As theorists, developers, and practitioners of the anticipatory governance of emerging technologies, we applaud Ankeny et al.’s...

College cheating is prevalent, with rates ranging widely from 9 to 95%. Research has been exclusively conducted with enrolled college students. This study examined the prevalence of cheating in a sample of college alumni, who risk less in disclosing academic dishonesty than current students. A total of 273 alumni reported on their prevalence and perceived severity of 19 cheating behaviors. The vast majority of participants report having engaged in some form of cheating during their undergraduate career. The most common forms (...) of cheating were “copying from another student's assignment” and “allowing others to copy from your assignment.” More students reported cheating in classes for their major than other classes. Males and females cheated at the same rates in classes for their major, and males reported higher rates of cheating than females in nonmajor classes. Respondents reported that their top reasons for cheating were “lack of time” and “to help a friend.”. (shrink)

We extend the concept that life is an informational phenomenon, at every level of organisation, from molecules to the global ecological system. According to this thesis: living is information processing, in which memory is maintained by both molecular states and ecological states as well as the more obvious nucleic acid coding; this information processing has one overall function—to perpetuate itself; and the processing method is filtration of, and synthesis of, information at lower levels to appear at higher levels in complex (...) systems . We show how information patterns, are united by the creation of mutual context, generating persistent consequences, to result in ‘functional information’. This constructive process forms arbitrarily large complexes of information, the combined effects of which include the functions of life. Molecules and simple organisms have already been measured in terms of functional information content; we show how quantification may be extended to each level of organisation up to the ecological. In terms of a computer analogy, life is both the data and the program and its biochemical structure is the way the information is embodied. This idea supports the seamless integration of life at all scales with the physical universe. The innovation reported here is essentially to integrate these ideas, basing information on the ‘general definition’ of information, rather than simply the statistics of information, thereby explaining how functional information operates throughout life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:347 THE ROLE OF PART XII IN HUME'S DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION Anyone appreciative of Hume's greatness as a philosopher will want to suppose that the Dialogues both form a coherent whole and express Hume's own views on natural religion or religion based on reason (as opposed to religion based on revelation). In the last connection, given what we know of Hume's epistemology, life, and correspondence, one would be (...) inclined to suppose that he would reject out of hand the claims of revealed religion and contend that if there existed an acceptable religion it would have to be some form of natural religion. But insofar as natural religion claimed to establish scientifically the existence and nature of God one would envisage Hume dissenting. Now as long as we restrict our gaze to Parts I-XI of the Dialogues we seem to be able, easily enough, to satisfy all these suppositions. In Part IV, under the name of 'mysticism, ' revealed religion is summarily and facetiously dismissed as 2 indistinguishable from atheism. Demea's apparently permanent departure from the discussion at the conclusion of Part XI as much as says, symbolically, that revealed religion is not a serious contender for one's belief. Its a priori arguments -- the argument from sufficient reason and the ontological argument -- are almost as shortly attacked and dismissed (D 188-192). Also quite in keeping with Hume's philosophical view on knowledge of matters of fact is, on the other hand, the lengthy and detailed examination he bestows on the empiricist argument from design. That Philo, ostensibly his spokesman, is however able to uncover all kinds of logical short-comings in its claims to scientifically 348 establish the existence and nature of God does not surprise us; it coheres perfectly with our preconceived picture of Hume the skeptic, and his system as restricting science to numbers and quantities or, in the term's looser sense, to human nature and its more immediate surroundings. In short, Parts I-XI seem to be all of one Humean whole. But at first and even second glance Part XII notoriously seems to tear our hopes to find coherence and a plausible representation of Hume to tatters. There are, for one thing, those mocking sentences that seem to paint Hume in the colors of a devout, believing Christian, 'avid' for revelation. Thus, at the end of Part XII, apparently expressing Hume's deepest convictions, Philo says that "a person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity" and immediately afterwards, "To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian" (D 227, 228). For another thing, in Part XII Hume seems to be completely reversing his refutations in Parts I-XI of the argument from design's claims to establish the existence and nature of God. Thus, where in Part II he had Philo reject the use of causal reasoning in the establishment of a Mind as the first cause of the universe on the relevantly Humean grounds that, to do so, "it were requisite, that we had experience of the origin of worlds" (D 150), in Part XII he has Philo, apparently speaking for himself (Hume), argue that "as there are also considerable differences, we have reason to suppose a proportional difference in the causes; and in particular ought to attribute a much higher degree of power and energy to the supreme cause than any we have ever observed in mankind. 349 Here then the existence of a DEITY is plainly ascertained by reason" (D 217). Indeed, all forms of the argument of design, purely analogical as well as causal, seem resurrected in Part XII, although they were one and all hanged and buried in Parts I-XI. Moreover, it seems that in Part XII Hume via Philo is saying that science itself leads us "to acknowledge a first intelligent Author" (D 214-215). Before proceeding to deal with certain other incoherencies with which Part XII seems to confront us let us address ourselves to the two that I have so far... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Missing Shade of Blue Re-viewed John 0. Nelson It is obviously important for Hume's purposes in the Treatise to maintain that simple ideas are always founded in precedent, resembling impressions;1 andhe explicitly, overandover, doesso, evensometimes being so carried away by this first principle ofhis science of man (T 7) or so careless as to say that not just all simple ideas but all ideas are founded in precedent, (...) resembling impressions. At the same time, as often noted, Hume explicitly maintains that it is possible for there to be a simple idea having no precedent, corresponding impression. He argues: There is however one contradictory phaenomenon, which may prove, that 'tis not absolutely impossible for ideas to go before their correspondent impressions... Suppose... a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue... Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, beplac'd before him... Now Iask, whether 'tis possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himselfthe idea ofthat particular shade, tho' it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there arefew but will be ofopinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always derived from the correspondent impressions. (T 5) Nowjust prior to this concession (as Cummins calls it ), Hume has said that the full examination ofthis question [the causal relationship between ideas and impression] is the subject of the present treatise; and therefore we shall here content ourselves with establishing one general proposition, That all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they exactly represent. (T 4) Volume XV Number 2 353 JOHN O. NELSON And just after the same concession, that a simple idea may be raised up which does not have a prior, correspondent impression, Hume says that it still remains true, that all our simple ideas proceed either mediately or immediately, from their correspondent impressions (T 7). Thus we have Hume explicitly asserting, it seems, both that all simple ideas have precedent correspondent impressions and that they do not. But this, on the face ofit, is an arrant contradiction! Can Hume have Homerically nodded? We have been quoting from the Treatise, but Hume makes the very same contradictory-seeming claims in the Enquiryl A thinker of Hume's acumen might nod for a page or two's quarter hour but not for all of nine years! Moreover, in both places Hume refers to the phenomenon of the impression-less idea ofblue as a contradictory phenomenon, indicating clearly enough that he was himself aware of there seeming to be an inconsistency here in his contentions. What can possibly be going on? Is Hume deliberately being paradoxical? Perhaps trying, for sensation's sake, to shock the reader and so increase sales of his work, as some commentators in the past might have wished to say? But this would be at the expense ofhis own contentions and principles and not the reader's, and not even Hume's bitterest foes and most malicious critics — so far as I know — have ever proposed that Hume would, figuratively speaking, like Oedipus, gouge out his own eyes, even in order to increase sales of the Treatise, nor does it make the slightest sense to think he would. The mystery deepens when we remember that Hume has said, in defining the program of the Treatise, that his intention is to establish the one general proposition that all our simple ideas in their first appearance are deriv'd from simple impressions, which are correspondentto them (T4). What astrange way, we want to exclaim, to show that all our simple ideas are derived from correspondent simple impressions by almost immediately afterwards arguing that it is possible to have an idea that has had no correspondent, precedent impression! Such an egregious nonsequitur mightbe expected ofan absolutely incompetent beginner in philosophy, but we are speaking of David Hume, generally recognized as the profoundest and most acute of... (shrink)

My final aim in this paper is to show that Descartes is not guilty, as is so often maintained, of circular argumentation in the Meditations. But first it is important to uncover and remove certain tenacious misconceptions and confusions concerning what goes on in the Meditations which lend credence to the charge of circular argumentation. In this connection Mr. Harry Frankfurt's recent article, “Memory and the Cartesian Circle,” is peculiarly instructive; for it presents not only a completely untenable defence of (...) Descartes but one that, implicitly at least, rests on the very misconceptions that give substance to the notion of a Cartesian Circle. With the intention, then, of clearing the ground for the construction of my own defence of Descartes, I shall spend the first part of this paper examining Frankfurt's central thesis, the errors contained in it, and their sources. This thesis is contained in his statement, which I shall henceforth designate by the letter “J,” “Descartes did not attempt to justify present clear and distinct perceptions.”. (shrink)

Let me first explain what I am not attacking in this paper. I am not attacking, for instance, the right of free speech or any of the other specific rights listed in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights or the United Nations' Charter. I am, rather, attacking any specific right's being called a ‘human right’. I mean to show that any such designation is not only fraudulent but, in case anyone might want to say that there can be noble lies, (...) grossly wicked, amounting indeed to genocide. (shrink)

WHEN, CONTROVERSIALLY, IT IS MAINTAINED that Aristotle was a functionalist, what is meant by "functionalist" cannot have the sense of "teleological functionalist," for in that sense there can be no doubt that Aristotle was a functionalist. The sense of "functionalism" that is patently being exploited is that which appears in contemporary philosophies of mind with affinities to logical behaviorism but also with some important divergencies and which Paul Churchland describes as the view that "psychological states are functional states in the (...) sense that for any being to have a psychology is for it to instance or embody a certain functional organization among its sensory inputs, internal states, and motor outputs." It is in this philosophical-psychological sense that the title of this paper controversially asks, Was Aristotle a functionalist? and to which I mean to give a negative answer. Thus, unless otherwise stated, it shall henceforth be this sense of the term that occurs in what follows. In order, however, to avoid ambiguity I shall call such functionalism "mind-functionalism.". (shrink)

Background Forward-looking, democratically oriented governance is needed to ensure that human genome editing serves rather than undercuts public values. Scientific, policy, and ethics communities have recognized this necessity but have demonstrated limited understanding of how to fulfill it. The field of bioethics has long attempted to grapple with the unintended consequences of emerging technologies, but too often such foresight has lacked adequate scientific grounding, overemphasized regulation to the exclusion of examining underlying values, and failed to adequately engage the public. Methods (...) This research investigates the application of scenario planning, a tool developed in the high-stakes, uncertainty-ridden world of corporate strategy, for the equally high-stakes and uncertain world of the governance of emerging technologies. The scenario planning methodology is non-predictive, looking instead at a spread of plausible futures which diverge in their implications for different communities’ needs, cares, and desires. Results In this article we share how the scenario development process can further understandings of the complex and dynamic systems which generate and shape new biomedical technologies and provide opportunities to re-examine and re-think questions of governance, ethics and values. We detail the results of a year-long scenario planning study that engaged experts from the biological sciences, bioethics, social sciences, law, policy, private industry, and civic organizations to articulate alternative futures of human genome editing. Conclusions Through sharing and critiquing our methodological approach and results of this study, we advance understandings of anticipatory methods deployed in bioethics, demonstrating how this approach provides unique insights and helps to derive better research questions and policy strategies. (shrink)

Studies the context of Giordano Bruni's Eroici furori in the light of two traditional literary forms; prose commentaries on verses, and Platonic love treatises.

NATURES AND FUTURES FOR POLITICAL THEORY John S. Nelson What are the problematics, histories, forms, aims, conditions, methods, and topics proper to political theory? Plainly, these change from one context to another; and yet they may ...

In the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights a quite large number of things are said to be ‘human rights’ and though in that Declaration the term ‘inalienable’ is not used to describe the rights in question it has been so used by commentators—at least with respect to some of the rights enumerated. I shall forgo asking the prior question as to whether any such thing as a human right exists and ask simply whether any such thing as an (...) inalienable right exists. My intention will be to show that it does not. (shrink)

In the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights a quite large number of things are said to be ‘human rights’ and though in that Declaration the term ‘inalienable’ is not used to describe the rights in question it has been so used by commentators—at least with respect to some of the rights enumerated. I shall forgo asking the prior question as to whether any such thing as a human right exists and ask simply whether any such thing as an (...) inalienable right exists. My intention will be to show that it does not. (shrink)

Now it cannot be denied, I think, that this argument has the appearance of being sound, that is, both true in its premises and valid in its conclusion. But one surely ought to harbor suspicions concerning an argument which establishes the most momentous of all conclusions upon nothing more than a few propositions. In this paper I shall attempt to show that these suspicions are well-founded by pointing out that the above "proof" derives whatever force it has from an equivocation.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Authorship of the Abstract Revisited John 0. Nelson More than a dozen years ago, in the pages of The Philosophical Quarterly,1 this writer contested Sraffa and Keynes' claim, advanced in the introduction to their edition ofthe Abstract? that it was Hume and not Adam Smith (as traditionally supposed) who was the author of that work. The traditional view, which might be called the Adam Smith authorship-theory, was largely (...) inspired by and seemed nailed shut by Hume's reference to a "Mr Smith" in a letter to Francis Hutcheson, datedMarch 4, 1740.3There appeared tobe goodreasonsforidentifying this "Mr Smith" with Adam Smith and then the latter with the undivulged author of the Abstract. It was known, for instance, that previous to March 4, 1740, Adam Smith had been a student of Hutcheson's and that Hutcheson was in the habit of setting his students the task of writing abstracts of newly published philosophical works.4 Since Hutcheson had originallylooked with favor on both the Treatise and its author,5 it had to seem more than likely that he had set his students the task ofwriting an abstract ofthe newly published Treatise ofHume. It was known, too, that Adam Smith was in possession of a copy ofthe Treatise soon after the date of H.6 Who, then, might be the "Mr Smith" adverted to in H's "My Bookseller has sent to Mr Smith a Copy of my Book, which I hope he has receive, as well as your Letter," except that same student of Hutcheson's, Adam Smith? What other Smith might have been known to Hutcheson, whom Hume could have wanted to refer to? No other Smith appeared to fit the bill. But why should Hume have wanted to refer in his correspondence with Hutcheson to an obscure, sixteen-year-old student ofHutcheson's, besides going to the trouble of having his bookseller send him a copy of the Treatise, unless that student had in some way made himselfnot only known to Hume but so highly regarded that Hume would want to favor him, presumably at his own expense, with a copy ofthe Treatise? The only tenable answer had to seem to be that this same student had composed such a perceptive and laudatory précis of the Treatise for Hutcheson that the latter had shown it to Hume and Hume, in the honest attempt to excite interest and sales of that languishing work, had seen to its publication as the Abstractl These are the reasonings Volume XVII Number 1 83 JOHN O. NELSON and considerations that inspired and seemed to confirm the Adam Smith authorship-theory.7 As can be perceived, these reasonings and considerations all revolve around the reference to a "Mr Smith"in H andthe identification of that Smith with Adam Smith. When, therefore, Sraffa and Keynes in the introduction to their edition oftheAbstract pointed out that there existed another Smith who might arguably be the Mr Smith referred toin H, namely, the DubUn publisher oftwo ofHutcheson's works, John Smith "at the Philosopher's Head on the Blind Quay," its major prop being seemingly knocked out from under it, the Adam Smith authorship-theory crashed—at least in the eyes of the general world—to the ground. And in thelatter's place, various ofits supporting reasons being given a lease on life, such as Hume's well-known endeavors and desires to excite interest in this first work of his, the Hume authorship-theory, so to speak, seated itself. In my previous venture into this subject, "Has the Authorship of An Abstract ofa Treatise ofHuman Nature Really Been Decided?"8 I tried, I believe with some success, to show that Sraffa and Keynes' arguments were not so unanswerable as they were generally taken to be and that, in fact, they presented various difficulties which the traditional theory avoided. But what then occasions this new excursion into these troubled waters? What more is to be said that I did not say in "Decided"? In "Decided" I presented various arguments and considerations that showed that it was unlikely either that Hume was the author of theAbstract or that the Mr Smith referred to in H... (shrink)

This book is a defense of Hume's philosophical principles in the Treatise of Human Nature. Nelson shows that Hume's new philosophy was a uniquely original and profound masterpiece in philosophical literature, worthy of serious study and acceptance. It is argued that Dialoguesis a reflective philosophical autobiography of Hume himself.

We must agree, I think, with Frank Ebersole that there is something preposterous in supposing that the God of religious belief, the God who handed down tablets to Moses on Mt. Sinai, etc., should be proven to exist by the ontological argument. Indeed, when we place the one, the ontological argument, by the side of the other, the God of religious belief, there seems hardly to be any connection between them. But if we agree to this perception of things, what (...) sense can we make of the ontological argument, for example, the “pull” that it sometimes exerts on us? (shrink)

In order to by-pass immaterial historical bickering I shall stipulatively mean by ‘Radical Millianism’ just this much more than what Katz in his recent article in The Philosophical Review , ‘Names without Bearers’ , means by the unqualified term, ‘Millianism’; namely, whereas Katz means by ‘Millianism’ that theory of proper names which holds that proper names ‘have no linguistic meaning,’.

There are, no doubt, a variety of reasons, good and bad, why anyone might want to treat a worker's labour, and most people, consciously or unconsciously do, as a commodity.

This work is a classic dialogue between two philosophers, with the unusual twist that it was actually conducted, not fabricated, by two different philosophers. It presents in a conversational tone the various crucial and not so crucial aspects of the topic of political liberty and what if any value it has for us.

In this essay I try, first, to show that Lockean passages in Book I can be given a Berkeleian interpretation. I take two passages that have, in particular, been cited as allowing only a Lockean interpretation and show how they can be more coherently construed as Berkeleian in their intended meaning. In the process of this demonstration I show that only a Berkeleian interpretation is tenable for Book I. Second, I defend the Berkeleian interpretation against several charges; for instance, a (...) charge of textual inconsistency. I do, however, acknowledge in the process that in the Enquiry and subsequently Hume abandons Berkeley for Locke. I then offer an explanation of why he did and lastly I try to show that though Hume is thereby committed to an inconsistency he provides a way for justifying his (and our) conversational commitment to that inconsistency. (shrink)

In this essay I try, first, to show that Lockean passages in Book I can be given a Berkeleian interpretation. I take two passages that have, in particular, been cited as allowing only a Lockean interpretation and show how they can be more coherently construed as Berkeleian in their intended meaning. In the process of this demonstration I show that only a Berkeleian interpretation is tenable for Book I. Second, I defend the Berkeleian interpretation against several charges; for instance, a (...) charge of textual inconsistency. I do, however, acknowledge in the process that in the Enquiry and subsequently Hume abandons Berkeley for Locke. I then offer an explanation of why he did and lastly I try to show that though Hume is thereby committed to an inconsistency he provides a way for justifying his (and our) conversational commitment to that inconsistency. (shrink)

(1988). Approaches, opportunities and priorities in the rhetoric of political inquiry: A critical synthesis. Social Epistemology: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 21-42.

A r anderson and n d belnap, Jr., Maintained in their 1962 article, "the pure calculus of entailment," that necessary propositions can be entailed only by necessary propositions, And not by contingent ones. Against this r w ashby offered an apparently conclusive counterexample in "entailment and modality" (1963). In support of anderson and belnap, The author of the present paper develops a definition of entailment and argues that contingent propositions never entail necessary ones. However, Psychological factors may intervene in our (...) logical perceptions to produce an appearance or illusion of entailment between a contingent and a necessary proposition. (staff). (shrink)

Various proponents of animal rights—for example, H. J. McCloskey— maintain that while brute animals cannot have; moral rights they can have legal rights. Indeed, McCloskey himself goes so far as to maintain that even inanimate objects are able to have legal rights.1 And why should not inanimate objects be able to? After f all, for there to be a legal right is anything more required than that whatever agency is empowered to issue legal rights simply legislate or proclaim that so-and-so (...) has that legal right? (shrink)