There are scientists that have speculated that, since science involves abstraction, generalizations across facts, and the generalization of causes and theories across empirical phenomena, the direction of science is to increasingly unify forces and causes until there is a single general theory unifying all of the forces of nature. The most prominent contemporary example of this attempt to unify all of the forces of nature in a single theory is string theory or superstring theory. String theorists have attempted to emulate (...) Albert Einstein’s call for physicists to attempt to unify all of the forces of physics in a single theory, sometimes called a “theory of everything.” String Theory has been called “untestable,” empirically unverifiable, and “post-empiricist,” and I use another standard by which String Theory might be evaluated, a _Standard of Instrument Design and Technological Productivity. _Moreover, I seek to show that, instead of attempting to unify all of the forces of nature in a single theory or “theory of everything,” it is possible to identify and separate the forces of nature in relation to each other, and order and rank the forces of nature by their capacity to generate branching patterns in the biological sciences or the physical sciences. Ranking forces by their capacity to generate branching patterns (or other shapes or patterns), in the biological sciences or in the physical sciences, is more positivist and testable than attempts to unify all of the forces of nature in a single theory. (shrink)

Ever since Greek antiquity "disembodied knowledge" has often been taken as synonymous with "objective truth." Yet we also have very specific mental images of the kinds of bodies that house great minds--the ascetic philosopher versus the hearty surgeon, for example. Does truth have anything to do with the belly? What difference does it make to the pursuit of knowledge whether Einstein rode a bicycle, Russell was randy, or Darwin flatulent? Bringing body and knowledge into such intimate contact is occasionally seen (...) as funny, sometimes as enraging, and more often just as pointless. Vividly written and well illustrated, Science Incarnate offers concrete historical answers to such skeptical questions about the relationships between body, mind, and knowledge. Focusing on the seventeenth century to the present, Science Incarnate explores how intellectuals sought to establish the value and authority of their ideas through public displays of their private ways of life. Patterns of eating, sleeping, exercising, being ill, and having (or avoiding) sex, as well as the marks of gender and bodily form, were proof of the presence or absence of intellectual virtue, integrity, skill, and authority. Intellectuals examined in detail include René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Ada Lovelace. Science Incarnate is at once very funny and deeply serious, addressing issues of crucial importance to present-day discussions about the nature of knowledge and how it is produced. It incorporates much that will interest cultural and social historians, historians of science and medicine, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists. (shrink)

Natural Law Today gives a strong voice to classical natural law theory as the best answers to the fundamental questions of ethics and as the best framework for political and social life. It explains various aspects of that theory and defends it against common misperceptions and criticisms.

This special issue contains three papers on evolutions in logic during the so-called ‘post-medieval’ period (roughly the years 1450–1700). The papers discuss the following topics: (1) traditions of logic in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; (2) approaches to validity in medieval and post-medieval logic; and (3) scholastic and humanist interpretations of the prologue to Galen’s Art of Medicine. All papers provide an original contribution to research on post-medieval logic, which to date is still in the early (...) stages. Together they testify to the great diversity of the discourse on logic during the period under consideration, something that has not been sufficiently appreciated in the scholarship. (shrink)

This special issue contains three papers on evolutions in logic during the so-called ‘post-medieval’ period. The papers discuss the following topics: traditions of...

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

Understanding the dynamics of information is crucial to many areas of research, both inside and outside of philosophy. Using computer simulations of three kinds of information, germs, genes, and memes, we show that the mechanism of information transfer often swamps network structure in terms of its effects on both the dynamics and the fitness of the information. This insight has both obvious and subtle implications for a number of questions in philosophy, including questions about the nature of information, whether there (...) is genetic information, and how to arrange scientific communities. (shrink)

Past research has found that skin colouration, particularly facial redness, influences the perceived health and emotional state of target individuals. In the current work, we explore several extensions of this past research. In Experiment 1, we manipulated facial redness incrementally on neutral and angry faces and had participants rate each face for anger and health. Different red effects emerged, as perceived anger increased in a linear manner as facial redness increased. Health ratings instead showed a curvilinear trend, as both extreme (...) paleness and redness were rated as less healthy than moderate levels of red. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings by manipulating the masculinity of both angry and neutral faces that varied in redness. The results found the effect of red on perceived anger and health was moderated by masculine face structure. Collectively, these results show that facial redness has context dependent effects that vary based on facial expression, appearance, and differentially impact ratings of emotional states and health. (shrink)

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY: COMMUNAL AGREEMENT AND OBJECTIVITY Christopher M. Leich and Steven H. Holtzman In this essay we shall take up certain questions raised ...

In this article, we examine the advantages of simple metacognitive capabilities in a repeated social dilemma. Two types of metacognitive agent were developed and compared with a non-metacognitive agent and two fixed-strategy agents. The first type of metacognitive agent takes the perspective of the opponent to anticipate the opponent's future actions and respond accordingly. The other metacognitive agent predicts the opponent's next move based on the previous moves of the agent and the opponent. The modeler agent achieves better individual outcomes (...) than a non-metacognitive agent and is more successful at encouraging cooperation. The opponent-perspective agent, by contrast, fails to achieve these outcomes because it lacks important information about the opponent. These simple agents provide insights regarding modeling of metacognition in more complex tasks. (shrink)

Gender inequity is a persistent problem in the United States. While the high school social studies classroom should be an important space for addressing gender inequity, there is significant underrepresentation of women in the curriculum. Thus, it is crucial that we understand how self-described feminist social studies teachers present women and gender-equity in their classrooms. In this mixed-methods study, the researchers examined the beliefs and practices of six feminist-identifying teachers. The results reveal commonalities across teachers related to classroom discourses, curricular (...) modifications, and professional practice, yet there were compelling differences based on whether or not the teacher subscribed to a critical feminist perspective or a liberal feminist perspective. While all the teachers in the study saw themselves as change agents, teachers who operated from a critical feminist lens focused more on structural gender inequity as a means to eliminate sexism, whereas teachers who operated from a liberal lens focused more on individual acts of sexism and greater inclusion of women—often individual women—in the curriculum. This study contributes to the scarce research on feminism in social studies and provides tools for practitioners who want practices that are more inclusive. (shrink)

There exists in the United States a popular account of the historical roots of environmental philosophy which is worth noting not simply as a matter of historical interest, but also as a source book for some of the key ideas that lend shape to contemporary North American environmental philosophy. However, this folk wisdom about the historical beginnings of North American environmental thinking is incomplete. The wilderness-based history commonly used by environmental philosophers should be supplemented with the neglected story of garbage (...) and sanitation in North American urban areas during the nineteenth century. This supplemented history changes the conceptual territory over which North American environmental philosophy roams. This new territory is better suited to a number of important local and international environmental challenges. (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The study tests the hypothesis that conditional probability judgments can be influenced by causal links between the target event and the evidence even when the statistical relations among variables are held constant. Three experiments varied the causal structure relating three variables and found that (a) the target event was perceived as more probable when it was linked to evidence by a causal chain than when both variables shared a common cause; (b) predictive chains in which evidence is a cause of (...) the hypothesis gave rise to higher judgments than diagnostic chains in which evidence is an effect of the hypothesis; and (c) direct chains gave rise to higher judgments than indirect chains. A Bayesian learning model was applied to our data but failed to explain them. An explanation-based hypothesis stating that statistical information will affect judgments only to the extent that it changes beliefs about causal structure is consistent with the results. (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

As we look beyond our terrestrial boundary to a multi-planetary future for humankind, it becomes paramount to anticipate the challenges of various human factors on the most likely scenario for this future: permanent human settlement of Mars. Even if technical hurdles are circumvented to provide adequate resources for basic physiological and psychological needs, Homo sapiens will not survive on an alien planet if a dysfunctional psyche prohibits the utilization of these resources. No matter how far we soar into the stars, (...) our psychologies for future generations will be forever tethered to the totality of our surroundings. By shaping our environment toward survival and welfare during the voyage to Mars and in a Martian colony, we indirectly shape our psyches and prepare them for a mission of unprecedented alienation and duration. Once on Mars, human factors such as leadership structure, social organization and code of conduct, group size, gender balance, developmental cycle, mobility, length of stay and the ecological settings and type and manner of subsistence, will create a novel Martian culture. The degree that settlers are severed from the Earth will affect how radically foreign this culture will be when compared with cultures on Earth. (shrink)

Despite commitments to claims about the welfare-enhancing superiority of art-interested ways of life implicit in much of their work, aestheticians have shown little interest in explicitly bringing their discipline to bear on issues at the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, and politics. Roger Scruton’s work on culture bucks that trend, but few have contributed to the discussion he initiated. After an extended treatment of one of many possible examples showing that aesthetics-related matters can and do bear significantly on social and political (...) issues, I present key components of Scruton’s brand of cultural conservatism and explore one way of working out some of the details, in an attempt to show that the kinds of off-putting unwieldiness and putative sociopolitical dubiousness from which ambivalence toward issues at the intersection stems might be satisfactorily dealt with. (shrink)

Pierre Maquet1,2,6, Steven Laureys1,2, Philippe Peigneux1,2,3, Sonia Fuchs1, Christophe Petiau1, Christophe Phillips1,6, Joel Aerts1, Guy Del Fiore1, Christian Degueldre1, Thierry Meulemans3, André Luxen1, Georges Franck1,2, Martial Van Der Linden3, Carlyle Smith4 and Axel Cleeremans5.

As quantum technologies (QT) advance, their potential impact on and relation with society has been developing into an important issue for exploration. In this paper, we investigate the topic of democratization in the context of QT, particularly quantum computing. The paper contains three main sections. First, we briefly introduce different theories of democracy (participatory, representative, and deliberative) and how the concept of democratization can be formulated with respect to whether democracy is taken as an intrinsic or instrumental value. Second, we (...) give an overview of how the concept of democratization is used in the QT field. Democratization is mainly adopted by companies working on quantum computing and used in a very narrow understanding of the concept. Third, we explore various narratives and counter-narratives concerning democratization in QT. Finally, we explore the general efforts of democratization in QT such as different forms of access, formation of grassroot communities and special interest groups, the emerging culture of manifesto writing, and how these can be located within the different theories of democracy. In conclusion, we argue that although the ongoing efforts in the democratization of QT are necessary steps towards the democratization of this set of emerging technologies, they should not be accepted as sufficient to argue that QT is a democratized field. We argue that more reflexivity and responsiveness regarding the narratives and actions adopted by the actors in the QT field and making the underlying assumptions of ongoing efforts on democratization of QT explicit, can result in a better technology for society. (shrink)

Watershed planning has typically been approached as a technical problem in which water quality and quantity as influenced by the hydrology, topography, soil composition, and land use of a watershed are the significant variables. However, it is the human uses of land and water as resources that stimulate governments to seek planning. For the past decade or more, many efforts have been made to create democratic planning processes, which, it is hoped, will be viewed as legitimate by those the plans (...) regulate. This article uses a case study of the Cache River watershed in southernmost Illinois to analyze the complicated historical and political economic context of a specific watershed planning process that occurred from 1993 through 1995. This article assesses the claims made about the democratic, grass-roots, deliberative nature of the planning process and casts doubt on the legitimacy of its outcomes. It also proposes an alternative form of governance that would be both democratic and capable of generating outcomes viewed as legitimate by most affected parties. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 251-257, June 2011.

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

A scientific community can be modeled as a collection of epistemic agents attempting to answer questions, in part by communicating about their hypotheses and results. We can treat the pathways of scientific communication as a network. When we do, it becomes clear that the interaction between the structure of the network and the nature of the question under investigation affects epistemic desiderata, including accuracy and speed to community consensus. Here we build on previous work, both our own and others’, in (...) order to get a firmer grasp on precisely which features of scientific communities interact with which features of scientific questions in order to influence epistemic outcomes. (shrink)

BackgroundOne of the next frontiers in HIV research is focused on finding a cure. A new priority includes people with HIV (PWH) with non-AIDS terminal illnesses who are willing to donate their bodies at the end-of-life (EOL) to advance the search towards an HIV cure. We endeavored to understand perceptions of this research and to identify ethical and practical considerations relevant to implementing it.MethodsWe conducted 20 in-depth interviews and 3 virtual focus groups among four types of key stakeholders in the (...) United States (PWH, biomedical HIV cure researchers, HIV clinicians, and bioethicists) to obtain triangulated viewpoints because little was known about the ethics of this topic. Each group was queried as to ethical considerations, safeguards, and protections for conducting HIV cure-related research at the EOL to ensure this research remains acceptable.ResultsAll four key stakeholder groups generally supported HIV cure-related research conducted at the EOL because of the history of altruism within the PWH community and the potential for substantial scientific knowledge to be gained. Our informants expressed that: (1) Strong stakeholder and community involvement are integral to the ethical and effective implementation, as well as the social acceptability of this research; (2) PWH approaching the EOL should not inherently be considered a vulnerable class and their autonomy must be respected when choosing to participate in HIV cure-related research at the EOL; (3) Greater diversity among study participants, as well as multi-disciplinary research teams, is necessitated by HIV cure-related research at the EOL; (4) The sensitive nature of this research warrants robust oversight to ensure a favorable risk/benefit balance and to minimize the possibility of therapeutic misconception or undue influence; and (5) Research protocols should remain flexible to accommodate participants’ comfort and needs at the EOL.ConclusionBecause of the ethical issues presented by HIV cure-related research at the EOL, robust ethical safeguards are of utmost importance. The proposed ethical and practical considerations presented herein is a first step in determining the best way to maximize this research’s impact and social value. More much inquiry will need to be directed towards understanding context-specific and cultural considerations for implementing EOL HIV cure research in diverse settings. (shrink)

Cancer cells seem to exploit mechanisms that evolve as part of physiological tolerance, which is a complementary and often beneficial form of defense. The study of physiological systems of tolerance can therefore provide insights into the development of a state of host tolerance of cancer, and how to break it. Analysis of these models has the potential to improve our understanding of existing immunological therapeutic targets, and help to identify future targets and rational therapeutic combinations. The treatment of cancer with (...) immune checkpoint inhibitors aims to reverse the progression to tolerance of cancer, and achieve an immunogenic, rather than tolerogenic, homeostasis. Broadening the efficacy and durability of checkpoint inhibitors focuses on reversing tolerance and stimulating immunogenicity in the cancer, host, and environment. Two examples of important physiological states of tolerance that may inform tolerance of cancer are microbial infection and placental reproduction. These states of tolerance result from bilateral shaping of host and non‐self, akin to immunoediting in cancer, and offer reliable models to study the immune tolerance paradigm. (shrink)

Participants in clinical research sometimes view participation as therapy or exaggerate potential benefits, especially in phase I or phase II trials. We conducted this study to discover what methods might improve cancer patients’ understanding of early-phase clinical trials. We randomly assigned 130 cancer patients from three U.S. medical centers who were considering enrollment in a phase I or phase II cancer trial to receive either a multimedia intervention or a National Cancer Institute pamphlet explaining the trial and its purpose. Intervention (...) participants were 32 times more likely to believe that the trial’s purpose was to examine safety and 60 % less likely to believe they would experience long-term benefit or cure. There was no difference in enrollment decision. However, while patients’ understanding of the trial’s purpose improved and expectations of long-term benefit diminished, half the respondents still believed they would experience long-term benefit or cure from participation. Therefore, we conclude that multimedia interventions such as this one may help oncologists to explain the risks and benefits of early-phase cancer trials in a way that patients can more easily understand, helping them to make more informed decisions about participation. But further research into other factors that influence patients’ beliefs about the outcome of enrollment is needed, both to modify the interventions and to determine how malleable patient beliefs are. (shrink)