This book explores the relationship between people living relatively simple lives and the cultural complexity of their live worlds by rethinking culture in terms of complexity theory.

Steen Brock paints a cross-disciplinary picture of the philosophical and scientific background for the rise of the quantum theory. He accounts for the unity of Kantian metaphysics of Nature, the Helmholtzian principles, and the Hamiltonian methods of modern pre-quantum physics. Brock shows how Planck's vision of a generalization of classical physics implies that the original quantum mechanics of Heisenberg can be regarded as a successful attempt to maintain this modern unity of physics.However, for Niels Bohr, the unity of science (...) and metaphysics did not end in the world of physics. The development of quantum physics had general implications both for other sciences and for various philosophical issues. Brock discusses these matters with respect to recent topics within the philosophy of science and major interpretations of Bohr's ideas. The author invites the reader to follow a long andwinding route of thought which, in the end, culminates in Bohr's ideas of complementarity, culture and Spirit. (shrink)

From five plausible premises about ordinary objects it follows that ordinary objects are either functions, fictions or processes. Assuming that the function and fiction accounts of ordinary objects are not plausible, in this paper I develop and defend a (non-Whiteheadian) process account of ordinary objects. I first offer an extended deduction that argues for mereological essentialism for masses or quantities, and then offer an inductive argument in favor of interpreting ordinary objects as processes. The ontology has two main types of (...) entities, masses of matter and processes. A cat, for instance, is shown to be a ‘catting’ process that migrates through distinct portions of matter, much like how a wave passes through distinct portions of water. I also show how the account solves the paradox of coincidence, the Ship of Theseus, fusion cases (e.g. Tib/Tibbles), and answers the Special Composition Question. (shrink)

Science is not value-free and ethics is not fact-free. Science and ethics should be similar, but they are not. The author indicates how research in ethics is to change in the face of this. Ethicists should accommodate empirical work in their programs and they should take heed of methodologies developed in science and philosophy of science. They should abandon the search for a single overarching theory of morality. Controversies in ethics are often spurious for lack of articulate methodological key concepts. (...) For example, disagreements over the value of general theories are misguided since disputants implicitly use different notions of generality and different notions of theory. An appropriate methodology does not suffice for the resolution of controversies but it is indispensable for consensus. The book argues these theses in a general way and applies them to the subject of egoism and altruism in ethics. Further case studies concern the environment and psychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Apparently factual disagreement on the level(s) at which selection operates often results from different interpretations of the term selection. Attempts to resolve terminological problems must come to grips with a dilemma: a narrow interpretation of selection may lead to a restricted view on evolution; a broader, less precise, definition may wrongly suggest that selection is the centre of a unified, integrated theory of evolution. Different concepts of selection, therefore, should carefully be kept apart.

Skildring af den mangeårige udveksling af idéer mellem to af det 20. århundreders store danske tænkere, der viser, hvordan de, trods meget forskellige udgangspunkter, blev forenet i deres modsætninger. Til læsere med interesse i filosofi, teologi og dansk åndsliv i det hele taget.

Recent work has suggested that conservation efforts such as restoration ecology and invasive species eradication are largely value-driven pursuits. Concurrently, changes to global climate are forcing ecologists to consider if and how collections of species will migrate, and whether or not we should be assisting such movements. Herein, we propose a philosophical framework which addresses these issues by utilizing ecological and evolutionary interrelationships to delineate individual ecological communities. Specifically, our Evolutionary Community Concept recognizes unique collections of species that interact and (...) have co-evolved in a given geographic area. We argue this concept has implications for a number of contemporary global conservation issues. Specifically, our framework allows us to establish a biological and science-driven context for making decisions regarding the restoration of systems and the removal of exotic species. The ECC also has implications for how we view shifts in species assemblages due to climate change and it advances our understanding of various ecological concepts, such as resilience. (shrink)

Governments and companies are increasingly promoting and organizing Responsible Innovation. It is, however, unclear how the seemingly incompatible demands for responsibility, which is associated with care and caution, can be harmonized with demands for innovation, which is associated with risk-taking and speed. We turn to the tradition of virtue ethics and argue that it can be a strong accomplice to Responsible Innovation by focussing on the agential side of innovation. Virtue ethics offers an adequate response to the epistemic and moral (...) complexity in innovation and encourages moral behaviour. We enumerate a number of virtues that people involved in Responsible Innovation would need to cultivate both related to responsibility, such as justice, anticipation, civility and inclusion, and virtues related to innovation, such as courage, dedication, curiosity and creativity. We put forward practical wisdom as a key virtue to regulate relevant virtues and to deal with the tension between responsibility and innovation. Practical wisdom helps an agent to find an appropriate mean in exercising and expressing the other virtues—where the mean is relative to the specific context of action and the role and abilities of the agent. (shrink)

Next SectionBackground Scientific papers are retracted for many reasons including fraud (data fabrication or falsification) or error (plagiarism, scientific mistake, ethical problems). Growing attention to fraud in the lay press suggests that the incidence of fraud is increasing. Methods The reasons for retracting 742 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Reasons for retraction were initially dichotomised as fraud or error and then analysed to determine specific reasons for retraction. Results Error was (...) more common than fraud (73.5% of papers were retracted for error (or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% retracted for fraud). Eight reasons for retraction were identified; the most common reason was scientific mistake in 234 papers (31.5%), but 134 papers (18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous reasons. Fabrication (including data plagiarism) was more common than text plagiarism. Total papers retracted per year have increased sharply over the decade (r=0.96; p<0.001), as have retractions specifically for fraud (r=0.89; p<0.001). Journals now reach farther back in time to retract, both for fraud (r=0.87; p<0.001) and for scientific mistakes (r=0.95; p<0.001). Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader; 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way. Conclusions Levels of misconduct appear to be higher than in the past. This may reflect either a real increase in the incidence of fraud or a greater effort on the part of journals to police the literature. However, research bias is rarely cited as a reason for retraction. (shrink)

We argue that Bohrian complementarity is a framework for making new ontological sense of scientific findings. It provides a conceptual pattern for making sense of the results of an empirical investigation into new realms or fields of natural properties. The idea of “formation length” engenders this mutual attunement of evidence and reality. Physicists want to be able to ascribe ontological features to atomic constituents and atomic processes such as “emission”, “impact”, or “change of energy-state”. These expressions supposedly refer to “local” (...) forms of physical change that in sum constitute the possibility of there being a “global” (for example an atomic) system of possible states. We argue that it is only because we can act it out in the design of experiments that we canmake sense of the link between classical and quantum theoretical systems. We need the notion of formation length in order to express the principle that the atom is a causal unity. This not in the sense of being the ground for a particular kind of causality, but in the sense of unifying the grounds for the variety of causal manifestations that constitutes the atom. (shrink)

Background Papers retracted for fraud (data fabrication or data falsification) may represent a deliberate effort to deceive, a motivation fundamentally different from papers retracted for error. It is hypothesised that fraudulent authors target journals with a high impact factor (IF), have other fraudulent publications, diffuse responsibility across many co-authors, delay retracting fraudulent papers and publish from countries with a weak research infrastructure. Methods All 788 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Data (...) pertinent to each retracted paper were abstracted from the paper and the reasons for retraction were derived from the retraction notice and dichotomised as fraud or error. Data for each retracted article were entered in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis. Results Journal IF was higher for fraudulent papers (p<0.001). Roughly 53% of fraudulent papers were written by a first author who had written other retracted papers (‘repeat offender’), whereas only 18% of erroneous papers were written by a repeat offender (χ=88.40; p<0.0001). Fraudulent papers had more authors (p<0.001) and were retracted more slowly than erroneous papers (p<0.005). Surprisingly, there was significantly more fraud than error among retracted papers from the USA (χ2=8.71; p<0.05) compared with the rest of the world. Conclusions This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive. It is inferred that such behaviour is neither naïve, feckless nor inadvertent. (shrink)

In this essay, I will discuss a variety of considerations that Goethe expressed in his writings. I will with few exceptions address these writings in chronological order. I include both literary and scientific-philosophical works. In this way I hope to show that a certain theme is at the heart of Goethe’s thinking, and that Goethe’s later works expresses a sophisticated and “deep” account of this theme. In addition, I will try to explain how one can ascribe this Goethean theme to (...) major philosophers of the twentieth century – Cassirer, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein. The theme in question concerns the individuality of a human life in a metaphysical sense, characterizing the individual as situated “in between” Nature and Culture. By being both a child of Nature and a child of Culture, the fate of individuals is the transformation of previously given human concerns and practices. There never is a natural child nor a cultural formation securing human individuality. In Goethe’s words: The history of an individual human being is the individual human being. “Die Geschichte der Wissenschaft ist die Wissenschaft selbst, die Geschichte des Individuums, das Individuum”. See Hamacher. Hamacher’s book has been a major source for me! (shrink)

This inclusive cross-cultural study rethinks the nexus between engineering education and context. In so doing the book offers a reflection on contextual boundaries with an overall boundary crossing ambition and juxtaposes important cases of critical participation within engineering education with sophisticated scholarly reflection on both opportunities and discontents. Whether, and in what way engineering education is or ought to be contextualized or de-contextualized is an object of heated debate among engineering educators. The uniqueness of this study is that this debate (...) is given comprehensive coverage - presenting both instrumentally inclined as well as radical positions on transforming engineering education. In contextualizing engineering education, this book offers diverse commentary from a range of disciplinary, meta- and interdisciplinary perspectives on how cultural, professional, institutional, and educational systems contexts shape histories, structural dynamics, ideologies and challenges as well as new pathways in engineering education. Topics addressed include examining engineering education in countries ranging from India to America, to racial and gender equity in engineering education and incorporating social awareness into the area. Using context as "bridge" this book confronts engineering education head on. Contending engineering ideologies and corresponding views on context are juxtaposed with contending discourses of reform. The uniqueness of the book is that it brings together scholars from the humanities, the social sciences and engineering from Europe - both East and West - with the United States, China, Brazil, India and Australia. (shrink)

While recognizing its positive contributions, the authors argue both that social constructionism is based on faulty assumptions and that it has far more kinship with objectivism than is generally acknowledged: it repudiates the possibility of universally valid knowledge while holding as universal truth that human nature is socially constructed; claims to have overcome a Western scientific view of the world while failing to recognize its own distinctly Western and parochial character; rejects an objective epistemology only to embrace its subjectivist mirror-opposite. (...) Finally, it presents the "self" as a reflection of cultural frameworks, thus failing to attend to personal experience or to account for creativity, and overlooks humans' relationship to nature, thereby sustaining objectivism's dichotomy between the social and the natural world. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

This book brings together phenomenological studies of the experience of forgiveness. The contributors, from psychological, philosophical, and theological backgrounds, set aside theoretical presuppositions, approach this topic with fresh eyes, and address problematic aspects of the existing literature.

This book presents a comprehensive treatment of basic mathematical logic. The author's aim is to make exact the vague, intuitive notions of natural number, preciseness, and correctness, and to invent a method whereby these notions can be communicated to others and stored in the memory. He adopts a symbolic language in which ideas about natural numbers can be stated precisely and meaningfully, and then investigates the properties and limitations of this language. The treatment of mathematical concepts in the main body (...) of the text is rigorous, but, a section of 'historical remarks' traces the evolution of the ideas presented in each chapter. Sources of the original accounts of these developments are listed in the bibliography. (shrink)

The impact of philosophy of science on biology is slight. Evolutionary biology, however, is nowadays an exception. The status of the neo-Darwinian (synthetic) theory of evolution is seriously challenged from a methodological perspective. However, the methodology used in the relevant discussions is plainly defective. A correct application of methodology to evolutionary theory leads to the following conclusions. (a) The theory of natural selection (the core of neo-Darwinism) is unfalsifiable in a strict sense of the term. This, however, does not militate (...) against the theory, because no scientific theory whatever is testable in this way. Under a more liberal testability criterion, the theory is surely testable. None the less, certain (not all) research programs may tend to make the theory untestable in practice. (b) It has often been argued that the tautologous character of the principle of natural selection, allegedly the focus of evolutionary theory, makes the theory untestable through circular reasoning. Actually, the principle is only a tautology if fitness is wrongly defined in terms of actual survival. But even then circular reasoning need not ensue. (c) Evolutionary principles do not permit, without additional information, the derivation of statements about evolutionary events concerning particular species or populations. If this were a reason to criticize the theory (as has been argued in the literature), any other scientific theory would be inadequate by the same token. (shrink)

Rosenberg has rightly argued that fitness is supervenient. But he has wrongly assumed that this makes The fittest survive nontautologous. Supervenience makes strict reduction impossible. It sheds light on disputes concerning the testability of evolutionary theory.

Ontology and epistemology will never be reconciled, this article argues. There is widespread opinion among scientists and laymen alike that we are standing at the threshold of a fusion and reconciliation of ontology and epistemology. But my thesis is that this will never happen – and my argument can be read as a credo for non-identity. The tensions between being and thinking are here to stay, and this philosophical ‘position’ has a wide range of implications for politics, education, Bildung and (...) thinking. Strongly rooted in Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno’s philosophy, it is claimed that he was right in emphasizing that the non-identical must be honored, defended and emancipated. The vivid dream is that conceptual work opens and ‘dignifies’ the non-identical, while the non-identical ‘longs for’ conceptual assistance so it can come to exist among us. (shrink)

The correspondence view of memory is not a metaphor. However, correspondence is the essential feature of the archaeology metaphor, which harks back to Freud and Neisser. A modern version of this metaphor and some of its implications are briefly described. The archaeology metaphor integrates the idea of stored traces in a nonmechanistic framework.

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE application can (...) serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

In order to maximize human performance, defence forces continue to explore, develop, and apply human performance enhancement (HPE) methods, ranging from pharmaceuticals to (bio)technological enhancement. This raises ethical, legal, and societal concerns and requires organizing a careful reflection and deliberation process, with relevant stakeholders. We discuss a range of ethical, legal, and societal aspects (ELSA), which people involved in the development and deployment of HPE can use for such reflection and deliberation. A realistic military scenario with proposed HPE application can (...) serve as a starting point for such an iterative and participatory process. Stakeholders can discuss this application, modify its features, and design appropriate processes around it – for instance, procedures for informed consent. We propose that organizing aspects into these three categories – ethical, legal, and societal – can help involve appropriate interlocutors at different moments: legal aspects with people in strategy or management roles, from the start of a project; ethical aspects with people in operations and medical roles, during development; and societal aspects with people in communication and personnel roles, during deployment. Notably, we developed and discussed this framework and the three aspects in close collaboration with personnel from the military. (shrink)

I develop and defend a novel answer to Peter van Inwagen’s ‘Special Composition Question,’ (SCQ) namely, under what conditions do some things compose and object? My answer is that things will compose an object when and only when they exist simultaneously relative to a reference frame (I call this ‘Temporally Restricted Composition’ or TREC). I then show how this view wards off objections given to ‘Unrestricted Mereology’ (UM). TREC, unlike other theories of Restricted Composition, does not fall prey to worries (...) about vagueness, anthropocentrism, or arbitrariness. TREC also has advantages over all the other answers to the SCQ. TREC is an account an A-theorist anti-Eternalist who wants an unrestricted mereology should accept. I also engage in some conceptual hygiene by showing how UM, as it should be used, should not, in itself, entail or contain a commitment to either Eternalism or Four-Dimensionalism. (shrink)

We describe a novel Internet-based method for building consensus and clarifying con icts in large stakeholder groups facing complex issues, and we use the method to survey and map the scienti c and organizational perspectives of the arti cial life community during the Seventh International Conference on Arti cial Life (summer 2000). The issues addressed in this survey included arti cial life’s main successes, main failures, main open scienti c questions, and main strategies for the future, as well as the (...) bene ts and pitfalls of creating a professional society for arti cial life. By illuminating the arti cial life community’s collective perspective on these issues, this survey illustrates the value of such methods of harnessing the collective intelligence of large stakeholder groups. (shrink)

In this article, drawing on the discursive psychology of Rom Harré, we show how mapping the exchange of words among people might disclose a complex reality; not merely that which farmers explicitly talk ‘about’ but the reality implicitly at stake within the communication. More specifically, we show how discourses involving modern farmers reveal an underlying placing in an abstract space, having sub-spaces defined by the life-orientation, sense of self and according self-positioning of modern people. In this way, we construct a (...) road map of a set of ‘individualities’ characterizing the life of modern farmers: an individuality of citizenship, an individuality of geographies and an individuality of experience. Consequently, farmers face the problem that this multiplicity of individuality prevents them from communicating, as we will call it, univocally in the public by contrast to the univocal voices of other established social groups. We will analyse the structure of that problem by viewing diverse relations between the authority and the authenticity of different partners in the conversation on land use. (shrink)

This book elucidates the ways post-cinema engages with potential futures, arguing that the morph is the crucial figure to understand both how the future is constrained and how hope for the future might be produced. The author draws on Deleuzian and Whiteheadian insights to argue for a new model of digital cinema.

Richly researched, the book explores how creativity has been invoked in arenas as varied as Enlightenment debates over the nature of the cognition, Victorian-era intelligence research, the Cold War technology race, contemporary education, and even modern electoral politics. Along the way, the book turns to a set of art works from mobile steampunk sculptures to bicentennial adaptations of Frankenstein to a musical about the US Presidential election that ask how our ideas about creativity are bound up with those of self-fulfillment, (...) responsibility, and the individual, and how these might seduce us into joining a worldview and even a set of social imperatives that we might otherwise find troubling. The Creativity Complex traces the history of how creativity has come to mean the things it now does, and explores the ethical implications of how we use this term today for both the arts and for the social world more broadly. (shrink)

It seems that actions are perceived from two different perspectives: on the one hand by the agent of the action and on the other hand by the observer. The latter perspective appears to be more reliable because of inter-subjective observations. Hence, determinists argue that actions can be causally explained by events, whereas the indeterminists claim that actions are acausal events. If e.g. Mary opens the door, we observe her behaviour but not her action; for it is not clear to us (...) from our observations whether she intends to open the door, whether she opens the door unconsciously or whether she opens the door only accidentally when sleepwalking. Since actions do not consist in events, their observations involve behaviouristic fallacy. Consequently, deterministic as well as indeterministic arguments prove to be untenable. Since only the first perspective, i.e. that of the agent, remains, it is necessary to refer to the reports about their actions and to our observations of their behaviour when explicating the concept of action. This enables us to clarify the question of how far human beings are free to do, or not to do, what they want. (shrink)

Media attention to retracted research suggests that a substantial number of papers are corrupted by misinformation. In reality, every paper contains misinformation; at issue is whether the balance of correct versus incorrect information is acceptable. This paper postulates that analysis of retracted research papers can provide insight into medical misinformation, although retracted papers are not a random sample of incorrect papers. Error is the most common reason for retraction and error may be the principal cause of misinformation as well. Still, (...) one-quarter of retracted papers are fraudulent, and misinformation may also arise through fraud. This paper hypothesises that error and fraud are the main sources of misinformation and that error is more common than fraud. Retraction removes misinformation from the literature; bias is non-retracted misinformation. Bias arises when scientific impropriety results in false research findings. Impropriety can involve experimental design, data collection, data analysis, or data presentation. Yet impropriety also arises through earnest error or statistical naiveté; not all bias is fraud. Several measures are proposed to minimise misinformation in the medical literature, including: greater detail in the clinical trial registry, with rigorous definition of inclusion and exclusion criteria and primary endpoints; clear statistical criteria for every aspect of clinical trials, especially sample size; responsibility for data integrity that accrues to all named authors; increased transparency as to how the costs of research were paid; and greater clarity as to the reasons for retraction. Misinformation can arise without malicious intent; authors of incorrect papers are owed a presumption of incompetence, not malice. (shrink)

This article traces Augustine’s presentation of an exegetical rule for oneness based on scriptural patterns in three different anti-Homoian contexts throughout his life. First, his letter to Pascentius outlines how descriptions of oneness in Scripture that include an added phrase detailing “one what” indicate substantial difference. Pericopes without the additional “one what,” though, reveal that the beings are of the same substance. Then, Augustine’s De trinitate builds upon this initial distinction by outlining how Trinitarian unity becomes the soteriological aim for (...) the believers’ oneness with one another. Just as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are of one substance and of one mind and volition, so too humanity, who is already of one substance, must become of one mind and volition through the same faith. Finally, Augustine’s encounter with Maximinus toward the end of his life elaborates further by explicating the significance of a verb’s singularity or plurality in a biblical verse for substantial oneness. He incorporates an argument that has already appeared in his thought into his approach to oneness in Scripture. This article, therefore, contributes to a greater understanding of Augustine’s exegetical arguments against Homoian theology and the trajectory of his pro-Nicene explanations over his life. (shrink)

That any filled location of spacetime contains a persisting thing has been defended based on the ‘argument from vagueness.’ It is often assumed that since the epistemicist account of vagueness blocks the argument from vagueness it facilitates a conservative ontology without gerrymandered objects. It doesn't. The epistemic vagueness of ordinary object predicates such as ‘bicycle’ requires that objects that can be described asalmost‐but‐not‐quite‐bicycleexist even though they fall outside the predicate's sharp extension. Since the predicates that begin with ‘almost’ are vague (...) as well, epistemicism's ontological backdrop is far from the conservative picture it is thought to enable. (shrink)