Does the idea of human enhancement presuppose a goal or an ideal to direct technological modifications? In the absence of such an agreed ideal in today’s culture, can Christian theology help clarify the goal or the meaning of “perfection” when applied to human beings? A theological perspective rooted in scripture and in the writings of theologians such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa suggests that theology instead of offering its own definition of the human ideal, theology rejects the possibility (...) of any defined human goal. An analysis of the biblical word teleios (“mature” or “perfect”), along with Gregory’s view of infinite ascent, leads to the conclusion that the human goal is found in relationship to the triune God and not in any anthropologically-definable status. (shrink)

Entheogens or psychedelic drugs such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and psilocybin are associated with mystical states of experience. Drug laws currently limit research, but important new work is under way at major biomedical research facilities showing that entheogens reliably occasion mystical experiences and thereby allow research into brain states during these experiences. Are drug-occasioned mystical experiences neurologically the same as more traditional mystical states? Are there phenomenological and theological differences? As this research goes forward and the public becomes more (...) widely aware of its achievements, religious scholars and experts in science and religion will be called upon to interpret the philosophical and theological presuppositions that underpin this research and the significance of the findings that flow from it. (shrink)

Christians have always been concerned with enhancement—now they are faced with significant questions about how technology can help or harm genuine spiritual transformation. What makes traditional and technological enhancement different from each other? Are there theological insights and spiritual practices that can help Christians face the challenge of living in a technological world without being dangerously conformed to its values? This book calls on Christians to understand and engage the deep issues facing the church in a technological, transhumanist future.

Accession Number: ATLA0001713218; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 929-944.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 943-944.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow users to create an online identity with preferences, photos including ‘selfies’ and links to other users. These platforms allow users to present and edit their identities or profiles in accordance with their subjective desires and aspirations as well as in response to feedback from others. Defining individual identity online presents new challenges for many individuals. This article explores those challenges and engages the culture and the practices of online identity formation critically. Identity (...) formation online raises profound theological questions, which are explored in relation to Christian theology and its understanding of personhood as defined in relationship. This view originates in the earliest Christian theology as an attempt to understand the Christian God as three identities that are mutually defined by their relationship to each other. The article asks how the experience of identity formation online in social media can challenge and inform a Christian view of the human relationship with the divine. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

This paper reports on the meeting of the Sounding Board of the EU Reprogenetics Project that was held in Budapest, Hungary, 6–9 November 2005. The Reprogenetics Project runs from 2004 until 2007 and has a brief to study the ethical aspects of human reproductive cloning and germline gene therapy. Discussions during The Budapest Meeting are reported in depth in this paper as well as the initiatives to involve the participating groups and others in ongoing collaborations with the goal of forming (...) an integrated network of European resources in the fields of ethics of science. (shrink)

The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful (...) of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Form and Discontent*Rosmarie Waldrop (bio)1. Composition as ExplanationIn the beginning there is Gertrude Stein, who says in “Composition as Explanation”: “Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same” [520].I could also say, in the beginning is Aristotle: “the fable is simply this, the combination of the incidents” [1460].2. A Look AroundThe forms that have (...) been striking me as “wild” have tended to be Steinian in this sense of stressing the horizontal, the axis of composition. I’m most struck by 3 tendencies: one is literally spatial composition, e.g. Susan Howe’s work; another, an emphasis on discontinuity, leaps on the level of syntax, of logic, of grammar. Breaks that do not immediately fold back into a smooth unity and may occur in mid-sentence:I was on my way from Carthage, it was night. It is not wax I am scorching was dead about her with knots.—Norma Cole, MarsI hide behind a category by misbehaving.—Carla Harryman, Under the BridgeLoop conceived in a line, the spine with its regions, reasons. On another, sweaters hang by the wrist to dry. The list is sweet. You lie. The eye is met by the season.—Ron Silliman, ParadiseYou took my temperature which I had meant to save for a more difficult day.—Rosmarie Waldrop, The Reproduction of ProfilesWent out so I’d take the car and a whole system of banking and money is based on a hierarchy.—Leslie Scalapino, Considering How Exaggerated the Music IsROAST POTATOESRoast Potatoes for.—Gertrude Stein, “Tender Buttons”Or, a subtler example, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge’s almost unnoticeable shifts from one grammatical structure into another: [End Page 54]Never mind if he calls, the places you get through inwardness take time, and to drift down to the shore of the island, you know by the sand moving, even the coarse sand here It’s hard to say if you can even stand up, there....[13]The third tendency is mathematical. There is a lot of counting. Not stresses, not even syllables—I’m not considering that most unimaginative bunch, the new formalists—but words per line, sentences per paragraph. You all know about Ron Silliman’s love for the Fibonacci number series, or Lyn Hejinian’s My Life, which began with 37 sections of 37 sentences each. When she published a second edition at age 45, she added 8 sentences to each section plus 8 new sections.Jacques Roubaud: “No ideas but in numbers” [291].Then, in a somewhat more remote way, a number of people use ideas of permutation. For example, Jackson Mac Low’s 4 Trains, of which I will quote the first two stanzas:Train rule atom intricate nitrogen. Rule unusual leotard entropy. Atom train ostrich might. Intricate nitrogen train rule intricate casual atom train entropy. Nitrogen intricate train rule ostrich genealogy entropy nitrogen.Rule unusual leotard entropy. Unusual nitrogen unusual social unusual atom leotard. Leotard entropy ostrich train atom rule dies. Entropy nitrogen train rule ostrich pope yearly.[7]As Zukofsky puts it: “[Thus] poetry may be defined as an order of words that as movement and tone (rhythm and pitch) approaches in varying degrees the wordless art of music as a kind of mathematical limit” [27].All these examples draw attention to arrangement, composition. They all listen to language. I once wrote:I don’t even have thoughts, I say, I have methods that make language think, take over and me by the hand. Into sense or offense, syntax stretched across rules, relations of force, fluid the dip of the plumb line, the pull of eyes.... No beginnings. All unrepentant middle.[A Form / of Taking / It All 74]And none of these forms are “organic form.” None relies primarily on metaphor, though from the Romantics on poetry has been more or less identified with it.3. Frameworka. HistoricalLet me step back for a moment to the beginnings of the concept of organic form, what it reacted against.When Goethe started to make a splash writing free verse, around 1770, the dominant aesthetic... (shrink)

Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. What do these intuitions look like? And what are their causes and consequences? In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate these questions empirically. This article presents and assesses the resulting area of research as well as its potential philosophical implications. First, we introduce the methods of empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Second, we provide an overview of the findings that have so far been made. Third, we (...) raise a number of methodological worries that cast doubt upon these findings. And fourth, we discuss ways in which lay persons' intuitions aboutmoral objectivity may bear on philosophical claims. (shrink)

New coverage of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ensuing public education campaigns by the Department of Veterans Affairs and private veterans advocacy groups combine to call the public's attention to the many potential mental health problems associated with traumatic event exposure. Indeed, since 2001, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom combat and peacekeeping missions have been characterized by high levels of exposure to acts of extreme violence, with often gruesome effects. Less publically discussed is the (...) fact that a surprisingly large number of United States civilians also report exposure to traumatic events, such as severe interpersonal violence, natural disasters, and serious automobile accidents. In fact, approximately 70% of randomly sampled respondents indicated that they have experienced an incident characterized by significant perceived life threat at some point during their lives. (shrink)

Without complete and accurate status information, a project manager’s ability to monitor progress, allocate resources effectively, and detect and respond to problems is greatly diminished, and this can lead to impaired project performance. Many different factors can contribute to intentional misreporting of status information by project members to the project manager. In this study, the impact of organizational ethical climate was assessed through the analysis of responses from 228 project members drawn from a variety of ongoing information systems projects. Our (...) results revealed that project members who perceived their organization to be one in which rules are followed strictly tended to misreport less, while those operating in an environment dominated by personal self-interest tended to misreport more. Somewhat surprisingly, the existence of a caring, team-spirited environment did not appear to have an impact on misreporting behaviors. Implications for researchers and project managers are discussed. (shrink)

The traditional philosophical doctrine of double effect claims that agents’ intentions affect whether acts are morally wrong. Our behavioral study reveals that agents’ intentions do affect whether acts are judged morally wrong, whereas the temporal order of good and bad effects affects whether acts are classified as killings. This finding suggests that the moral judgments are not based on the classifications. Our results also undermine recent claims that prior moral judgments determine whether agents are seen as causing effects intentionally rather (...) than as side effects. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. by Thomas R. Cole.

Griffiths and Machery contend that the concept of innateness should be dispensed with in the sciences. We contend that, once that concept is properly understood as what we have called 'closed process invariance', it is still of significant use in the sciences, especially cognitive science.

Sound and complete axiomatizations are provided for a number of different logics involving modalities for the knowledge of multiple agents and operators for branching time, extending previous work of Halpern, van der Meyden and Vardi [to appear, SIAM Journal on Computing] for logics of knowledge and linear time. The paper considers the system constraints of synchrony, perfect recall and unique initial states, which give rise to interaction axioms. The language is based on the temporal logic CTL*, interpreted with respect to (...) a version of the bundle semantics. (shrink)

A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those who cultivate it.

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 37-39.

Extant research suggests that individuals employ traditional moral heuristics to support their observed altruistic behavior; yet findings have largely been limited to inductive extrapolation and rely on relatively few traditional frames in so doing, namely, deontology in organizational behavior and virtue theory in law and economics. Given that these and competing moral frames such as utilitarianism can manifest as identical behavior, we develop a moral framing instrument—the Philosophical Moral-Framing Measure (PMFM)—to expand and distinguish traditional frames associated and disassociated with observed (...) altruistic behavior. The validation of our instrument based on 1015 subjects in 3 separate real stakes scenarios indicates that heuristic forms of deontology, virtue-theory, and utilitarianism are strongly related to such behavior, and that egoism is an inhibitor. It also suggests that deontic and virtue-theoretical frames may be commonly perceived as intertwined and opens the door for new research on self-abnegation, namely, a perceived moral obligation toward suffering and self-denial. These findings hold the potential to inform ongoing conversations regarding organizational citizenship and moral crowding out, namely, how financial incentives can undermine altruistic behavior. (shrink)

The models used in social simulation to date have mostly been very simplistic cognitively, with little attention paid to the details of individual cognition. This work proposes a more cognitively realistic approach to social simulation. It begins with a model created by Gilbert (1997) for capturing the growth of academic science. Gilbert’s model, which was equation-based, is replaced here by an agent-based model, with the cognitive architecture CLARION providing greater cognitive realism. Using this cognitive agent model, results comparable to previous (...) simulations and to human data are obtained. It is found that while different cognitive settings may affect the aggregate number of scientific articles produced, they do not generally lead to different distributions of number of articles per author. The paper concludes with a discussion of the correspondence between our model and the constructivist view of academic science. It is argued that using more cognitively realistic models in simulations may lead to novel insights. (shrink)

Alison Gopnik and her collaborators have recently proposed a bold and intriguing hypothesis about the relationship between scientific cognition and cognitive development in childhood. According to this view, the processes underlying cognitive development in infants and children and the processes underlying scientific cognition are _identical_. We argue that Gopnik’s bold hypothesis is untenable because it, along with much of cognitive science, neglects the many important ways in which human minds are designed to operate within a social environment. This leads to (...) a neglect of _norms_ and the processes of _social_ _transmission_ which have an important effect on scientific cognition and cognition more generally. (shrink)

Preprint of Cole, Sacks, and Waterman. 2000. "On the immunity principle: A view from a robot." Trends in Cognitive Science 4 (5): 167, a response to Shaun Gallagher, S. 2000. "Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science," Trends in Cognitive Science 4 (1):14-21. Also see Shaun Gallagher, Reply to Cole, Sacks, and Waterman Trends in Cognitive Science 4, No. 5 (2000): 167-68.

Learners are able to use 2 different types of knowledge to perform a skill. One type is a conscious mental model, and the other is based on memories of instances. The authors conducted 3 experiments that manipulated training conditions designed to affect the availability of 1 or both types of knowledge about an artificial grammar. Participants were tested for both speed and accuracy of their ability to generate letter sequences. Results indicate that model-based training leads to slow accurate responding. Memorybased (...) training leads to fast, less accurate responding and highest achievement when perfect accuracy was not required. Evidence supports participants’ preference for using the memory-based mode when exposed to both types of training. Finally, the accuracy contributed by model-based training declined over a retention interval. (shrink)

The Character Gap by Christian Miller is an excellent discussion of how the empirical research conducted on virtue bears upon the larger question of whether or not people are virtuous, especially when we consider the question through the lens of a philosophically rigorous account of virtue. His conclusion is that overall people are not virtuous—but then, neither are they vicious. In this commentary, I challenge the latter. I explore two alternative ways of conceiving of vice and utilize a range of (...) empirical findings—on topics ranging from bullying, to sexual assault, to factory farming—to argue that perhaps vice is much more prevalent than Miller believes, a worry that deserves our attention and concern. (shrink)

The economy for artisanal products, such as Navajo rugs or Pashmina shawls are often threatened by mass-produced fakes. We propose the use of AI-based authentication as one part of a larger system that would replace extractive economies with generative circulation. In this case study we examine initial experiments towards the development of a cell phone-based authentication app for kente cloth in West Africa. We describe the context of weavers and cloth sales; an initial test of a machine learning algorithm for (...) distinguishing between real and fake kente, and an outline of the next stages of development. (shrink)

The presentation will illustrate an approach to teaching business ethics.

A traditional social scientific divide concerns the centrality of the interpretation of local understandings as opposed to attending to relatively general factors in understanding human individual and group differences. We consider one of the most common social scientific variables, race, and ask how to conceive of its causal power. We suggest that any plausible attempt to model the causal effects of such constructed social roles will involve close interplay between interpretationist and more general elements. Thus, we offer a case study (...) that one cannot offer a comprehensive model of the causal power of racial categories as social constructions without careful attention both to local meanings and more general mechanisms. (shrink)

Variable binding has long been a challenge to connectionists. Attempts to perform variable binding using localist and distributed connectionist representations are discussed, and problems inherent in each type of representation are outlined.

This chapter summarizes much of the recent work in experimental philosophy. It begins with some background, introducing the philosophical dispute between descriptivists and causal‐historical accounts of reference that has served as the primary focus of experimental work. The chapter also reviews some reasons to think that understanding reference may have very general philosophical implications. It introduces preliminary experimental work on reference by Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich, which suggested the existence of cultural diversity in judgments about (...) the reference of proper names in a classic case. The chapter explains a range of responses to this work; responses that themselves advance and clarify the central issues at stake. The chapter briefly considers the related empirical research, some of it recent, some of it decades old, into the reference of kind terms rather than proper names. Finally, the chapter summarizes by considering the payoffs of this literature. (shrink)

Spaces of Geographical Thought examines key ideas – like space and place - which inform the geographic imagination. The text: discusses the core conceptual vocabulary of human geography: agency: structure; state: society; culture: economy; space: place; black: white; man: woman; nature: culture; local: global; and time: space; explains the significance of these binaries in the constitution of geographic thought; and shows how many of these binaries have been interrogated and re-imagined in more recent geographical thinking. A consideration of these binaries (...) will define the concepts and situate students in the most current geographical arguments and debates. The text will be required reading for all modules on the philosophy of geography and on geographical theory. (shrink)

A traditional social scientific divide concerns the centrality of the interpretation of local understandings as opposed to attending to relatively general factors in understanding human individual and group differences. We consider one of the most common social scientific variables, race, and ask how to conceive of its causal power. We suggest that any plausible attempt to model the causal effects of such constructed social roles will involve close interplay between interpretationist and more general elements. Thus, we offer a case study (...) that one cannot offer a comprehensive model of the causal power of racial categories as social constructions without careful attention both to local meanings and more general mechanisms. (shrink)

Jeffery Aubin,Dianne Cole,Julio Cesar Dias Chaves,Jonathan von Kodar,Anne-France Morand,Timothy Pettipiece,Paul-Hubert Poirier,Martin Voyer,Eric Crégheur.

This essay explores histories of common salt, sodium chloride, using concepts and methods from media theory. It contributes to research on media and environment and the general ‘material turn’ taken across the Humanities. I conceive of salt as what Peters calls an ‘elemental’ medium so as to show, first, the imbrication of naturally-occurring substances in the operations and supply chains of digital culture. Second, the many lives salt has lived materially, in techniques of survival and exchange, and metaphorically, in cultural (...) expression, complicate conventional understandings of media. In showing how salt performs three functions, processing, storage, and transfer, which Kittler ascribed to technical and symbolic media, I argue for a more expansive use of ‘mediation’ as a bridge concept that speaks to matters of nature and culture, Arts and Science, and to account for deep histories of extraction and economy that shape digital culture and global supply chains. (shrink)