will explain how Western courts have actually adjudicated cases of “negligent nondisclosure,” that (...) is, cases in which patient‐plaintiffs allege that their informed consent rights were violated by the failure of their health providers to inform them of reasonably foreseeable risks that subsequently materialized. To support my argument, I will scrutinize the landmark decision by the United Kingdom's Supreme Court in Montgomery v. Lanarkshire Health Board and, in particular, Justice Brenda Hale's concurrence. (shrink)

I was in manufacturing for over thirty years and a manager for nearly twenty-five. During that time it never occurred to me that the consequentialist, utilitarian framework I used was inadequate as a conceptual framework for making decisions to ensure organisational viability and success.1 The framework gave three criteria which enabled me to construct a rational approach to issues associated with my role as a manager: To show that this framework is adequate as a basis for managerial decision making I (...) want to spell out the logical implications of the three criteria and show that they are necessary and jointly sufficient to provide an epistemically sound framework for managerial decisions. I will argue that we can look to managerial practice for examples which can serve as paradigms for constructing a pragmatic approach to management decision making, one that — when employed correctly — will result in the best moral outcome for all those affected by a decision.2 This approach is derived from, and ultimately justified by, the primary role responsibility of a manager to create and implement a healthy work environment. This is one designed to be viable so that the organisation can compete successfully in the marketplace and meet the morally minimal standard that we ought not to cause unnecessary and avoidable harm to innocent people. Because the approach is goal directed, it is teleological and consequential in nature. I maintain that a workplace, or organisation, is healthy when all the components that constitute it are working coherently together to achieve legitimate organisational goals designed to ensure the best chances of being viable and competitive. Such an organisation is what I term optimally functional.3. (shrink)

We propose a criterion to regard a property of a theory (in first or second order logic) as virtuous: the property must have significant mathematical consequences for the theory (or its models). We then rehearse results of Ajtai, Marek, Magidor, H. Friedman and Solovay to argue that for second order logic, ‘categoricity’ has little virtue. For first order logic, categoricity is trivial; but ‘categoricity in power’ has enormous structural consequences for any of the theories satisfying it. The stability hierarchy extends (...) this virtue to other complete theories. The interaction of model theory and traditional mathematics is examined by considering the views of such as Bourbaki, Hrushovski, Kazhdan, and Shelah to flesh out the argument that the main impact of formal methods on mathematics is using formal definability to obtain results in ‘mainstream’ mathematics. Moreover, these methods (e.g., the stability hierarchy) provide an organization for much mathematics which gives specific content to dreams of Bourbaki about the architecture of mathematics. (shrink)

John Henderson focuses on three key Letters visiting three Roman villas, and reveals their meaning as designs for contrasting lives. Seneca brings the philosophical epistle to Latin literature, creating models for moralizing which feature self-criticism, parody, and animated revision of myth. The Stoic moralist wrests writing away from Greek gurus and texts, and recasts it into critical thinking in Latin terms, within a Roman context. The Letters embody critical thinking on metaphor and translation, self-transformation and cultural tradition.

EPICURUS AND HIS FRIENDS Every philosopher has a personal history, and it is often helpful to understand his history if we want to understand his philosophy ...

Art of seeing, John Rajchman argues in his essay, was in the center of Michel Foucault’s critical attention as well as practice. Foucault himself was a visual thinker and writer. More importantly, however, the ways in which historically changing vision determines not only what is seen, but what can be seen, are one of his major concerns. Rupture with self-evidences is then the first step one must take to make the invisible – yet not hidden – power visible. Th (...) e invisibility of power, seen as the invisible light that makes other things visible, is what makes it tolerable. Knowledge and the practice of knowing themselves are constructed by the technology of the visual, such as the diff erent types of spaces that bring about specific visibility. In Foucault’s histories, the prison or the clinic are such spaces that have visualized criminality, sexuality or madness in particular manner. However, problematization of these things needs to go beyond new ways of looking at them and has to question their entire field of vision. This implies that Foucauldian ethics is less concerned with what we do about things themselves, instead, it rather asks how we see them in the first place and how can they be seen differently. It thus requires not to look within us, on the contrary, we should look out, from outside of ourselves. (shrink)

Fish comes dangerously close to identifying the meaning of a statement with its illocutionary force. At one point he says that "the meaning of a sentence is a function of its illocutionary force". At another he says that a move from a situation in which "I have to study for an exam" is heard as a statement to one in which it is heard as a rejection of a proposal is a move "from one meaning that emerges in a set (...) of circumstances to another meaning that emerges in another set of circumstances". Since "meaning" is so tricky a term, it may be well to remind ourselves that in a situation in which the sentences "I have to tie my shoes," "I have to eat popcorn," and "I hate movies" would all be understood as rejections of an invitation to the movies, no one would mistake the meaning of one for that of either of the other two. The three sentences make different statements, convey different information, and offer different reasons for not going to the movies. There is a sense in which Y's saying "I hate movies" means that he rejects the proposal. But even in that situation, the meaning of "I hate movies" isn't reducible to "I reject your proposal." John Reichert, chairman of the English department at Williams College, is the author of Making Sense of Literature. He has contributed "Making Sense of Interpretation" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

John Harris; A Paradox of Multicultural Societies, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 223–233, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

Frederick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 Robert Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one. Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Fragmente When two major studies on the same thematic appear roughly simultaneously, integrating not only their authors' respective careers but the revisions of a whole generation of scholarship, the moment cries out for stock-taking, both substantively and methodologically. (...) At a minimum, we need to recognize the key theses of our two protagonists and the frameworks they erect to uphold them. But we need even more to step back from that endeavor to wider considerations. I advance two claims in that light. First, something has been unearthed in these studies which speaks to urgent philosophical concerns of our day, namely the rise of naturalized epistemology and the need for a more encompassing naturalism. Indeed, I suspect this current interest may have incited discernment of just those aspects of the earlier age. That signals something essential about the point and practice of intellectual history, namely the mutuality, not opposition, of historicism and presentism. (shrink)

Collins, John Francis; Carroll, Sandra In the April 2012 edition of The Australasian Catholic Record John Duiker presented a useful overview and history of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal titled 'Spreading the Culture of Pentecost in the Midst of Disenchantment.' According to Duiker the CCR as an ecclesial movement 'has its origins in a retreat that was held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the USA in February 1967.' Describing this event as a Pentecost experience Duiker writes that (...) the movement that was started by this event 'spread to other college campuses and continued to spread right across the world, and now exists in over 220 countries and has touched the lives of over 120 million Catholics.' Duiker's article draws on Charles Taylor's thesis that our post-enlightenment Western culture has been emptied-out of the idea of God's providence leading to 'a diminishing of the necessity of grace and a fading of the sense of mystery.' Duiker then presents a case for CCR being recognised 'as an example for the re-enchantment of a post-Enlightenment secular world.'. (shrink)

With the discovery in 1995 of the first planet orbiting another star, we know that planets are not unique to our own Solar System. For centuries, humanity has wondered whether we are alone in the Universe. We are now finally one step closer to knowing the answer. The quest for exoplanets is an exciting one, because it holds the possibility that one day we might find life elsewhere in the Universe, born in the light of another sun. Written from the (...) perspective of one of the pioneers of this scientific adventure, this exciting account describes the development of the modern observing technique that has enabled astronomers to find so many planets orbiting around other stars. It reveals the wealth of new planets that have now been discovered outside our Solar System, and what this means in terms of finding other life in the Universe. (shrink)

John Wilson; A Reply to James Marshall, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 105–107, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.

John Neville Figgis was a historian, political theorist and monk, his writings extensively influenced the history of ideas and prefigured the theological developments of the 1920s. First published in 1916, this second edition of a 1907 original provides six chapters on various aspects of political thought from between 1414 and 1625, together with one introductory chapter and extensive notes. It was derived from a The Birkbeck Lectures for 1900, which were delivered by Figgis at Trinity College, Cambridge. This book (...) will be of value to anyone with an interest in Medieval history, Renaissance history, and the history of ideas in general. (shrink)