To open a newspaper or turn on the television it would appear that science and religion are polar opposites - mutually exclusive bedfellows competing for hearts and minds. There is little indication of the rich interaction between religion and science throughout history, much of which continues today. From ancient to modern times, mathematicians have played a key role in this interaction. This is a book on the relationship between mathematics and religious beliefs. It aims to show that, throughout scientific history, (...) mathematics has been used to make sense of the 'big' questions of life, and that religious beliefs sometimes drove mathematicians to mathematics to help them make sense of the world. Containing contributions from a wide array of scholars in the fields of philosophy, history of science and history of mathematics, this book shows that the intersection between mathematics and theism is rich in both culture and character. Chapters cover a fascinating range of topics including the Sect of the Pythagoreans, Newton's views on the apocalypse, Charles Dodgson's Anglican faith and Gödel's proof of the existence of God. (shrink)

Patrick Stokes has argued that although many conspiracy theories are true, we should reject the policy of particularism (that is, the policy of investigating conspiracy theories if they are plausible and believing them if that is what the evidence suggests) and should instead adopt a policy of principled skepticism, subjecting conspiracy theories – or at least the kinds of theories that are generally derided as such – to much higher epistemic standards than their non-conspiratorial rivals, and believing them only if (...) they are proven up to the hilt. The reason is that although some conspiracy theories are true (or otherwise epistemically kosher) there is a widespread practice of conspiracy theorizing which leads to the social acceptance of conspiracy theories which (much like Lord Byron) are mad, bad and dangerous to ‘know’, leading to radically false beliefs about the natural and political worlds (for instance to Trump’s claim that Global Warming is a ‘Chinese Hoax’). Thus Stokes is a defender of the epistemic status quo in which the punditocracy routinely dismisses and sneers at ‘conspiracy theories’, simply because they are conspiracy theories, whilst admitting sotto voce that once in a blue moon there are some conspiracy theories that are true. It is just the he would prefer the epistemic policy of the punditocracy to be the policy of the populace at large. Stokes seems to be suggesting that although particularism looks like a sensible epistemic policy (and might indeed be the correct policy in an ideal world), if it were put into practice at the level of public debate it would give a specious air of plausibility to many false and dangerous conspiracy theories with pernicious social effects. I reply that the actual moral costs of conspiracy ‘skepticism’ (as it is currently practiced) exceed the likely costs of particularism, especially if it is informed by some sensible heuristics, ruling out some conspiracy theories as crazy and ruling in others as relatively sane. For the conspiracy ‘skepticism’ as currently practiced is highly selective, pouring scorn and contempt on conspiracy theories which threaten current elites whilst giving the conspiratorial concoctions of those elites something close to a free pass. (shrink)

David Elder-Vass's “For Emergence: refining Archer's account of social structure,” is the latest of a number of papers which together constitute a family quarrel in the cognitive space After Postmodernism among realist social scientists. In the case under examination here in “Elder-Vass's Move and Giddens's Call”, the concern is the structure and agency problem in the social sciences. The debate continuing in Elder-Vass's paper represents the proponents of the resurrection of Durkheim's social realism under the auspices of Bhaskar's Transcendental Realism; (...) the debate that continues here as a response to the Elder-Vass paper, opposes the latter's attempt to advance the argument for social realism under the canopy of Harre's Immanental realism. The theme of this response is this: Elder-Vass fails to realize the promise of reconciling social structural realism and social relational realism. (shrink)

[IMPORTANT CORRECTION - See end of abstract.] In Syntactical Treatments of Modality, with Corollaries on Reflexion Principles and Finite Axiomatizability, Acta Philosophica Fennica 16 (1963), 153–167, Richard Montague shows that the use of a single syntactic predicate (with a context-independent semantic value) to represent modalities of alethic necessity and idealized knowledge leads to inconsistency. In A Note on Syntactical Treatments of Modality, Synthese 44 (1980), 391–395, Richmond Thomason obtains a similar impossibility result for idealized belief: under a syntactical treatment of (...) belief, the assumption that idealized belief is deductively closed, together with certain other plausible conditions on idealized belief, imply that an ideal believer with consistent beliefs cannot believe the truth of Robinson's Arithmetic. In this essay I assert an impossibility result similar to Thomason's but which does not assume that belief is deductively closed or ideal in any other way. There are technical mistakes in the formulations of Lemmas 1-4 and Theorem 2, however. Corrections can be found in the Erratum section of the author's website. (shrink)

We present a probabilistic extension to active path analyses of token causation (Halpern & Pearl 2001, forthcoming; Hitchcock 2001). The extension uses the generalized notion of intervention presented in (Korb et al. 2004): we allow an intervention to set any probability distribution over the intervention variables, not just a single value. The resulting account can handle a wide range of examples. We do not claim the account is complete --- only that it fills an obvious gap in previous active-path approaches. (...) It still succumbs to recent counterexamples by Hiddleston (2005), because it does not explicitly consider causal processes. We claim three benefits: a detailed comparison of three active-path approaches, a probabilistic extension for each, and an algorithmic formulation. (shrink)

THIS PAPER IS A DEFENSE OF AN OBJECTIVIST VERSION OF\nRODERICK FIRTH'S IDEAL OBSERVER THEORY OF ETHICS. IT\nANALYZES AND CRITIQUES A POWERFUL, RELATIVIZED IDEAL\nOBSERVER THEORY ADVANCED BY THOMAS CARSON.

Of laws in general -- Of laws directly derived from the nature of government -- Of the principles of the three kinds of government -- That the laws of education ought to be relative to the principles of government -- That the laws given by the legislator ought to be relative to the nature of government -- Consquences of the principles of different governments, with respect to the simplicity of civil and criminal laws, the form of judgements, and inflicting of (...) punishments -- Consquences of the different principles of the three governments, with respect to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women -- Of the corruption of the principles of the three governments -- Of the laws in the relation they bear to defensive force -- Of laws, in the relation they bear to offensive force. (shrink)

Most contemporary philosophers who defend the compatibility of hell with the divine goodness do so by arguing that the damned freely choose hell. Thomas Talbott denies that such a choice is possible, on the grounds that God in his goodness would remove any 'ignorance, deception, or bondage to desire' which would motivate a person to choose eternal misery. My strategy is to turn the tables on Talbott and ask why God would not remove the motives we have for any sin (...) whatsoever. I argue that two plausible answers to this question also show why God would not remove our motives for choosing hell. (shrink)

Hebb's conception of instinctive behavior permits the conclusion that it is just not human nature to be instinctive: while the ant brain is built for instinctive behavior, the human brain is built for intelligent behavior. Since drives cannot be instincts, even when a human driver becomes driven, human motives are not instincts either. This understanding allows us to dismiss the determinism of the old instinctivism found in Freud's bio-psychological unconscious, and of the new instinctivism, exemplified by Wilson's sociobiology. The latter (...) entails an explanatory shift from instincts to genes, in which the deterministic character of instincts is carried over to genes. Since genes are not instincts this is a mistake. (shrink)

We begin with our reasons for seeking to bring Kant to bear on contemporary information and computing ethics (ICE). We highlight what each contributor to this special issue draws from Kant and then applies to contemporary matters in ICE. We conclude with a summary of what these chapters individually and collectively tell us about Kant’s continuing relevance to these contemporary matters – specifically, with regard to the issues of building trust online and regulating the Internet; how far discourse contributing to (...) deliberative democracy online may include storytelling and appeals to the emotions; and whether or not search engine algorithms should be made public. We further highlight how certain chapters – especially as they incorporate more recent philosophical traditions such as phenomenology and cognitive psychology – develop a Kantian approach (or at least one that is both inspired by while simultaneously transforming Kant) to ethical issues in ICE, including the ethical implications of the on-going blurring of the border between the real and the virtual; designing software in light of distributed ethical responsibility; and trust-building in e-Science collaborations. (shrink)

Are they needed? To be sure. The Darwinian industry, industrious though it is, has failed to provide texts of more than a handful of Darwin's books. If you want to know what Darwin said about barnacles (still an essential reference to cirripedists, apart from any historical importance) you are forced to search shelves, or wait while someone does it for you; some have been in print for a century; various reprints have appeared and since vanished." -Eric Korn,Times Literary Supplement (...) class='Hi'>Charles Robert Darwin (1880-1882) has been widely recognized since his own time as one of the most influential writers in the history of Western thought. His books were widely read by specialists and the general public, and his influence had been extended by almost continuous public debate over the last 130 years. New York University Press' edition makes it possible for the first time to review Darwin's public literary output as a whole, plus his scientific journal articles, his private notebooks, and his correspondence. This is the first complete edition containing all of Darwin's published books, featuring definitive texts recording original paginations with Darwin's indexes retained. All illustrations and plates are presented, inclucing 82 color plates of birds and mammals and several folding maps and plates. The set also features a general introduction and index, and textural introductions in each volume. (shrink)

This book is comprised of essays previously published in Philosophy & Public Affairs and also an extended excerpt from Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars.

This article defends the thesis that in theorizing about the mind we need to accord first-person (“introspective” or “reflective”) judgments about experience a “selective provisional trust.” Such an approach can form part of a descriptive psychology. It is here so employed to evaluate some influential interpretations of research on attention to conclude that—despite what conventional wisdom suggests—an “introspection-positive” policy actually offers us a better critical perspective than its contrary. What supposedly teaches us the worthlessness of introspection actually shows us why (...) we need to take it seriously. (shrink)

Following Bernheim,1 we examine aspects of 'felicitometrics,'2 the measurement of the 'quality' term in Quality of Life (QOL). Bernheim argued that overall QOL is best captured as the Gestalt3 of a global self-assessment and suggested that the Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment (ACSA) approach, in which subjects' memories of the best and worst times of their lives are used to anchor a Visual Analog Scale (VAS), provided a serious answer to the serious question, 'How have you been?' Bernheim compares and contrasts (...) the ACSA to multi-item questionnaire QOL instruments, such as the SF-36, concluding that the ACSA has a number of advantages. His discussion assumes that the use of QOL outcomes in clinical trials is both relevant and appropriate. In the present paper, we document the reasonableness of this latter assumption,4 contribute to the characterization of the similarities and differences between multi-item and individualized QOL instruments, and point to some other individualized instruments that may be used in clinical trial contexts. These 'other individualized instruments' differ from the ACSA in fundamental ways; but they are individualized in that the subject defines those areas in his/her life that are most important, and these may vary from subject-to-subject. (shrink)

Population ethics contains several principles that avoid the repugnant conclusion. These rules rank all possible alternatives, leaving no room for moral ambiguity. Building on a suggestion of Parfit, this paper characterizes principles that provide incomplete but ethically attractive rankings of alternatives with different population sizes. All of them rank same-number alternatives with generalized utilitarianism.

Numbers are symbols manipulated in accord with the axioms of arithmetic. They sometimes represent discrete and continuous quantities, but they are often simply names. Brains, including insect brains, represent the rational numbers with a fixed-point data type, consisting of a significand and an exponent, thereby conveying both magnitude and precision.

Determining whether the law of excluded middle requires bivalence depends upon whether we are talking about sentences or propositions. If we are talking about sentences, neither side has a decisive case. If we are talking of propositions, there is a strong argument on the side of those who say the excluded middle does require bivalence. I argue that all challenges to this argument can be met.

Intending the recovery of human agency with the aid of theories of human socio-cultural life, Turner and Harre do so however in terms of conflicting conceptions of the embodying of persons. Consequently, their theories share the problem of determinism and embodied human agency. This is the problem of the proper location of agency with regard to the person, the body, and society. These theories then are in fundamental conflict on exactly this issue of the proper location of agency. Turner's thesis (...) of location: in the beginning is the body, and therefore the person. Thus Turner's recovery of agency: the effectiveness of persons resides in the discourse-independent agency of the bodies of persons. Harre's thesis of location: in the beginning is the person, and therefore the body. Thus Harre's recovery of agency: the effectiveness of persons resides in the discursive agency of persons embodied. For both Turner and Harre the intent to recover agency through embodiment is also a scientific intent. Thus, the problem of the proper location of agency requires that agency must be formulated in terms of ubiquitous determinism and not regularity determinism: only the former provides a conception of causal powers. To answer the question of location Turner is led to Merleau-Pontian phenomenology and its conception of the lived body. Instead, Harre enlists a realist philosophy of science with its special conception of causual powers. A systematic conception of agentive causation is shown to constitute the recovery of human agency and to enable us to make principled determinations in the assignment of agency. It is argued that, since phenomenology presumes the ontology of regularity determinism, it cannot provide us with what it in fact denies, a conception of causal powers. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty moved from his idea of the actual body as lived to the actual body as flesh, and in that reformulation it is best understood as causal powers. It is argued that without a conception of causal powers Turner's use of the lived body to establish the agency of effective persons must fail, revealing instead that the effectiveness of persons is the discursive agency of persons embodied. Persons discursively embodied enact the practices of speech acts and action signs systems. (shrink)

I claim that our desire to be special motivates us to suppose that if we were not God created, we must be self-created. I also claim that Stephen J Gould's claims about punctuated equilibrium, the absence of directional selection, and exaptations, when taken together, lead to kind of secular creationism. I introduce the notion of “adaptive effects” and argue that a focus on the actual physiological and psychological mechanisms that produce adaptations provides a way out of the exaptation dilemma.

In the aftermath of the Aum case, various suggestions as to the causes of dangerous cult mentality, and possible measures for its prevention have been offered in the Japanese media, but it seems that a much more penetrating diagnosis is necessary than that thus far proffered. To merely lay blame to the person of Shoko Asahara, or the phenomenon of mind control, or an insensitivity, ineptitude, or lack of resources on the part of the Japanese police, is to grossly oversimplify (...) and objectify a problem which has complex roots within the structure of the very institutions and values which Japanese society regards as its greatest assets. (shrink)

In interviews, it may happen that a respondent gives an answer which seems well formatted, but is not receipted as acceptable by the interviewer. In this article I examine one way in which interviewers display their diagnosis of the problem and act to bring about its solution. In the cases I describe, the interviewers defer revision of the question until they have established a new, more personalized basis for it, informed by their knowledge of the respondents' circumstances. There are three (...) things of interest. The first is how this actually works conversationally; it seems to be structured as an insertion sequence and played out by presequential turns which are highly projective of the respondent's agreement. The second is that the scenario that the interviewer inserts is a positive example of what would have been an answer to the `failed' original question. The third is that there is a difference between the original, general question and its subsequent, specific revision. I argue that all these features manifest interviewers' solution of their dilemma in choosing between literal and sensitive questioning. (shrink)