This second volume of Michael Black's commentary on Lawrence's prose works concentrates on the extraordinary sequence of nonfiction texts written between 1913 and 1917: The "Foreword" to Sons and Lovers, Study of Thomas Hardy, Twilight in Italy, "The Crown," "The Reality of Peace." In all of them Lawrence was compulsively rewriting what he called "my philosophy." They are difficult works: highly metaphorical, in places prophetically expressionist, even surreal. This extended commentary makes sense of them, treating them as a (...) succession of experimental writings that support each other, develop non-discursive modes of writing, and are linked by shared metaphors that reveal shared preoccupations. Black's highly useful analysis is like the close reading of poetry. (shrink)

The Darwinian Revolution--the change in thinking sparked by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which argued that all organisms including humans are the end product of a long, slow, natural process of evolution rather than the miraculous creation of an all-powerful God--is one of the truly momentous cultural events in Western Civilization. Darwinism as Religion is an innovative and exciting approach to this revolution through creative writing, showing how the theory of evolution as expressed by Darwin has, from the (...) first, functioned as a secular religion. Drawing on a deep understanding of both the science and the history, Michael Ruse surveys the naturalistic thinking about the origins of organisms, including the origins of humankind, as portrayed in novels and in poetry, taking the story from its beginnings in the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century right up to the present. He shows that, contrary to the opinion of many historians of the era, there was indeed a revolution in thought and that the English naturalist Charles Darwin was at the heart of it. However, contrary also to what many think, this revolution was not primarily scientific as such, but more religious or metaphysical, as people were taken from the secure world of the Christian faith into a darker, more hostile world of evolutionism. In a fashion unusual for the history of ideas, Ruse turns to the novelists and poets of the period for inspiration and information. His book covers a wide range of creative writers - from novelists like Voltaire and poets like Erasmus Darwin in the eighteenth century, through the nineteenth century with novelists including Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and H. G. Wells and poets including Robert Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and on to the twentieth century with novelists including Edith Wharton, D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, William Golding, Graham Greene, Ian McEwan and Marilynne Robinson, and poets including Robert Frost, Edna St Vincent Millay and Philip Appleman. Covering such topics as God, origins, humans, race and class, morality, sexuality, and sin and redemption, and written in an engaging manner and spiced with wry humor, Darwinism as Religion gives us an entirely fresh, engaging and provocative view of one of the cultural highpoints of Western thought. (shrink)

This paper is a nontechnical exposition of the author's view that mathematics is a science of patterns and that mathematical objects are positions in patterns. the new elements in this paper are epistemological, i.e., first steps towards a postulational theory of the genesis of our knowledge of patterns.

By a logical theory I mean a formal system together with its semantics, meta-theory, and rules for translating ordinary language into its notation. Logical theories can be used descriptively (for example, to represent particular arguments or to depict the logical form of certain sentences). Here the logician uses the usual methods of empirical science to assess the correctness of his descriptions. However, the most important applications of logical theories are normative, and here, I argue, the epistemology is that of wide (...) reflective equilibrium. The result is that logic not only assesses our inferential practice but also changes it. I tie my discussion to Thagard's views concerning the relationship between psychology and logic, arguing against him that psychology has and should have only a peripheral role in normative (and most descriptive) applications of logic. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has a rich history; yet, its application in health ethics has been minimal compared to other major ethical frameworks. Even more, its application to health policy and population-level questions has been almost nonexistent. A new concept in moral theology, structures of virtue, provides impetus for ethicists to consider how virtue ethics can be a valuable addition to existing frameworks in public health ethics. This article offers a basic overview of virtue ethics and its value for analysis of social (...) structures in public health. It does so by explaining how virtue can be seen not only in the process of public health—the promotion of habituated behavior—but also in the content of public health—values such as temperance, fortitude and prudence. It concludes with two extended applications of virtue ethics: vaccination policy and healthy eating. (shrink)

Michael Potter presents a comprehensive new philosophical introduction to set theory. Anyone wishing to work on the logical foundations of mathematics must understand set theory, which lies at its heart. Potter offers a thorough account of cardinal and ordinal arithmetic, and the various axiom candidates. He discusses in detail the project of set-theoretic reduction, which aims to interpret the rest of mathematics in terms of set theory. The key question here is how to deal with the paradoxes that bedevil (...) set theory. Potter offers a strikingly simple version of the most widely accepted response to the paradoxes, which classifies sets by means of a hierarchy of levels. What makes the book unique is that it interweaves a careful presentation of the technical material with a penetrating philosophical critique. Potter does not merely expound the theory dogmatically but at every stage discusses in detail the reasons that can be offered for believing it to be true. Set Theory and its Philosophy is a key text for philosophy, mathematical logic, and computer science. (shrink)

Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy begins by presenting Plantingas essay, and the chapters that follow address issues in three traditional areas of interest to philosophers: epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.

In recent years, we have seen a new concern with ethics training for research and development professionals. Although ethics training has become more common, the effectiveness of the training being provided is open to question. In the present effort, a new ethics training course was developed that stresses the importance of the strategies people apply to make sense of ethical problems. The effectiveness of this training was assessed in a sample of 59 doctoral students working in the biological and social (...) sciences using a pre-post design with follow-up and a series of ethical decision-making measures serving as the outcome variable. Results showed not only that this training led to sizable gains in ethical decision making but also that these gains were maintained over time. The implications of these findings for ethics training in the sciences are discussed. (shrink)

This article will argue that Tao Yuanming 陶淵明 recognized a tension between being himself and the natural transformations of the world. While he advocated a kind of ziran zhuyi 自然 主義, he did not believe that he, or human beings in general, were predisposed to accept the inevitable changes of the world. Hence, his "naturalism" is not necessarily about fitting into his natural surroundings, despite the fact that he relies on these surroundings in his poetry, and that contemporary scholars sometimes (...) see his work as "pastoral." Through an examination of "Returning to Live on the Farmstead" and several other of Tao's poems I will demonstrate two things: Tao saw... (shrink)

Recounts the works of Immanuel Velikovsky and the controversies surrounding it, discussing his influence on the counterculture and debates with such luminaries as Carl Sagan.

Ethical decision making measures are widely applied as the principal dependent variable used in studies of research integrity. However, evidence bearing on the internal and external validity of these measures is not available. In this study, ethical decision making measures were administered to 102 graduate students in the biological, health, and social sciences, along with measures examining exposure to ethical breaches and the severity of punishments recommended. The ethical decision making measure was found to be related to exposure to ethical (...) events and the severity of punishments awarded. The implications of these findings for the application of ethical decision making measures are discussed. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between perceiving and imagining on the basis of predictive processing models in neuroscience. Contrary to the received view in philosophy of mind, which holds that perceiving and imagining are essentially distinct, these models depict perceiving and imagining as deeply unified and overlapping. It is argued that there are two mutually exclusive implications of taking perception and imagination to be fundamentally unified. The view defended is what I dub the ecological–enactive view given that it does not (...) succumb to internalism about the mind-world relation, and allows one to keep a version of the received view in play. (shrink)

It is commonly held that early career experiences influence ethical behavior. One way early career experiences might operate is to influence the decisions people make when presented with problems that raise ethical concerns. To test this proposition, 102 first-year doctoral students were asked to complete a series of measures examining ethical decision making along with a series of measures examining environmental experiences and climate perceptions. Factoring of the environmental measure yielded five dimensions: professional leadership, poor coping, lack of rewards, limited (...) competitive pressure, and poor career direction. Factoring of the climate inventory yielded four dimensions: equity, interpersonal conflict, occupational engagement, and work commitment. When these dimensions were used to predict performance on the ethical decision-making task, it was found that the environmental dimensions were better predictors than the climate dimensions. The implications of these findings for research on ethical conduct are discussed. (shrink)

Although education in the responsible conduct of research is considered necessary, evidence bearing on the effectiveness of these programs in improving research ethics has indicated that, although some programs are successful, many fail. Accordingly, there is a need for systematic evaluation of ethics education programs. In the present effort, we examine procedures for evaluation of ethics education programs from a multilevel perspective: examining both within-program evaluation and cross-program evaluation. With regard to within-program evaluation, we note requisite designs and measures for (...) conducting systematic program evaluation have been developed and multiple measures should be applied in program evaluation. With regard to cross-program evaluation, we argue that a meta-analytic framework should be employed where analyses are used to identify best practices in ethics education. The implications of this multilevel approach for improving responsible conduct of research educational programs are discussed. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the genesis of mathematical knowledge. While some philosophers might argue that mathematics has no real subject matter and thus is not a body of knowledge, I will not try to dissuade them directly. I shall not attempt such a refutation because it seems clear to me that mathematicians do know such things as the Mean Value Theorem, The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, Godel's Theorems, etc. Moreover, this is much more evident to me than any philosophical (...) view of mathematics I know of — including my own. So I am going to take mathematics as my starting point. (shrink)

This study examined the role of key causal analysis strategies in forecasting and ethical decision-making. Undergraduate participants took on the role of the key actor in several ethical problems and were asked to identify and analyze the causes, forecast potential outcomes, and make a decision about each problem. Time pressure and analytic mindset were manipulated while participants worked through these problems. The results indicated that forecast quality was associated with decision ethicality, and the identification of the critical causes of the (...) problem was associated with both higher quality forecasts and higher ethicality of decisions. Neither time pressure nor analytic mindset impacted forecasts or ethicality of decisions. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)