The history of the Euclidean Steiner tree problem, which is the problem of constructing a shortest possible network interconnecting a set of given points in the Euclidean plane, goes back to Gergonne in the early nineteenth century. We present a detailed account of the mathematical contributions of some of the earliest papers on the Euclidean Steiner tree problem. Furthermore, we link these initial contributions with results from the recent literature on the problem.

This special volume of Studies in Christian Ethics constitutes the most significant continuation to date of Christian social ethics in the tradition of Ronald Preston. It brings together leading scholars and new voices in the field from around the world, covering a broad range of contemporary issues, including globalisation, poverty, feminism, civil society, economics and religious pluralism.

As the crusade to outlaw the teaching of evolution changed to a battle for equal time for creationism, the ideological defenses of that doctrine also shifted from primarily biblical to more scientific grounds. This essay describes the historical development of “scientific creationism” from a variety of late–nineteenth– and early–twentieth–century creationist reactions to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, through the Scopes trial and the 1960s revival of creationism, to the current spread of strict creationism around the world.

We describe some of the ways that the field of content analysis is being transformed in an Era of Big Data. We argue that content analysis, from its beginning, has been concerned with extracting the main meanings of a text and mapping those meanings onto the space of a textual corpus. In contrast, we suggest that the emergence of new styles of text mining tools is creating an opportunity to develop a different kind of content analysis that we describe as (...) a computational hermeneutics. Here the goal is to go beyond a mapping of the main meaning of a text to mimic the kinds of questions and concerns that have traditionally been the focus of a hermeneutically grounded close reading, a reading that focuses on what Kenneth Burke described as the poetic meanings of a text. We illustrate this approach by referring to our own work concerning the rhetorical character of US National Security Strategy documents. (shrink)

The development and deployment of the notion of pre-objective or nonconceptual content for the purposes of intentional explanation of requires assistance from a practical and theoretical understanding of computational/robotic systems acting in real-time and real-space. In particular, the usual "that"-clause specification of content will not work for non-conceptual contents; some other means of specification is required, means that make use of the fact that contents are aspects of embodied and embedded systems. That is, the specification of non-conceptual content should use (...) concepts and insights gained from android design and android epistemology. (shrink)

2.4 The Example: Infants and object-(im)permanence : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 17 2.4.1 Why a contentful account is warranted: Perspectival sensitivity : : : 17 2.4.2 The \searching under a cloth" and \AB" data : : : : : : : : : : : : 24 2.4.3 Two constraints on objectuality : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : (...) : 25.. (shrink)

One can learn a great deal about the relative priorities in any moral theory by understanding how these priorities are conveyed in the perpetually vexing challenge of moral education. Rousseau and Kant are two thinkers whose distinctly modern retrieval of classical virtue was animated by overlapping yet diverging grievances with classical philosophy. One common enemy of Rousseauian and Kantian virtue found in classical thought is the moral vice of envy. This essay argues that whereas Rousseau chastises the vice of envy, (...) replacing it with the central virtue of pity, Kant redirects the vice of envy towards the more salutary virtue of magnanimity during adolescence and beneficence in the adult. The consideration of sympathy in its full moral and educational context in Kant-over and against Rousseau’s emphasis on pity as the central corrective to the vice of envy-underscores the extent of the differences between Rousseau and Kant on this issue. The common criticism of Rousseau and Kant on the problem of envy is animated by some common concerns, but their understandings of it as a problem require responses that are deceptively different in their substance. (shrink)

Computer simulation models of mentality and brain theory each, confront a challenge that they do not account for all the data of psychology: the category of contents of consciousness, as a phenomenologist would call it, seems completely untouched by these physicalistic analyses. In my paper I provide a sketch of a possible approach to explaining conditions for ascription of consciousness which is compatible with computer-theoretic and brain-theoretic models.

This dissertation is a systematic study of Spinoza's ethical system as a virtue ethic. Spinoza's ethical theory has been under-appreciated in this regard and has therefore been virtually ignored by contemporary virtue ethicists who have looked almost exclusively to the ancients as a source of insight regarding the virtues. With my dissertation I aim both to contribute to Spinoza scholarship and to provide an historical resource to contemporary ethicists working in the area of virtue. ;The dissertation can be divided into (...) two parts. The first part, Chapters One thru Four, deals mostly with Spinoza's metaethic and the rudiments of Spinoza's normative ethic. These chapters include a discussion of spinozistic value, the dictates of reason and Spinoza's ethical intellectualism. These chapters lay the foundation for the more explicit discussion of Spinoza's virtue ethic that takes place in Chapters Five thru Seven. In these later chapters I focus on the following questions: To what extent is Spinoza's ethical theory properly a virtue ethic? What is the structure of his virtue ethic? Does it resemble any of the virtue ethics of the ancients? In what sense is, as Spinoza insists, virtue its own reward? Is Spinoza's intellectualist virtue ethic internally cogent? I argue, inter alia, that Spinoza's ethical theory is properly a virtue ethic, that it does differ in interesting ways---particularly methodologically---from most ancient virtue ethics and that Spinoza recognizes three distinct benefits for those who live virtuously. ;In the final chapter I treat what I take to be the central issue regarding the cogency of Spinoza's intellectualist virtue ethic. Does the intellectual state that Spinoza identifies with virtue and advocates cultivating deliver on what it promises in terms of the rewards of virtue? The answer, I argue, is that it does not. However, I further argue that Spinoza's ethical theory is not thereby devastated. There is room for a sympathetic spinozean to remedy this defect. The defect merely reveals that there is significant ethical theorizing, beyond what Spinoza himself provides, that needs to be done. (shrink)

This book explores aspects of William H. Poteat’s philosophical anthropology, which proposes a post-critical alternative to the prevailing dualistic conception of the person and opens a path to recovery of the pre-reflective ontological ground of the person where our personhood can be recovered and re-appropriated.

Belief in the divine origin of the universe began to wane most markedly in the nineteenth century, when scientific accounts of creation by natural law arose to challenge traditional religious doctrines. Most of the credit - or blame - for the victory of naturalism has generally gone to Charles Darwin and the biologists who formulated theories of organic evolution. Darwinism undoubtedly played the major role, but the supporting parts played by naturalistic cosmogonies should also be acknowledged. Chief among these was (...) the nebular hypothesis proposed by Pierre Simon Laplace in 1796, which explained the origin of the solar system as a natural development over extended periods of time. Ronald Numbers focuses on Laplace's theory as it affected American scientific thought. he first traces the history of Laplace's cosmogony chronologically, from its European inception to its demise about 1900. the last three chapters explore some of the theological and scientific consequences resulting from the acceptance of this cosmogony. Most significant was the change in the status of supernatural doctrine. When the nebular hypothesis lost credence at the end of the nineteenth century, those who had before tried to accommodate natural theory with supernatural doctrine no longer felt compelled to do so when faced with succeeding theories. The nebular hypothesis, it seems, had established natural law in the heavens. (shrink)

No matter whether it is a discussion of nationhood, race, family, adolescence, or popular culture, identity is a mainstay in everyday conversations about who we ...

It is by now commonly agreed that the proper study of consciousness requires a multidisciplinary approach which focuses on the varieties and dimensions of conscious experience from different angles. This book, which is based on a workshop held at the University of Skövde, Sweden, provides a microcosm of the emerging discipline of consciousness studies and focuses on some important but neglected aspects of consciousness. The book brings together philosophy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive and computer science, biology, physics, art and (...) the new media. It contains critical studies of subjectivity vs objectivity, nonconceptuality vs conceptuality, language, evolutionary aspects, neural correlates, microphysical level, creativity, visual arts and dreams. It is suitable as a text-book for a third-year undergraduate or a graduate seminar on consciousness studies. (shrink)

The companion volume to Arnold Come's Kierkegaard as Humanist, Kierkegaard as Theologian is an exploration of Søren Kierkegaard's deliberately Christian writings, from Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (1846) to For Self-Examination (1851). In his later writings Kierkegaard sought to "get further forward in the direction of discovering the Christianity of the New Testament" to resolve his own spiritual crisis. His struggle to understand how authentic theologizing relates to the spiritual struggles of personal faith led him to a discussion of the (...) three basic foci of his theologizing: the self as gift, that is, a creation "out of nothing" from God; the self as failure, which brings on a state of despair; and the self redeemed by God's love and healing compassion. Come probes some of the problematic aspects of Kierkegaard's theology. He addresses the question of whether God's high intentions and demands for human achievement of selfhood and spirituality justify the unspeakable sufferings entailed in human failures to fulfil those demands. He also explores the puzzling relation between Kierkegaard's seeming assignment of exclusivity to the Christian understanding and experiences of both sin and salvation as well as his assumption of the capacity of humans to recognize the need to turn to the eternal that is immanent in every human consciousness - so-called Religiousness A. (shrink)

If one's political engagement is to be shaped fundamentally by the Scriptures, it means developing a biblical understanding on a given issue by means of a process vastly more complex than selecting a few isolated proof-texts related to it.

(1) Van Gelder's concession that the dynamical hypothesis is not in opposition to computation in general does not agree well with his anticomputational stance. (2) There are problems with the claim that dynamic systems allow for nonrepresentational aspects of computation in a way in which digital computation cannot. (3) There are two senses of the “cognition is computation” claim and van Gelder argues against only one of them. (4) Dynamical systems as characterized in the target article share problems of universal (...) realizability with formal notions of computation, but differ in that there is no solution available for them. (5) The dynamical hypothesis cannot tell us what cognition is, because instantiating a particular dynamical system is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a cognitive agent. (shrink)

We are causing species to go extinct at extraordinary rates, altering existing species in unprecedented ways and creating entirely new species. More than ever before, we require an ethic of species to guide our interactions with them. In this book, Ronald L. Sandler examines the value of species and the ethical significance of species boundaries and discusses what these mean for species preservation in the light of global climate change, species engineering and human enhancement. He argues that species possess (...) several varieties of value, but they are not sacred. It is sometimes permissible to alter species, let them go extinct and invent new ones. Philosophically rigorous, accessible and illustrated with examples drawn from contemporary science, this book will be of interest to students of philosophy, bioethics, environmental ethics and conservation biology. (shrink)

Given recent discussions of personal privacy, or more particularly, its invasion via the internet, it is not surprising to find the issue of personal privacy emerging regarding God’s relation to our private lives. Two different and opposing views of this God-person relation have surfaced in the literature: ‘God and Privacy’ by Falls-Corbitt and Michael McLain, and ‘Privacy and Control’ by Scott Davison. I discuss key elements in both sides of this debate. Even though I will register my sympathy with both (...) sides, I claim that both fail to grasp what I call the existential depth of the God-person relationship. (shrink)

This brief essay remembers the late William H. Poteat and outlines his intellectual perspective and its its roots.