What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body and brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Others think of consciousness as indicating a continuation of self, a transformation, an awakening or even alternatives based on the quality of life experience. In this issue, speculation drawn from theoretic research are presented. -/- Table of Contents Epigraph: From “The Immortal”, Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor’s Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, Gregory (...) M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon—A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It’s the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really “such stuff as dreams are made on”? Chris Nunn 1229-1225 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1226-1230 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1231-1236. (shrink)

Aimed at undergraduates, _Contemporary Ethics_ presupposes little or no familiarity with ethics and is written in a clear and engaging style. It provides students with a sympathetic but critical guide to utilitarianism, explaining its different forms and exploring the debates it has spawned. The book leads students through a number of current issues in contemporary ethics that are connected to controversies over and within utilitarianism. At the same time, it uses utilitarianism to introduce students to ethics as a subject. In (...) these ways, the book is not only a guide to utilitarianism, but also an introduction to some standard problems of ethics and to several important topics in contemporary ethical theory. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed utilitarian analysis of the ethical issues involved in war. Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War addresses the two basic ethical questions posed by war: when, if ever, are we morally justified in waging war, and if recourse to arms is warranted, how are we permitted to fight the wars we wage? In addition, it deals with the challenge that realism and relativism raise for the ethical discussion of war, and with the duties of military personnel (...) and the moral challenges they can face. In tackling these matters, the book covers a wide range of topics—from pacifism to armed humanitarian intervention, from the right of national defense to pre-emptive or preventive war, from civilian immunity to the tenets of just war theory and the moral underpinnings of the rules of war. But, what is distinctive about this book is that it provides a consistent and thorough-going utilitarian or consequentialist treatment of the fundamental normative issues that war occasions. Although it goes against the tide of recent work in the field, a utilitarian approach to the ethics of war illuminates old questions in new ways by showing how a concern for well-being and the consequences of our actions and policies shape the moral constraints to which states and other actors must adhere. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war, just war theory, moral philosophy, war and conflict studies and IR. (shrink)

Eldon Soifer and Béla Szabados argue that hypocrisy poses a problem for consequentialism because the hypocrite, in pretending to live up to a norm he or she does not really accept, acts in ways that have good results. They argue, however, that consequentialists can meet this challenge and show the wrongness of hypocrisy by adopting a desirefulfilment version of their theory. This essay raises some doubts about Soifer and Szabados's proposal and argues that consequentialism has no difficulty coming to grips (...) with hypocrisy, whether or not one favours a desire-fulfilment account of the good. (shrink)

In this book, William H. F. Altman considers the pedagogical connections behind the post-Republic dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of their Reading Order.

The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies for rationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophers argue that these anomalies are explained well by sentimentalism, the thesis that the presence of an emotion is necessary for the formation of a sincere moral judgment. The present review reveals that while emotions and moral judgments indeed often co-occur, there is scant evidence that emotions directly cause or constitute moral judgments. Research on disgust, anger, (...) sympathy, and guilt indicates that people only reliably experience emotions when judging conduct that is relevant to the welfare of the self and valued others. Moreover, many recent studies have either failed to replicate or exposed crucial confounds in the most cited evidence in support of sentimentalism. Moral psychologists should jettison sentimentalism, and focus instead on how considerations of harm and welfare—the core concepts of rationalist theories— interact with empirical beliefs to shape moral judgments. (shrink)

In the past two decades, reinforcement learning has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of (...) a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. (shrink)

Here, William H. Schaberg presents a detailed publication history and biography of Nietzsche as author and an equally comprehensive annotated bibliography of his work.

We note in Section I that an acceptable formulation of Presentism must preserve its consistency with Transient Time and inconsistency with Static Time. After arguing in Section II that certain formulations of Presentism are unacceptable, we offer in Section III a formulation of Presentism that we defend against the charge of triviality.

In this book, William H. F. Altman argues that it is not order of composition but reading order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo “late dialogues,” and shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late” Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters.

Although recent cognitive science and traditional phenomenology has placed great importance on first-person descriptions, exactly what this entails goes undefined. I will seek to answer what's involved in phenomenological description, with reference to Husserl. I define phenomenological description according to its genus and differentia. I compare description in the natural sciences with description in phenomenology. I discuss how the basic particulars for Husserlian phenomenological description stem from the intentional relation -- particularly the distinction between noesis and noema. I discuss the (...) pivotal role of reflection in phenomenological description. I further argue that a phenomenological description is more than a statement which utilizes the 'I-[verb]' template. The final section analyses the difficulties inherent in describing intersubjectivity and argues these difficulties may have influenced Husserl's early, descriptive account of this topic. (shrink)

Neurobiologist William Calvin explores the human brain, positing that the neurons in the brain operate in an accelerated version of biological evolution, evolving ideas through random variations and selections, and supports his hypothesis with numerous ca.

This article attempts to account for professional historians’ relative neglect of the history of economic life over the past thirty years, looking mainly at the American case. This neglect seems paradoxical, considering the remarkable transformations that have taken place in world capitalism during this same period. I trace the neglect to the capture of the once interdisciplinary field of economic history by mathematically inclined economists and to the roughly simultaneous turn of historians from social to cultural history. I conclude by (...) suggesting some topics in the history of economic life that seem both timely and exciting. I also suggest some intellectual resources that other disciplines, particularly economic sociology and economic history, could offer should historians decide to tackle the history of economic life once again. (shrink)

This book is a study of Plato’s most elementary dialogues, arranged in relation to Reading Order as opposed to order of composition. Beginning with the theatrical Protagoras and reaching a mountaintop in Symposium, the dialogues between them—Alcibiades, Lovers, Hippias, Ion, and Menexenus—introduce the student to both philosophy and Platonism.

Combining engaging discussions and stimulating new case studies, BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES gives students a comprehensive survey of business ethics that will guide them toward becoming ethical professionals, even if they have never studied philosophy before. Rich with real-world examples, BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES invites students to critically analyze and apply a broad range of philosophical concepts and principles to today's most important issues in business and beyond. BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES is a concise (...) (without readings) and updated version of the eleventh edition of MORAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS. BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES is also available in an eBook format. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The modern corpuscular theory of radiation was born in 1905 when Einstein advanced his light quantum hypothesis; and the steps by which Einstein's hypothesis, after years of profound scepticism, was finally and fully vindicated by Arthur Compton's 1922 scattering experiments constitutes one of the most stimulating chapters in the history of recent physics. To begin to appreciate the complexity of this chapter, however, it is only necessary to emphasize an elementary but very significant point, namely, that while Einstein based his (...) arguments for quanta largely on the behaviour of high-frequency black body radiation or ultra-violet light, Compton experimented with X-rays. A modern physicist accustomed to picturing ultra-violet light and X-radiation as simply two adjacent regions in the electromagnetic spectrum might regard this distinction as hair-splitting. But who in 1905 was sure that X-rays and γ-rays are far more closely related to ultra-violet light than to α-particles, for example? This only became evident after years of painstaking research, so that moving without elaboration from Einstein's hypothesis to Compton's experiments automatically eliminates from consideration an important segment of history—a segment in which a major role was played by William Henry Bragg. (shrink)

It must strive to defeat our centuries-old habituation to the book as spectacle, in order that we may be brought to dwell in the immediacies of our lively selves in the world, as we do in our oral/aural life.

This article studies seriously actualistic quantified modal logics. A key component of the language is an abstraction operator by means of which predicates can be created out of complex formulas. This facilitates proof of a uniform substitution theorem: if a sentence is logically true, then any sentence that results from substituting a predicate abstract for each occurrence of a simple predicate abstract is also logically true. This solves a problem identified by Kripke early in the modern semantic study of quantified (...) modal logic. A tableau proof system is presented and proved sound and complete with respect to logical truth. The main focus is on seriously actualistic T, an extension of T, but the results established hold also for systems based on other propositional modal logics. Following Menzel it is shown that the formal language studied also supports an actualistic account of truth simpliciter. (shrink)

Relatively new and now ubiquitous, smartphones and tablet computers are changing our lives by asking us to rethink the ways that we conduct business, form and maintain relationships, and read books and magazines. In the same capacity, mobile devices are redefining how health care is administered, monitored, and delivered through specialized technologies called medical apps (applications). In general, apps are pieces of software that can be installed and run on a variety of hardware platforms, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop (...) computers. Medical apps, in particular, refer to a wide variety of software that focuses on health care (loosely defined). Whether these apps target the health-care .. (shrink)

Neuroscience, brain based learning and education -- Collaborative reports in neuroscience and education -- A local paradigmatic example, founded on an international research phenomenon -- The mereological fallacy -- First-person/third-person asymmetry -- Neuroscience and irreducible uncertainty -- Inner and outer : the epistemology of the mind -- Inner and outer : the challenges of crypto-cartesianism, materialism and reductionism -- Intrinsic and relational models of education -- Education, psychology and physics -- Bohr's philosophy of physics and its application to psychology and (...) education -- A new educational philosophy based on Bohr's interpretation of quantum physics -- Conclusions : wittgenstein-bohr model of education. (shrink)

Recent Plato scholarship has grown increasingly comfortable with the notion that Plato’s art of writing brings his readers into the dialogue, challenging them to respond to deliberate errors or lacunae in the text. Drawing inspiration from Stanley Fish’s seminal reading of Satan’s speeches in Paradise Lost, this paper considers the narrative of Timaeus as deliberately unreliable, and argues that the actively critical reader is “the missing fourth” with which the dialogue famously begins. By continuing Timaeus with Critias—a dialogue that ends (...) with a missing speech—Plato points to the kind of reader he expects: one who can answer Critias’ question : ὡς μὲν γὰρ οὐκ εὖ τὰ παρὰ σοῦ λεχθέντα εἴρηται, τίς ἂν ἐπιχειρήσειεν ἔμφρων λέγειν. (shrink)