The Hoffmann reflex (H-wave) is produced by alpha-motoneuron activation in the spinal cord. A feature of this electromyography response is that it exhibits fluctuations in amplitude even during repetitive stimulation with the same intensity of current. We herein explore the hypothesis that physical training induces plastic changes in the motor system. Such changes are evaluated with the fractal dimension (FD) analysis of the H-wave amplitude-fluctuations (H-wave FD) and the cross-covariance (CCV) between the bilateral H-wave amplitudes. The aim of this study (...) was to compare the H-wave FD as well as the CCV before and after track training in sedentary individuals and athletes. The training modality in all subjects consisted of running three times per week (for 13 weeks) in a concrete road of 5 km. Given the different physical condition of sedentary vs. athletes, the running time between sedentary and athletes was different. After training, the FD was significantly increased in sedentary individuals but significantly reduced in athletes, although there were no changes in spinal excitability in either group of subjects. Moreover, the CCV between bilateral H-waves exhibited a significant increase in athletes but not in sedentary individuals. These differential changes in the FD and CCV indicate that the plastic changes in the complexity of the H-wave amplitude fluctuations as well as the synaptic inputs to the Ia-motoneuron systems of both legs were correlated to the previous fitness history of the subjects. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that the FD and CCV can be employed as indexes to study plastic changes in the human motor system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.1 (2006) 35-53 [Access article in PDF] "Truth Is What Works": Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism—A Conversation Francisco J. Varela Bernhard Poerksen Institut für Journalistik und Kommunikationswissenschaft Universität Hamburg Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a (...) dissertation on the insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35]Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001.In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why?Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it... (shrink)

The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.

The question whether ethical behavior is biologically determined may refer either to the capacity for ethics (i.e., the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or wrong), or to the moral norms accepted by human beings for guiding their actions. I herein propose: (1) that the capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature; and (2) that moral norms are products of cultural evolution, not of biological evolution. Humans exhibit ethical behavior by nature because their biological makeup (...) determines the presence of three necessary conditions for ethical behavior: (i) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s own actions; (ii) the ability to make value judgments; and (iii) the ability to choose between alternative courses of action. Ethical behavior came about in evolution not because it is adaptive in itself, but as a necessary consequence of man’s eminent intellectual abilities, which are an attribute directly promoted by natural selection. That is, morally evolved as an exaptation, not as an adaptation. Since Darwin’s time there have been evolutionists proposing that the norms of morality are derived from biological evolution. Sociobiologists represent the most recent and most subtle version of that proposal. The sociobiologists' argument is that human ethical norms are sociocultural correlates of behaviors fostered by biological evolution. I argue that such proposals are misguided and do not escape the naturalistic fallacy. The isomorphism between the behaviors promoted by natural selection and those sanctioned by moral norms exist only with respect to the consequences of the behaviors; the underlying causations are completely disparate. (shrink)

Knives, birds' wings, and mountain slopes are used for certain purposes: cutting, flying, and climbing. A bird's wings have in common with knives that they have been 'designed' for the purpose they serve, which purpose accounts for their existence, whereas mountain slopes have come about by geological processes independently of their uses for climbing. A bird's wings differ from a knife in that they have not been designed or produced by any conscious agent; rather, the wings, like the slopes, are (...) outcomes of natural processes without any intentional causation. Evolutionary biologists use teleological language and teleological explanations. I propose that this use is appropriate, because teleological explanations are hypotheses that can be subject to empirical testing. The distinctiveness of teleological hypotheses is that they account for the existence of a feature in terms of the function it serves; for example, wings have evolved and persist because flying is beneficial to birds by increasing their chances of surviving and reproducing. Features of organisms that are explained with teleological hypotheses include structures, such as wings; processes, such as development from egg to adult; and behaviours, such as nest building. A proximate explanation of these features is the function they serve; an ultimate explanation that they all share is their contribution to the reproductive fitness of the organisms. I distinguish several kinds of teleological explanations, such as natural and artificial, as well as bounded and unbounded, some of which but not others apply to biological explanations. (shrink)

How can science be brought to connect with experience? This book addresses two of the most challenging problems facing contemporary neurobiology and cognitive science. Firstly, understanding how we unconsciously execute habitual actions as a result of neurological and cognitive processes that are not formal actions of conscious judgment but part of a habitual nexus of systematic self-organization. Secondly, attempting to create an ethics adequate to our present awareness that there is no such thing as a transcendental self, a stable subject (...) or soul. The author combines researches in cognitive science and phenomenology with two representatives of what he calls the 'wisdom traditions': Confucianism and Buddhist epistemology. (shrink)

Stephen Jay Gould’s monumental The Structure of Evolutionary Theory ‘‘attempts to expand and alter the premises of Darwinism, in order to build an enlarged and distinctive evolutionary theory . . . while remaining within the tradition, and under the logic, of Darwinian argument.’’ The three branches or ‘‘fundamental principles of Darwinian logic’’ are, according to Gould: agency (natural selection acting on individual organisms), efficacy (producing new species adapted to their environments), and scope (accumulation of changes that through geological time yield (...) the living world’s panoply of diversity and morphological complexity). Gould’s efforts to contribute something important to each of these three fundamental components of Darwinian Theory are far from successful. (shrink)

The question whether ethical behavior is biologically determined may refer either to thecapacity for ethics (e.i., the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or wrong), or to the moralnorms accepted by human beings for guiding their actions. My theses are: (1) that the capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature; and (2) that moral norms are products of cultural evolution, not of biological evolution.Humans exhibits ethical behavior by nature because their biological makeup determines the presence (...) of the three necessary, and jointly sufficient, conditions for ethical behavior: (i) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one's own actions; (ii) the ability to make value judgements; and (iii) the ability to choose between alternative courses of action. Ethical behavior came about in evolution not because it is adaptive in itself, but as a necessary consequece of man's eminent intellectual abilities, which are an attribute directly promoted by natural selection. (shrink)

According to Heidegger’s own testimony, his 1940 essay, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” is derived from a course he first delivered in 1931/32. Yet, while an interpretation of the Theaetetus is central to the argument in 1931/32, this dialogue is not so much as mentioned in the 1940 essay. The reason is that Heidegger’s own careful and insightful reading of the Theaetetus simply does not support his thesis regarding Plato’s “doctrine of truth.” But then the real interest of this reading is (...) that it affords the opportunity for pursuing a genuine dialogue between Heidegger and Plato that was too abruptly discontinued. (shrink)

The study examines the end or purpose of the acts of the virtue of religion within Thomas Aquinas' ethics of human action. What is the end of religious worship? Is it God, or is it the worshippers themselves? On the one hand, one would presume that God cannot be the end of religion because, from the perspective of Classical Theism (of which Aquinas is a main proponent), God cannot benefit from the activity of creatures. But on the other hand, if (...) the worshipper is the end of religious acts, would not worship be a self-centered or an egotistic act? The standard Thomistic account of the problem, first laid out by Cajetan and later adopted by countless followers, is that God is the finis cuius ("the aim toward which") of the acts of the virtue of religion, whereas the religious worshipper is the finis quo (the beneficiary) of the acts. I argue that this solution, which is based on a single text of Aquinas (ST II-II.81.7c), is insufficient. After examining Aquinas' theory of action (the doctrine of object, end, and circumstances presented in ST I-II.18), I show how the object of a particular human act can be interpreted as the finis operis (the end of the agent's act). Utilizing this principle of the identity between the object and the finis operis, I argue that the finis operis of religion can be summed up as a threefold sequence of ends: the honor, reverence, and glory of God. As a result, the ultimate beneficiary of acts of religious worship is neither God nor the individual worshipper, but rather the totality of the universe, encapsulated by Aquinas in his notion of divine "glory," that is, the extrinsic manifestation of God's intrinsic goodness within the universe. (shrink)

Resumen Defiendo que lo novedoso de la concepción de Cicerón de los modelos basados en personajes del pasado consistió en conferirles habilidades que podían aplicarse a las disputas legales y políticas de Roma y, al mismo tiempo, mejorar el desempeño de los oradores jóvenes y aprendices mediante un modelo mixto de retórica. La destreza técnica y la prudencia práctica de estas autoridades para advertir aspectos cruciales en casos particulares y adaptarse a circunstancias adversas sirven como ejemplos para los oficios del (...) rétor y del abogado. Esas dos características, y no el amplio conocimiento o la fama que estos personajes alcanzaron, llevaron a Cicerón a reconocer a ciertos oradores y pensadores como fuentes de inspiración moral y formativa.I argue that Cicero's innovative understanding of the models based on characters from the past consisted in conferring them skills to be applied in the legal and political disputes of Rome and, at the same time, to improve the performance of young orators and apprentices with a mixed model of rhetoric. Both the technical ability and practical prudence of these authorities to see crucial aspects in particular cases and to adapt to adverse circumstances serve to the craft of rhetoricians and lawyers. These two features, and not the large knowledge or fame these figures acquired in life, took Cicero to recognise certain orators and thinkers as sources of moral and formative inspiration. (shrink)

El presente trabajo explora cómo la Inteligencia Artificial (IA) puede integrarse en los cuidados a personas dependientes y con discapacidad en España, resaltando su capacidad para promover la autonomía y la atención centrada en la persona. Inspirado en la Convención sobre los Derechos de las Personas conDiscapacidad de las Naciones Unidas, el documento propone un cambio del modelo institucionalizado de cuidado hacia uno comunitario y más integrado en el hogar, donde la tecnología, especialmente la IA, juegue un papel crucial. Se (...) discuten los beneficios y riesgos de la IA en los cuidados, como mejorar la calidad de vida y la eficiencia de los servicios, al tiempo que se plantea la necesidad de un análisis cuidadoso para evitar la discriminación y asegurar el respeto por los derechos humanos. Además, se detallan ejemplos de tecnologíasactuales, como robots de atención domiciliaria y sistemas de monitoreo remoto, mostrando la creciente integración de la IA en el ámbito de los cuidados. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: The Design Argument The Design Argument in Antiquity Christian Authors Hume's Onslaught William Paley's Natural Theology The Bridgewater Treatises Intelligent Design: A Political Movement Eyes to See No “There” There Blood and Tears Gambling to Non‐existence Natural Selection Natural Selection and Design Postscript: Counterpoint Notes References.

The question whether ethical behavior is biologically determined may refer either to the capacity for ethics (i.e., the proclivity to judge human actions as either right or wrong), or to the moral norms accepted by human beings for guiding their actions. I herein propose: (1) that the capacity for ethics is a necessary attribute of human nature; and (2) that moral norms are products of cultural evolution, not of biological evolution. Humans exhibit ethical behavior by nature because their biological makeup (...) determines the presence of three necessary conditions for ethical behavior: (i) the ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s own actions; (ii) the ability to make value judgments; and (iii) the ability to choose between alternative courses of action. Ethical behavior came about in evolution not because it is adaptive in itself, but as a necessary consequence of man’s eminent intellectual abilities, which are an attribute directly promoted by natural selection. That is, morally evolved as an exaptation, not as an adaptation. Since Darwin’s time there have been evolutionists proposing that the norms of morality are derived from biological evolution. Sociobiologists represent the most recent and most subtle version of that proposal. The sociobiologists' argument is that human ethical norms are sociocultural correlates of behaviors fostered by biological evolution. I argue that such proposals are misguided and do not escape the naturalistic fallacy. The isomorphism between the behaviors promoted by natural selection and those sanctioned by moral norms exist only with respect to the consequences of the behaviors; the underlying causations are completely disparate. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, se tratará de dilucidar la caracterización del Barroco europeo que Deleuze propone en El pliegue, con miras a aislar los rasgos idiosincrásicos que comparte con el Barroco hispano, definitorios como son de un ethos encaminado hacia una Modernidad alternativa a la que finalmente se impuso. Transitaremos así de la interpretación de la filosofía leibniziana del sujeto como un «manierismo» que ofrece Deleuze a la caracterización graciana del héroe y el mundo, con miras a mostrar que en (...) ambos planteamientos hay una ontología de la potencia que desmiente el esencialismo a propósito del sujeto característico de la Modernidad de cuño cartesiano, en provecho de una evaluación interna o inmanente del sujeto conformada en tiempos de crisis y con una marcada inspiración estoica. (shrink)

In _Ecological Ethics and the Human Soul: Aquinas, Whitehead, and the Metaphysics of Value_, Francisco J. Benzoni addresses the pervasive and destructive view that there is a moral gulf between human beings and other creatures. Thomas Aquinas, whose metaphysics entails such a moral gulf, holds that human beings are ultimately separate from nature. Alfred North Whitehead, in contrast, maintains that human beings are continuous with the rest of nature. These different metaphysical systems demand different ethical stances toward creation. Benzoni (...) analyzes and challenges Thomas's understanding of the human soul, his primary justification for the moral separation, arguing that it is finally philosophically untenable. The author finds promising the alternative metaphysics of Whitehead, for whom human beings are a part of nature—even if the highest part; all creatures have a degree of subjectivity and creativity, and thus all have intrinsic value and moral worth, independent of subjective human valuation. Further, though there is difference, there is no moral gulf between God and the world. God is truly affected by the experience of creatures. Benzoni argues that if this vision of moral worth is articulated with sufficient force and clarity, it could help heal the human relation to our planet. “Eminently clear in concept and analysis, profound in insight, and precise in reasoning, this book not only contributes a distinguished study of Aquinas but also reshapes contemporary ecological ethics by relating it to basic issues of metaphysics. Both subsequent moral theory attentive to Aquinas and subsequent formulations of ecological ethics will be incomplete without taking account of Benzoni's argument.” —_Franklin I. Gamwell, Shailer Mathews Distinguished Service Professor of Religious Ethics, the Philosophy of Religion, and Theology, The University of Chicago Divinity School_ “In the introduction and conclusion, Francisco Benzoni makes clear the broader significance of this work for the field of ecological ethics and the future well-being of the human species on this earth. One can learn a great deal about the philosophy of both Aquinas and Whitehead in working through these pages.” —_Joseph Bracken, Xavier University _. (shrink)

The ultimate source of explanation in biology is the principle of natural selection. Natural selection means differential reproduction of genes and gene combinations. It is a mechanistic process which accounts for the existence in living organisms of end-directed structures and processes. It is argued that teleological explanations in biology are not only acceptable but indeed indispensable. There are at least three categories of biological phenomena where teleological explanations are appropriate.

This book examines the conceptual contributions of constituent representatives in Spain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Spanish Parliament has been the stage for the political modernisation of the country. Constitutional debates have historically led to the gradual acknowledgement and broadening – usually unevenly – of citizens’ rights. At the same time, constitutional debates have created opportunities to design institutions and settle legal mechanisms to enforce rights and distribute state resources. The book identifies and analyses rhetorical and conceptual innovations (...) produced in such debates from a historical perspective. (shrink)

The present paper uses the theme of dialectic and dialogue to begin unraveling the similarities and differences between the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and H.G. Gadamer. Ricoeur is shown to distance himself from Heidegger by insisting on a dimension of explanation and distanciation (which he sometimes identifies with Plato's `descending dialectic') that cannot be reduced to, or absorbed by, understanding and appropriation. This same move, however, leads him to reject Platonic dialogue, with the attendant prioritizing of oral conversation over the (...) written text, as a model for hermeneutics. Ricoeur therefore sees in Gadamer's recourse to such a model a regression to the problematic position of Heidegger. Yet the conception of philosophy as dialectical and dialogical which Gadamer finds in Plato is capable of responding to Ricoeur's objections. Where the fundamental difference between the hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Gadamer emerges is in the question of whether experience is fundamentally dialectical and whether language is inherently dialogical. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * Intelligent Design * Darwin’s Scientific Revolution * Natural Selection * Chance and Necessity: Mutation and Natural Selection * “Only a Theory” * Evolution Is a Fact * Irreducibly Complex? * The Disguised Friend * References and Recommended Readings.

The purpose of this paper is to show how interdisciplinary studies between the fields of law and literature can contribute to the debate on legal interpretation, and to the role of what legal operators actually do when deciding constitutional issues. First, we will review one of the possible meeting points between law and literature - i. e. law as literature - and we will examine Roland Barthes’ semiological proposal, specifically his theory about “The Death of the Author”; from there on, (...) we will show how the ideas and concepts he coined constitute one of the tools that best describe the mechanics of the current constitutional interpretation in some legal systems. This will lead to what we will call “The Death of the Lawmaker”. (shrink)

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's (...) interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Form and Argument in Late Plato ed. by Christopher Gill and Mary Margaret McCabeFrancisco J. GonzalezChristopher Gill and Mary Margaret McCabe, editors. Form and Argument in Late Plato. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 345. Cloth, $65.00.This collection has the commendable aim of challenging the view that in Plato’s “late” works the dialogue form is a mere formality adding little to the argumentative content, a view (...) still widespread among “analytic” scholars. The qualification is necessary because this view has already been seriously challenged by “nonanalytic” interpreters. It is therefore surprising that the editors chose contributors who almost all “share the analytic’ approach which is prominent in Anglo-American scholarship on Plato,” despite their admission that this approach has focused more on arguments than on the dialogue form (2, 299–300). Why seek to reinvent the wheel without the help of those who have already invented it? As a result, while the volume certainly makes an important contribution to our understanding of the form of this group of dialogues, it is much more successful in providing helpful and illuminating readings of their argumentative content: the detailed and rigorous analyses of McCabe, Malcolm Schofield (both on the Parmenides), and Gail Fine (on the Theaetetus) deserve special mention. The aim of the present review, which could not even begin to do justice to what the volume provides in the latter area, is therefore limited to documenting its mixed success in addressing some fundamental questions about form that have already occupied nonanalytic scholars (perhaps too exclusively):1) Does the main speaker speak for Plato?Given the great variety of main speakers in the “late” dialogues (Socrates, Parmenides, the Eleatic Stranger, Timaeus, the Athenian Stranger), each with a distinct personality and a distinct method, no attempt to understand the form of these dialogues should avoid this question. Gill raises it (293–95) and Schofield provides the most explicit response in denying that any interlocutor in a Platonic dialogue “can be assumed to be merely a spokesman for Plato’s own views” (51). More importantly, the essays by Dorothea Frede (on the Philebus) and Catherine Osborne (on the Timaeus), probably the most valuable in the volume, show what results can be achieved without this assumption. On the other hand, Michael Frede (on the Sophist) and Christopher Rowe (on the Politicus; see 158 and cf. 172 n.48) simply assume without argument that the Eleatic Stranger = Plato. All other contributors make the “spokesman” assumption, either implicitly or explicitly (see Christopher Bobonich’s reading of the Laws, 254–55).2) What is the significance of the dramatic context, especially dramatic chronology and characterization?As often noted, the Parmenides is set in Socrates’ youth and is in this sense the earliest [End Page 311] dialogue, while the series Theaetetus-Sophist-Politicus is set immediately before Socrates’ trial and condemnation. McCabe and Schofield are silent about the first fact. M. Frede briefly discusses the second (146–47), but adds little to what has already been said by others. As for the characterization of specific interlocutors, this volume overall has surprisingly little to offer. The essays of D. Frede and Osborne, however, are exemplary in this area.3) Why did Plato choose to write these works as dialogues rather than as treatises?Bobonich, D. Frede, and Osborne succeed in demonstrating the significance and even necessity of the dialogue form, an extraordinary achievement given the dialogues they discuss. Osborne in particular brilliantly shows how the dialogue form undercuts the common tendency to read the Timaeus as a treatise on natural science. Other contributors are less successful in answering this question central to the volume’s task. Schofield takes himself to be reading the Parmenides as a dialogue (51) because he, unlike Vlastos, interprets the Third Man Argument (second version) in the wider context of other arguments in the dialogue, including those of the second half. But “reading arguments in context” is demanded by any philosophical text and has nothing per se to do with the dialogue form. Fine reads the first part of the Theaetetus as the dialectical elaboration and refutation of an opponent’s view (109), but this could just as well be... (shrink)

Edith Stein (1891-1942) is a clear example of a philosopher, since she dedicated her entire life and effort to the conquest of Truth, of Being. The path she follows begins with her personal experience and her desire to find an answer to the existence of man. In phenomenology, she will find a means of confronting reality, free of prejudices. During her intellectual and existential journey, she meets a God that becomes living experience and quenches her thirst for Truth. She completes (...) her contemplation of the philosophical being by means of a mystic contemplation of Being. Her philosophical activity is a road that leads "from finite being to eternal being". (shrink)

I will, first, outline what we currently know about the last 4 million years of human evolutionary history, from bipedal but small‐brained Australopithecus to modern Homo sapiens, our species, through the prolific toolmaker Homo habilis and the continent wanderer Homo erectus. I shall then identify anatomical traits that distinguish us from other animals and point out our two kinds of heredity, the biological and the cultural.Biological inheritance is based on the transmission of genetic information, in humans very much the same (...) as in other sexually reproducing organisms. But cultural inheritance is distinctively human, based on transmission of information by a teaching and learning process that is in principle independent of biological parentage. Cultural inheritance makes possible the cumulative transmission of experience from generation to generation. Cultural heredity is a swifter and more effective (because it can be designed) mode of adaptation to the environment than the biological mode. The advent of cultural heredity ushered in cultural evolution, which transcends biological evolution.I will, finally, explore ethical behavior as a model case of a distinctive human trait, and seek to ascertain the causal connections between human ethics and human biology. My conclusions are that (1) moral reasoning—that is, the proclivity to make ethical judgments by evaluating actions as either good or evil—is rooted in our biological nature; it is a necessary outcome of our exalted intelligence, but (2) the moral codes that guide our decisions as to which actions are good and which ones are evil are products of culture, including social and religious traditions. This second conclusion contradicts those evolutionists and sociobiologists who claim that the morally good is simply that which is promoted by the process of biological evolution. (shrink)

_Dialectic and Dialogue_ seeks to define the method and the aims of Plato's dialectic in both the "inconclusive" dialogues and the dialogues that describe and practice a method of hypothesis. Departing from most treatments of Plato, Gonzalez argues that the philosophical knowledge at which dialectic aims is nonpropositional, practical, and reflexive. The result is a reassessment of how Plato understood the nature of philosophy.

My purpose in this article is to propose an explicitly naturalized account of the experience of present nowness on the basis of two complementary sources: phenomenological analysis and cognitive neuroscience. What I mean by naturalization, and the role cognitive neuroscience plays will become clear as the paper unfolds, but the main intention is to use the consciousness of present time as a study case for the phenomenological framework presented by Depraz in this Special Issue.