Hud Hudson shows that apparently irreconcilable conflicts between science and religion often turn out to be misdescribed battles about negotiable philosophical assumptions. He defends an original Hypertime Hypothesis which reconciles the Christian doctrines of The Fall and Original Sin with reigning scientific orthodoxy.

This paper addresses the gap between familiar popular narratives describing Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as the trope of the killer robot, and the realistic near-future implications of machine intelligence and automation for technology policy and society. The authors conducted a series of interviews with technologists, science fiction writers, and other experts, as well as a workshop, to identify a set of key themes relevant to the near future of AI. In parallel, they led the analysis of almost 100 recent works (...) of science fiction stories with AI themes to develop a preliminary taxonomy of AI in science fiction. These activities informed the commissioning of six original works of science fiction and non-fiction response essays on the themes of “intelligence” and “justice” that were published as part of the Slate Future Tense Fiction series in 2019 and 2020. Our findings indicate that artificial intelligence remains deeply ambiguous both in the policy and cultural contexts: we struggle to define the boundaries and the agency of machine intelligence, and consequently find it difficult to govern or interact with such systems. However, our findings also suggest more productive avenues of inquiry and framing that could foster both better policy and better narratives around AI. (shrink)

In Seeing Things, Robert Hudson assesses a common way of arguing about observation reports called "robustness reasoning." Robustness reasoning claims that an observation report is more likely to be true if the report is produced by multiple, independent sources. Seeing Things argues that robustness reasoning lacks the special value it is often claimed to have. Hudson exposes key flaws in various popular philosophical defenses of robustness reasoning. This philosophical critique of robustness is extended by recounting five episodes in (...) the history of science (from experimental microbiology, atomic theory, astrophysics, and astronomy) where robustness reasoning is — or could be claimed to have been — used. Hudson goes on to show that none of these episodes do in fact exhibit robustness reasoning. In this way, the significance of robustness reasoning is rebutted on both philosophical and historical grounds. But the book does more than critique robustness reasoning. It also develops a better defense of the informative value of observation reports. The book concludes by relating insights into the failure of robustness reasoning to a popular approach to scientific realism called "(theoretical) preservationism." Hudson argues that those who defend this approach to realism commit similar errors to those who advocate robustness reasoning. In turn, a new form of realism is formulated and defended. Called "methodological preservationism," it recognizes the fundamental value of naked-eye observation to scientists — and the rest of us. (shrink)

Are there any non‐composite objects? Are there any objects every part of which is composite? Are items of either kind even possible? What would they be like? Of what significance would they be? How best can we come to have reasonable beliefs about the answers to these inquiries? Such questions – about the actuality and possibility, the analysis and significance, the methodology and epistemology of simples and pieces of gunk – have been center stage in recent contemporary analytic metaphysics. The (...) following article provides a general overview of some of the current debates on their proper answers as well as a pair of slightly more detailed investigations into two issues of special interest in the recent literature devoted to these topics. (shrink)

A short philosophical narrative about an angel wrestling with the decision to rebel against God and leave his post in the Garden of Eden.

At the beginning of his book, Principles of Christian Theology, John Macquarrie says that theology ‘implicitly claims to have its place in the total intellectual endeavour of mankind’. The question I want to discuss is this: in what terms, if any, can that claim be justified?

I want to put forward a certain view of the logical foundation of religious belief. It is, in a sentence, the view that religious belief is constituted by the concept of god. This view will be discussed under three headings. First, I shall explain as clearly as I can what I mean by it. Secondly, I shall indicate what seem to me to be interesting parallels, both with regard to universes of discourse in general and to religious belief in particular, (...) between my idea of a constitutive concept and Wittgenstein's ideas of a fundamental proposition and a religious ‘picture’. Thirdly, I shall try to substantiate the view I take of the logical foundation of religious belief by rebutting three conceivable objections to it: namely, that it rests on an illegitimate craving for generality, that it is at variance with common usage, and that it consigns religious belief to an intellectual ghetto. (shrink)

Hud Hudson presents an innovative view of the metaphysics of human persons according to which human persons are material objects but not human organisms. In developing his account, he formulates and defends a unique collection of positions on parthood, persistence, vagueness, composition, identity, and various puzzles of material constitution. The author also applies his materialist metaphysics to issues in ethics and in the philosophy of religion. He examines the implications for ethics of his metaphysical views for standard arguments addressing (...) the moral permissibility of our treatment of human persons and their parts, fetuses and infants, the irreversibly comatose, and corpses. He argues that his metaphysics provides the best foundation in the philosophy of religion for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. Hudson addresses a broad range of metaphysical issues, but among his most strikingly original contributions are his defense of the "Partist" view and his argument for the compatibility of Christianity with a materialistic theory of human persons. (shrink)

Hud Hudson offers a fascinating examination of philosophical reasons to believe in hyperspace. He explores non-theistic reasons in the first chapter and theistic ones towards the end; in the intervening sections he inquires into a variety of puzzles in the metaphysics of material objects that are either generated by the hypothesis of hyperspace or else informed by it, with discussions of receptacles, boundaries, contact, occupation, and superluminal motion. Anyone engaged with contemporary metaphysics, and many philosophers of religion, will find (...) much to stimulate them here. (shrink)

Secession and the civil war that followed are often regarded as having exclusively structural determinants, expressed in political cleavages. From this point of view, these events are explained, variously, by the rise of abolitionism in the North or sectionalism in the Union or some cultural attribute of the South. This focus gets us part of the way in understanding the events that led to secession, the creation of a Southern Confederacy, and civil war, but this interpretation says too little about (...) precisely how these events and processes played out. Secession occurred in time, sequentially and dynamically, with one state leading and other states following. This article offers a processual specification of the conditions of Southern secession and the creation of a Southern Confederacy. It does so by focusing on mobilization within the vanguard state, South Carolina, and the consequences of this activity for other Southern states. (shrink)

Jebb in outlining the differences between ancient and modem oratory maintains that while modern orators try to give the impression that their speeches are extempore, the Greeks polished their speeches with fastidious care and were not ashamed to admit laboured preparation. This view, which is widely held, needs considerable qualification. The purpose of this article is.

* Why should offenders be punished - what should punishments be designed to achieve? * Why has imprisonment become the normal punishment for crime in modern industrial societies? * What is the relationship between theories of punishment and the actual penalties inflicted on offenders? This revised and updated edition of a highly successful text provides a comprehensive account of the ideas and controversies that have arisen within law, philosophy, sociology and criminology about the punishment of criminals. Written in a clear, (...) accessible style, it summarises major philosophical ideas - retribution, rehabilitation, incapacitation - and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. This new edition has been updated throughout including, for example, a new section on recent cultural studies of punishment and on the phenomenon of mass imprisonment that has emerged in the United States. This second edition includes a new chapter on restorative justice, which has developed considerably in theory and in practice since the publication of the first edition. The sociological perspectives of Durkheim, the Marxists, Foucault and their contemporary followers are analysed and assessed. A section on the criminological perspective on punishment looks at the influence of theory on penal policy, and at the impact of penal ideologies on those on whom punishment is inflicted. The contributions of feminist theorists, and the challenges they pose to masculinist accounts of punishment, are included. The concluding chapter presents critiques of the very idea of punishment, and looks at contemporary proposals which could make society's response to crime less dependent on punishment than at present. Understanding Justice has been designed for students from a range of disciplines and is suitable for a variety of crime-related courses in sociology, social policy, law and social work. It will also be useful to professionals in criminal justice agencies and to all those interested in understanding the issues behind public and political debates on punishment. (shrink)

In his recent article, Nicolas Rasmussen (2001) is harshly critical of what he terms 'empirical philosophy of science', a philosophy that takes seriously the history of science in advancing philosophical pronouncements about science. He motivates his criticism by reflecting on recent history in microbiology involving the 'discovery' of a new bacterial organelle, the mesosome, during the 1950's and 1960's, and the subsequent retraction of this discovery by experimental microbiologists during the late 1970's and early 1980's. In particular, he argues that (...) there was a lack of constancy in the methods microbiologists used in approaching the issue of the existence of mesosomes, and that in fact a similar sort of 'methodological flux' pervades all experimental work. My goal here is to refute Rasmussen's doctrine of flux, and in turn to re-establish order in our understanding of the methods and strategies of experimenters. My strategy in achieving this goal is to re-visit the same crucial research articles in the history of the mesosome episode that Rasmussen (2001) visits; and what I find upon returning to this literature is not flux, as Rasmussen seems to find, but a constancy of method in experimental reasoning, a constancy codified by what I call 'reliable process reasoning'. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1896 Edition.

It is commonly thought that Jean Perrin argued for the reality of atoms in the early twentieth century by using what Wesley Salmon calls a “common cause” argument, also known as robustness reasoning. After citing some concerns with this interpretation of Perrin, I offer a different interpretation of Perrin’s work that more closely depicts the details of Perrin’s reasoning in his relevant published writings. I then offer a historical argument that supports this interpretation and discuss the philosophical merits of Perrin’s (...) style of reasoning as I have presented it. I close by showing how my interpretation is distinct from previous interpretations of Perrin’s work. (shrink)

Introduction In the first four chapters of this book, I develop and defend a monistic account of human persons according to which human persons are highly ...

The fact of evil has worried theists for a long time. The earliest clear statement of this worry is perhaps to be found in the book of Habbakuk: (i, 13). More precisely formulated, it comes to this: if God is good and omnipotent, why evil ? From his goodness it would follow necessarily that he does not will evil and from his omnipotence that he could prevent it; why then should it occur? Theists have attempted to escape from this dilemma (...) by means of an argument which turns on the claim that human beings are, to some degree at any rate, free to choose and act as they will. They are free to do good or evil; frequently they choose the latter and that is why evils, or at least many of them, occur. This human freedom, however, is a necessary condition of personality and, as such, a great good; so it is perfectly consistent with the goodness of God that he should will it. But what of his omnipotence? The point of the argument is that God has to allow those evils which result from men making evil choices, and this certainlylooks, at first blush, like a limitation of his power. But, we are assured,it is not really a limitation because all it amounts to is that God cannot do the logically impossible, viz., make beings who, at one and the same time, are both free to do what they will and pre-determined to do good.To deny that God can do the logically impossible, of course, is not to den his omnipotence; it is merely to point out that there are some things which it would not make sense to say that he had done. (shrink)

This book argues that language is a network of concepts which in turn is part of the general cognitive network of the mind. It challenges the widely-held view that language is an innate mental module with its own special internal organization. It shows that language has the same internal organization as other areas of knowledge such as social relations and action schemas, and reveals the rich links between linguistic elements and contextual categories. Professor Hudson presents a new theory of (...) how we learn and use our knowledge of language. He puts this to work in a series of extended explorations of morphology, syntax, semantics, and sociolinguistics. Every step of his argument and exposition is illustrated with examples, including the kind mainstream theory finds it hard to analyse. He introduces the latest version of his influential theory of Word Grammar and shows how it can be used to explain the operations of language and as a key to understanding the associated operations of the mind. (shrink)

Did Wittgenstein think that language-games have presuppositions? He sometimes speaks as if he thought that they do, at other times as though he thought that they do not. For examples, in On Certainty 110, after pointing out that the business of giving grounds for what we say has to come to an end sometime, he remarks, ‘but the end is not an ungrounded presupposition’; whereas, in 115, after warning us that if we try to doubt everything we shall not get (...) as far as doubting anything, he gives as his reason ‘the game of doubting itself presupposes certainty’. It is of some importance for a correct understanding of Wittgenstein to clear up this apparent contradiction. (shrink)

There have been and continue to be disagreements about how to consider the traditional square of opposition and the traditional inferences of obversion, conversion, contraposition and inversion from the perspective of contemporary quantificational logic. Philosophers have made many different attempts to save traditional inferences that are invalid when they involve empty classes. I survey some of these attempts and argue that the only satisfactory way of saving all the traditional inferences is to make the existential assumption that both the subject (...) and predicate classes and their complement classes are non-empty for all the propositions we admit. I briefly indicate the room for continued controversy over how properly to interpret Aristotle?s statements regarding these inferences, but find some plausibility in the views of Manley Thompson and A.N.Prior that Aristotle had in mind a particular arrangement of existential import unfamiliar to most contemporary logicians. (shrink)

Readers of the poems of Dracontius as edited and expounded by F. Vollmer may well receive the impression that the poet was incapable of the Latin tongue and was given to turns and expressions intelligible only to himself and such painstaking students as his editor. The language of the true Drac., though often stiff and artificial, does not, however, call for superhuman powers of interpretation, and the bewilderment of his readers is occasioned largely by the faulty tradition of the text (...) and the conservatism of an editor who either refuses to recognize the corruptions which confront him, or is content with superficial corrections sufficient to restore some semblance of grammar whether or not accompanied by sense. To the text of Drac. Vollm. certainly made a valuable contribution, but his unshakable faith in the integrity of scribes led to a frequent acceptance of the false as the true; that the transmission of the text may have been left to the heedless or the ignorant is not a possibility which appears to have occurred to him. There can be no doubt that the manuscripts on which the text depends are full of corruptions, and many of these have received either inadequate attention or none at all; where convincing remedies have been proposed by previous scholars, Vollm. has shown all too often a blind indifference. The poems of Drac. deserve, indeed, more sympathetic treatment, for they are by no means without merit. The Christian works at least, written during his imprisonment, contain flashes of real poetry and are characterized by a warmth of feeling inspired by the poet's personal miseries and genuine belief in the goodness of God; that they were read and imitated in the most diverse lands of the Christian world is not surprising. The following notes represent for the most part an attempt to improve on Vollm.'s text of the De laudibus dei and the Satisfactio in certain passages where the manuscript reading appears to me to have been either improperly retained or imperfectly emended. I have already dealt with a number of other unsatisfactory passages in C.Q., vol. xxxiii, pp. 157–62, and vol. xl, pp. 92–100. The text quoted is in each case that of Vollm.'s P.L.M. edition. (shrink)

This essay uses Garland’s framework from The Culture of Control to suggest an agenda for critical penology. This includes, as well as the analysis of choices actually made and the cultural repertoire actually available, describing and advocating other possible choices, and analysing the conditions of possibility for the adoption of other (better) policies and practices; and examining the implications for the future of choices which are currently being made. Carlen’s Women and Punishment: The Struggle for Justice and Garland’s edited collection (...) Mass Imprisonment in the USA are examples of these penologies. Another way in which penologists, social theorists and philosophers can attempt to influence policy choices is to contribute to enlargement of the available cultural repertoire. The development and promotion of restorative justice is given as one example of this; another is work by philosophers such as Duff, Matravers and Norrie which addresses questions such as the source, nature and limits of penal communities; the basis of political obligation, and the relational nature of responsibility for crime. (shrink)