Bringing together speeches given at the Institute's annual King Day convocation, this book celebrates two decades of commitment by MIT to honoring the memory and furthering the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. In reading these speeches, one catches in reflection twenty years of turmoil and change, some positive (including an increasing number of speakers drawn from the ranks of MIT's African-American alumni/ae) but much negative, in which Dr. King's dream has been a continuing beacon for action. Speakers have included (...) leaders who are prominent both nationally and in the local (Boston/Cambridge) community, in accordance with Dr. King's dual emphasis on global and local issues. The book closes with Coretta Scott King's twentieth-anniversary address in 1994. The 1995 speech by A. Leon Higginbotham is included as an appendix. (shrink)

Published comments by American scientists on Darwin’s evolutionary theory are rather rare in the latter half of the 19th century. Clarence King, the founding director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1879, and an experienced field geologist, focused on the relation between Darwin’s evolutionary concepts and the larger context of Hutton/Lyell’s uniformitarianism versus Cuvier’s catastrophism in his 1877 paper, “Catastrophism and Evolution.” King knew that the fossil record contains little or no data supporting Darwin’s vision of gradual evolutionary change. (...) Instead, using horse evolution seen in the rocks of the American West, the very example that by the 1920s had become the shining exemplar of gradual evolutionary change, King argued for catastrophic extinction and evolutionary replacement by “plastic” species that were able to survive in modified form as components of the succeeding biota. Though he could not see such change as involving natural selection, in this novel use of the term “plasticity,” there may well be adumbrations of modern evolutionary biology. King’s themes became muted as Americans began to embrace more fully Darwin’s work. But his version of catastrophism never entirely disappeared, especially in paleobiological circles. And it came back in more fully modern form with force beginning with the work of Norman D. Newell on mass extinctions in the mid-20th century—and with that of two of his students: Eldredge and Gould’s “Punctuated Equilibria.” This essay introduces King’s “Catastrophism and Evolution” for the journal’s “Classics in Biological Theory” collection; King’s article is available as supplementary material in the online version of this introduction. (shrink)

The Truth That Never Hurts brings together for the first time more than two decades of literary criticism & political thought about gender, race, sexuality, power & social change. As one of the first writers in the United States to claim Black feminism for Black women in the early seventies, this authors works has been ground breaking in defining a Black women's literary tradition; in examining the sexual politics of the lives of Black & other women of color; in representing (...) the lives of Black lesbians & gay men; & in making connections between race, class, sexuality, & gender. Her essay "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," is often cited as a major catalyst in opening the field of Black women's literature. This essay also presented the first serious discussion of Black lesbian writing. Essays about racism in the women's movement, Black & Jewish relations, & homophobia in the Black community have ignited dialogue about topics that few other writers address. The collection also brings together topical political commentaries that examine the 1968 Chicago convention demonstrations; attacks on the NEA; the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas Senate hearings; & police brutality against Rodney King & Abner Louima. It also includes a never before published personal essay on racial violence, the day-to-day life of Kitchen Table Press, & the bonds between Black women that make it possible to survive. This authors writing offers a rare combination of intellectual challenge & an accessible personal voice. her commitment to telling the truth about difficult, even volatile issues, makes a unique contribution to American literature & social thought. (shrink)

The idea of artificial intelligence for social good is gaining traction within information societies in general and the AI community in particular. It has the potential to tackle social problems through the development of AI-based solutions. Yet, to date, there is only limited understanding of what makes AI socially good in theory, what counts as AI4SG in practice, and how to reproduce its initial successes in terms of policies. This article addresses this gap by identifying seven ethical factors that are (...) essential for future AI4SG initiatives. The analysis is supported by 27 case examples of AI4SG projects. Some of these factors are almost entirely novel to AI, while the significance of other factors is heightened by the use of AI. From each of these factors, corresponding best practices are formulated which, subject to context and balance, may serve as preliminary guidelines to ensure that well-designed AI is more likely to serve the social good. (shrink)

Why should we seek and tell the truth? Does anyone know what truth is? Many are skeptical about the relevance of truth. Truth Matters endeavours to show why truth is important in a world where the very idea of truth is contested. Putting philosophers in conversation with educators, literary scholars, physicists, political theorists, and theologians, Truth Matters ranges across both analytic and continental philosophy and draws on the ideas of thinkers such as Aquinas, Balthasar, Brandom, Davidson, Dooyeweerd, Gadamer, Habermas, Kierkegaard, (...) Plantinga, Ricoeur, and Wolterstorff. Some essays attempt to provide a systematic account of truth, while others wrestle with the question of how truth is told and what it means to live truthfully. Contributors address debates between realists and anti-realists, explore issues surrounding relativism and constructivism in education and the social sciences, examine the politics of truth telling and the ethics of authenticity, and consider various religious perspectives on truth. Most scholars agree that truth is propositional, being expressed in statements that are subject to proof or disproof. This book goes a step farther: yes, propositional truth is important, but truth is more than propositional. To recognize how it is more than propositional is crucial for understanding why truth truly matters. Contributors include Doug Blomberg (ICS), Allyson Carr (ICS), Jeffrey Dudiak (King’s University College), Olaf Ellefson (York University), Gerrit Glas (VU University Amsterdam), Gill K. Goulding (Regis College), Jay Gupta (Mills College), Clarence Joldersma (Calvin College), Matthew J. Klaassen (ICS), John Jung Park (Duke University), Pamela J. Reeve (St. Augustine’s Seminary), Amy Richards (World Affairs Council of Western Michigan), Calvin Seerveld (ICS), Ronnie Shuker (ICS), Adam Smith (Brandeis University), John Van Rys (Redeemer University College), Darren Walhof (Grand Valley State University), Matthew Walhout (Calvin College), and Lambert Zuidervaart (ICS). (shrink)

The Chicago school of pragmatism was one of the most controversial and prominent intellectual movements of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Spanning the ferment of academic and social thought that erupted in those turbulent times in America, the Chicago pragmatists earned widespread attention and respect for many decades. They were a central force in philosophy, contesting realism and idealism for supremacy in metaphysics, epistemology and value theory. Their functionalist views formed the Chicago school of religion, which sparked intense scrutiny (...) into the real meaning of theism, religious experience and the role of religious values in society. Their social standpoint on psychology generated the Chicago school of sociology, social psychology and symbolic interactionism that dominated the social sciences until the 1960s. Their educational philosophy was a major component of progressivism, aiming to make schools more responsive to the democratic and industrial character of the country. In economics, labour issues, civil rights and liberal politics, the Chicago school was also impossible to ignore This four-volume set focuses on the cornerstones of the thought grounding such intellectual activism: their philosophies of human nature, intelligence, values and social purpose. While other collections of the writings of the most prominent Chicago pragmatists (John Dewey, George Mead and James Tufts) offer some of their own individual work, no other collection captures the entire breadth and depth of the movement as a whole. Key writings of these major philosophers are set in their proper context of important writings of James Angell, Edward Ames, Addison Moore, and of many of their graduates who had significant careers, including Ella Flagg Young, H. Heath Bawden, Arthur Rogers, Irving King, Kate Gordon, Douglas Macintosh, William Wright, Clarence Ayres and Charles Morris. Also included are their debates with many critics, such as James Mark Baldwin, George Santayana, William Montague, Roy Wood Sellars and William Hocking. Spanning roughly fifty years, the 130 pieces are brought together from several dozens of now obscure and increasingly rare books, journals and archival sources. This collection will be indispensable for the study of American intellectual history, and especially the evolution of American philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, education and politics. --130 articles gathered into an indispensable collection covering the entire Chicago pragmatism movement --all materials are reset, annotated, indexed and enhanced by new editorial introductions --includes a wealth of obscure, rare and hard-to-find original materials --indispensable for the study of American intellectual history, and especially the evolution of American philosophy, psychology, sociology, religion, education and politics. (shrink)

As concerns about the negative health effects of unhealthy eating, overweight and obesity have increased, so too have policy efforts to promote healthy eating. Federal, state, and local governments have proposed and implemented a variety of healthy eating policies. Many of these policies are controversial, facing objections that range from the practical (e.g., the policy won’t succeed at improving people’s diets) to the ethical (e.g., the policy is paternalistic or inequitable). Especially controversial have been policies limiting the options offered in (...) the marketplace, limiting access to certain options, or providing disincentives for the purchase of certain options. Examples of such policies include proposed .. (shrink)

The majority of recent work on the moral standing to blame (the idea that A may be unable to legitimately blame B despite B being blameworthy) has focused on blamers who themselves are blameworthy. This is unfortunate, for there is much to learn about the standing to blame once we consider a broader range of cases. Doing so reveals that challenged standing is more expansive than previously acknowledged, and accounts that have privileged the fact that the blamers are themselves morally (...) culpable likely require revision. One such account figures in Patrick Todd’s (2012) argument for incompatibilism, which ostensibly depends on considerations involving the standing to blame. I believe this argument fails. But its failure is instructive, for it allows us to appreciate the numerous ways in which one’s blame can be morally problematic, and hence ways in which one’s standing to blame can be challenged. Thus, while one objective of this paper is to show why Todd’s argument fails, the larger aim is to use that argument to frame discussion of some important (and novel) ways in which the standing to blame can be compromised. (shrink)

Im Beitrag werden Veränderungen der Kommunikation durch digitale Medien, ihre psychischen Bedeutungen und Folgen, u. a. anhand von empirischen Befunden zu Social-Media-Praktiken von Jugendlichen und von Eltern thematisiert. Bezugsrahmen der Analyse sind dabei kulturelle Wandlungen sowie soziale und psychische Bedeutungen von Aufmerksamkeit: geteilte Aufmerksamkeit als ein Kern der Kommunikation, aber auch die für psychische Entwicklung notwendige geschenkte, für den anderen oder für anderes offene Aufmerksamkeit als ein wesentliches Moment der Zuwendung, Empathie und Bezogenheit – im Gegensatz zu selbstbezogener Aufmerksamkeit und (...) instrumenteller Aufmerksamkeitslenkung. Überdies werden Folgen fragmentierter Aufmerksamkeit, wie sie aus der Überlagerung von Online- und Offline-Kommunikation resultiert, für psychische Entwicklungen betrachtet. (shrink)

Recently, ethicists have posited that consideration of epigenetic mechanisms presents novel challenges to concepts of justice and equality of opportunity, such as elevating the importance of environments in bioethics and providing a counterpoint to gross genetic determinism. We argue that new findings in epigenetic sciences, including those regarding intergenerational health effects, do not necessitate reconceptualization of theories of justice or the environment. To the contrary, such claims reflect a flawed understanding of epigenetics and its relation to genetics that may unintentionally (...) undermine appeals to social justice. We provide a brief summary of epigenetic sciences, focusing on phenomena central to the current ethical discourse. We identify three fallacious modes of reasoning arising from the emergent literature on the ethical and policy implications of epigenetics, including mischaracterization, undue extrapolation, and exceptionalism. We end by discussing how these issues may work against mobilizing health equity policies and present a more modest claim regarding the value of new epigenetic knowledge to health justice by setting this discourse within the context of known themes in biomedical ethics and health policy. (shrink)

The editor's introduction discusses Clarence I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism when compared with post-empiricist epistemology and argues that several Cartesian assumptions play a major role in the work, not unlike those of Logical Positivism. The suggestion is made that the Cartesian legacy still hidden in Logical Positivism turns out to be a rather heavy ballast for Lewis’s project of restructuring epistemology in a pragmatist key. More in detail, the sore point is the nature of inter-subjectivity. For Lewis, no less than (...) for the Logical Positivists at the time of the Protocols Controversy and Husserl in the Cartesian Meditations, this is a problem without a solution. The reason is that all these philosophers are apparently unable to realize that the existence of a plurality of knowing subjects cannot be treated at once both as a speculative problem and a methodological one. Lewis, thanks to his pragmatist approach both comes closer to the right answer and offers an even more naïve unsatisfactory solution to the pseudo-problem under discussion. The fact that he has clear in mind that inter-subjectivity means not only a plurality of linguistic utterances but also a co-existence of different kinds of practical behaviour. Eventually, the very idea of mind, the key-idea in the book, suffers from the above mentioned tension. In fact, if inter-subjective communication and action is considered at a methodological level, the very idea of mind would not need an analysis, and no kind of ‘reflexive’ analysis. Methodology might be limited to a ‘naïve’ level where the existence of the world and a plurality of subjects be taken as a bedrock of uncritically accepted evidence. Philosophical reflection on ultimate evidence, instead, would take a different approach, maybe the one Wittgenstein was putting into practice in the same years when Mind and the world order was written, namely it would be bound to question the very meaning of the idea of ‘mind’ as an undue fiction – the same carried out by Descartes – when he assumed the Cogito to be at once a body of self-evident truths and a thing or substance, the familiar Platonic idea of psyche or soul. (shrink)

In his critique of the extended mind hypothesis, Robert Rupert suggests that we have no reason to move from the claim that cognition is deeply embedded in the environment to the more radical claim that, in some cases, cognition itself extends into the environment. In this paper, I argue that we have strong normative reasons to prefer the more radical extended mind hypothesis to Rupert’s modest embedded mind hypothesis. I take an agnostic position on the metaphysical debate about the ultimate (...) nature and location of the mind, and instead argue in favor of the extended mind framework on the basis of its ability to better capture normative concerns about the way we evaluate the cognitive capacities of learning disabled individuals. In light of the commitments of the embedded and extended mind frameworks, defenders of the embedded mind framework are committed to conclusions about learning-disabled individuals that we have good normative reason to reject, whereas the extended mind framework avoids such problematic conclusions. Thus, if we find these normative concerns persuasive, we have good reason to prefer the extended mind position. (shrink)

Although most of us know that human beings cannot and should not be replaced by computers, we have great difficulties saying why this is so. This paradox is largely the result of institutionalizing several fundamental misconceptions as to the nature of both trustworthy objective and moral knowledge. Unless we transcend this paradox, we run the increasing risks of becoming very good at counting without being able to say what is worth counting and why. The degree to which this is occurring (...) is the degree to which the computer revolution is already over — and the degree to which we human beings have lost. (shrink)

Does "nature" still exist? Common wisdom now acknowledges the malleability of nature, the complex reality that circumscribes and constitutes the human. Weather patterns, topographical contours, animal populations, and even our own genetic composition--all of which previously marked the boundary of human agency--now appear subject to our intervention. Some thinkers have suggested that nature has disappeared entirely and that we have entered a postnatural era; others note that nature is an ineradicable context for life. Christian theology, in particular, finds itself in (...) an awkward position. Its Western traditions have long relied upon a static "nature" to express the dynamism of "grace," making nature a foundational category within theology itself. This means that any theological inquiry into the changing face of nature must be reflexive and radically interdisciplinary. This book brings leading natural and social scientists into conversation with prominent Christian theologians and ethicists to wrestle collectively with difficult questions. Is nature undergoing fundamental change? What role does nature play in theological ethics? How might ethical deliberation proceed "without nature" in the future? What does the religious drive to transform human nature have to do with the technological quest to transcend human limits? Would the end of nature make grace less comprehensible? (shrink)

Beginning with the idea that digital storytelling can be a useful tool for moral sensemaking and development for undergraduates, the paper reviews the process of digital storytelling and details how the lead author incorporated a digital storytelling project into a course on leadership ethics. The paper provides a theoretical basis for the project in Gentile’s (2010, 2011) work on Giving Voice to Values, and in perspectives from aesthetics, phenomenology, and personal narrative. This is followed by two autoethnographic narratives of the (...) experience: one from the course designer and professor who discusses his motivation for the project and the moral dilemma he faced in assigning it, and another from one of the students in the class who investigates the challenges she faced in engaging a deeply-felt moral dilemma in a public way. Finally, the paper discusses the implications for this approach with respect to leadership development and research. (shrink)

Contemporary debates concerning a universal theory about the praxis of love in human society and culture can benefit greatly from the works of two twentieth‐century thinkers, the French paleontologist and religious writer Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Russian‐American sociologist Pitirim A. Sorokin. Although from very different personal and disciplinary backgrounds, they share amazingly similar views on the power of love as transformative energy for transcending the individual self and for creating radically new, collaborative, and cooperative ways of acting that (...) will transform whole societies, indeed the planet. Traditionally, ideas of love have been associated with religion, but these two thinkers advocate systematic scientific research on the production and application of “love‐energy” for the change of culture, social institutions, and human beings. The article is organized in five parts: (1) altruism, science and love: what is love energy? (2) Teilhard's understanding of the phenomenon of love; (3) Sorokin's approach to creative, altruistic love; (4) comparison of Teilhard's and Sorokin's ideas; and (5) performing works of love. As far as I am aware, this is the first article comparing the remarkable parallels as well as distinctive differences between Sorokin's and Teilhard's ideas on love as the highest form of human energy. (shrink)

HUME AND NOWELL-SMITH TRIED TO UNDERSTAND CERTAIN THEOLOGIANS’ CLAIMS ABOUT MIRACLES WITHOUT ATTENDING TO THEIR BASES IN ARISTOTELIAN PHYSICS. THIS SOMEWHAT WEAKENS THEIR CRITICISMS. AFTER REJECTING A "DEMONSTRATIVE" OR "DEDUCTIVE" APPROACH TO MIRACLES WHICH RESULTS FROM CERTAIN (OUT-DATED) ARISTOTELIAN BELIEFS ABOUT SCIENTIFIC REASONING, I ARGUE FOR THE INTELLIGIBILITY AND RATIONALITY OF A TOLERANT ’GOOD REASONS’ APPROACH TO JUDGMENTS ABOUT THE MIRACULOUS. SOME, NOT ALL, OF TILLICH’S REMARKS ON MIRACLES TEND TO FIT THE LATTER APPROACH WHICH LEADS TO AN ILLUMINATING CLUSTER (...) CONCEPT OF "THE MIRACULOUS" (SACRED AND PROFANE). (shrink)

IN ‘Thomistic First Principles and Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language’ Professor Peter Dwyer SJ has put forward some suggestions, both learned and exciting, for increasing friendly commerce between admirers of Saint Thomas and admirers of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Recognising that there is considerable philosophical diversity within each set of admirers and that some fine philosophers already belong to both sets, Dwyer concludes: ‘Thomistic first principles complement and correct the philosophy of Wittgenstein by drawing attention to the fact that language has an objective (...) criterion of meaning which is, in the last analysis, independent of what we might say about reality’. (shrink)

TZIPORAH KASACHKOFF’S most welcome and valuable attack on D Z Phillips’ ‘internalist’ defence of his strange forms of fideism closes with these words.

2. Regimentation in Action. That these words of Quine's are unfortunate can best be shown by looking at two examples of regimentation in action and by considering how we might very naturally first appraise the regimenter's success with a metaphysical problem. One example will be taken from Paul Weiss's Modes of Being and the other from Quine himself.

We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Like many fields, bioethics has been constrained to thinking to race in terms of colorblindness, the idea that ideal deliberation would ignore race and hence prevent bias. There are practical and ethically significant problems with colorblind approaches to ethical deliberation, and important reasons why race is ethically relevant. Future discourse needs to understand how and why race is relevant in bioethics.

Theory of "conceptual pragmatism" takes into account both modern philosophical thought and modern mathematics. Stimulating discussions of metaphysics, a priori, philosophic method, much more.