Strange is our situation here upon the earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.1.

This is an intriguing volume for anyone interested in the underpinnings of consciousness, from psychologists and philosophers to laypeople interested in ...

Paul Tillich noted the emergence of science by “demythologization” from its original unity with religion in antiquity. Demythologization can lead to conflict with accepted paradigms and therefore requires the “courage to create,” as exemplified by Galileo. Tillich's “God above God” as the ground of creativity and courage can, in this new millennium, enable religion to be reconciled with science. Religion is a source of the “courage to create,” which is essential for progress in scientific knowledge. Religion and (...) science working together as complementary dimensions of the human spirit can lead us into a wider world and greater wisdom. Reconciliation and reunion characterize the New Being and Creation. (shrink)

Our response amplifies our case for scientific realism and the unity of science and clarifies our commitments to scientific unity, nonreductionism, behaviorism, and our rejection of talk of “emergence.” We acknowledge support from commentators for our view of physics and, responding to pressure and suggestions from commentators, deny the generality supervenience and explain what this involves. We close by reflecting on the relationship between philosophy and science.

Science is a dynamic process in which the assimilation of new phenomena, perspectives, and hypotheses into the scientific corpus takes place slowly. The apparent disunity of the sciences is the unavoidable consequence of this gradual integration process. Some thinkers label this dynamical circumstance a ‘crisis’. However, a retrospective view of the practical results of the scientific enterprise and of science itself, grants us a clear view of the unity of the human knowledge seeking enterprise. This book provides (...) many arguments, case studies and examples in favor of the unity of science. These contributions touch upon various scientific perspectives and disciplines such as: Physics, Computer Science, Biology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, and Economics. (shrink)

Abstract.In contradistinction to the contemporary human sciences, recent theological accounts of the individual‐in‐relation continue to defend the concept of the singular continuous self. Consequently, theological anthropology and the human sciences seem to offer widely divergent accounts of the sense of self‐fragmentation that many believe pervades the modern world. There has been little constructive interdisciplinary conversation in this area. In this essay I address the damaging implications of this oversight and establish the necessary conditions for future dialogue. I have three primary (...) objectives. First, I show how the notion of personal continuity acquires philosophical theological significance through its close association with the concept of personal particularity. Second, through a discussion of contemporary accounts of self‐multiplicity, I clarify the extent of theological anthropology's disagreement with the human sciences. Third, I draw upon narrative accounts of identity to suggest an alternative means of understanding the experiential continuity of personhood that maintains the tension between self‐plurality, unity, and particularity and thereby reconnects philosophical theological concerns with human‐scientific analyses of the human condition. Narrative approaches to personhood are ideally suited to this purpose, and, I suggest, offer an intriguing solution to understanding and resolving the problem of self‐fragmentation that has caused recent theological anthropology so much consternation. (shrink)

Synonyms Cognitive universals; Human nature; Human universals Definition The “psychic unity” idea denotes the existence of a set of psychological and cognitive capacities universally shared by human beings and grounded in biological equality.

This chapter makes the general case for metaphysics as a required partner to cognitive science in the debunking project, for providing an external standard to assess intuitions. It considers the specific case studies of color, temporal passage, and spatial unity. These illustrate the general role of metaphysics in debunking, while also shedding more light on the interplay between cognitive science and metaphysics. There is also a sense in which cognitive science might be thought to have something (...) very specific to say just about metaphysics. Talk of intuitions is only coming in as a mediator between these two claims: the claims in metaphysics that are potentially open to debunking are intuitions, and cognitive science is relevant to the debunking of these very intuitions. What emerges from this paradigm case of a belief that needs debunking are three crucial and interconnected aspects of the debunking project: psychological aspect; metaphysical aspect; and epistemological aspect. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between unity and progress in psychology. It contends that psychologists have traditionally sought unity in order to fulfill positivistic criteria of progress and success. In accordance with innovations in the philosophy of science, and in accordance with recent trends toward methodological pluralism, such unity is neither required nor recommended. However, a problem that arises under the new philosophy of science &emdash; incommensurability &emdash; must also be addressed. It is argued that (...) before psychology can be a coherent discipline, three important questions pertaining to incommensurability must be answered. (shrink)

The potential of psychiatry as an integrative science has been impeded by an internal schism that derives from the duality of mental and physical. Organic unity theory is proposed as a conceptual framework that brings together the terms of the mind-body duality in one coherent perspective. Organic unity theory is braided of three strands: identity, which describes the relationship between mentally described events and corresponding physically described events; continuity, which describes the linguistic-conceptual system that contains both mental (...) and physical terms; and dialectic, which describes the relationship between the empirical way of knowing that is associated with the physical domain of the linguistic-conceptual system and the hermeneutic way of knowing that is associated with the mental domain. Each strand represents an integrative formulation that resolves an aspect of mental-physical dualism into an underlying unity. After the theory is presented, its implications for psychiatry are briefly considered. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity (...) of celestial and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century). Without relying on mathematical detail, Taylor's emphasis is on fundamental physics, like particle physics and cosmology. Balancing what is understood with the unestablished theories and still unanswered questions, Taylor takes readers on a fascinating ongoing journey. John C. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. A student of Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, Taylor's research career has spanned the era of developments in elementary particle physics since the 1950s. He taught theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. (shrink)

Truth, universalism, and relativism -- Objectivism and alienation -- Relativism and nihilism -- Inclusive notions of science and objectivity -- Cognitive pluralism -- Plurality of perspectives and unity of style -- The question of the ground of understanding -- Education and educators -- Relations between educators and learners -- The educational order of truth -- Education and the problem of authority -- The nature of educational renewal -- Conclusions.

I am persuaded that the anti-reductionist stance of the Mistake-Making Theoretical Framework is fundamentally sound and will prove heuristically fruitful. But the very success of this framework generates a challenge. Many biologically informed metaphysicians have drawn striking conclusions from the fact that biology cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. One such conclusion is John Dupré's “disunity of the sciences” thesis which follows upon the alleged “disorder of things.” These conclusions threaten to undermine assumptions underpinning the Mistake-Making Theoretical Framework. In (...) this paper I argue that metaphysicians need to find a middle path between an unattainable reductionism one the one hand and the unwelcome disunity thesis on the other. This is no easy task, as a survey of various proposals makes clear. I argue that adverting to the long-discredited Aristotelian notion of Prime Matter is the most economical way of achieving unity without reduction. (shrink)

Explanations of consciousness from both philosophy and cognitive science are traditionally conceived in terms of how an active self-consciousness relates to the various aspects of the world with which it is faced. This way of framing the problem is intuitive, but it also leads ultimately to an infinite regress. A better approach to consciousness is suggested by Buddhism, which responds to the regress by arguing that consciousness and its apparent relata are, in any given instance, actually simultaneously illuminated isolates (...) of an underlying unity. This response circumvents the regress, but does not offer an explanation of consciousness as such. Nevertheless, insights such as this can be integrated into contemporary scientific theorizing about cognition and the brain with surprisingly fruitful results. (shrink)

This article, taken from a presentation to the 2011 European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics annual conference, draws on both national legislation in European states and the Conventions of the Council of Europe as well as EU instruments such the Opinions of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies and the Charter of Fundamental Rights to examine the current state of national and regional diversity in approaches to key bioethics issues and examines its evolution with (...) reference to debates surrounding the development of key pieces of EU legislation and Council of Europe policy with bioethical implications. The relationship between the EU’s genesis as a primarily economic and commercial governance entity – with its accompanying emphasis on the harmonization of technical standards – and its approach to diversity in national bioethical perspectives is also examined. Conclusions are drawn as to the relative success and desirability of the European consensus process in bioethics. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 222-234 DOI 10.1558/hrge.v17i2.222 Authors David Fieldsend, CARE for Europe, 205/14 Rue Belliard, 1040-Brussels, Belgium Journal Human Reproduction & Genetic Ethics Online ISSN 2043-0469 Print ISSN 1028-7825 Journal Volume Volume 17 Journal Issue Volume 17, Number 2 / 2011. (shrink)

Recent developments in cognitive science provide compelling leads that need to be interpreted and synthesized within the context of semiotic and biosemiotic principles. To this end, we examine the impact of the mind-body unity on the sorts of choices that an organism is predisposed to making from its Umwelt. In multicellular organisms with brains, the relationship that an organism has with its Umwelt impacts on neural plasticity, the functional specialisations that develop within the brain, and its behaviour. Clinical (...) observations, such as those recorded by Norman Doidge, as well as historical observations from outside the field of semiotics (Plato, Aristotle, Hume) shed further light on this process, and serve to further substantiate our semiotic and biosemiotic paradigm. Our analysis develops a rather limited associationism (with reference to Peirce’s categories) into a more general and robust interpretation that is applicable to all mind-bodies, whether they be neurons, paramecia and amoebae, or humans, cats and dogs. Biosemiotics is a more universal semiotics that takes us beyond the confines of anthropocentrism, because it recognizes the role of the body in shaping Mind. (shrink)

The question of whether it is possible to philosophize outside the categories of rationalist philosophy is not limited to methodology. It has ideological overtones. Namely, the rationalism that has developed in philosophy in modern times, after Descartes, is inevitably supplemented by mechanics. The world is seen as a machine, the living is reduced to mechanisms. Rationalism becomes a machine of mentality. Taking it as a model of normal thinking, giving it a universal value, we thereby impose Western way of thinking (...) on other cultures with a different mentality. The question, therefore, is not about the method of scientific knowledge but about the power realized through the transformation of mentality. Scientific knowledge conquers space. Philosophy produces a transformation of mentality. New rationalism, according to G. Bachelard, is in dialectical relation with the usual realism of the natural Sciences. In this process, there is the implementation of new schemes developed in the complex interaction of “ratio” and experiment. Modern science is the collective creation of a new reality. This is the reality of the “picture of the world.” There is another view of science, rationalism and modern philosophy. According to him, rationalism is dualism, atomism and social individualism. These features reveal the anti-traditional and anti-metaphysical spirit of modern Western civilization. The traditional approach is non-duality, unity provided by metaphysical principles. The new rationalism in science is characterized by the belief in the infinite progress of knowledge. But knowledge itself, from the point of view of tradition, is devoid of great value. Philosophy uses categories of ancient Greek philosophy or German classical philosophy, but they cannot be considered universal. They corresponded not only to the time and place, the conditions in which they arose, but also to the characteristic mentality of the peoples and individuals who created them. They are not suitable for understanding the metaphysical doctrines of traditional cultures. The language of traditional cultures is symbolic and synthetic in contrast to the analytical language of Western science and philosophy. (shrink)

Charles Taylor has been one of the most original and influential figures in contemporary philosophy: his 'philosophical anthropology' spans an unusually wide range of theoretical interests and draws creatively on both Anglo-American and Continental traditions in philosophy. A selection of his published papers is presented here in two volumes, structured to indicate the direction and essential unity of the work. He starts from a polemical concern with behaviourism and other reductionist theories (particularly in psychology and the philosophy of language) (...) which aim to model the study of man on the natural sciences. This leads to a general critique of naturalism, its historical development and its importance for modern culture and consciousness; and that in turn points, forward to a positive account of human agency and the self, the constitutive role of language and value, and the scope of practical reason. The volumes jointly present some two decades of work on these fundamental themes, and convey strongly the tenacity, verve and versatility of the author in grappling with them. They will interest a very wide range of philosophers and students of the human sciences. (shrink)

This paper is an articulation and defense of a trope-bundle theory of material objects. After some background remarks about objects and tropes, I start the main defense in Section III by answering a charge frequently made against the bundle theory, namely that it commits a conceptual error by saying that properties are parts of objects. I argue that there’s a general and intuitive sense of “part” in which properties are in fact parts of objects. This leads to the question of (...) qualitative unity: in virtue of what are certain properties unified as parts of an object? In Section IV I defend an account of unity for complex material objects. It turns on the thesis that the properties of such objects are structural properties. After addressing some objections, I turn in Section V to the question of unity for simple material objects. Here a different and more radical account is needed, for simples, since they do not have structural properties, are not subsumed by the account of Section IV. I defend the view that a simple object just is a simple property, so that identity delivers the desired unity. (shrink)

The article reviews selected points arising from the quaestio disputata on the relation between philosophy and the sciences, published in this journal in September 2003 and then some weeks later treated in an open forum by professors and students of the Gregorian Faculty of Philosophy. The central issue emerging from the discussion was that of organizing the different modes of rational discourse in a manner that respects the specific methods of each, while remaining attentive to the unity of human (...) thought and practical action. The later Wittgenstein took care to avoid mixing different types of discourse, while Carnap acknowledged the inevitability of including consideration of the psychP as an essential procedural step in every theoretical construct in the sciences. Maréchalian transcendental philosophies and Husserlian phenomenologies both insist that human subjectivity is more than functional, since it lies at the origin of rational activity. Thus, science draws attention to subjectivity, but a viable theory must still specify the status of actions proper to the latter. (shrink)

In the United States, the crisis broke out in 2008 launched a public debate on the decline of the middle class with peculiar historical references: from the Great Depression and the New Deal to the globalization of the Nineties, through the fractures imposed by the social movements of the Sixties and the neo-liberal turn of the Eighties. In the light of a debate in which the middle class emerges as an indisputable keyword of the American political cultures, the essay points (...) out the historical origin of the fetish of middle class by showing the role that US social sciences have had in the making of the middle class as an ideological notion at the very foundation of the American century. Released by its fetish, middle class emerges as a historical category that allows to trace the formation of the liberal order and its transition to the neoliberal order, to point to the crisis and transformation of capitalism and the American state, to identify the frontier beyond which their historical legitimacy is missing. (shrink)

Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically untestable, or metaphysical thesis. It thus lies beyond the scope of science. Only when physics has formulated a testable unified theory of everything which has been amply corroborated empirically will science be in a position to declare that it has established that (...) the cosmos is physically comprehensible. But this argument presupposes a widely accepted but untenable conception of science which I shall call standard empiricism. According to standard empiricism, in science theories are accepted solely on the basis of evidence. Choice of theory may be influenced for a time by considerations of simplicity, unity, or explanatory capacity, but not in such a way that the universe itself is permanently assumed to be simple, unified or physically comprehensible. In science, no thesis about the universe can be accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. Granted this view, it is clear that science cannot have established that the universe is physically comprehensible. Standard empiricism is, however, as I have indicated, untenable. Any fundamental physical theory, in order to be accepted as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, must satisfy two criteria. It must be (1) sufficiently empirically successful, and (2) sufficiently unified. Given any accepted theory of physics, endlessly many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted – disunified because they assert that different dynamical laws govern the diverse phenomena to which the theory applies. These disunified rivals are not considered for a moment in physics, despite their greater empirical success. This persistent rejection of empirically more successful but disunified rival theories means, I argue, that a big, highly problematic, implicit assumption is made by science about the cosmos, to the effect, at least, that the cosmos is such that all seriously disunified theories are false. Once this point is recognized, it becomes clear, I argue, that we need a new conception of science which makes explicit, and so criticizable and improvable the big, influential, and problematic assumption that is at present implicit in physics in the persistent preference for unified theories. This conception of science, which I call aim-oriented empiricism, represents the assumption of physics in the form of a hierarchy of assumptions. As one goes up the hierarchy, the assumptions become less and less substantial, and more and more nearly such that their truth is required for science, or the pursuit of knowledge, to be possible at all. At each level, that assumption is accepted which (a) best accords with the next one up, and (b) has, associated with it the most empirically progressive research programme in physics, or holds out the greatest hope of leading to such an empirically progressive research programme. In this way a framework of relatively insubstantial, unproblematic, fixed assumptions and associated methods is created, high up in the hierarchy, within which much more substantial and problematic assumptions and associated methods, low down in the hierarchy, can be changed, and indeed improved, as scientific knowledge improves. One assumption in this hierarchy of assumptions, I argue, is that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – that is, such that some yet-to-be-discovered unified theory of everything is true. Hence the conclusion: improve our ideas about the nature of science and it becomes apparent that science has already established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – in so far as science can ever establish anything theoretical. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the classical Marxist tradition and the conceptual roots of totalitarianism. Here totalitarianism is understood to entail the attempt to frame the developmental impulses of modernity within the logic of a premodern political imaginary—defined as internally homogenous and transparent to itself. In the first part, we take issue with those who try to distinguish between the thought of Marx and Engels, and who insist that it is only in Engels's thought that the traces of a (...) totalitarian politics might be found. In the second section, we outline briefly the context within which Marx's thought was developed, after which we argue that Marx's vision of communism is dependent on the three-phase vision of historical process which he inherited from Hegel. Without denying the historical peculiarities of the imposition of communism in Russia, we conclude that it is out of this latter vision of history that the conceptual roots of totalitarianism must be located. (shrink)

The aim of this book is both to develop a logic of microreduction, primarily for dynamic theories, or theories that state and explain the attributes and behavior, rather than the evolutionary development, of the things in some domain and, also, to argue that a program of microreduction offers the best hope for the unification of science. After two initial chapters, developing the necessary logical tools and techniques, Causey gets to the central problem of microreduction. The fundamental idea is: a (...) theory, T2, involving entities and attributes proper to some domain, D2, is microreduced to a theory, T1, involving entities and attributes proper to some other domain, D1, when the entities of D2 are explained as structured wholes made up of elements of D1. Attributes present more of a problem. One must first select the classifying attributes which divide the entities of each domain into disjoint equivalence classes. The connecting sentences, relating attributes of D2 to attributes of D1 cannot be identity statements in a set-theoretic formulation but should be such in a more flexible formulation. On this basis, the author gives a detailed specification of the condition for a successful, i.e., no emergence, reduction of the ontology and laws of T2 to those of T1. The second half of the book is more programmatic defending the program of microreduction as the best, though presently unrealizable, means of unifying science. The objections to the program brought by Fodor and others are countered. Though the author’s detailed analysis is geared to the reduction of chemistry to physics, he believes that the same general method should also handle the reduction of social sciences to a science of individual behavior. (shrink)

Kant and the Sciences aims to reveal the deep unity of Kant's conception of science as it bears on the particular sciences of his day and on his conception of ...

Street’s Darwinian dilemma claims that anti-realist theories are more parsimonious explanations of moral evaluative attitudes. Anti-realists claim we have evaluative attitudes because having them was evolutionarily beneficial. Unlike the realist, the anti-realist does not need to appeal to moral facts to explain evaluative attitudes. Such parsimony is not the only way a theory can be simpler. Realists may appeal to theory unity to respond to the anti-realist’s dilemma. Unity is when the same account explains more observed phenomena. Realists (...) may do this by using a tracking account to explain both moral and epistemic evaluative attitudes. Some anti-realists conversely present a more disunified account. Such theories use a tracking account to explain epistemic evaluative attitudes but an adaptive link account to explain moral evaluative attitudes. Compared to such an account the realist’s single account of both epistemic and moral evaluative attitudes is more unified and may be simpler. Anti-realists defending such a position must explain why their ontological parsimony is preferable to the realist’s unity. However, there is no agreement as to how to go about this. Unless this can be done, this complicates Street’s anti-realist claim on the second horn. Further, this implicates other similar anti-realist accounts claiming simplicity over realists. However, through an objection, we will show the anti-realist who claims to explain all evaluative attitudes with an adaptive link account possesses the simplest theory. Determining which simplicity comparison is the most useful will require arguing for the most plausible realist or anti-realist account. I will avoid doing this and will only mention the various measures of simplicity they comparatively do well or poorly on. Whatever the most plausible position is, my paper will inform it as to how well it fares in terms of simplicity when compared to either the opposing realist or anti-realist. (shrink)

Kant famously identified 'What is man?' as the fundamental question that encompasses the whole of philosophy. Yet surprisingly, there has been no concerted effort amongst Kant scholars to examine Kant's actual philosophy of man. This book, which is inspired by, and part of, the recent movement that focuses on the empirical dimension of Kant's works, is the first sustained attempt to extract from his writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their (...) presuppositions as well as their methodology. In exploring his philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences, it reveals an unexpected picture of Kant, a picture of a thinker who is profoundly attentive to the diversity, detail and complexity of the human world. (shrink)

This book is a mathematical potpourri. Its material originated in classroom presentations, formal lectures, sections of earlier books, book reviews, or just things written by the author for his own pleasure. Written in a nontechnical fashion, this book expresses the unique vision and attitude of the author towards the role of mathematics in society. It contains observations or incidental remarks on mathematics, its nature, its impacts on education and science and technology, its personalities and philosophies. The book is directed (...) towards the math buffs of the world and, more generally, towards the literate and interested public. Philip Davis is known for his work in numerical analysis and approximation theory, as well as his investigations in the history and philosophy of mathematics. Currently a Professor Emeritus from the Division of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, Davis is known for his books both in the areas of computational mathematics and approximation theory and for books exploring certain questions in the philosophy of mathematics and the role of mathematics in society. (shrink)

Cognitive science is a new paradigm that informs and involves several disciplines, including artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cognitive ethology, and the philosophy of mind. Cognitive science studies the mind as an information processor, with the computer often operating as a metaphor for the operations of the mind. Developments in the cognitive sciences stand to affect tremendously how we think of the mind and, consequently, how we think of theological and religious claims that concern the human subject. The (...) unity of self, claims of human uniqueness, the relation of mind and body, human nature, and the personal agency of God are all areas of religious import in which the cognitive sciences need to be taken into account. (shrink)

The Certainty Trap introduced by Redstone reminds us that certainty/uncertainty are endemic to the human condition and merit sustained social science attention. This comment begins with seven preliminary considerations, such as whether the context is objective or subjective and the variety of words involved. Next we summarize some theoretical and empirical lines of attack. The theoretical approaches include three theories of varying type, all involving both certainty/uncertainty and happiness, signaling a link between certainty/uncertainty and happiness. The empirical approaches include (...) both testing theoretical predictions and assembling an archive of data on certainty/uncertainty, including numerical versions of response categories. We end with the possibility that a large and lifelong field of opportunities to assess certainty/uncertainty may build both cognitive and noncognitive skills, protecting against the Certainty Trap. (shrink)