"Don't believe any of this. Place no value in the book, in the author. Give it up, the idea of author, of truth. Give up all believe: believe only in yourself. You: you are nothing but my experience. Me: I don't. I don't believe any of this." —John Brockman.

Evolutionary science lies at the heart of a modern understanding of the natural world. Darwin’s theory has withstood 150 years of scientific scrutiny, and today it not only explains the origin and design of living things, but highlights the importance of a scientific understanding in our culture and in our lives. Recently the movement known as “Intelligent Design” has attracted the attention of journalists, educators, and legislators. The scientific community is puzzled and saddened by this trend–not only because it distorts (...) modern biology, but also because it diverts people from the truly fascinating ideas emerging from the real science of evolution. INTELLIGENT THOUGHT features fifteen of our preeminent thinkers whose clear, accessible, and passionate essays reveal the fact and power of Darwin’s theory, and the beauty of the scientific quest to understand our world. (shrink)

The Reality Club is an informal group of adventurous intellectuals whose by-invitation-only membership roster reads like a Who's Who of American arts, science, politics, and business—particle physicist Gerald Feinberg, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, linguist Vitaly Shevoroshkin, cyberneticist and video artist Paul Ryan. Theirs are the cutting-edge minds of our time, whose ideas are creating the reality of tomorrow. The Reality Club has been meeting once or twice a month, in private sessions in New York City, since 1981. Now it's going (...) public in a series of thematic books, of which WAYS OF KNOWING—thirteen provocative essays on the theme of how we learn, think, and process information—is the third volume. Like its predecessors, SPECULATIONS and DOING SCIENCE, it is required reading for anyone who appreciates the life of the mind, the unflinching search for truth, and reading for sheer intellectual pleasure. (shrink)

In most children’s hospitals, there are very few ethics consultations, even though there are many ethically complex cases. We hypothesize that the reason for this may be that hospitals develop different mechanisms to address ethical issues and that many of these mechanisms are closer in spirit to the goals of the pioneers of clinical ethics than is the mechanism of a formal ethics consultation. To show how this is true, we first review the history of collaboration between philosophers and physicians (...) about clinical dilemmas. Then, as a case-study, we describe the different venues that have developed at one children’s hospital to address ethical issues. At our hospital, there are nine different venues in which ethical issues are regularly and explicitly addressed. They are ethics committee meetings, Nursing Ethics Forum, ethics Brown Bag workshops, PICU ethics rounds, Grand Rounds, NICU Comprehensive Care Rounds, Palliative Care Team case conferences, multidisciplinary consults in Fetal Health Center, and ethics consultations. In our hospital, ethics consults account for only a tiny percentage of ethics discussions. We suspect that most hospitals have multiple and varied venues for ethics discussions. We hope this case study will stimulate research in other hospitals analyzing the various ways in which ethicists and ethics committees can build an ethical environment in hospitals. Such research might suggest that ethicists need to develop a different set of “core competencies” than the ones that are needed to do ethics consultations. Instead, they should focus on their skills in creating multiple “moral spaces” in which regular and ongoing discussion of ethical issues would take place. A successful ethicist would empower everyone in the hospital to speak up about the values that they believe are central to respectful, collaborative practice and patient care. Such a role is closer to what the first hospital philosophers set out to do than in the role of the typical hospital ethics consultant today. (shrink)

Předmětem této studie je analýza jednoho z aktuálně předkládaných řešení tzv. problému dvou kultur, který roku 1959 formuloval Charles Percy Snow, a to tzv. třetí kultuře, kterou v polovině devadesátých let ve stejnojmenné práci představil John Brockman. Mým záměrem zde bude kriticky zhodnotit Brockmanovo pojetí "třetí kultury" a předložit argumenty ve prospěch tvrzení, že v souvislosti s ním ve skutečnosti nelze hovořit o řešení problému dvou kultur, ale jedná se naopak o názorný doklad přetrvávající existence a aktuálnosti tohoto (...) problému. Pro tyto účely bude v textu využit koncept tzv. obchodních zón (trading zones), který zavádí filosof a historik vědy Peter Galison k popisu a vysvětlení možných způsobů interakce a dorozumění vědců napříč nesouměřitelnými vědeckými disciplínami. Jak se pokusím ukázat, tento koncept lze stejně úspěšně aplikovat i na problematiku komunikace právě mezi přírodními vědami a vědami humanitními. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of a particular view of neo-humanism, as represented by John Brockman in his two books The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution and The New Humanists: Science at the Edge, and calls for greater care by Brockman in utilizing the concept. This article argues against the idea that the “new” humanists, as Brockman implies, are primarily found within the domain of empirical minded thinkers in the natural and life sciences.

Today’s Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better ed. John Brockman, Harper Perrennial, 2007, pp. xvii-xxii; also appears in The Wall Street Journal Online January 25th, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120120661987514417.html.

In today’s world driven by technological innovation and change, publisher John Brockman has proclaimed scientists as the new “humanists”. Many in the science arena have seized the public podium not only to discuss advances in their area of expertise, but often to speak almost ex cathedra, on the social and philosophical implications for humans and the planet itself. The break with The Church in the 15th & 16th century set in motion a secular humanism which began the movement (...) within the scholarly communities to separate knowledge into disciplines. Following the Enlightenment, many in the social arena turned from the theory based, deductive, approaches toward the sciences with the hope that this inductive methodology would yield the same success found in the bio-physical arena. While this approach has failed to achieve such heights, “science envy” is now driving academic institutions, particularly in the United States and manydeveloping countries, to reposition The Academy to become innovative and contribute to both the private and public sector much in the same manner that Science’s handmaiden, Technology, has contributed in the bio/physical arena.The Humanities, as sensed by Brockman and others, has turned inward or has been ineffective in responding except to utter the mantra that its area represents humanity’s soul and thus provides the critical knowledge needed to save the planet and thus humans. Yet philosophy has not been able, or is unwilling, to accept the challenge and enter the academic lists or command the public pulpit. In this default, a surrogate, religious fundamentalism, has raised its head above the trenches reminiscent of the ancient Science/ Church confrontation and seeks to restore the idea of salvation in the next world, hoping to destroy the Gnostic ideal of humans being able to create such peace on earth. (shrink)

In today’s world driven by technological innovation and change, publisher John Brockman has proclaimed scientists as the new “humanists”. Many in the science arena have seized the public podium not only to discuss advances in their area of expertise, but often to speak almost ex cathedra, on the social and philosophical implications for humans and the planet itself. The break with The Church in the 15th & 16th century set in motion a secular humanism which began the movement (...) within the scholarly communities to separate knowledge into disciplines. Following the Enlightenment, many in the social arena turned from the theory based, deductive, approaches toward the sciences with the hope that this inductive methodology would yield the same success found in the bio-physical arena. While this approach has failed to achieve such heights, “science envy” is now driving academic institutions, particularly in the United States and manydeveloping countries, to reposition The Academy to become innovative and contribute to both the private and public sector much in the same manner that Science’s handmaiden, Technology, has contributed in the bio/physical arena.The Humanities, as sensed by Brockman and others, has turned inward or has been ineffective in responding except to utter the mantra that its area represents humanity’s soul and thus provides the critical knowledge needed to save the planet and thus humans. Yet philosophy has not been able, or is unwilling, to accept the challenge and enter the academic lists or command the public pulpit. In this default, a surrogate, religious fundamentalism, has raised its head above the trenches reminiscent of the ancient Science/ Church confrontation and seeks to restore the idea of salvation in the next world, hoping to destroy the Gnostic ideal of humans being able to create such peace on earth. (shrink)

A Norton Library edition of Locke's Second Treatise of Government, edited by A. John Simmons.

In addition to a somewhat detailed exposition of certain portions of what may be called the book-work of formal logic, the following pages contain a number of problems worked out in detail and unsolved problems, by means of which the student may test his command over logical processes. In the expository portions of Parts I, II, and III, dealing respectively with terms, propositions, and syllogisms, the traditional lines are in the main followed, though with certain modifications; e.g., in the systematisation (...) of immediate inferences, and in several points of detail in connexion with the syllogism. For purposes of illustration Euler's diagrams are employed to a greater extent than is usual in English manuals. In Part IV, which contains a generalisation of logical processes in their application to complex inferences, a somewhat new departure is taken. So far as I am aware this part constitutes the first systematic attempt that has been made to deal with formal reasonings of the most complicated character without the aid of mathematical or other symbols of operation, and without abandoning the ordinary non-equational or predicative form of proposition. This attempt has on the whole met with greater success than I had anticipated; and I believe that the methods formulated will be found to be both as easy and as effective as the symbolical methods of Boole and his followers. The book concludes with a general and sure method of solution of what Professor Jevons called the inverse problem, and which he himself seemed to regard as soluble only by a series of guesses. (shrink)

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

This book addresses a single overriding question in contemporary philosophy: Given that we know from physics, chemistry, and the other hard sciences that the universe consists entirely of mindless, meaningless physical particles in fields of force, and that these are organized into systems, how do we account for the human reality - the reality of mind, meaning, consciousness, intentionality, society, science, aesthetics, morality, and all of social organization including money, property, government, and marriage? The book features a discussion of the (...) problem of the freedom of the will as well as an account of the problems of political philosophy, particularly the notions of power and human rights. Originally written as lectures, the book includes in an appendix questions on the lectures and John Searle's replies. (shrink)

In this 2nd edition, John Gray adds an extensive postscript which defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalism.

Misunderstandings about what it means for humans to be created in God's image have wreaked devastation throughout history -- for example, slavery in the U. S., genocide in Nazi Germany, and the demeaning of women everywhere. In Dignity and Destiny John Kilner explores what the Bible itself teaches about humanity being in God's image. He discusses in detail all of the biblical references to the image of God, interacts extensively with other work on the topic, and documents how misunderstandings (...) of it have been so problematic. People made according to God's image, Kilner says, have a special connection with God and are intended to be a meaningful reflection of him. Because of sin, they don't actually reflect him very well, but Kilner shows why the popular idea that sin has damaged the image of God is mistaken. He also clarifies the biblical difference between being God's image (which Christ is) and being in God's image (which humans are). He explains how humanity's creation and renewal in God's image are central, respectively, to human dignity and destiny. Locating Christ at the center of what God's image means, Kilner charts a constructive way forward and reflects on the tremendously liberating impact that a sound understanding of the image of God can have in the world today. (shrink)

John Russon draws from a broad range of art and literature to show how philosophy speaks to the most basic and important questions in our everyday lives. In Sites of Exposure, Russon grapples with how personal experiences such as growing up and confronting death combine with broader issues such as political oppression, economic exploitation, and the destruction of the natural environment to make life meaningful. His is cutting-edge philosophical work, illuminated by original and rigorous thinking that relies on cross-cultural (...) communication and engagement with the richness of human cultural history. These probing interpretations of the nature of phenomenology, the philosophy of art, history, and politics, are appropriate for students and scholars of philosophy at all levels. (shrink)

A deeply comforting and enlightening book on how Stoicism can inspire us to lead more enjoyable lives What aspects of your life do you really control? What do you do when you cannot guarantee that things will turn out in your favour? And what can Stoicism teach us about how to live together? In the past few years, Stoicism has been making a comeback. But what exactly did the Stoics believe? In Lessons in Stoicism, philosopher John Sellars weaves together (...) the key ideas of the three great Roman Stoics -- Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius -- with snapshots of their fascinating lives, to show us how their ideas can help us today. In vivid prose, Sellars shows how the works of these three Stoics have inspired readers ever since, speaking as they do to some of the perennial issues that face anyone trying to navigate their way through life. Their works, fundamentally, are about how to live -- how to understand one's place in the world, how to cope when things don't go well, how to manage one's emotions and how to behave towards others. Consoling and inspiring, Lessons in Stoicism is a deeply thoughtful guide to the philosophy of a good life. (shrink)

Principlism : the Borg of bioethics -- A common morality for hedgehogs : Bernard Gert -- Getting down to cases : the revival of casuistry in bioethics -- Nice story but so what : narrative and justification in ethics -- Dewey and Rorty's pragmatism and bioethics -- Freestanding pragmatism in bioethics and law -- A method in search of a purpose : the internal morality of medicine -- Method to rule them all? Reflective equilibrium in bioethics -- Concluding reflections : (...) method in bioethics : the very idea. (shrink)

In Romances with Schools, John Goodlad steps out from behind the public persona of distinguished scholar and advocate for public schooling to offer a moving personal account of a life devoted to educating the young. He deftly interweaves fascinating personal details with reflections on many of the larger issues in education that he has explored throughout his career.

In this book, author John Lynch shows how three controversial experiments--the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the Willowbrook Hepatitis Study, and the Cincinnati Total Body Irradiation Study--have been remembered and forgotten, and why their memorialization or their erasure matters today.

A new collection of John Perry's work celebrating his contributions to the philosophy of language.

Although many Catholics are familiar with the four Gospels and other writings of the New Testament, for most, reading the Old Testament is like walking into a foreign land. Who wrote these forty-six books? When were they written? Why were they written? What are we to make of their laws, stories, histories, and prophecies? Should the Old Testament be read by itself or in light of the New Testament? John Bergsma and Brant Pitre offer readable in-depth answers to these (...) questions as they introduce each book of the Old Testament. They not only examine the literature from a historical and cultural perspective but also interpret it theologically, drawing on the New Testament and the faith of the Catholic Church. Unique among introductions, this volume places the Old Testament in its liturgical context, showing how its passages are employed in the current Lectionary used at Mass. Accessible to nonexperts, this thorough and up-to-date introduction to the Old Testament can serve as an idea textbook for biblical studies. Its unique approach, along with its maps, illustrations, and other reference materials, makes it a valuable resource for seminarians, priests, Scripture scholars, theologians, and catechists, as well as anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the Bible. (shrink)

“Patience, patience, because the great movements of history have always begun in those small parenthesis that we call ‘in the meantime.’” —John Berger The last book that John Berger wrote was this precious little volume about time titled What Time Is It?, now posthumously published for the first time in English by Notting Hill Editions. Berger died before it was completed, but the text has been assembled and illustrated by his longtime collaborator and friend Selçuk Demirel, and has (...) an introduction by Maria Nadotti. What Time Is It? is a profound and playful meditation on the illusory nature of time. Berger, the great art critic and Man Booker Prize–winning author, reflects on what time has come to mean to us in modern life. Our perception of time assumes a uniform and ceaseless passing of time, yet time is turbulent. It expands and contracts according to the intensity of the lived moment. We talk of time “saved” in a hundred household appliances; time, like money, is exchanged for the content it lacks. Berger posits the idea that time can lengthen lifetimes once we seize the present moment. “What-is-to-come, what-is-to-be-gained empties what-is.”. (shrink)

As part of an article symposium on Partha Dasgupta and Sanjeev Goyal’s “Narrow Identities”, John B. Davis reflects on the variety of social identities and the implications this variety has for social identity analysis.

“Interpretation” is a term that encompasses both the most esoteric and the most fundamental activities of our lives, from analyzing medical images to the million ways we perceive other people’s actions. Today, we also leave interpretation to the likes of web cookies, social media algorithms, and automated markets. But as John Frow shows in this thoughtfully argued book, there is much yet to do in clarifying how we understand the social organization of interpretation. On Interpretive Conflict delves into four (...) case studies where sharply different sets of values come into play—gun control, anti-Semitism, the religious force of images, and climate change. In each case, Frow lays out the way these controversies unfold within interpretive regimes that establish what counts as an interpretable object and the protocols of evidence and proof that should govern it. Whether applied to a Shakespeare play or a Supreme Court case, interpretation, he argues, is at once rule-governed and inherently conflictual. Ambitious and provocative, On Interpretive Conflict will attract readers from across the humanities and beyond. (shrink)

This book is an exploration of the relationship between philosophy and political inquiry. John G. Gunnell is seeking to explain certain dimensions of how philosophy has influenced political science and political theory but also how these latter fields have understood and deployed philosophy. When social scientists and social theorists turn to the work of philosophers for intellectual authority what they extract is often selective and in the service of some prior agenda. The philosophers whose work he discusses have all (...) in various degrees been objects of the conversation of political theory, but close acquaintance with that work is often limited and derivative. Gunnell's goal is to initiate a more genuine "conversation" with certain philosophers and political theorists. (shrink)

“Lash is capable of explaining the mind-bending concepts of Gnosticism and pagan mystery cults with bracing clarity and startling insight.... [His] arguments are often lively and entertaining.”—Los Angeles Times Fully revised and with a new preface by the author, this timely update is perfect for readers of The Immortality Key. Since its initial release to wide acclaim in 2006, Not in His Image has transformed the lives of readers around the world by presenting the living presence of the Wisdom Goddess (...) as never before revealed, illustrating that the truth of an impactful Gnostic message cannot be hidden or destroyed. With clarity, author John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. Early Christians burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. Not in His Image delves deeply into ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spirituality—the Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaia. In the 15th Anniversary Edition, Lash doubles down on his original argument against redemptive ideology and authoritarian deceit. He shows how the Gnostics clearly foresaw the current program of salvation by syringe, and places the Sophianic vision of life centrally in the battle to expose and oppose the evil agenda of transhumanism, making this well-timed update more relevant than ever. “Sometimes a book changes the world. Not in His Image is such a book. It is clear, stimulating, well-researched, and sure to outrage the experts.... Get it. Improve not just your own life, but civilization’s chances for survival.”—Roger Payne, author of Among Whales. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes (...) argues that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)

Beginning with the assertion that earth is the elemental place that grants an abode to humans and to other living things, in Senses of Landscape the philosopher John Sallis turns to landscapes, and in particular to their representation in painting, to present a powerful synthetic work. Senses of Landscape proffers three kinds of analyses, which, though distinct, continually intersect in the course of the book. The first consists of extended analyses of distinctive landscapes from four exemplary painters, Paul Cezanne, (...) Caspar David Friedrich, Paul Klee, and Guo Xi. Sallis then turns to these artists’ own writings—treatises, essays, and letters—about art in general and landscape painting in particular, and he sets them into a philosophical context. The third kind of analysis draws both on Sallis’s theoretical writings and on the canonical texts in the philosophy of art (Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Heidegger). These analyses present for a wide audience a profound sense of landscape and of the earthly abode of the human. (shrink)

A powerful case for the importance of universities as an antidote to the “secular dogmatism” that increasingly infects political discourse John Sexton argues that over six decades, a “secular dogmatism,” impenetrable by dialogue or reason, has come to dominate political discourse in America. Political positions, elevated to the status of doctrinal truths, now simply are “revealed.” Our leaders and our citizens suffer from an allergy to nuance and complexity, and the enterprise of thought is in danger. Sexton sees our (...) universities, the engines of knowledge and stewards of thought, as the antidote, and he describes the policies university leaders must embrace if their institutions are to serve this role. Acknowledging the reality of our increasingly interconnected world—and drawing on his experience as president of New York University when it opened campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai—Sexton advocates for “global network universities” as a core aspect of a new educational landscape and as the crucial foundation-blocks of an interlocking world characterized by “secular ecumenism.”. (shrink)

This book explores the logic and historical origins of a strange taboo that has haunted literary critics since the 1940s, keeping them from referring to the intentions of authors without apology. The taboo was enforced by a seminal article, "The Intentional Fallacy," and it deepened during the era of poststructuralist theory. Even now, when the vocabulary of "critique" that has dominated the literary field is under sweeping revision, the matter of authorial intention has yet to be reconsidered. This work explains (...) how "The Intentional Fallacy" confused different kinds of authorial intentions and how literary critics can benefit from a more up-to-date understanding of intentionality in language. The result is a challenging inventory of the resources of literary theory, including implied readers, poetic speakers, omniscient narrators, interpretive communities, linguistic indeterminacy, unconscious meaning, literary value, and the nature of literature itself. (shrink)

"Sympathetic Sentiments develops an innovative interdisciplinary framework to explore the implications of living in a 'culture of feeling' that seems ill at ease with itself, one in which 'sentiments' are frequently denounced for being 'sentimental' and self-indulgent. This is traced back to the inheritance of the eighteenth century, enabling us to identify a distinctive 'spectacle of sympathy' in which sympathy seems inherently to entail public forms of expression whereby being 'on show' is both a condition of the authenticity of such (...) affects and of their capacity to be masked and simulated -- hence stimulating controversy, but also the exploration of the vicarious dimensions of modern experience so central to modern literature, art and culture. The implications of all this are further explored in the context of current debates over the display of trauma as the language of sympathetic engagement, and the alleged prevalence of 'compassion fatigue' in the era of media sensationalism. Overall, the book uncovers the patterns that both reproduce our capacity for 'sympathetic sentiments' while revealing the inherent underlying tensions."--. (shrink)

John Barton is convinced that in many areas of ethical enquiry the Old Testament has much to teach us, and he argues his case in this new book, which developed out of lectures given both in Canada and in Oxford. During it he looks again at the Ten Commandments; the narrative about David and his children; the ethical issues of ecology, sexual morality and property; human morality as the express command of God; and the motivation for moral conduct. By (...) the end of the book it is clear that although the Old Testament comes to us from a remote, alien and apparently unsophisticated context, the powerful minds who worked on its books still have things to say which remain evocative and suggestive for our own moral enquiries. (shrink)

Truth-makers are the dark matter of metaphysics. On the one hand, truth-makers seem obvious and necessary: if there are truths then there must be something that makes these truths true. On the other hand, it’s proven difficult to say exactly what these truth-makers are. Even defenders disagree about what sort of entity truth-makers are or whether all truths have truth-makers. Skeptics have questioned whether truth-makers are actually so obvious and necessary, or even whether they exist at all. Here I offer (...) an account of this unhappy state of affairs and a modest proposal. First, I argue that not only are there no good arguments for truth-makers but it’s unlikely that there ever will be. Second I point to how much can be done without resorting to truth-makers in the first place: they are not as essential as often assumed. Finally, I conclude that we needn’t jettison the concept of truth-makers entirely. Understood in a modest and pragmatic spirit we can hold on to truth-makers while recognizing their inherent limitations. (shrink)