In this paper, I present a detailed interpretation of Peirce’s cosmogony about the origin of the universe and its evolutionary development. This involves bringing together and making sense of Peirce’s disconnected statements on cosmology, which are scattered throughout his writings and which sometimes employ different terminologies. Furthermore, it shall involve identifying the categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness that govern its conceptual structure, and ultimately the metaphysical structure of the universe to which it refers. Attending to the categories at play (...) here reveals the basic “logic” of Peirce’s theory from which its rational coherence is discernable. As such, it may be argued that given.. (shrink)

This volume sets out to reverse the neglect.

This study explores how peer advising affects student project teams’ discussions of engineering ethics. Peer ethics advisors from non-engineering disciplines are expected to provide diverse perspectives and to help engineering student teams engage and sustain ethics discussions. To investigate how peer advising helps engineering student teams’ ethics discussions, three student teams in different peer advising conditions were closely observed: without any advisor, with a single volunteer advisor, and with an advising team working on the ethics advising project. Micro-scale discourse analysis (...) based on cognitive ethnography was conducted to find each team’s cultural model of understanding of engineering ethics. Cultural-historical activity theory analysis was also conducted to see what influenced each team’s cultural model. In cultural model, the engineering team with an ethics advising team showed broader understanding in social implications of engineering. The results of CHAT analysis indicated that differences in rules, community, and division of labor among three teams influenced the teams’ cultural models. The CHAT analysis also indicated that the peer advisors working on the ethics advising project and the engineering team working on engineering design project created a collaborative environment. The findings indicated that collaborative environment supported peer ethics advising to facilitate team discussions of engineering ethics. (shrink)

Following previous work that shows engineering students possess different levels of understanding of ethics—implicit and explicit—this study focuses on how students’ implicit understanding of engineering ethics influences their team discussion process, in cases where there is significant divergence between their explicit and implicit understanding. We observed student teams during group discussions of the ethical issues involved in their engineering design projects. Through the micro-scale discourse analysis based on cognitive ethnography, we found two possible ways in which implicit understanding influenced the (...) discussion. In one case, implicit understanding played the role of intuitive ethics—an intuitive judgment followed by reasoning. In the other case, implicit understanding played the role of ethical insight, emotionally guiding the direction of the discussion. In either case, however, implicit understanding did not have a strong influence, and the conclusion of the discussion reflected students’ explicit understanding. Because students’ implicit understanding represented broader social implication of engineering design in both cases, we suggest to take account of students’ relevant implicit understanding in engineering education, to help students become more socially responsible engineers. (shrink)

Unlike natural agents, artificial agents are, to varying extent, designed according to sets of principles or assumptions. We argue that the designers philosophical position on truth, belief and knowledge has far reaching implications for the design and performance of the resulting agents. Of the many sources of design information and background we believe philosophical theories are under-rated as valuable influences on the design process. To explore this idea we have implemented some computer-based agents with their control algorithms inspired by two (...) strongly contrasting philosophical positions. A series of experiments on these agents shows that, despite having common tasks and goals, the behaviour of the agents is markedly different and this can be attributed to their individual approaches to belief and knowledge. We discuss these findings and their support for the view that epistemological theories have a particular relevance for artificial agent design. (shrink)

The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.

Attention Restoration Theory proposes that exposure to natural environments helps to restore attention. For sustained attention—the ongoing application of focus to a task, the effect appears to be modest, and the underlying mechanisms of attention restoration remain unclear. Exposure to nature may improve attention performance through many means: modulation of alertness and one’s connection to nature were investigated here, in two separate studies. In both studies, participants performed the Sustained Attention to Response Task before and immediately after viewing a meadow, (...) ocean, or urban image for 40 s, and then completed the Perceived Restorativeness Scale. In Study 1, an eye-tracker recorded the participants’ tonic pupil diameter during the SARTs, providing a measure of alertness. In Study 2, the effects of connectedness to nature on SART performance and perceived restoration were studied. In both studies, the image viewed was not associated with participants’ sustained attention performance; both nature images were perceived as equally restorative, and more restorative than the urban image. The image viewed was not associated with changes in alertness. Connectedness to nature was not associated with sustained attention performance, but it did moderate the relation between viewing the natural images and perceived restorativeness; participants reporting a higher connection to nature also reported feeling more restored after viewing the nature, but not the urban, images. Dissociation was found between the physiological and behavioral measures and the perceived restorativeness of the images. The results suggest that restoration associated with nature exposure is not associated with modulation of alertness but is associated with connectedness with nature. (shrink)

Through close examination of the texts, the author shows how 15th-century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa developed an understanding of uncertainty that opened the way for human intelligence, despite its inherent weaknesses, to find out more about ourselves, the world, and what lies beyond.

This book, based on the prestigious Oxford Amnesty Lecture series, focuses on human rights abuses, and the ways in which they are interpreted. The collection includes contributions by Tzvetan Todorov, Michael Ignatieff, Peter Singer, Gitta Sereny, Susan Sontag, and Eva Hoffman, with commentaries on their essays by Niall Fergusson, Timothy Garton Ash, John Broome, Hermione Lee and others.

In the last decade there arose a debate between William P. Alston and Nicholas Wolterstorff on the subject of Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of analogia—that is, the position that perfection terms, when properly predicated of God and of creatures, are distinct, yet related in meaning. Whereas Alston interprets Aquinas to hold this well-known position before criticizing it, Wolterstorff argues that Aquinas actually did not hold the position as it is usually presented. In this paper, I show why Alston’s “orthodox” interpretation (...) is more faithful to the letter of Aquinas’s text than is Wolterstorff’s “heterodoxy” and attempt to defuse Alston’s criticisms. (shrink)

Was the emperor as sovereign allowed to seize the property of his subjects? Was this handled differently in late medieval Roman law and in the practice and theory of zabt in Mughal India? How is political sovereignty relating to the church's powers and to trade? How about maritime sovereignty after Grotius? How was the East India Company as a 'corporation' interacting with an Indian Nawab? How was the Shogunate and the emperor negotiating 'sovereignty' in early modern Japan? The volume addresses (...) such questions through thoroughly researched historical case studies, covering the disciplines of History, Political Sciences, and Law. Contributors include: Kenneth Pennington, Fabrice Micallef, Philippe Denis, Sylvio Hermann De Franceschi, Joshua Freed, David Dyzenhaus, Michael P. Breen, Daniel Lee, Andrew Fitzmaurice and Kajo Kubala, Nicholas Abbott, Tiraana Bains, Cornel Zwierlein, Mark Ravina. (shrink)

Pragmatic Scientific Realism (PSR) urges us to take up the realist aim or the goal of truth although we have good reason to think that the goal can neither be attained nor approximated. While Newton-Smith thinks that pursuing what we know we cannot achieve is clearly irrational, Rescher disagrees and contends that pursuing an unreachable goal can be rational on pragmatic grounds—if in pursuing the unreachable goal one can get indirect benefits. I have blocked this attempt at providing a pragmatic (...) justification for the realist aim of PSR on precisely the same pragmatic grounds—since there is a competing alternative to PSR, and the alternative can provide whatever indirect benefits PSR can offer while being less risky than it is, prudential reasoning favours the alternative to PSR. This undermines the pragmatic case for the realist aim of science since the instrumentalist alternative does not aim at the truth. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 2, Page 325-326, March 2022.

This volume commemorates the 6th centennial of the birth of Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), a Renaissance polymath whose interests included law, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, theology, mysticism and relations between Christians and non-Christian peoples. The contributors to this volume reflect Cusanus' multiple interests; and, by doing so they commemorate three deceased luminaries of the American Cusanus Society: F. Edward Cranz, Thomas P. McTighe and Charles Trinkaus. Contributors include: Christopher M. Bellitto, H. Lawrence Bond, Elizabeth Brient, Louis Dupré, Wilhelm Dupré, Walter (...) Andreas Euler, Lawrence Hundersmarck, Thomas M. Izbicki, Dennis D. Martin, Yelena Matusevich, Bernard McGinn, Clyde Lee Miller, Thomas E. Morrissey, Brian A. Pavlac, and Morimichi Watanabe. Publications by Charles Trinkaus: - Edited by C. Trinkaus and H.A. Oberman, The pursuit of holiness in late medieval and renaissance religion, ISBN: 978 90 04 03791 5 (Out of print). (shrink)

Are bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges received ethical wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment. -/- Agar builds a bridge between the biological sciences and what he calls "folk" morality to arrive at a (...) workable environmental ethic and a new spectrum--a new hierarchy--of living organisms. The book overturns common-sense moral belief as well as centuries of philosophical speculation on the exclusive moral significance of humans. Spanning several fields, including philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, and other areas of contemporary analytic philosophy, Agar analyzes and speaks to a wide array of historic and contemporary views, from Aristotle and Kant, to E. O. Wilson, Holmes Rolston II, and Baird Callicot. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically-informed appreciation of nature. (shrink)

Francis Fukuyama's controversial new book, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, has elicited varied reactions, but like it or not, it seems likely to be influential. Here are three opinions. —Ed.

The authors explore the history of experiments in economics, provide examples of different types of experiments and show that the growing use of experimental methods is transforming economics into an empirical science.

Since the 1950s, Lee Joseph of Zhu Xi of the Road, learn to criticism that many aspects of Taoism is similar to Whitehead's qualification process philosophy, which Zhu large amount of philosophical comprehensive work is the right assessment, triggering In order to controversy . This paper argues that there are many real reason is that Zhu and Whitehead都qualification processes philosopher. According to Whitehead's thought, emphasizing the role or function of qualifications process description is the qualification process may philosopher. Zhu Xi (...) said in his clear emphasis on learning裡qualification process, change, transformation and innovation of other concepts. Description of this method less controversial, but the problem is in the end "qualification process" concept in terms of how important Zhu? He has "qualification process" concept is obvious? Over the past eight hundred years have an ongoing controversy, Zhu Xi Road School for the qualification process as the subject is so obvious? Zhu Xi describes the nature of the universe is life and life does not interest, is well known. However, many scholars have argued Zhu Xi's description of the main school - "Management", or the original management, channel management, pattern, or order, in fact, is a static concept. If "management" is static or just the original order or pattern in the form of management, it is difficult to establish qualification process is a description of the key themes of philosophy. Like a dead Yuzhe how it is possible to control a horse living ? This is a serious topic, in fact, followed by South Korean scholars to discuss the subject, which launched the great "forty-seven Debate." This article will certainly "reasonable" can indeed be interpreted as a life principle of management by a manager or management Concept. Really the case, said Zhu Xi's learning can rightly be regarded as a strongly significant qualification process philosophy, such as Whitehead and Lee Snow and other scholars advocated. Zhu Xi to provide In order many of the "reasonable" interpretation, possible these things in the world or the events of the original treatment or reason, interpreted with the qualification process in nature, even creative, with its complex of Taoist system role. This will be Chen Chun highly influential book of the "North Creek word meaning" to prove the wisdom of philosophy of Zhu Xi's disciples will be the most "reasonable" as a "way of qualifications." Therefore, based on an important school of Zhu Xi's interpretation of Taoism, we can agree and support the Joseph Lee, Zhu Xi Neo-Confucianism as the philosophy of the Core see qualification process. Ever since Joseph Needham in the 1950s made the comment that in many ways the daoxue of Zhu Xi resembled the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead there has been a debate on whether or not this is an accurate assessment of the Master Zhu's massive philosophical synthesis. This paper argues that there are substantive grounds to suggest that both Master Zhu and Whitehead are process philosophers. Based on Whitehead's observation that some philosophers emphasize the role or function or process as a key element of their philosophical vision and hence can be deemed 'process' philosophers, it is clear that Zhu certainly affirmed a central place for notions of process, change, transformation and creativity within his daoxue or Teaching of the Way. In many ways there is little argument about the general nature of this comment: the problem is, just how central to Zhu's daoxue is the notion of process? Is process more apparent than real? There has been a constant debate for the last eight hundred years as to whether or not Zhu Xi's commitment to process as a central theme or motif of daoxue is as strong as it appears at first glance. Zhu was famous for saying that the nature of the cosmos is, for instance, constant generation or shengsheng buxi life and life does not interest rates. Nonetheless, many competent scholars have argued that Zhu's crucial notion of li management or principle, rationale, pattern, or order might actually be a static concept: hardly the kind of key theme to build a process philosophy around if indeed it is the case that principle is a static or merely a formal principle of order or pattern . One of the best ways of putting the question was, how can a dead rider ride a live horse ? This is a serious question, and in fact later Korean scholars debated the issue with great subtlety in the great Four-Seven Debate. This paper will defend the notion that li can indeed be interpreted as a living principle or rationale. If this is the case, then Zhu's daoxue can be rightly deemed a process philosophy in the strongest sense of the term as defined by scholars such as Whitehead and Nicholas Rescher. Although Zhu Xi offered a number of different interpretations of li, it is entirely plausible that principle or the rationale for the things and events of the world can be construed as processive, even creative in terms of its role in the complex daoxue architectonic. For instance, the influential Beixi ziyi [or Neo-Confucian Terms Explained as translated by Wing-tsit Chan] of Chen Chun proves that one of Master Zhu's most philosophically astute disciples understood li to be proccessive. Therefore, based on one important stream of exegesis of Zhu's daoxue, we can agree with and support Joseph Needham's insight that daoxue is a form of process philosophy. (shrink)

The rapid developments in technologies -- especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet -- has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism (...) 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. Instead, Agar uses the most recent psychological studies about human perceptions of well-being to create a realistic model of the impact technology will have. Although he accepts that technological advance does produce benefits, he insists that these are significantly less than those proposed by the radical optimists, and aspects of such progress can also pose a threat to values such as social justice and our relationship with nature, while problems such as poverty cannot be understood in technological terms. He concludes by arguing that a more realistic assessment of the benefits that technological advance can bring will allow us to better manage its risks in future. (shrink)

Abstract. A rhesus monkey, Helen, from whom the striate cortex was almost totally removed, was studied intensively over a period of 8 years. During this time she regained an effective, though limited, degree of visually guided behaviour. The evidence suggests that while Helen suffered a permanent loss of `focal vision she retained (initially unexpressed) the capacity for `ambient vision.

A comparative philosophical consideration of the extremes of humanism, or "Titanism," this book critiques trends in Eastern and Western philosophy and examines solutions to them.

Decades of public investment in molecular technologies and data integration techniques have fueled promises of precision medicine (PM) as a novel, targeted, and data-driven approach that takes into...

An introductory level text designed to explain and review basic ideas concerning the role of law in society. Assuming no previous knowledge of the field, the volume examines the theoretical and empirical dimensions of law in society from political, sociological, psychological and philosophical perspectives.

This paper argues that there is an inconsistency between Jaegwon Kim's earlier work on supervenience and his more recent work on explanatory exclusion. In his work on supervenience Kim advocates an explanatory agnosticism that, by the time of his later work, is replaced by an endorsement of reductive explanation. My argument is that this tension between Kim's early and later work is unfortunate since explanatory exclusion is highly questionable in its own right and is not reconcilable with his earlier work (...) on supervenience anyway. /// El presente artículo sostiene que existe una inconsistencia entre los primeros textos sobre superveniencia de Jaegwon Kim y sus trabajos más recientes sobre exclusión explicativa. En sus escritos sobre superveniencia, Kim defiende un agnosticismo explicativo que, en sus textos posteriores, sustituye con su aprobación a la explicación reductiva. Mi argumento es que esta tensión entre las dos etapas de la obra de Kim es poco afortunada, pues la exclusión explicativa es por derecho propio sumamente cuestionable y de todos modos no se puede conciliar con sus primeros textos sobre superveniencia. (shrink)