There are several lessons that can already be drawn from the current research programs on strong AI and building conscious machines, even if they arguably have not produced fruits yet. The first one is that functionalist approaches to consciousness do not account for the key importance of subjective experience and can be easily confounded by the way in which algorithms work and succeed. Authenticity and emergence are key concepts that can be useful in discerning valid approaches versus invalid ones and (...) can clarify instances where algorithms are considered conscious, such as Sophia or LaMDA. Subjectivity and embeddedness become key notions that should also lead us to re-examine the ethics of decision delegation. In addition, the focus on subjective experience shifts what is relevant in our understanding of ourselves as human beings and as an image of God, namely, in de-emphasizing intellectuality in favor of experience and contemplation over action. (shrink)

The topic of pain and suffering is complex and requires a holistic vision. This article begins by clarifying concepts to understand pain as a biological, psychological, and social phenomenon that has an evolutionary history whose maximum expression arises in humans. Established this common ground, it explores altruism and animal cooperation as incipient phenomena of care for the other, though contextual. Then it points out that the difference with humans is that they perceive caring for the weak, innocent, and marginalized as (...) a moral duty and a path of personal flourishing. Finally, in the face of human weakness and from Christian theology, God shows with deeds a path of care for the weak by making himself weak, suffering and remaining innocent. (shrink)

The study of belief is expanding and involves a growing set of disciplines and research areas. These research programs attempt to shed light on the process of believing, understood as a central human cognitive function. Computational systems and, in particular, what we commonly understand as Artificial Intelligence (AI), can provide some insights on how beliefs work as either a linear process or as a complex system. However, the computational approach has undergone some scrutiny, in particular about the differences between what (...) is distinctively human and what can be inferred from AI systems. The present article investigates to what extent recent developments in AI provide new elements to the debate and clarify the process of belief acquisition, consolidation, and recalibration. The article analyses and debates current issues and topics of investigation such as: different models to understand belief, the exploration of belief in an automated reasoning environment, the case of religious beliefs, and future directions of research. (shrink)

El programa de investigación Naturaleza Humana 2.0, dirigido por la Profesora Camino Cañón, fue un proyecto de la Cátedra Ciencia, Tecnología y Religión, Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de la Universidad Comillas, Madrid. Concluyó con un Simposio del que parte de sus ponencias y comunicaciones son publicados en este número extraordinario de PENSAMIENTO, en la serie Ciencia, Filosofía y Religión, volumen VIII. Sara Lumbreras, Antonio Sánchez-Orantos y Clara Fernández Díaz-Rincón, presentan aquí una recapitulación de los contenidos de esta (...) Conferencia, que presentamos como una Crónica, que permitirá entender el sentido de algunos de los artículos anteriores. Con esta crónica concluimos. (shrink)

Los modelos epistemológicos tradicionales clasifican el conocimiento en disciplinas separadas con objetos de estudio distintos y técnicas específicas, incluso proponiendo esquemas jerárquicos. Según pensadores como John Holland o Teilhard de Chardin, el avance de la ciencia implica una convergencia entre sus disciplinas. Esta convergencia puede estudiarse de maneras distintas, como el impacto de diferentes autores fuera de su equipo o la manera en la que colaboran. Aunque estos estudios están generando ideas interesantes, no son capaces de mostrar la convergencia de (...) los distintos temas que se tratan en un cuerpo de trabajos. Este artículo intenta estudiar esta pregunta desde un punto de vista cuantitativo, buscando evidencias que apoyen la idea de convergencia en el contenido de las ciencias en sí mismas. Empleamos Latent Dirichlet Analysis, una técnica que analiza textos y estima las contribuciones relativas de los temas que los generan. Aplicamos esta técnica al corpus de artículos publicados por el Instituto de Santa Fe, que describe trabajos relacionados con las Ciencias de la Complejidad entre 1989 y 2015. Analizamos la cercanía entre las diferentes áreas, la aparición y desaparición de temas de investigación y, en general, la posible convergencia entre disciplinas. Combinando la estructura obtenida de la historia de las publicaciones de SFI con técnicas de inferencia de jerarquía y clustering, reconstruimos la perspectiva de una comunidad científica dinámica que experimenta tendencias, temas recurrentes y cambios en la cercanía de las diferentes disciplinas. Nuestros resultados muestran que hay evidencias de convergencia y que la aplicación de métodos cuantitativos puede proporcionar nuevos elementos de comprensión que ayuden a los investigadores a estructurar una literatura científica cada vez más amplia y compleja, así como a identificar áreas potenciales para nuevas colaboraciones. (shrink)

La mercantilización se define como «la transformación de los bienes, servicios, ideas y personas en objetos de comercio estandarizados». Este artículo presenta una visión de la mercantilización como un proceso que se aplica no sólo a la naturaleza sino también a los bienes, al trabajo, al propio cuerpo, las experiencias y las relaciones. El artículo reflexiona sobre papel clave de la tecnociencia.El camino hacia la reconciliación —con la naturaleza, con el otro y con nosotros mismos— pasa por reconocer y apreciar (...) lo que en ellos es único e irremplazable. El artículo concluye con algunas ideas iniciales sobre cómo la tecnología puede utilizarse como una herramienta. Dar marcha atrás en el proceso de mercantilización es esencial si deseamos establecer una economía sostenible y una sociedad más humana. (shrink)

Las Tecnologías de la Comunicación y la Información han cambiado drásticamente la manera en la que accedemos al conocimiento y procesamos datos, cómo aprendemos y trabajamos y nuestra manera de relacionarnos con otros seres humanos. El interés creciente que despiertan las consecuencias del uso de las TCIs se ha manifestado en múltiples estudios aislados que analizan estos fenómenos desde puntos de vista diferentes. Este artículo tiene como objetivo proporcionar una perspectiva unificadora de estos trabajos, reflexionando sobre las consecuencias que el (...) uso de las TCI está teniendo en nuestras habilidades intelectuales y en cómo nos percibimos a nosotros mismos como seres humanos. (shrink)

Las Tecnologías de la Comunicación y la Información han cambiado drásticamente la manera en la que accedemos al conocimiento y procesamos datos, cómo aprendemos y trabajamos y nuestra manera de relacionarnos con otros seres humanos. El interés creciente que despiertan las consecuencias del uso de las TCIs se ha manifestado en múltiples estudios aislados que analizan estos fenómenos desde puntos de vista diferentes. Este artículo tiene como objetivo proporcionar una perspectiva unificadora de estos trabajos, reflexionando sobre las consecuencias que el (...) uso de las TCI está teniendo en nuestras habilidades intelectuales y en cómo nos percibimos a nosotros mismos como seres humanos. (shrink)

Uno de los principales retos del transhumanismo lo encontramos en su antropología. Nos encontramos ante un reduccionismo en el que el cuerpo aparece despojado de su dignidad y el espíritu no existe. El ejemplo que más me llama la atención de esto es el de la endogénesis: no se valora el hecho de que el ser humano sea gestado dentro del vientre de otro ser humano; para ellos sería preferible tener una máquina que pudiese hacer la misma misión, en lugar (...) de que el embarazo sea un acto de amor que tiene impacto en toda la vida de la persona. Creo que este es el mayor obstáculo en el que nos encontraremos al valorar el transhumanismo, y es especialmente importante: la persona es un edificio de múltiples dimensiones inextricablemente ligadas. Es necesario reconocer la dignidad de nuestro cuerpo, que va más allá de ser sustrato material de nuestra consciencia. El cuerpo forma parte de nuestra naturaleza, en la que cuerpo, emoción, pensamiento y espíritu son dimensiones que están íntimamente ligadas. No podemos renunciar a nuestro cuerpo. Además, me gustaría proponer que dentro del cuerpo existen portales ante la trascendencia. no es lo mismo ser que parecer. Muchos defienden que pronto tendremos robots que estarán dotados de consciencia. Que podrán pasar el test de Turing. Además, la Inteligencia Artificial permite generar mensajes de manera sintética. En algunos casos, estos mensajes son relativamente simples, pero en otros casos, como los chatbots, resultan muy interesantes. Algunos autores estiman que, dentro de poco, estos chatbots podrían llegar a pasar el test de Turing. Una vez tengamos máquinas que pasen el test de Turing, ¿podremos decir que son conscientes? ¿Es lo mismo una máquina que pase el Test de Turing que una máquina consciente? Para algunos, la respuesta es «es indiferente». Yo digo que no, que no es lo mismo. (shrink)

Understanding artificial intelligence and belief formation have interesting bidirectional synergies. From explaining the logical derivation of beliefs and their internal consistency, to giving a quantitative account of mightiness, AI still has plenty of unexploited metaphors that can illuminate belief formation. In addition, acknowledging that AI should integrate itself with our belief processes makes it possible to focus on more promising lines such as Interpretable Machine Learning.

Eschatological beliefs have matured alongside both biblical composition and Christian history. This evolution can be traced using cultural evolutionary studies. The process reflects attempts to adapt to new conditions and challenges—sometimes giving place to more focused views, but also sometimes to failures and dysfunctional forms or fruitless variations. It becomes a theological duty to assess this evolution better. The key element is the reception of these eschatological beliefs, to discern what expressions of them are more helpful in encouraging Christian fidelity, (...) coping with distress, and engaging with individual and societal challenges. In this article, we outline a research programme that links eschatology to anthropology, and that tries to analyse beliefs according to state‐of‐the‐art methods, such as evolutionary cultural studies and research on the believing process. We also contribute a case study based on the concept of hell to test the proposed approach. (shrink)

This book investigates the role of inference in argumentation, considering how arguments support standpoints on the basis of different loci. The authors propose and illustrate a model for the analysis of the standpoint-argument connection, called Argumentum Model of Topics. A prominent feature of the AMT is that it distinguishes, within each and every single argumentation, between an inferential-procedural component, on which the reasoning process is based; and a material-contextual component, which anchors the argument in the interlocutors’ cultural and factual common (...) ground. The AMT explains how these components differ and how they are intertwined within each single argument. This model is introduced in Part II of the book, following a careful reconstruction of the enormously rich tradition of studies on inference in argumentation, from the antiquity to contemporary authors, without neglecting medieval and post-medieval contributions. The AMT is a contemporary model grounded in a dialogue with such tradition, whose crucial aspects are illuminated in this book. (shrink)

Proponents of grounding often describe the notion as "metaphysical causation" involving determination and production relations similar to causation. This paper argues that the similarities between grounding and causation are merely superficial. I show that there are several sorts of causation that have no analogue in grounding; that the type of "bringing into existence" that both involve is extremely different; and that the synchronicity of ground and the diachronicity of causation make them too different to be explanatorily intertwined.

Awe has traditionally been considered a religious or spiritual emotion, yet scientists often report that awe motivates them to answer questions about the natural world, and to do so in naturalistic terms. Indeed, awe may be closely related to scientific discovery and theoretical advance. Awe is typically triggered by something vast (either literally or metaphorically) and initiates processes of accommodation, in which existing mental schemas are revised to make sense of the awe‐inspiring stimuli. This process of accommodation is essential for (...) the kind of belief revision that characterizes scientific reasoning and theory change. Across six studies, we find that the tendency to experience awe is positively associated with scientific thinking, and that this association is not shared by other positive emotions. Specifically, we show that the disposition to experience awe predicts a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, and rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly. (shrink)

The social categories to which we belong—Latino, disabled, American, woman— causally influence our lives in deep and unavoidable ways. One might be pulled over by police because one is Latino, or one might receive a COVID vaccine sooner because one is American. Membership in these social categories most often falls outside of our control. This paper argues that membership in social categories constitutes a restriction on human agency, creating a situation of non-ideal agency for many human individuals. -/- However, there (...) are ways to resist the causal influence of social categories, and certain socially marginalized groups can be understood as attempting to do just this. I discuss two instances of social category resistance: gender pronouns and the rights of trans individuals. I suggest that the intentional declaration of gender pronouns (“she/her” or “they/them”) can be understood as an attempt to resist the causal powers of nonconsensual social categorization. Similarly, one among many reasons to support the rights of trans individuals is that their self-declarations of gender identity can be viewed as a reclamation of agency in the face of causal constraints imposed by socially defined and imposed gender categories. This lesson can be generalized to people belonging to a broad range of marginalized groups. (shrink)

In "Changing the Past" (2010), Peter van Inwagen argues that a time traveler can change the past without paradox in a growing block universe. After erasing the portion of past existence that generates paradox, a new, non-paradox-generating block can be "grown" after the temporal relocation of the time traveler. -/- I articulate and explore the underlying mechanism of Van Inwagen's model: the time traveler's control over the location of the objective present. Van Inwagen's model is aimed at preventing paradox by (...) changing the past, but it achieves something broader than paradox avoidance: it gives tools for a new model of time travel. I use van Inwagen's tools to develop a new kind of time travel in which in which the location of the objective present is shifted by the time traveler. I call this type of time travel Movable Objective Present, or MOP. After defining MOP, I argue that it is compatible with any theory of time that accepts hypertime, including presentism and moving spotlight theory. (shrink)

I argue that fitting envy plays a special role in safeguarding our happiness and flourishing. After presenting my theory of envy and its fittingness conditions, I contrast Kant’s view that envy is always unfitting with D’Arms and Jacobson’s defense of fitting envy as an evolutionarily-shaped response to a deep and wide human concern, that is, relative positioning. However, D’Arms and Jacobson don’t go far enough. First, I expand on their analysis of positional goodness, distinguishing between an epistemic claim, according to (...) which we use implicit or explicit comparison to know what position we occupy in a continuum of goodness, and thus to form judgments of goodness, and a metaphysical one, according to which much human goodness depends on implicit or explicit rankings and positionality. Second, I argue that fitting envy is not only intrinsically valuable qua fitting response to authentic goodness, but can be epistemically, morally and prudentially valuable. (shrink)

This paper suggests that time travelling scenarios commonly depicted in science fiction introduce problems and dangers for the time traveller. If time travel takes time, then time travellers risk collision with past objects, relocation to distant parts of the universe, and time travel-specific injuries. I propose several models of time travel that avoid the dangers and risks of time travel taking time, and that introduce new questions about the relationship between time travel and spatial location.

This paper discusses a puzzling tension in attributions of moral responsibility in cases of resultant moral luck: we seem to hold agents fully morally responsible for unlucky outcomes, but less-than-fully-responsible for unlucky outcomes brought about differently than intended. This tension cannot be easily discharged or explained, but it does shed light on a famous puzzle about causation and responsibility, the Thirsty Traveler.

In this paper I will develop a lambda-term calculus, lambda-2Int, for a bi-intuitionistic logic and discuss its implications for the notions of sense and denotation of derivations in a bilateralist setting. Thus, I will use the Curry-Howard correspondence, which has been well-established between the simply typed lambda-calculus and natural deduction systems for intuitionistic logic, and apply it to a bilateralist proof system displaying two derivability relations, one for proving and one for refuting. The basis will be the natural deduction system (...) of Wansing's bi-intuitionistic logic 2Int, which I will turn into a term-annotated form. Therefore, we need a type theory that extends to a two-sorted typed lambda-calculus. I will present such a term-annotated proof system for 2Int and prove a Dualization Theorem relating proofs and refutations in this system. On the basis of these formal results I will argue that this gives us interesting insights into questions about sense and denotation as well as synonymy and identity of proofs from a bilateralist point of view. (shrink)

Ausgangspunkt dieser Untersuchung sind Wittgensteins Analysen der Kippbilder, seine Reflexionen über das Sehen-als und die damit verbundene Spannung zwischen Identität und Differenz. Wittgenstein, so lautet die zentrale These des Buches, beschäftigte sich mit solchen außergewöhnlichen Phänomenen, weil sie die übersichtliche Darstellung der komplexen, symbolischen Praktiken menschlicher Lebensformen erlauben. Anhand unterschiedlicher Beispiele – physiognomischer Ausdruck, Witz, Kunst, Dichtung, sadomasochistische Perversion – erstellt Sara Fortuna eine Grammatik der Aspekte, die eng auf ethische Fragestellungen bezogen bleibt. Dadurch erscheinen Wittgensteins späte Gedanken als (...) Kritik einer philosophischen und kulturellen Tradition und es gelingt der Autorin, ihn mit Dante, Vico, Kant, der Psychoanalyse, der Anthropologie und der feministischen Philosophie in ein fruchtbares Gespräch zu bringen. (shrink)

Do we need a right to mental privacy? In an era of increasing sophistication in recording, interpreting, and directly intervening on our neural activity – not to mention efforts at combining neural...

This paper argues that causal idealism, the view that causation is a product of mental activity, should be considered a competetitor to contemporary views that incorporate human thought and agency into the causal relation. Weighing contextualism, contrastivism, or pragmatism about causation against causal idealism results in at least a tie with respect to the virtues of these theories.

This chapter develops an alternative to the dominant articulation of human existence on the basis of classical phenomenology, arguing that Edmund Husserl's phenomenological inquiries into the structures of embodiment provide a very different and more fruitful starting point for the investigation of sexual difference than the ideas of social gender and biological sex. The ways of classifying sex and gender characteristics mark them out on several different conceptual bases, and thus their categories may not correspond or coincide. Moreover historical and (...) biological inquiries indicate that the dimorphic notion of sex is prescriptive and constructive. Finally the sex/gender paradigm is dominated by the explanatory framework of causes and effects. The phenomenological analysis shows that the causal-functional framework is inadequate for the investigation of the plurality of the bodily existence and sexual difference as a dimension of this existence. In the light of the explication of the concepts of sex and gender, and the phenomenological analysis of embodiment, the sex/gender paradigm cannot offer a basis for a comprehensive philosophy of sexual existence. (shrink)

China is rising. As China ascends in power, it is likely that ?Western? administrators ? American and European, in particular ? will find that they must interact with Chinese administrators more and more. In this article, I offer readers a brief glimpse into Chinese administrative ethics through an investigation of two forms of Chinese philosophy ? Confucianism and Taoism. In addition to reviewing these philosophies, I derive some consequences for a public service ethic that lies between the East and the (...) West. In particular, this article includes some recommendations for the managerial implications of these two philosophies in the context of increased political and administrative connections between the West and China. (shrink)

The concept of solidarity is of central importance to the political sense of collective action. But it is a curious fact that solidarity is virtually unmentioned across the large and growing literature in philosophical collective action theory. Instead, we see discussions of collective action overwhelmingly focus on epistemic conditions and group-level correlates of individual action explanations such as collective intentions, collective beliefs, and so on. The aim of this paper is to elucidate the relationship between solidarity and collective action theory. (...) I will try to answer two questions: (1) What is it about the structure of accounts of collective action that seems to preclude discussions of solidarity and related concepts; and (2) How can solidarity be made to play a useful role in those accounts? (shrink)

This paper examines both creepiness and the distinctive reaction had to creepiness, being “creeped out.” The paper defends a response-dependent account of creepiness in terms of this distinctive reaction, contrasting our preferred account to others that might be offered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of detecting creepiness.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls discusses “the problem of envy”, namely the worry that the well-ordered society could be destabilized by envy. Martha Nussbaum has proposed, in Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, that love, in particular what she calls civic friendship, is the solution to this problem. Nussbaum’s suggestion is in accordance with the long-standing notion that love and envy are incompatible opposites, and that the virtue of love is an antidote to the vice of envy. (...) I argue that this idea is misguided, and that love and envy are opposite sides of the same coin: what Kant called “unsociable sociability”. Love and envy arise from the same psychological mechanisms and thrive in the same social and personal conditions; thus, it’s not possible to have one without the other. However, there are other solutions to the problem of envy, including favoring the arousal of emulative envy. -/- . (shrink)

The Philosophy of Umberto Eco stands out in the Library of Living Philosophers series as the volume on the most interdisciplinary scholar hitherto and probably the most widely translated. The Italian philosopher's name and works are well known in the humanities, both his philosophical and literary works being translated into fifteen or more languages. Eco is a founder of modern semiotics and widely known for his work in the philosophy of language and aesthetics. He is also a leading figure in (...) the emergence of postmodern literature, and is associated with cultural and mass communication studies. His writings cover topics such as advertising, television, and children's literature as well as philosophical questions bearing on truth, reality, cognition, language, and literature. The critical essays in this volume cover the full range of this output. This book has wide appeal not only because of its interdisciplinary nature but also because of Eco's famous "high and low" approach, which is deeply scholarly in conception and very accessible in outcome. The short essay "Why Philosophy?" included in the volume is exemplary in this regard: it will appeal to scholars for its wit and to high school students for its intelligibility. (shrink)

The debate on love's reasons ignores unrequited love, which—I argue—can be as genuine and as valuable as reciprocated love. I start by showing that the relationship view of love cannot account for either the reasons or the value of unrequited love. I then present the simple property view, an alternative to the relationship view that is beset with its own problems. In order to solve these problems, I present a more sophisticated version of the property view that integrates ideas from (...) different property theorists in the love literature. However, even this more sophisticated property view falls short in accounting for unrequited love's reasons. In response, I develop a new version of the property view that I call the experiential view. On this view, we love a person not only in virtue of properties shaped by and experienced in a reciprocal loving relationship, but also in virtue of perspectival properties, whose value can be properly assessed also outside of a reciprocal loving relationship. The experiential view is the only view that can account not only for reciprocated love's reasons, but also for unrequited love's reasons. (shrink)

Feminism is sensational -- On being directed -- Willfulness and feminist subjectivity -- Trying to transform -- Being in question -- Brick walls -- Fragile connections -- Feminist snap -- Lesbian feminism -- Conclusion 1: A killjoy survival kit -- Conclusion 2: A killjoy manifesto.

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which (...) is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

This paper is dedicated to articulating the ethical puzzles that arise from the possibility of time travel. I divide the puzzles into three different categories: permissibility puzzles, obligation puzzles, and conflicts between past and future selves. In each category, I suggest that ethical problems involving time travel are not as dissimilar to parallel “normal” ethical puzzles as one might think.

Introduction: find your way -- Orientations toward objects -- Sexual orientation -- The orient and other others -- Conclusion: disorientation and queer objects.

In this paper I present a novel taxonomy of envy, according to which there are four kinds of envy: emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. An inquiry into the varieties of envy is valuable not only to understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but also to shed light on the nature of its alleged viciousness. The first section introduces the intuition that there is more than one kind of envy, together with the anecdotal and linguistic evidence that supports it. The (...) second section proposes and explains in detail a definition of envy tout court. The third section presents a recurring distinction between behavioral tendencies of envy, which has been explained in two distinct ways, one mostly proposed by psychologists, the other discernible in the philosophical tradition. The fourth section argues that these models of explanation track two variables, whose interplay is responsible for the existence of the four envies. The fifth section illustrates four paradigmatic cases, and provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenology, motivational structure, and typical behavioral outputs of each. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the taxonomy for moral education. (shrink)

The most popular uniting theme in feminist peace literature grounds women's peace work in mothering. I argue if maternal arguments do not address the variety of relationships different races and classes of mothers have to institutional violence and/or the military, then the resulting peace politics can only draw incomplete conclusions about the relationships between maternal work/thinking and peace. To illustrate this I compare two models of mothering: Sara Ruddick's decription of "maternal practice" and Patricia Hill Collins's account of racial-ethnic (...) women's "motherwork.". (shrink)

Envy is almost universally condemned. But is its reputation warranted? Sara Protasi argues envy is multifaceted and sometimes even virtuous.

The emergence of systems biology raises many fascinating questions: What does it mean to take a systems approach to problems in biology? To what extent is the use of mathematical and computational modelling changing the life sciences? How does the availability of big data influence research practices? What are the major challenges for biomedical research in the years to come? This book addresses such questions of relevance not only to philosophers and biologists but also to readers interested in the broader (...) implications of systems biology for science and society. The book features reflections and original work by experts from across the disciplines including systems biologists, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scholars investigating the social and educational aspects of systems biology. In response to the same set of questions, the experts develop and defend their personal perspectives on the distinctive character of systems biology and the challenges that lie ahead. Readers are invited to engage with different views on the questions addressed, and may explore numerous themes relating to the philosophy of systems biology. This edited work will appeal to scholars and all levels, from undergraduates to researchers, and to those interested in a variety of scholarly approaches such as systems biology, mathematical and computational modelling, cell and molecular biology, genomics, systems theory, and of course, philosophy of biology. (shrink)

All of us ponder the big and enduring human questions—Who am I? Am I free? What should I do? What is good? Is there justice?