Stuart Kauffman here presents a brilliant new paradigm for evolutionary biology, one that extends the basic concepts of Darwinian evolution to accommodate recent findings and perspectives from the fields of biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics. The book drives to the heart of the exciting debate on the origins of life and maintenance of order in complex biological systems. It focuses on the concept of self-organization: the spontaneous emergence of order widely observed throughout nature. Kauffman here argues that self-organization plays (...) an important role in the emergence of life itself and may play as fundamental a role in shaping life's subsequent evolution as does the Darwinian process of natural selection. Yet until now no systematic effort has been made to incorporate the concept of self-organization into evolutionary theory. The construction requirements which permit complex systems to adapt remain poorly understood, as is the extent to which selection itself can yield systems able to adapt more successfully. This book explores these themes. It shows how complex systems, contrary to expectations, can spontaneously exhibit stunning degrees of order, and how this order, in turn, is essential for understanding the emergence and development of life on Earth. Topics include the new biotechnology of applied molecular evolution, with its important implications for developing new drugs and vaccines; the balance between order and chaos observed in many naturally occurring systems; new insights concerning the predictive power of statistical mechanics in biology; and other major issues. Indeed, the approaches investigated here may prove to be the new center around which biologicalscience itself will evolve. The work is written for all those interested in the cutting edge of research in the life sciences. (shrink)

Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should characterize imagination as a cognitive ability, exercises of which are cognitive processes. Following dual process theories of cognition developed in cognitive science, the set of imaginative processes (...) is then divided into two kinds: one that is unconscious, uncontrolled, and effortless, and another that is conscious, controlled, and effortful. This paper outlines the different epistemological strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of imaginative process, and argues that a dual process model of imagination helpfully resolves or clarifies issues in the epistemology of imagination and the closely related epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

Fetal pain has long been a contentious issue, in large part because fetal pain is often cited as a reason to restrict access to termination of pregnancy or abortion. We have divergent views regarding the morality of abortion, but have come together to address the evidence for fetal pain. Most reports on the possibility of fetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience. Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the cortex (...) only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out fetal pain until the final trimester. Here, more recent evidence calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks. We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so fetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion. (shrink)

This book examines the concept of post-truth and the impact it is having on contemporary life, bringing out both its philosophical and political dimensions. Post-truth is contextualised within the philosophical discourse of truth, with particular reference to theories of scepticism and relativism, to explore whether it can take advantage of these to claim any intellectual credibility. Sim argues that post-truth cannot be defended on either sceptical or relativistic grounds – even those provided by recent iconoclastic philosophical movements such as poststructuralism (...) and postmodernism. The affinity between post-truth and conspiracy theory is emphasised, and the extent to which post-truth plays a role in religious doctrine is also considered. Post-truth is seen to constitute a threat to liberal democratic ideals and our Enlightenment heritage, raising the question of whether we are moving into a post-liberal age where the far right would hold power. To prevent this, post-truth urgently needs to be countered. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research groups and for their bioscience collaborators who rely on these models. In this paper we introduce a new kind of visualization that was developed to address just this sort of epistemic opacity. The visualization (...) is unusual in that it depicts the dynamics and structure of a computer model instead of that model’s target system, and because it is generated algorithmically. Using considerations from epistemology and aesthetics, we explore how this new kind of visualization increases scientific understanding of the content and function of computer models in systems biology to reduce epistemic opacity. (shrink)

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. The argument (...) view of thought experiments claims that thought experiments are arguments, and that they function epistemically however arguments do. These two views have generated a great deal of discussion, although there hasn’t been much written about their combination. I argue that despite some interesting harmonies, there is a serious tension between them. I consider several options for easing this tension, before suggesting a set of changes to the argument view that I take to be consistent with Norton’s fundamental philosophical commitments, and which retain what seems intuitively correct about the argument view. These changes require that we move away from a unitary epistemology of thought experiments and towards a more pluralist position. (shrink)

Teaching research methods is especially challenging because we not only wish to convey formal knowledge and encourage critical thinking, as with any course, but also to enable our students dream up meaningful research projects, translate them into logical steps, conduct the research in a professional manner, analyze the data, and write up the project in APA style. We also wish to spark interest in the topics of research papers, and in the intellectual challenge of creating a research report, but we (...) have learned just how difficult these goals can be from teaching undergraduates and from serving as journal reviewers: many submissions contain flaws such as elementary errors of logic (e.g., using a null control condition instead of a placebo or dummy treatment), tangled statistics, a lack of graphs, and ungrammatical, unclear writing that violates APA rules. Yet these manuscripts are written by university faculty, often with doctorates and years of experience. Even published papers may contain egregious faults (Standing & McKelvie, 1986). And although we have both published widely, we still hone our skills. It requires optimism to expect that a typical undergraduate will do better, on the basis of just a year or two of studies in psychology. In this paper, we describe a systematic set of methodology courses and two specific practices that we think can help. Methodology Courses as the Backbone of our Psychology Program How can methodology courses promote undergraduate involvem... (shrink)

This intelligent and often subtle introduction to rationalist metaphysics focuses on the development of the concept of substance in Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. After briefly reviewing the Aristotelian background in the introduction, Woolhouse spends the first three chapters presenting the broad outlines of each thinker’s account of substance. These are followed by three chapters devoted more specifically to the metaphysics of extended substance and to foundational issues in early modern physics. Next come two chapters on thinking substance and its relation (...) to extended substance, and finally a chapter on the relation between created and uncreated substance, which Woolhouse describes as "an organizing centre of the whole book". (shrink)

What is it for an individual thing in the natural world—a rock, a mouse, a family or a planet—to be made of other things—crystals, organs, animals, soil, water, or dirt? Rocks, mice, families and planets are composites, but how are we to understand the relation that holds between these composites and their component parts? My aim is to offer a new account of this relation, which I shall call corporeal composition. A central claim of my account is that corporeal composition (...) is grounded in causal relations between components. I will show how this claim, combined with a minimalist approach to causation—that causation is not one thing, but many—entails a position I call compositional minimalism—that composition is not one thing, but many. (shrink)

For the ancient Greeks, the world was both Eros, the god of chaos and creativity, and Logos, the regularity of the heavens as law. From chaos the world came forth. The world was home to ultimate creativity. Two thousand years later Kepler, Galileo, and then mighty Newton created deterministic classical physics in which all that happens in the universe is determined by the laws of motion, initial and boundary conditions. The Theistic God who worked miracles became the Deistic God who (...) set up the universe and let Newton’s laws take over. Eros, raw creativity, is dead, all is Logos.Quantum mechanics replaced the determinism of classical physics with fundamental indeterminism. This was a major crisis in physics, but remained entirely within the Newtonian paradigm of laws, here the Schrödinger equation, initial and boundary conditions. The Schrödinger equation entails the deterministic propagation of a probability distribution. The probabilities concern the indeterminate outcomes of quantum measurement events.The central issue of this article is to show that no laws at all determine or entail the becoming of our biosphere or any other among the 1022 solar systems in the universe. This claim is radical. If no laws determine or entail the becoming of biospheres, and biospheres are part of the universe, the Pythagorean dream that All is Number, All is Logos, is dead. There is no Final Theory that entails all that become in the universe. Eros is again, and always was, rambunctiously alive in the raw creativity of the becoming of life anywhere in the universe. The becoming of life is based on physics, on Logos, but beyond it, emerging from Eros.The reasons Eros is at play in the evolution of biospheres are fourfold.First, the universe will not make all possible complex things. That is, the universe is vastly non-ergodic. Yet complex things such as the human heart exist.Second, the reason human hearts exist is that organisms are Kantian Wholes in which the parts exist for and by means of the whole. Hearts exist because they fulfill the function of pumping the blood that keeps the whole organism alive. Such organisms propagate progeny that carry with them the hearts that keep them alive.Third, adaptations like hearts, the flagellar motor, the loop of Henle in kidneys that concentrates urine, and flight feathers, are tinkered-together contraptions stumbled upon in evolution. Parts and processes that arise in evolution are jury-rigged for unprestatable new functions that help keep the entire Kantian Whole organism alive and propagating in the evolving biosphere. There is no deductive theory of jury rigging. We cannot deduce the emergence of such novel functions.Fourth, the functions of parts of organisms emerge in unprestatable ways and form the unprestatable and ever-changing phase space of evolution. Since we cannot prestate the ever-changing phase space of evolution, we can write no laws of motion in differential equation form, so cannot integrate the equations we do not have. Thus, no laws entail the becoming of any biosphere.Evolving biospheres are everywhere creative. This is Eros, the chaos from which the world emerges. This profound creative emergence is the stuff of story, of narrative. Evolving biospheres always were and always will be both Eros and Logos, the stuff of story and the stuff of law. We always live in a world of Art and Science. (shrink)

Christie, Jaye; Stuart, Stephen The United States have experienced devastating attacks on church-state separation in recent decades. The intrusion of religion into affairs of state is more blatant than in Australia, but there is mounting evidence that the religious right is gaining momentum here. As former Australian High Court judge, Michael Kirby, has said, 'The principle of secularism is one of the greatest developments in human rights in the world. We must safeguard and protect it, for it can come (...) under threat in contemporary Australia.'. (shrink)

Today we’re talking with Stuart Hameroff, Professor Emeritus at the Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, at the University of Arizona. Dr Hameroff is best-known for his research on 'quantum consciousness', an alternative model to the accepted view of how consciousness arises. With Sir Roger Penrose, Dr Hameroff has proposed that consciousness arises at the quantum level within structures inside neurons, known as microtubules.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionStuart J. Youngner (bio), Laura A. Siminoff (bio), and Renie Schapiro (bio)This issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (KIEJ) centers on a piece of empirical research. The motivation behind the study of Laura Siminoff, Christopher Burant, and Stuart Youngner (2004) was to find out more about what the general public understands and believes about when a person is dead. More specifically, the study tried to determine (...) how members of the public define death, especially their acceptance and interpretation of the medical concept of "brain death," and their attitudes toward the so-called "dead donor rule," an informal but powerful social and legal norm insisting that the taking of organs for transplantation not cause the death of the source of those organs.As the demand for organs increases and the waiting list grows, the United States has explored multiple ways to expand the pool of potential donors. One approach has been to gerrymander (coherently or not) the line between life and death to shift patients who are extremely compromised but traditionally considered to be in the living category into the dead category. In this way, the dead donor rule remains technically intact. This reasoning is explicit in the report of the Harvard Medical School Ad Hoc Committee (1968) that "introduced" "brain death" to the American culture. Since then, other efforts to redraw the line have been proposed and rejected.One alternative to gerrymandering is to consider under what conditions, if any, it is morally acceptable to violate the dead donor rule. Some would argue that this alternative is the more "honest" approach. Rather than sidestepping moral problems by calling people dead, it brings the moral problems to the surface where the necessity of sticking to the rule can be considered on its own merits. However, when the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a position paper that proposed making anencepahlic newborns an exception to the dead donor rule, along with arguments about why this was acceptable, the outcry was so great that the proposal was retracted (AMA 1995).Clearly, our society has identified organ transplantation as a priority, although two papers in this volume (those by Courtney Campbell and by Megan Crowley-Matoka and Robert Arnold) take issue with that prioritization. The fact that the donor pool has remained relatively stable (and inadequate) despite massive efforts [End Page 211] to increase it speaks, at least in part, to the cultural and legal resistance to "new" ways to procure more organs. Voluntarism seems to have peaked. Financial incentives clash with the heavily endorsed notion of the "gift of life" and seem to many to violate the dignity of the human body. Presumed consent or eminent domain, in which the community has a greater claim to a person's organs than that person or his/her family, go against the grain of American individual freedom and the ethos of patient autonomy.Abandoning the dead donor rule generally is regarded as an even tougher sell to the American public and its legislators. The study by Siminoff and colleagues attempts, among other things, to gauge just how tough this sell would be. What the data actually demonstrate is a matter of interpretation, and this issue of the KIEJ is devoted to some of those interpretations. The authors, with the exception of Daniel Hausman, came together for a meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, during which the study's methods and data were presented with time for questions, clarifications, and general discussion. The authors then worked with the editors to generate the papers printed in this volume.The issue begins with a presentation of the study conducted by Siminoff and colleagues. The same paper also appears in the journal Social Science and Medicine, where it includes the conclusions of the authors (Siminoff, Burant, and Youngner 2004). In the current volume, we present only the methodology of and data from the study, allowing a number of distinguished commentators to offer their own conclusions and reflections.The first response comes from Tracy Schmidt, Executive Director of Intermountain Donor Services, one of our nation's organ procurement organizations (OPOs). For years, organ procurement professionals have reported anecdotal stories about families who wished to donate organs of... (shrink)

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of (...) the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes. (shrink)

In the film and play Twelve Angry Men, Juror 8 confronts the prejudices and poor reasoning of his fellow jurors, exhibiting an unwavering capacity not just to formulate and challenge arguments, but to be open-minded, stay calm, tolerate uncertainty, and negotiate in the face of considerable group pressures. In a perceptive and detailed portrayal of a group deliberation a ‘wheel of virtue’ is presented by the characters of Twelve Angry Men that allows for critical thinking virtues and vices to be (...) analysed in context. This article makes the case for the film being an exceptional teaching resource, and, drawing primarily on the ideas of Martha Nussbaum concerning contextualised detail, emotional engagement, and aesthetic distance, its educational value being intimately related to its being a work of fiction. (shrink)

“Lambeth Palace is my Washpot. Over Fulham have I cast my breeches.” So declared the novelist and secularist H. G. Wells in a letter to his mistress, Rebecca West, in May 1917. His claim was that, because of him, Britain was “full of theological discussion” and theological books were “selling like hot cakes”. He was lunching with liberal churchmen and dining with bishops. Certainly, the first of the books published during Wells’s short “religious period”, the novel Mr. Britling Sees It (...) Through, had sold very well on both sides of the Atlantic and made Wells financially secure. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (“Woodbine Willie”) wrote that, “Everyone ought to read Mr. H. G. Wells’s great novel, Mr. Britling Sees It Through. It is a gallant and illuminating attempt to state the question, and to answer it. His thought has brought him to a very real and living faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, and has also brought relief to many troubled minds among the officers of the British Army.” Yet, Wells’s God was explicitly a finite God, and his theology was far from orthodox. How can we account for his boast and for the clerical affirmation which he certainly did receive? This article examines and re-evaluates previous accounts of the responses of clergy to Wells’s writing, correcting some narratives. It discusses the way in which many clergy used Mr. Britling as a means by which to engage in a populist way with the question of theodicy, and examines the letters which Wells received from several prominent clerics, locating their responses in the context of their own theological writings. This is shown to be key to understanding the reaction of writers such as Studdert Kennedy to Mr. Britling Sees It Through. Finally, an assessment is made of the veracity of Wells’s boasting to his mistress, concluding that his claims were somewhat exaggerated. “Lambeth Palace is my Washpot, Over Fulham have I cast my breeches.” Mit diesen Worten erklärte der literarisch außergewöhnlich erfolgreiche und entschieden säkular denkende, kirchenkritische Schriftsteller und Science-Fiction-Pionier Herbert George Wells seiner Geliebten, dass seinetwegen Großbritannien “full of theological discussion” sei. Nicht ohne Eitelkeit schrieb er es seinem im September 1916 mit Blick auf den Krieg geschriebenen und stark autobiographisch gefärbten Roman Mr. Britling Sees it Through von knapp 450 Seiten zu, dass theologische Bücher reißenden Absatz fänden. Auch war er stolz darauf, liberale Kleriker zum Lunch zu treffen und von Bischöfen zum abendlichen Dinner eingeladen zu werden. In einer kurzen Phase seines Lebens war – oder inszenierte sich – Wells als ein frommer, gläubiger Mensch. Sein damals veröffentlichter Roman Mr. Britling Sees It Through verkaufte sich sowohl in Nordamerika als auch im Heimatland so gut, dass der Autor nun definitiv finanziell gesichert war. Der anglikanische Priester und Dichter Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, der im Ersten Weltkrieg Woodbine Willie genannt wurde, weil er verletzten und sterbenden Soldaten in den Phasen der Vorbereitung auf den Tod Woodbine-Zigaretten anbot, empfahl die Lektüre von Wells’ “great novel” Mr. Britling mit den Worten: “It is a gallant and illuminating attempt to state the question, and to answer it. His thought has brought him to a very real and living faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ, and has also brought relief to many troubled minds among the officers of the British Army.” Allerdings war H. G. Wells’ Gott ein durchaus endlicher Gott, und seine Theologie war alles andere als orthodox. Wie lassen sich dennoch seine evidente Prahlerei und die emphatische Zustimmung zu seinem Roman in den britischen Klerikereliten erklären? Im Aufsatz werden zunächst einige ältere Deutungen der Zustimmung führender Kleriker zu Wells’ Roman untersucht und einige der dabei leitenden Deutungsmuster kritisch infrage gestellt. Deutlich wird, dass nicht wenige anglikanische Geistliche Mr. Britling dazu nutzten, um höchst populistisch das umstrittene Theodizeeproblem anzusprechen. Auch werden die Briefe prominenter Geistlicher an Wells analysiert, mit Blick auf ihre eigenen Publikationen. Diese Reaktionen haben stark Studdert Kennedys Haltung zu Mr. Britling Sees It Through beeinflusst. Besonders aufrichtig war Wells mit Blick auf sich selbst allerdings nicht. Die Selbstinszenierung gegenüber seiner Geliebten war einfach nur peinliche Übertreibung. (shrink)

Aristotle warned against a 'missing middle' in logic (Gk Mesos – middle; intermediate). This paper submits that one of the reasons why there has been no major breakthrough in macroeconomics since the financial crisis of 2007-08 has been a missing middle in mainstream micro-macro syntheses, constrained by partial and general equilibrium premises. It maintains that transcending this needs recognition that large and dominant multinational corporations between small micro firms and macro outcomes – while also influencing both – merit the conceptual (...) paradigm of mesoeconomics. Drawing on a range of uses of the concept, it relates this to reasons for 'too big to fail' and suggests implications for policies to gain accountability of big business, including how a meso dimension to input-output could yield transparency on risk-prone financial transactions by banks, and of corporations contributing to climate change. It also critiques misrepresentation of Walras and Pareto, as well as suggesting areas for research which could address, and potentially redress, 'missing middles' in mainstream micro-macro syntheses. (shrink)

Newborn bloodspot screening programs are some of the longest running population screening programs internationally. Debate continues regarding the need for parents to give consent to having their child screened. Little attention has been paid to how meanings of consent-related terminology vary among stakeholders and the implications of this for practice. We undertook semi-structured interviews with parents, healthcare professionals and policy decision makers in two Canadian provinces. Conceptions of consent-related terms revolved around seven factors within two broad domains, decision-making and information (...) attainment. Decision-making comprised: parent decision authority; voluntariness; parent engagement with decision-making; and the process of enacting choice. Information ascertainment comprised: professional responsibilities ; parent responsibilities; and the need for discussion and understanding prior to a decision. Our findings indicate that consent-related terms are variously understood, with substantive implications for practice. We suggest that consent procedures should be explained descriptively, regardless of approach, so there are clear indications of what is expected of parents and healthcare professionals. Support systems are required both to meet the educational needs of parents and families and to support healthcare professionals in delivering information in a manner in keeping with parent needs. (shrink)

Back in 2017, Moodley and Rennie published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled ‘Penile transplantation as an appropriate response to botched traditional circumcisions in South Africa: an argument against.’1 As the title suggests, we took a critical view towards penile transplantation as a way of responding to the problem of young men in South Africa experiencing genital mutilation and amputation as a result of traditional circumcision practices. Our main conclusion was that prevention is key: social, cultural and (...) political strategies to prevent mutilations and amputations should be prioritised, rather than surgical solutions, particularly in low-resource communities. Van der Merwe, who led the surgical team for the first successful penile transplantation in Stellenbosch, South Africa, has responded to our views, and in what follows, we will distill and evaluate his main arguments. Cost and access to services : Van der Merwe states that our position is mostly based on costs, that is, that penile transplantation is expensive and it is unrealistic to think that young men in traditional communities will be able to avail themselves of such services. Against this, Van Der Merwe argues that the actual cost of penile transplantation can be favourably compared with another, more established medical intervention, that is, renal transplantation. Of course, cost comparisons are difficult with a new intervention when it is …. (shrink)

Needham, E; Stuart, SN Every three years the International Humanist and Ethical Union sponsors a World Humanist Congress, hosted by one of its member organizations, which this year was the British Humanist Association. The theme of this Congress was 'Freedom of thought and expression - forging a 21st-century Enlightenment'.

Cushman argues that “rationalization is rational.” We show that there is reasonable empirical clinical and forensic psychological evidence to support viewing rationalization as a quite suboptimal defense mechanism. Rationalization has been found to be associated not only with poorer emotional development, but also with a broad range of antisocial behavior, including not only shoplifting, but also pedophilia and murder.

In February 2018 the fourth volume of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality was finally published. Les aveux de la chair [Confessions of the Flesh] was edited by Frédéric Gros, and appeared in the same Gallimard series as Volumes 1, 2 and 3. The book deals with the early Christian Church Fathers of the second to fifth centuries. This essay reviews the book in relation to Foucault’s other work, showing how it sits in sequence with Volumes 2 and 3, but also (...) partly bridges the chronological and conceptual gap to Volume 1. It discusses the state of the manuscript and whether it should have been published, given Foucault’s stipulation of ‘no posthumous publications’. It outlines the contents of the book, which is in three parts, on the formation of a new experience, on virginity and on marriage. There are also some important supplementary materials included. The review discusses how it begins to answer previously unanswered questions about Foucault’s work, and offers some suggestions about how the book might be received and discussed. (shrink)

A review of volume 11, part 1 of _Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks._.

The situationist challenge to global character traits claims that on the basis of findings in social psychology, we should only accept at most the existence of local or context-sensitive traits. In this article I explore a neglected area of J. S. Mill's work to outline an account of context-sensitive traits. This account of traits, coupled with a sophisticated consequentialist ethical framework, suggests an interesting view on which persons govern the circumstances of their actions in order to best promote overall well-being.