Richard Gelwick has made an important contribution by exploring Lesslie Newbigin’s appropriation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology. When certain aspects of Newbigin’s epistemological project are understood more clearly and fully, many of Gelwick’s criticisms and concerns are answered. His brief challenges regarding Newbigin’s theological responses to pluralism, seen against the work of Charles McCoy, signal another important area for consideration. This initial work holds great promise for future dialogue between Polanyi scholars and emerging circles of Newbigin scholarship.

Despite Hunsberger’s apology for Newbigen’s use of Polanyi, Newbigen in The Gospel in a Pluralist Society reverses Polanyi’s essential elements of heuristic passion and universal intent. The outcome is a misunderstanding of the common ground and differences between science and theology and a stifling and narrowing theology of cultural plurality. In contrast, Charles McCoy’s federal theology and understanding of Polanyi shows an approach of openness yet grounding in the biblical God present in the believed-in realities of global life.

"Lucas' book competently brings Whitehead's philosophy into dialogue with "analytic" philosophy. This is a topic of great originality and considerable potential importance for the field of philosophy.

This article, an introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Military Ethics devoted to emerging military technologies, elaborates the present status of certain predictions about the future of warfare and combat made by postmodern essayist, Umberto Eco, during the First Gulf War in 1991. The development of military robotics, innovations in nanotechnology, prospects for the biological, psychological, and neurological ?enhancement? of combatants themselves, combined with the increasing use of nonlethal weapons and the advent of cyber warfare, have operationalized (...) the diffuse, decentralized, ?neoconnectionist? vision of warfare in the post-Clausewitzian, postmodern world that Eco first prophesied. On the one hand, such technologies threaten to make war ever more ubiquitous as the path of least resistance, rather than the option of last resort, for the resolution of political conflict. On the other hand, these same technologies offer prospects for lessening the indiscriminate destructive power of war, and enhance prospects for the evolution from state-centered conventional war, to discriminate law enforcement undertaken by international coalitions of peacekeeping forces. (shrink)

The Modern Synthesis (MS) gene-centered population model of evolution is currently being challenged by the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (ESS) organism-centered developmental model of evolution. The predictions of the EES are here examined with respect to the arguments of Edward Drinker Cope (1840–1897) for an organism-centered evolutionary process in which organisms both shape and are shaped by their environments such that the activities of the organisms themselves play a role in their own evolution.

In 1878 evolutionary theoretician Edward D. Cope published an eight-page paper filled with prescient ideas that clearly anticipated theoretical evolutionary topics that are actively being debated some 145 years later. An examination of these ideas and their modern counterparts is the primary objective of this essay. A proposal is also made to provide an answer to Cope’s Puzzle concerning the sequences of events involved in the evolution of adaptive animal structures. This article revisits Cope’s “The Relation of Animal Motion to (...) Animal Evolution” (published in _The American Naturalist_, volume 12, number 1, January 1878, pp. 40–48) for _Biological Theory_’s “Classics in Biological Theory” collection; Cope’s original paper is available as supplementary material in the online version of this article. (shrink)

The third edition covers topics of recent interest in the twenty-first century, such as Heroic Medicine, Gender Identity, Wealth Inequality, LGBTQ Issues, and more. This encyclopedic work includes more than 1,000 essays organized by broad categories related to ethical issues.

What significance does "ethics" have for the men and women serving in the military forces of nations around the world? What core values and moral principles collectively guide the members of this "military profession?" This book explains these essential moral foundations, along with "just war theory," international relations, and international law. The ethical foundations that define the "Profession of Arms" have developed over millennia from the shared moral values, unique role responsibilities, and occasional reflection by individual members the profession on (...) their own practices - eventually coming to serve as the basis for the "Law of Armed Conflict" itself.This book focuses upon the ordinary men and women around the world who wear a military uniform and are committed to the defense of their countries and their fellow citizens. It is about what they do, how they do it, what they think about it, how they behave when carrying out their activities, and how they are expected to behave, both on and off the battlefield - and what everyone needs to know about this. The book also examines how military personnel are treated and regarded by those whom they have sworn to defend and protect, as well as how they treat and regard one another within their respective services and organizational settings. Finally, the book discusses the transformations in military professionalism occasioned by new developments in armed conflict, ranging counterinsurgency warfare and humanitarian military intervention, to cyber conflict, military robotics, and private military contracting. From China to Russia, author George Lucas effectively sheds light on today's military ethics in existence throughout the world. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. (shrink)

Abstract This article evaluates the ?drive toward greater autonomy? in lethally-armed unmanned systems. Following a summary of the main criticisms and challenges to lethal autonomy, both engineering and ethical, raised by opponents of this effort, the article turns toward solutions or responses that defense industries and military end users might seek to incorporate in design, testing and manufacturing to address these concerns. The way forward encompasses a two-fold testing procedure for reliability incorporating empirical, quantitative benchmarks of performance in compliance with (...) formalized and programmable rules of engagement, and a conception of ?due care? in product liability. This would be designed in analogy with procedures currently followed by well-intentioned governments and militaries with their own (human) military personnel, both to ensure against failure, and to accept responsibility and compensate victims of inadvertent and unintended accidents. The procedure is designed specifically to address objections first posed by Robert Sparrow (2007) and Noel Sharkey (2007), and echoed in P.W. Singer's critically acclaimed Wired for War (2009), that lethal autonomous systems cannot be meaningfully held accountable for commission of war crimes, and thus the development, manufacture, and deployment of such systems would constitute a violation of international law. (shrink)

This text prepares undergraduate mathematics students to meet two challenges in the study of mathematics, namely, to read mathematics independently and to understand and write proofs. The book begins by teaching how to read mathematics actively, constructing examples, extreme cases, and non-examples to aid in understanding an unfamiliar theorem or definition (a technique famililar to any mathematician, but rarely taught); it provides practice by indicating explicitly where work with pencil and paper must interrupt reading. The book then turns to proofs, (...) showing in detail how to discover the structure of a potential proof from the form of the theorem (especially the conclusion). It shows the logical structure behind proof forms (especially quantifier arguments), and analyzes, thoroughly, the often sketchy coding of these forms in proofs as they are ordinarily written. The common introductroy material (such as sets and functions) is used for the numerous exercises, and the book concludes with a set of "Laboratories" on these topics in which the student can practice the skills learned in the earlier chapters. Intended for use as a supplementary text in courses on introductory real analysis, advanced calculus, abstract algebra, or topology, the book may also be used as the main text for a "transitions" course bridging the gab between calculus and higher mathematics. (shrink)

Whatever else one might say concerning the legality, morality, and prudence of his actions, Edward Snowden, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, is right about the notion of publicity and informed consent, which together constitute the hallmark of democratic public policy. In order to be morally justifiable, any strategy or policy involving the body politic must be one to which it would voluntarily assent when fully informed about it. This, in essence, was Snowden's argument for leaking, in June 2013, (...) the documents that revealed the massive NSA surveillance program: So long as there's broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there's a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision.... However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that's a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of “governing in the dark,” where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input. (shrink)

Originally presented at a forum sponsored by Concerned Philosophers for Peace at the Eastern Division annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Philadelphia, PA: 29 December 2008), this essay discusses two ethical challenges in foreign policy likely to be confronted by the new U.S. presidential administration. The increased reliance on private military contractors, including security contractors, poses a number of difficulties, the most troubling of which is the erosion of civil-military relations. Modern military campaigns cannot be waged without some degree (...) of reliance on the logistical support such contractors provide, but their use makes it easier for governments to hide the true risks and costs of modern war from the electorate, serving to undermine key conceptions of “just war” principles like “legitimate authority” and “public declaration” of war. On the other hand, the dramatic increase in maritime piracy forces an unpleasant choice between either increasing defense spending on appropriate weapons systems and personnel during a global economic crises in order to provide enhanced maritime security, or else, ironically, relying even more on private security contractors to protect global shipping and transportation. Both these and similar foreign policy challenges focus attention on the need for “ethical interoperability,” the ability to share common notions of military ethics, public service, and professional responsibility among coalition military forces otherwise drawn from a variety of disparate national, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. (shrink)

Although the use of military force for humanitarian ends seems utterly divorced from the use of such force to combat terrorism, both uses answer to similar descriptions. Both appear to encourage nations that are not necessarily themselves under attack to set aside the reigning conventions of national sovereignty and territorial integrity for the overriding purposes of international law enforcement and protection of vulnerable noncombatants. Both involve offensive rather than purely defensive uses of military force. Both answer to criteria of justification (...) that can be derived more readily from the normative moral principles of the classical just war tradition than from purely descriptive revisions of the 'legalist paradigm' in international relations, because the latter is deeply wedded by precedent to notions of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and a purely defensive use of military force. Most significantly, the justification for both kinds of military action depends essentially upon a notion of 'the international community' that is inchoate and urgently in need of rigorous reformulation. In this paper, I attempt to formulate criteria for the justifiable use of military force for these non-defensive purposes, with attention to the nuances of internationalism that several of the resulting criteria entail. Challenges to the de facto role of the United Nations as the sole authoritative representative of this community, and alternatives to its authority in legitimating the use of military force for purposes of international law enforcement, are considered. (shrink)

Most discussions of fiduciary duty focus on medical decision-making, but that is not the only context in which the concept is important. Investment advisers have fiduciary duties to their clients: in this essay, we address those duties. Many advisers refuse to help their clients with ‘socially responsible’ investment plans, for a variety of reasons, among which are fiduciary concerns. We argue that the reasons generally given not to pursue a religious, environmental, or social investment strategy are mistaken, and, most importantly, (...) that an investment adviser’s fiduciary duties may be met while providing such alternatives to clients. (shrink)

The inherently subjective nature of consciousness severely limits our ability to make progress on the problem of consciousness. The inability to acquire objective, publicly available data on the phenomenal aspect of consciousness makes evaluating alternative theories very difficult, if not impossible. However, the anomalous nature of subjective states with respect to our conventional theories of the physical world suggests the possibility of considering other anomalous data around consciousness that happen to be objective. For such purposes, I propose that we examine (...) the psi data gathered under laboratory conditions, which generally receive little attention. I wish to consider whether we have theories or frameworks of consciousness that attempt to account for subjective qualia but also fit the psi data. I argue that Russellian monism can be combined with an argument regarding quantum holism to arrive at a version of cosmopsychism that fits very well with the psi data. While I do not argue that such a framework exhausts the theoretical possibilities, I do suggest we can move forward with a framework that has attractive theoretical features and is also consistent with objective data currently on the table. (shrink)

Here we propose a new theory for the origins and evolution of human warfare as a complex social phenomenon involving several behavioral traits, including aggression, risk taking, male bonding, ingroup altruism, outgroup xenophobia, dominance and subordination, and territoriality, all of which are encoded in the human genome. Among the family of great apes only chimpanzees and humans engage in war; consequently, warfare emerged in their immediate common ancestor that lived in patrilocal groups who fought one another for females. The reasons (...) for warfare changed when the common ancestor females began to immigrate into the groups of their choice, and again, during the agricultural revolution. (shrink)

In this short article, the conditions surrounding the recent discovery of Whitehead's first lecture at Harvard University are detailed. This article is meant as an introduction to Whitehead's lecture, which is published for the first time in the present issue of Process Studies. The previous two installments of the series titled "On the Trail ofWhitehead" can be found in Process Studies issues 45.1 and 46.1.