The commentary argues (1) that we cannot be sure that human consciousness has survival value and (2) that in order to understand the origins and, perhaps, the function of consciousness, we should examine the behavioural and neural precursors to consciousness in nonhumans. An example is given of research on the role of context in decisions regarding fleeing from probable predators in the Mongolian gerbil.

The main function of vision in many animals is to control movement. In rodents, some visuomotor acts require the construction of models of the external world while others rely on Gibsonian invariants. Such findings support Norman's dual processing approach but it is not clear that the two types of processing rely on homologs of visual processing streams described in primates.

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the eminent scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding of Ross's great (...) work today. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen two significant trends emerging within the philosophy of science: the rapid development and focus on the philosophy of the specialised sciences, and a resurgence of Aristotelian metaphysics, much of which is concerned with the possibility of emergence, as well as the ontological status and indispensability of dispositions and powers in science. Despite these recent trends, few Aristotelian metaphysicians have engaged directly with the philosophy of the specialised sciences. Additionally, the relationship between fundamental Aristotelian concepts—such (...) as "hylomorphism", "substance", and "faculties"—and contemporary science has yet to receive a critical and systematic treatment. _Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science _aims to fill this gap in the literature by bringing together essays on the relationship between Aristotelianism and science that cut across interdisciplinary boundaries. The chapters in this volume are divided into two main sections covering the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of the life sciences. Featuring original contributions from distinguished and early-career scholars, this book will be of interest to specialists in analytical metaphysics and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Family disputes over the diagnosis of brain death have caused much controversy in the bioethics literature over the conceptual validity of the brain death standard. Given the tenuous status of brain death as death, it is pragmatically fruitful to reframe intractable debates about the metaphysical nature of brain death as metalinguistic disputes about its conceptual deployment. This new framework leaves the metaphysical debate open and brings into focus the social functions that are served by deploying the concept of brain death. (...) In doing so, it highlights the epistemic injustice of medicolegal authorities that force people to uniformly accept brain death as a diagnosis of death based on normative considerations of institutional interests, such as saving hospital resources and organ supplies, rather than empirical evidence of brain death as death, which is insufficient at best and nonexistent at worst. In light of this injustice, I propose the rejection of the uniform standard of brain death in favor of a choice-based system that respects families’ individualized views of death. (shrink)

Kit Fine’s logic of essence and his reduction of modality crucially rely on a principle called the ‘monotonicity of essence’. This principle says that for all pluralities, xx and yy, if some xx belong to some yy, then if it is essential to xx that p, it is also essential to yy that p. I argue that on the constitutive notion of essence, this principle is false. In particular, I show that this principle is false because it says that some (...) propositions are essential to yy even though those propositions are only about some of its members. I then consider modifications to the principle appealing to consequential essence and argue that such a modification is inconsistent with a central. (shrink)

I show that in Epictetus’ view (1) the wise man genuinely loves (στέργειv) and is affectionate (φιλόστoργoς) to his family and friends; (2) only the Stoic wise man is, properly speaking, capable of loving—that is, he alone actually has the power to love; and (3) the Stoic wise man loves in a robustly rational way which excludes passionate, sexual, ‘erotic’ love (’έρως). In condemning all ’έρως as objectionable πάθoς Epictetus stands with Cicero and with the other Roman Stoics, Seneca and (...) Musonius Rufus, and against the Greeks of the early Stoa. Epictetus’ conception of love excludes erotic passion because of its intrinsic excessiveness and uncontrollableness, which inevitably endanger mental serenity, but includes and emphasizes the soberly rational, purely positive joy of interpersonal affiliation. Epictetus’ account of how the Stoic Sage loves is, I think, more consistent and less problematic than that of the Greek Stoics. (shrink)

Although many of the pioneers of present-day bioethics came from religious and theological backgrounds, the recent controversy about the role of religion in bioethics has elicited much attention. Timothy Murphy would ban religion from bioethics altogether. Much of the ado hinges on conflicting understandings of just what bioethics is and just what religion is. This paper attempts to make more explicit how the fields of bioethics and religion have been understood in this context, and how they should not be understood. (...) We begin by looking at bioethics as a field: its origins, purpose, scope, and its methods. We then examine the notion of religion, looking especially at its importance for bioethics. Humanity is not just Homo sapiens but also Homo religiosus. Religion is more than a code of ethics; it gives insight into many of the foundational matters of bioethics. (shrink)

Five different arguments for vegetarianism are discussed: the system of meat production deprives poor people of food to provide meat for the wealthy, thus violating the principle of distributive justice; the world livestock industry causes great and manifold ecological destruction; meat-eating cultures and societal oppression of women are intimately linked and so feminism and vegetarianism must both be embraced to transform our patriarchal culture; both utilitarian and rights-based reasoning lead to the conclusion that raising and slaughtering animals is immoral, and (...) so we ought to boycott meat; meat consumption causes many serious diseases and lowers life expectancy, and so is unhealthy. Objections to each argument are examined. The conclusion reached is that the cumulative case successfully establishes vegetarianism as a virtuous goal. (shrink)

Chapter I THE BEGINNINGS OF PHENOMENOLOGY INTRODUCTORY Prefatory Remarks The writer of this monograph on the phenomenology of Charles Sanders Peirce will ...

The metamemory approach to memory confidence was extended and elaborated to deal with semantic memory tasks. The metamemory approach assumes that memory confidence is based on the products and processes of a completed memory task, as well as metamemory beliefs that individuals have about how their memory products and processes relate to memory accuracy. In two experiments participants were asked deceptive and nondeceptive questions involving geographical information. In both experiments, as predicted by the metamemory approach to memory confidence, there was (...) a positive confidence/ accuracy relationship for nondeceptive items and a negative relationship for deceptive items. Experiment 2 used items that constrained the memory strategies (e.g., hierarchical reasoning about spatial location) used by the participants. The results supported the hypothesis that the participants were aware of the levels of memory accuracy associated with the different strategies and used that information to generate their memory confidence judgments. (shrink)

Using ideas gleaned from the philosophy of technology of Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas and the philosophy of health of Georges Canguilhem, I argue that one of the characteristics of emerging medical technologies is that these technologies lead to new conceptions of health. When technologies enable the body to respond to more and more challenges of disease, we thus establish new norms of health. Given the continued development of successful technologies, we come to expect more and more that our bodies (...) should be able to respond to ever-new challenges of environment and disease by establishing ever-new norms of health. Technologies may aim at the prevention and treatment of disease, but they also bring about modifications of what we consider normal for the human being. Thus, new norms of health arise from technological innovation. (shrink)

Virtually all activities of health care are motivated at some level by hope. Patients hope for a cure; for relief from pain; for a return home. Physicians hope to prevent illness in their patients; to make the correct diagnosis when illness presents itself; that their prescribed treatments will be effective. Researchers hope to learn more about the causes of illness; to discover new and more effective treatments; to understand how treatments work. Ultimately, all who work in health care hope to (...) offer their patients hope. In this paper, I offer a brief analysis of hope, considering the definitions of Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Thomas Aquinas. I then differentiate shallow and deep hope and show how hope in health care can remain shallow. Next, I explore what a philosophy of deep hope in health care might look like, drawing important points from Ernst Bloch and Gabriel Marcel. Finally, I suggest some implications of this philosophy of hope for patients, physicians, and researchers. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION A story has been passed down to us from some two millennia ago of a conversation between a wealthy Athenian estate owner, ...

The rapid fertility decline in most advanced industrial nations, coupled with secularization and the disintegration of the family, is a sign that Western Civilization is beginning to collapse, even while radical religious movements pose challenges to Western dominance. Under such dire circumstances, it is pointless to be cautious about developing new Converging Technologies. Historical events are undermining the entire basis of ethical decision-making, so it is necessary to seek a new basis for ethics in the intellectual unification of science and (...) the power to do good inherent in the related technological convergence. This article considers the uneasy relations between science and religion, in the context of fertility decline, and the prospects for developing a new and self-sustaining civilization based in a broad convergence of science and technology, coalescing around a core of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive technologies. It concludes with the suggestion that the new civilization should become interstellar. (shrink)

Metagenomics bears upon all aspects of microbiology, including our understanding of mitochondrial and eukaryote origin. Recently, ribosomal protein phylogenies show the eukaryote host lineage – the archaeal lineage that acquired the mitochondrion – to branch within the archaea. Metagenomic studies are now uncovering new archaeal lineages that branch more closely to the host than any cultivated archaea do. But how do they grow? Carbon and energy metabolism as pieced together from metagenome assemblies of these new archaeal lineages, such as the (...) Deep Sea Archaeal Group (including Lokiarchaeota) and Bathyarchaeota, do not match the physiology of any cultivated microbes. Understanding how these new lineages live in their environment is important, and might hold clues about how mitochondria arose and how the eukaryotic lineage got started. Here we look at these exciting new metagenomic studies, what they say about archaeal physiology in modern environments, how they impact views on host‐mitochondrion physiological interactions at eukaryote origin. (shrink)

In 1880, Galton carried out an investigation of imagery in a sample of distinguished men and a sample of nonscientists (adolescent male students). He concluded that scientists were either totally lacking in visual imagery or had “feeble” powers of mental imagery. This finding has been widely accepted in the secondary literature in psychology. A replication of Galton’s study with modern scientists and modern university undergraduates found no scientists totally lacking in visual imagery and very few with feeble visual imagery. Examination (...) of Galton’s published data shows that his own published data do not support his claims about deficient visual imagery in scientists. The modern data for scientists and nonscientists and the 1880 data for scientists and nonscientists are in agreement in showing that all groups report substantial imagery on recollective memory tasks such as Galton’s breakfast questionnaire. We conclude that Galton’s conclusions were an example of theory-laden interpretation of data based on the initial responses from several very salient scientists who reported little or no visual imagery on Galton’s imagery questionnaire. (shrink)

Current research in business ethics gives serious cause for concern because it may be designed more to advance academic careers than to encourage ethical business. The author is completing his doctoral thesis in business ethics at the Management School, Imperial College, London.