Research groups around the world are currently busy trying to invent new life in the laboratory, looking for extraterrestrial life, or making machines increasingly more life-like. In the case of astrobiology, any newly discovered life would likely be very old, but when discovered it would be new to us. In the case of synthetic organic life or life-like machines, humans will have invented life that did not exist before. Together, these endeavors amount to what we call the emerging plurality of (...) lives because we see a future where we are surrounded by, and interact with, life of many different origins, as well as entities that we have not traditionally seen as being alive. In the future these entities will likely possess properties that we so far have only associated with living beings, thereby transcending and perhaps blurring the borders between life and non-life. (shrink)

We explore the integrated structure of consciousness by examining the “phenomenological axioms” of the “integrated information theory of consciousness ” from the perspective of Husserlian phenomenology. After clarifying the notion of phenomenological axioms by drawing on resources from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we develop a critique of the integration axiom by drawing on phenomenological analyses developed by Aron Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty. This axiom is ambiguous. It can be read either atomistically as claiming that the phenomenal content of conscious experience (...) is an integrated complex and holistically as claiming that it is an integrated Gestalt. We argue that the latter reading provides a better characterization of the internal structure of the phenomenal content. Furthermore, the integrated structure of consciousness is not confined to the phenomenal content, but it also extends into the subjective attitude. Subjective attitudes and phenomenal contents are interdependent constituents that jointly make up conscious experiences. This implies a novel theoretical challenge to the scientific component of IIT, which is to explain how to accommodate the subjective dimension of consciousness into its explanatory scope. IIT can respond in a few different ways, but most importantly, it cannot just ignore it once and for all. As one possible way to address the challenge, we propose introducing a novel construct, noetic complex, to develop a fine-grained model of the neural underpinning of consciousness. (shrink)

In this review, we describe some of the central philosophical issues facing origins-of-life research and provide a targeted history of the developments that have led to the multidisciplinary field of origins-of-life studies. We outline these issues and developments to guide researchers and students from all fields. With respect to philosophy, we provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory (...) of life, (2) the distinctions between synthetic, historical, and universal projects in origins-of-life studies, issues with strategies for inferring the origins of life, such as (3) the nature of the first living entities (the “bottom up” approach) and (4) how to infer the nature of the last universal common ancestor (the “top down” approach), and (5) the status of origins of life as a science. Each of these debates influences the others. Although there are clusters of researchers that agree on some answers to these issues, each of these debates is still open. With respect to history, we outline several independent paths that have led to some of the approaches now prevalent in origins-of-life studies. These include one path from early views of life through the scientific revolutions brought about by Linnaeus (von Linn.), Wöhler, Miller, and others. In this approach, new theories, tools, and evidence guide new thoughts about the nature of life and its origin.We also describe another family of paths motivated by a” circularity” approach to life, which is guided by such thinkers as Maturana & Varela, Gánti, Rosen, and others. These views echo ideas developed by Kant and Aristotle, though they do so using modern science in ways that produce exciting avenues of investigation. By exploring the history of these ideas, we can see how many of the issues that currently interest us have been guided by the contexts in which the ideas were developed. The disciplinary backgrounds of each of these scholars has influenced the questions they sought to answer, the experiments they envisioned, and the kinds of data they collected. We conclude by encouraging scientists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore ways in which they can interact to provide a deeper understanding of the conceptual assumptions, structure, and history of origins-of-life research. This may be useful to help frame future research agendas and bring awareness to the multifaceted issues facing this challenging scientific question. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

Goethe's objections to Newton's theory of light and colours are better than often acknowledged. You can accept the most important elements of these objections without disagreeing with Newton about light and colours. As I will argue, Goethe exposed a crucial weakness of Newton's methodological self-assessment. Newton believed that with the help of his prism experiments, he could prove that sunlight was composed of variously coloured rays of light. Goethe showed that this step from observation to theory is more problematic than (...) Newton wanted to admit. By insisting that the step to theory is not forced upon us by the phenomena, Goethe revealed our own free, creative contribution to theory construction. And Goethe's insight is surprisingly significant, because he correctly claimed that all of the results of Newton's prism experiments fit a theoretical alternative equally well. If this is correct, then by suggesting an alternative to a well-established physical theory, Goethe developed the problem of underdete... (shrink)

Like many sociocultural phenomena in Brazil, popular music, as everyone knows, is the result of a meeting of influences. It could almost be said that it is born a cross-breed, given the half-European, half-African origins of its best-known first genres, lundu, choro and maxixe. As a result of its history it comes under the sign of the Cannibalism, the metaphor invented by modernist writers in the 1920s to refer to the ‘ritual devouring’ by which Brazil assimilated foreign values and made (...) them its own.Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil readily used the concept of Cannibalism at the end of the 1960s, when they founded Tropicalismo, which claimed a mixture of genres, styles and arts as its basis, and married international pop music and Brazilian traditions, electric guitars and berimbau. Tropicalismo as such only lasted for a few months, but the ideas which it promoted profoundly marked contemporary Brazilian culture. Caetano Veloso returned to the history of this movement in Verdade Tropical, an autobiographical work in which he reveals his thoughts on a number of subjects close to his heart: music, the cinema, masters/teachers, friends, family, love, sexuality freedom, prison, exile, books, language, etc. For this author, composer, performer, actor, director, poet and prose writer, inveterate and voracious reader and incorrigible chatterbox, anything to do with human beings is fair game. For Caetano loves words, and loves to talk about words. As early as the acknowledgements page he praises Unamuno, the author, according to him, of comments which are “the most moving that a foreigner has ever written about the Portuguese language”. And in a chapter entitled ‘Língua’ he mentions not only the songs he has written in English and his interest in the Anglo-Saxon language, but also his attachment to Romance languages in general and Portuguese in particular. (shrink)

The book is an introductory exposition of the development of the physical and astronomical notions of the universe. It covers the period from Greek antiquity to the Copernican revolution and the Renaissance, half of the text being devoted to medieval science within both the Aristotelian and the Archimedean traditions. The book is intended for a general audience interested in intellectual and scientific developments, but should also be useful as a guide to further studies. Thus it has an extensive bibliography classifying (...) much of the secondary literature on the subject, and also a sixty page 'dictionary' of all the scientists and philosophers mentioned in the text. This contains references to printed editions of the sources and to a selection of books and periodicals. (shrink)

This study revisits the relation between corporate performance and corporate social responsibility in the context of a major shift in firms’ credit risk status. Relying on corporate credit rating as a performance indicator, we examine whether firms under the scrutiny of rating agencies trade-off CSR engagement for credit quality improvement. To explore whether firms adjust their CSR engagement after a focal rating change, we focus on the investment–speculative grade threshold because of its importance in accessing the public debt market. We (...) find that firms that lose the investment grade rating subsequently increase CSR engagement. We also uncover that improving CSR engagement helps firms restore their credit ratings ex post. Our findings support the view of CSR engagement as a valuable risk management strategy. (shrink)

Theory of illness causation is an important issue in all biomedical sciences, and solid etiological explanations are needed in order to develop therapeutic approaches in medicine and preventive interventions in public health. Until now, the literature about the theoretical underpinnings of illness causation research has been scarce and fragmented, and lacking a convenient summary. This interdisciplinary book provides a convenient and accessible distillation of the current status of research into this developing field, and adds a personal flavor to the discussion (...) by proposing the etiological stance as a comprehensive approach to identify modifiable causes of illness. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that Ted Poston's theory of explanatory coherentism is well-suited as a tool for causal explanation in the health sciences, particularly in epidemiology. Coherence has not only played a role in epidemiology for more than half a century as one of Hill's viewpoints, it can also provide background theory for the development of explanatory systems by integrating epidemiologic evidence with a diversity of other error-independent data. I propose that computational formalization of Hill's viewpoints in an explanatory (...) coherentist framework would provide an excellent starting point for a formal epistemological (knowledge-theoretical) project designed to improve causal explanation in the health sciences. As an example, I briefly introduce Paul Thagard's ECHO system and offer my responses to possible objections to my proposal. (shrink)

Although Lorenz Oken is a classic example of Naturphilosophie as applied to biology, his views have been imperfectly understood. He is best viewed as a follower of Schelling who consistently attempted to apply Schelling's ideas to biological data. His version of Naturphilosophie, however, was strongly influenced by older pseudoscience traditions, especially alchemy and numerology as they had been presented by Robert Fludd, whose works were current in Jena and available to him. According to those influences, parts of Oken's philosophical conception (...) were communicable even in a non-idealistic scientific culture, for example in Paris, where Oken met Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Geoffroy however was embedded in a French intellectual tradition, and the correspondence between his views and those of Oken was only superficial. The English anatomist Richard Owen attempted to incorporate the views of Oken and Geoffroy within his own, idiosyncratic system. Although Darwin knew of Oken's ideas, it was Geoffroy who really affected his evolutionary biology, and any influence of Oken must have been attenuated to the point of triviality. (shrink)

In this article the authors focus on the emergence, or disappearance, of notions of responsibility in social dynamic processes. Hence, the starting point in this article is concrete behavior within organisational settings. This article presents a systematic overview of mechanisms related to acting upon a sense of moral responsibility. Some of these mechanisms are based on individual characteristics, others are embedded in the social context wherein responsible behaviour emerges or disappears. In this article, various mechanisms are identified and labelled in (...) order to analyse what types of processes are behind the mechanisms. In this way, the article yields important understandings for the conscious use of these mechanisms to strengthen responsible behavior within organisations. (shrink)

Two decades after the publication of Clifford and Marcus' volume Writing Culture, this collection provides a fresh and diverse reassessment of the debates that ...

Bradford Hill (1965) highlighted nine aspects of the complex evidential situation a medical researcher faces when determining whether a causal relation exists between a disease and various conditions associated with it. These aspects are widely cited in the literature on epidemiological inference as justifying an inference to a causal claim, but the epistemological basis of the Hill aspects is not understood. We offer an explanatory coherentist interpretation, explicated by Thagard's ECHO model of explanatory coherence. The ECHO model captures the complexity (...) of epidemiological inference and provides a tractable model for inferring disease causation. We apply this model to three cases: the inference of a causal connection between the Zika virus and birth defects, the classic inference that smoking causes cancer, and John Snow’s inference about the cause of cholera. (shrink)

The intention of the article is to offer stakeholders affected by mergers a criterion from which moral arguments may be generated for the organization of each individual case. The criterion: "Any operation causing legitimate interests to suffer vital infringement should be avoided in a merger process." A vital infringement of these interests is assumed when the merger undermines unique positive opportunities or considerable impairment in the future, impossible to overcome for the person affected without an unacceptable level of difficulty. Therefore, (...) we mainly concentrate on implicit contracts – which should be based on the principle pacta sunt servanda as well. These contracts are mandatory to run an economy that produces increasingly more knowledge-based goods. (shrink)

Models of illness causation play a crucial role in medicine and public health. In their recent paper on this topic, Michael Kelly, Rachel Kelly, and Federica Russo state that the integration of social, biological, and behavioral causes in one and the same etiologic mechanism remains to be clarified. In particular, they think that current models of illness causation do not appreciate "the truly integrated nature of bio-social-behavioral pathogenesis". In brief, Kelly, Kelly, and Russo suggest that two levels of explanation are (...) at work in medicine and public health, biological and social; that integration is difficult because of resistance to including social determinants of disease in both the... (shrink)

Strategische Kommunikation zielt mit ihren kontingenten Wirklichkeitsbeschreibungen seit jeher auf gesellschaftliche Wahrheitsmodelle. Wie häufig gesellschaftliche Wahrheitsmodelle auf strategische Kommunikationsbemühungen zurückgehen, auf Unwahrhaftigkeit beruhen und damit zumindest zeitweise zu strategischen Wahrheiten werden, zeigen eindrucksvoll zwischenzeitlich geglaubte Wahrheiten, die sich als Lüge entpuppt haben: von Walter Ulbrichts "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten" über Hitlers Tagebücher bis hin zu den Massenvernichtungswaffen im Irak. Die erfolgreichen Kampagnen der Brexiteers und von Donald Trump 2016 haben diesem Thema zu neuer und bislang ungeahnter (...) Aufmerksamkeit verholfen. Während die Themen Desinformation und postfaktische Gesellschaft die Journalismus-, politische Kommunikations- und Medienethikforschung aktuell zu dominieren scheinen, ist das Schweigen der deutschsprachigen und internationalen PR- und Organisationskommunikationsforschung auffällig. Dies ist umso bemerkenswerter, weil die PR-Wissenschaft in der Vergangenheit immer wieder versucht hat, ihren Gegenstand zu schärfen, indem sie sich am Begriff der Propaganda abgearbeitet hat. Daraus müsste eigentlich eine Affinität für das Thema Desinformation resultieren. Aber genau das Gegenteil ist offensichtlich der Fall: Hat sich die PR-Wissenschaft gerade deshalb nicht mit Desinformation beschäftigt, weil sie sich so dezidiert von Propaganda und darin eingeschlossenen desinformierenden und manipulativen Techniken abgrenzen will? Was sind die Gründe hierfür? Glauben wir, bereits alles zum Thema gesagt zu haben? Liegt dies daran, dass sich die PR- und Organisationskommunikationsforschung seit jeher vor allem für Unternehmen und weniger für politische und Non-Profit-Organisationen interessiert? Oder fühlen wir uns hier schlicht und ergreifend nicht zuständig? Es scheint offenkundig höchste Zeit zu sein, sich wieder eingehend mit Fragen der Desinformation aus der Perspektive der strategischen Kommunikationsforschung zu befassen. Die Beiträge des Tagungsbandes fokussieren hierzu auf neue theoretische Perspektiven, normative Bewertungen und empirische Befunde. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that electronic cryptography benefits democracy because it can be instrumental in protecting free speech, which is considered a cornerstone for democracy. The author argues, however, that a close look at some aspects of democratic theory suggests that matters are not really as clear-cut. The fact that encryption can be abused in many ways also poses a threat to democracy. This paradox is examined in detail.

Wenn überhaupt in einem Gebiet Wahrheit und Existenz unabhängig von unseren Erkenntnisfähigkeiten sind, dann in der Metaphysik – etwa bei der Frage, ob es Gott gibt oder eine Seele, die unseren Tod überdauert. Die metaphysica specialis schreit geradezu nach metaphysischem Realismus und dem zugehörigen Wahrheitsbegriff. Von diesem Ausgangspunkt gerät man allerdings schnell in Verlegenheit, wenn man fragt: Nach welchen Kriterien sollen wir uns richten, wenn wir uns über Gott oder Unsterblichkeit ein Urteil bilden wollen? Mit den Mitteln der Naturwissenschaft und (...) deren rationaler Methodologie (in der es um Empirie, Einfachheit, Sparsamkeit usw. geht) kommen wir bei Themen wie Gott oder Unsterblichkeit immer nur bis zum Patt. Genauso steht es bei der Frage, ob wir in unseren Entscheidungen frei sind. Urteilsenthaltung können wir uns nicht erlauben, dafür sind die metaphysischen Fragen zu wichtig; Auslosen kommt auch nicht infrage. Statt erkenntnistheoretisch zu kapitulieren, schlage ich programmatisch vor, die Erkenntnislehre auf weichere Weise weiterzubetreiben. Emotion, Intuition, Moral – das sind einige der zusätzlichen außerrationalen Hilfsmittel, mit deren Hilfe wir weiterkommen können. Ich zeige, dass diese Hilfsmittel respektabler und gewichtiger sind, als kühle, rationale Erkenntnistheoretiker zugeben wollen. Diese Hilfsmittel führen zu guten Postulaten aus Unvernunft (und zwar nicht nur in der Metaphysik). Wie schlimm es für den Realismus ist, dass diese Postulate immer noch falsch sein könnten, diese Frage werde ich im vorliegenden Aufsatz nicht mehr klären. (shrink)

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this (...) book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions - analogism, pantheism, and naturalism - found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice. (shrink)

The search for causes of perinatal brain damage needs a solid theoretical foundation. Current theory apparently does not offer a unanimously accepted view of what constitutes a cause, and how it can be identified. We discuss nine potential theoretical misconceptions: (1) too narrow a view of what is a cause (causal production vs. facilitation), (2) extrapolating from possibility to fact (potential vs. factual causation), (3) if X, then invariably Y (determinism vs. probabilism), (4) co-occurrence in individuals vs. association in populations, (...) (5) one cause is all that is needed (single cause attribution vs. multicausal constellations), (6) drawing causal inferences from very small numbers of observations (the tendency to generalize), (7) unstated causal inferences, (8) ignoring heterogeneity, and (9) failing to consider alternative explanations for what is observed. We hope that our critical discussion will contribute to fruitful research and help reduce the burden of perinatal brain damage. (shrink)

Quine claims that holism (i.e., the Quine-Duhem thesis) prevents us from defining synonymy and analyticity (section 2). In "Word and Object," he dismisses a notion of synonymy which works well even if holism is true. The notion goes back to a proposal from Grice and Strawson and runs thus: R and S are synonymous iff for all sentences T we have that the logical conjunction of R and T is stimulus-synonymous to that of S and T. Whereas Grice and Strawson (...) did not attempt to defend this definition, I try to show that it indeed gives us a satisfactory account of synonymy. Contrary to Quine, the notion is tighter than stimulus-synonymy -- particularly when applied to sentences with less than critical semantic mass (section 3). Now according to Quine, analyticity could be defined in terms of synonymy, if synonymy were to make sense: A sentence is analytic iff synonymous to self-conditionals. This leads us to the following notion of analyticity: S is analytic iff, for all sentences T, the logical conjunction of S and T is stimulus-synonymous to T; an analytic sentence does not change the semantic mass of any theory to which it may be conjoined (section 4). This notion is tighter than Quine's stimulus-analyticity; unlike stimulus-analyticity, it does not apply to those sentences from the very center of our theories which can be assented to come what may, even though they are not synthetic in the intuitive sense (section 5). (shrink)