It is a challenge in teaching early modern philosophy to balance historical faithfulness to the arguments and concerns of early modern philosophers and interpreting them as relevant to the kinds of thinking that contemporary undergraduate students find plausible. Early modern philosophy is unique, however, in applying modern scientific method directly to problems concerning nonphysical aspects of reality that our contemporary scientific thought, and with it mainstream contemporary culture, no longer find amenable in their own, independent right to reliable reasoned approaches. (...) At the same time, early modern philosophy often also takes seriously purely conceptual or logically consequential thought in the investigation of these topics, as our mainstream contemporary culture does not. This kind of thought, we argue, is distinctive of philosophy in general and appropriate to nonphysical aspects of reality. Early modern philosophy, then, offers a bridge between the kind of reasoned, objective thought our mainstream culture finds plausible and thought about nonphysical reality or, in general, the thought that characterizes philosophy. (shrink)

Behavior, language, development, identity, and science—all of these phenomena are commonly characterized as 'social' in nature. But what does it mean to be 'social'? Is there any intrinsic 'mark' of the social shared by these phenomena? In the first book to shed light on this foundational question, twelve distinguished philosophers and social scientists from several disciplines debate the mark of the social. Their varied answers will be of interest to sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, and anyone interested in the theoretical foundations (...) of the social sciences. (shrink)

DNA double‐strand breaks (DSBs) are extremely hazardous lesions for all DNA‐bearing organisms and the mechanisms of DSB repair are highly conserved. In the eukaryotic mitotic cell cycle, DSBs are often present following DNA replication while, in meiosis, hundreds of DSBs are generated as a prelude to the reshuffling of the maternally and paternally derived genomes. In both cases, the DSBs are repaired by a process called homologous recombinational repair (HRR), which utilises an intact DNA molecule as the repair template. Mitotic (...) and meiotic HRR are managed by ‘checkpoints’ that inhibit cell division until DSB repair is complete. Here we attempt to summarise the substantial recent progress in understanding the checkpoint management of HRR in mitosis (focussing mainly on mammals) and then go on to use this information as a framework for understanding the presumed checkpoint management of HRR in mammalian meiosis. BioEssays 29:974–986, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Just Ecological Integrity presents a collection of revised and expanded essays originating from the international conference "Connecting Environmental Ethics, Ecological Integrity, and Health in the New Millennium" held in San Jose, Costa Rica in June 2000. It is a cooperative venture of the Global Ecological Integrity Project and the Earth Charter Initiative.

In _Matter and Consciousness_, Paul Churchland presents a concise and contemporary overview of the philosophical issues surrounding the mind and explains the main theories and philosophical positions that have been proposed to solve them. Making the case for the relevance of theoretical and experimental results in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence for the philosophy of mind, Churchland reviews current developments in the cognitive sciences and offers a clear and accessible account of the connections to philosophy of mind. For (...) this third edition, the text has been updated and revised throughout. The changes range from references to the iPhone's "Siri" to expanded discussions of the work of such contemporary philosophers as David Chalmers, John Searle, and Thomas Nagel. Churchland describes new research in evolution, genetics, and visual neuroscience, among other areas, arguing that the philosophical significance of these new findings lies in the support they tend to give to the reductive and eliminative versions of materialism. Matter and Consciousness, written by the most distinguished theorist and commentator in the field, offers an authoritative summary and sourcebook for issues in philosophy of mind. It is suitable for use as an introductory undergraduate text. (shrink)

The article reviews several books about philosophical isuuses including "Against Coherence: Truth, Probability, and Justification," by Olsson Erik J., "Fixing Frege," by Burgess John, "Events and Semantic Architecture," by Pietroski Paul M.

The present essay is addressed simultaneously to two distinct audiences.

A study in the philosophy of science, proposing a strong form of the doctrine of scientific realism' and developing its implications for issues in the philosophy of mind.

The Mind-Body Problem Questions: What is the mind? What is its connection to the body? Most basic division of answers: Dualist and Materialist (or Physicalist) responses.

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the common-sense psychology it displaces, and more substantially (...) integrated within physical science generally. My purpose in this paper is to explore these projections, especially as they bear on (1) the principal elements of common-sense psychology: the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), and (2) the conception of rationality in which these elements figure. (shrink)

Electronic health record (EHRs) have largely replaced obsolete paper medical charts. This replacement has produced an increased demand on physicians’ time and has compromised efficiency. In an attempt to overcome this perceived obstacle to productivity, physicians turned to medical scribes to perform the work required by EHRs. In doing so, they have introduced an uninvited participant in the physician-patient relationship and compromised patients’ confidentiality. Scribes may be a successful work around for physicians frustrated by EHRs, but patients’ confidentiality should not (...) be sacrificed in the process. (shrink)

In recent years there has been substantial support for heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) as a treatment for a variety of disorders and for performance enhancement ( Gevirtz, 2013 ). Since conditions as widely varied as asthma and depression seem to respond to this form of cardiorespiratory feedback training, the issue of possible mechanisms becomes more salient. The most supported possible mechanism is the strengthening of homeostasis in the baroreceptor ( Vaschillo et al., 2002 ; Lehrer et al., 2003 ). (...) Recently, the effect on the vagal afferent pathway to the frontal cortical areas has been proposed. In this article, we review these and other possible mechanisms that might explain the positive effects of HRVB. (shrink)

In _ Plato's Camera_, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories (...) to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures. (shrink)

A Neurocomputationial Perspective illustrates the fertility of the concepts and data drawn from the study of the brain and of artificial networks that model the...

"Churchland and Hooker have collected ten papers by prominent philosophers of science which challenge van Fraassen's thesis from a variety of realist perspectives. Together with van Fraassen's extensive reply... these articles provide a comprehensive picture of the current debate in philosophy of science between realists and anti-realists."—Jeffrey Bub and David MacCallum, Foundations of Physics Letters.

Paul M. Pietroski presents an ambitious new account of human languages as generative procedures that respect substantive constraints. He argues that meanings are neither concepts nor extensions, and sentences do not have truth conditions; meanings are composable instructions for how to access and assemble concepts of a special sort.

A study of how syntax relates to meaning by a leader of the new generation of philosopher-linguists.

In _ Plato's Camera_, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation -- or "takes a picture" -- of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories (...) to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures. (shrink)

In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms (...) the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents. (shrink)

For the uninitiated, there are two major tendencies in the modeling of human cognition. The older, tradtional school believes, in essence, that full human cognition can be modeled by dividing the world up into distinct entities -- called __symbol s__-- such as “dog”, “cat”, “run”, “bite”, “happy”, “tumbleweed”, and so on, and then manipulating this vast set of symbols by a very complex and very subtle set of rules. The opposing school claims that this system, while it might be good (...) at concluding that Paris is the capital of France or that there must be blood flowing in the left-rear leg of a cow, can never capture the full measure -- indeed, the essence -- of human cognition. For them, the essential features of cognition emerge from the combined effects of myriad, tiny actions far below the surface of consciousness. This is the camp to which Paul Churchland belongs. (shrink)

This collection was prepared in the belief that the most useful and revealing of anyone's writings are often those shorter essays penned in conflict with...

Paul Pietroski presents an original philosophical theory of actions and their mental causes. We often act for reasons: we deliberate and choose among options, based on our beliefs and desires. However, bodily motions always have biochemical causes, so it can seem that thinking and acting are biochemical processes. Pietroski argues that thoughts and deeds are in fact distinct from, though dependent on, underlying biochemical processes within persons.

Paul M. Pietroski, University of Maryland I had heard it said that Chomsky’s conception of language is at odds with the truth-conditional program in semantics. Some of my friends said it so often that the point—or at least a point—finally sunk in.