Fire is a force that links everyday human activities to some of the most powerful energetic movements of the Earth. Drawing together the energy-centred social theory of Georges Bataille, the fire-centred environmental history of Stephen Pyne, and the work of a number of ‘pyrotechnology’ scholars, the paper proposes that the generalized study of combustion is a key to contextualizing human energetic practices within a broader ‘economy’ of terrestrial and cosmic energy flows. We examine the relatively recent turn towards fossil-fuelled ‘internal (...) combustion’ in the light of a much longer human history of ‘broadcast’ burning of vegetation and of artisanal pyrotechnologies – the use of heat to transform diverse materials. A combustion-centred analysis, it is argued, brings human collective life into closer contact with the geochemical and geologic conditions of earthly existence, while also pointing to the significance of explorative, experimental and even playful dispositions towards energy and matter. (shrink)

Neurulation, the curling of the neuroepithelium to form the neural tube, is an essential component of the development of animal embryos. Defects of neural tube formation, which occur with an overall frequency of one in 500 human births, are the cause of severe and distressing congenital abnormalities. However, despite the fact that there is increasing information from animal experiments about the mechanisms which effect neural tube formation, much less is known about the fundamental causes of neural tube defects (NTD). The (...) use of computer models provides one way of gaining clues about the ways in which neurulation may be compromised. Here we employ one computer model to examine the robustness of different cellular mechanisms which are thought to contribute to neurulation. The model, modified from that of Odell et al (Odell, G.M., Oster, G., Alberch, P. and Burnside, B., (1981)) mimics neurulation by laterally propagating a wave of apical contraction along an active zone within a ring of cells. We link the results to experimental evidence gained from studies of embryos in which neurulation has been perturbed. The results indicate that alteration of one of the properties of non-neural tissue can delay or inhibit neurulation, supporting the idea, gained from observation of embryos bearing genes which predispose to NTD, that the tissue underlying the neuroepithelium may contribute to the elevation of the neural folds. The results also show that reduction of the contractile properties of a small proportion of the neuroepithelial cell population may have a profound effect on overall tissue profiling. The results suggest that the elevation of the neural folds, and hence successful neurulation, may be vulnerable to relatively minor deficiencies in cell properties. (shrink)

The word 'athletics' is derived from the Greek verb 'to struggle for a prize'. After reading this book, no one will see the Olympics as a graceful display of Greek beauty again, but as war by other means. Nigel Spivey paints a portrait of the Greek Olympics as they really were - fierce contests between bitter rivals, in which victors won kudos and rewards, and losers faced scorn and even assault. Victory was almost worth dying for, and a number (...) of athletes did just that. Many more resorted to cheating and bribery. Contested always bitterly and often bloodily, the ancient Olympics were not an idealistic celebration of unity, but a clash of military powers in an arena not far removed from the battlefield. (shrink)

It is well established that neural grafts can exert functional effects on the host animal by a multiplicity of different mechanisms – by diffuse release of trophic molecules, neurohormones, and deficient neurotransmitters, as well as by growth and reformation of neural circuits. Our challenge is to understand how these different mechanisms complement each other.

This study of the implications of Gillick competence argues it is an unnecessary burden with an unethical foundation. The ethics of adolescent medical decision-making is a fraught area for medical ethics because it deals with the threshold boundaries between childhood and adulthood and Gillick adds a burden upon children and adolescent patients that is unwarranted and through which damage is done to integral human relationships. In light of Gillick, it can be seen that the context of adolescent decision-making and childhood, (...) is a neglected topic of ethical reflection. (shrink)

This book argues that the institutions of law, and the structures of legal thought, are to be understood by reference to a moral ideal of freedom or independence from the power of others. The moral value and justificatory force of law are not contingent upon circumstance, but intrinsic to its character. Doctrinal legal arguments are shaped by rival conceptions of the conditions for realization of the idea of law. In making these claims, the author rejects the viewpoint of much contemporary (...) legal theory, and seeks to move jurisprudence closer to an older tradition of philosophical reflection upon law, exemplified by Hobbes and Kant. Modern analytical jurisprudence has tended to view these older philosophies as confused precisely in so far as they equate an understanding of law's nature with a revelation of its moral basis. According to most contemporary legal theorists, the understanding and analysis of existing institutions is quite distinct from any enterprise of moral reflection, but the relationship between ideals and practices is much more intimate than this approach would suggest. Some institutions can be properly understood only when they are viewed as imperfect attempts to realize moral or political ideals; and some ideals can be conceived only by reference to their expression in institutions. (shrink)

Sinnott, Nigel I had been looking forward to 29 July 1962 for a very long time. It marked the end often years spent at two English private boarding schools with their ethos of 'muscular Christianity': a proto-fascist mix of semi-monastic living, lots of compulsory sport and relentless Anglican religious indoctrination. I had loathed almost every day I had spent at these schools, as I disliked ball games and strenuous exercise from the outset, and by the time I was ten, (...) or maybe a few months older, I was a staunch atheist. I was by temperament a studious, imaginative and inquiring boy, but I loathed the formality, petty regimentation, narrow conservative mind-set, intolerance and sometimes brutality of the school system in which I found myself. I had spent a decade feeling confined, frustrated, very bored, often cold and sometimes frightened. I resolved that, if I ever had children of my own, they would never be brought up and 'educated' like this. (shrink)

Sinnott, Nigel Review of: Dare to stand alone: The story of Charles Bradlaugh, by Bryan Niblett, Oxford: Kramedart Press, 2010, 2011, viii, 391 pp., 4 plates. ISBN 978-0-9564743-0-8.

Sinnott, Nigel I enjoyed the article on Islam by Dr John Perkins, as it said a number of things that needed saying; but I did at times feel it was a bit too black and white in its approach.

Sinnott, Nigel Review of: Worst words, by Don Watson with Helen Smith Sydney: Vintage Books, 2015. 439 pp., pbk., ISBN 978 0 85798 344 2.

Abstractα/β barrels have an ill‐defined origin. Evidence exists which favours their divergent evolution from a common ancestral barrel and convergent evolution to a stable fold. However, recent sequence and structural information for the flavin oxidase/dehydrogenase family of barrel enzymes indicate that sub‐families of α/β barrels have evolved divergently. The modular fusion of barrel domains with core structures from other gene families has also contributed to the evolution of related but catalytically distinct enzyme molecules within each sub‐family of the flavin oxidases/dehydrogenases. (...) An analysis of the structures and sequences of the flavin oxidases/dehydrogenases has now enabled studies focusing on the evolutionary origins and modular assembly of this important family of proteins to be initiated. (shrink)

Cognitive science has always included multiple methodologies and theoretical commitments. The philosophy of cognitive science should embrace, or at least acknowledge, this diversity. Bechtel’s (2009a) proposed philosophy of cognitive science, however, applies only to representationalist and mechanist cognitive science, ignoring the substantial minority of dynamically oriented cognitive scientists. As an example of nonrepresentational, dynamical cognitive science, we describe strong anticipation as a model for circadian systems (Stepp & Turvey, 2009). We then propose a philosophy of science appropriate to nonrepresentational, dynamical (...) cognitive science. (shrink)

Cholinergic-rich grafts have been shown to be effective in restoring maze-learning deficits in rats with lesions of the forebrain cholinergic projection system. However, the relevance of those studies to developing novel therapies for Alzheimer's disease is questioned.

Can theories of mental imagery, conscious mental contents, developed within cognitive science throw light on the obscure (but culturally very significant) concept of imagination? Three extant views of mental imagery are considered: quasi‐pictorial, description, and perceptual activity theories. The first two face serious theoretical and empirical difficulties. The third is (for historically contingent reasons) little known, theoretically underdeveloped, and empirically untried, but has real explanatory potential. It rejects the “traditional” symbolic computational view of mental contents, but is compatible with recentsituated (...) cognition and active visionapproaches in robotics. This theory is developed and elucidated. Three related key aspects of imagination (non‐discursiveness, creativity, and seeing as) raise difficulties for the other theories. Perceptual activity theory presents imagery as non‐discursive and relates it closely to seeing as. It is thus well placed to be the basis for a general theory of imagination and its role in creative thought. (shrink)

We attempt in this paper to define a new field of study for philosophy: philosophy of management. We briefly speculate why the interest some managers and management writers take in philosophy has been so little reciprocated and why it needs to be. Then we suggest the scope of this new branch of philosophy and how it relates to and overlaps with other branches. We summarise some key matters philosophers of management should concern themselves with and pursue one in some detail. (...) We conclude with an invitation. (shrink)

This book uses the philosophy of Wittgenstein as a perspective from which to challenge the idea of a critical social theory, represented pre-eminently by Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar.

World Ethics: The New Agenda identifies different ways of thinking about ethics, and of thinking ethically about international and global relations. It also considers several theories of world ethics in the context of issues such as war and peace, world poverty, the environment and the United Nations. The discussion is grounded in an awareness of the post-9/11 world in which we live and offers a more detailed exploration of the idea of global citizenship and a global or cosmopolitan ethic.

Describes when and how humans first acquired and then utilized symbolic representation and explores how art has been used throughout history as a means of mass persuasion.

Talk of “essences” has, since Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, gained significant currency in contemporary philosophy. It is no longer unfashionable to talk about the essence of this or that (natural) kind, and as such we now find a variety of brands of essentialism on the market including B.D. Ellis’s scientific essentialism, David Oderberg’s real Essentialism, Alexander Bird’s dispositional essentialism, and the contemporary essentialism of Kripke and Putnam. -/- Almost all these brands of essentialism share a particular gloss on Locke’s (...) famous objection to Aristotle that natural kinds are demarcated by nominal essences not real essences. Thus Oderberg claims that ‘Empiricists take [real] essences to be paradigmatically unobservable’ and that this ‘objection goes back at least to John Locke’ (Oderberg 2007: 21). Bird, presenting his dispositional essentialism, defines a notion of “being” as ‘the reverse of Locke’s definition of essence’ which he takes to be ‘the being of any thing, whereby it is what it is’ (Bird 2007: 100). Joseph LaPorte, discussing nominal and real essences, claims that ‘Kripke and Putnam seem to affirm something more substantive: that biological kinds have “real essences” in Locke’s terminology’ (LaPorte 2004: 49). Even avowed anti-essentialists such as John Dupré sanction the standard criticism of Locke that his scepticism about the knowability of real essences was ‘premature’, and claim that ‘genuine natural kinds provide the extensions of many terms of natural language, where these natural kinds are determined by true Lockean real essences’ (Dupré 1993: 22). -/- All of these essentialisms (even Dupré’s anti-essentialism) are wrong about Locke. Oderberg is wrong to claim that Locke thought that real essences were paradigmatically unobservable; Bird is wrong to think that Locke’s notion of essence is the being of anything whereby it is what it is; LaPorte is wrong to think that Kripke and Putnam are talking about Lockean real essences (although so are Kripke and Putnam); and Dupré is wrong to think that genuine natural kinds (if by genuine he means objective or mind-independent) are determined but true Lockean real essences . -/- The mistake stems from a standard, but ultimately incorrect, interpretation of Locke’s discussion of essences in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . This mistaken interpretation (Lowe 1995, 2006, Von Leyden 1973, Wiggins 1974) takes Locke to mean, by “real essence”, the Aristotelian notion i.e. ‘the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is’ (Essay III.iii.15), and interprets his objection as epistemological: we cannot come to know what real essences are, and therefore they cannot figure in our classifications of things into kinds. -/- This paper will present and defend the following two claims: i) that Locke’s notion of “real essence” is not the Aristotelian notion, and ii) that Locke’s objection to the Aristotelian notion was not merely epistemological. The first claim can be defended by presenting and applying Vienne’s (1993) terminological revision. Vienne argues that Locke did not introduce a dichotomy between real and nominal essence, but a trichotomy between real essence, nominal essence and real constitution. This terminological revision will be employed to highlight where ambiguous uses of the phrase “real essence” have caused some serious misunderstandings of Locke’s philosophy. The second claim (steering Locke around what is the classic objection to his thesis) can be defended by presenting a novel way of splitting up Locke’s objections to the Aristotelian notion of essence. The analysis will show that Locke’s anti-essentialism is still in good shape, and of contemporary significance. (shrink)

Against the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while it is tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of just war thinking, Nigel Biggar argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice.

Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind's eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli. It is also generally understood to bear intentionality (i.e., mental images are always images of something or other), and thereby to function as a form of mental representation. Traditionally, visual mental imagery, the most discussed variety, was thought (...) to be caused by the presence of picturelike representations (mental images) in the mind, soul, or brain, but this is no longer universally accepted. (shrink)

The 'postmodern condition,' in which instrumentalism finally usurps all other considerations, has produced a kind of intellectual paralysis in the world of education. The authors of this book show how such postmodernist thinkers as Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard illuminate puzzling aspects of education, arguing that educational theory is currently at an impasse. They postulate that we need these new and disturbing ideas in order to "think again" fruitfully and creatively about education.

Against the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while it is tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of just war thinking, Nigel Biggar argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice.

During the past four decades, the Netherlands played a leading role in the debate about euthanasia and assisted suicide. Despite the claim that other countries would soon follow the Dutch legalization of euthanasia, only Belgium and the American state of Oregon did. In many countries, intense discussions took place. This article discusses some major contributions to the discussion about euthanasia and assisted suicide as written by Nigel Biggar, Arthur J. Dyck, Neil M. Gorsuch, and John Keown. They share a (...) concern that legalization will undermine a society's respect for the inviolability and sanctity of life. Moreover, the Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill is analyzed. All studies use ethical, theological, philosophical, and legal sources. All these documents include references to experiences from the Netherlands. In addition, two recent Dutch documents are analyzed which advocate further liberalization of the Dutch euthanasia practice, so as to include infants and elderly people "suffering from life". (shrink)

The decades between 1770 and 1840 are rich in exotic accounts of the ruin-strewn landscapes of Ethiopia, Egypt, India, and Mexico. Yet it is a field which has been neglected by scholars and which - unjustifiably - remains outside the literary canon. In this pioneering book, Nigel Leask studies the Romantic obsession with these 'antique lands', drawing generously on a wide range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travel books, as well as on recent scholarship in literature, history, geography, and anthropology. (...) Viewing the texts primarily as literary works rather than 'transparent' adventure stories or documentary sources, he sets out to challenge the tendency in modern academic work to overemphasize the authoritative character of colonial discourse. Instead, he addresses the relationship between narrative, aesthetics, and colonialism through the unstable discourse of antiquarianism, exploring the effects of problems of creditworthiness, and the nebulous epistemologicial claims of 'curiosity', on the contemporary status of travel writing.Attentive to the often divergent idioms of elite and popular exoticism, Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing plots the transformation of the travelogue through the period, as the baroque particularism of curiosity was challenged by picturesque aesthetics, systematic 'geographical narrative', and the emergence of a 'transcendental self' axiomatic to Romantic culture. In so doing it offers an important reformulation of the relations between literature, aesthetics, and empire in the late Enlightenment and Romantic periods. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article:Stanley L. Paulson and Bonnie Litschewski Paulson, Normativity and Norms.

What can computers do in principle? What are their inherent theoretical limitations? These are questions to which computer scientists must address themselves. The theoretical framework which enables such questions to be answered has been developed over the last fifty years from the idea of a computable function: intuitively a function whose values can be calculated in an effective or automatic way. This book is an introduction to computability theory (or recursion theory as it is traditionally known to mathematicians). Dr Cutland (...) begins with a mathematical characterisation of computable functions using a simple idealised computer (a register machine); after some comparison with other characterisations, he develops the mathematical theory, including a full discussion of non-computability and undecidability, and the theory of recursive and recursively enumerable sets. The later chapters provide an introduction to more advanced topics such as Gildel's incompleteness theorem, degrees of unsolvability, the Recursion theorems and the theory of complexity of computation. Computability is thus a branch of mathematics which is of relevance also to computer scientists and philosophers. Mathematics students with no prior knowledge of the subject and computer science students who wish to supplement their practical expertise with some theoretical background will find this book of use and interest. (shrink)

Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it. In forty brief chapters, Nigel Warburton guides us on (...) a chronological tour of the major ideas in the history of philosophy. He provides interesting and often quirky stories of the lives and deaths of thought-provoking philosophers from Socrates, who chose to die by hemlock poisoning rather than live on without the freedom to think for himself, to Peter Singer, who asks the disquieting philosophical and ethical questions that haunt our own times. Warburton not only makes philosophy accessible, he offers inspiration to think, argue, reason, and ask in the tradition of Socrates. _A Little History of Philosophy_ presents the grand sweep of humanity's search for philosophical understanding and invites all to join in the discussion. (shrink)

Philosophy begins with questions about the nature of reality and how we should live. These were the concerns of Socrates, who spent his days in the ancient Athenian marketplace asking awkward questions, disconcerting the people he met by showing them how little they genuinely understood. This engaging book introduces the great thinkers in Western philosophy and explores their most compelling ideas about the world and how best to live in it. In forty brief chapters, Nigel Warburton guides us on (...) a chronological tour of the major ideas in the history of philosophy. He provides interesting and often quirky stories of the lives and deaths of thought-provoking philosophers from Socrates, who chose to die by hemlock poisoning rather than live on without the freedom to think for himself, to Peter Singer, who asks the disquieting philosophical and ethical questions that haunt our own times. Warburton not only makes philosophy accessible, he offers inspiration to think, argue, reason, and ask in the tradition of Socrates. _A Little History of Philosophy_ presents the grand sweep of humanity's search for philosophical understanding and invites all to join in the discussion. (shrink)

This article was written as a commentary on a target article by Peter W. Ross entitled "The Location Problem for Color Subjectivism" [Consciousness and Cognition 10(1), 42-58 (2001)], and is published together with it, and with other commentaries and Ross's reply. If you or your library have the necessary subscription you can get PDF versions of the target article, all the commentaries, and Ross's reply to the commentaries here. However, I do not think that it is by any means essential (...) for you to have read Ross's piece in order to understand this one. Ross defends a view called "color physicalism" or color realism that holds (simplifying somewhat) that colors are real physical properties (in typical cases, spectral reflectances of object surfaces). This is in opposition to what is probably a more widely held "subjectivist" view of color, holding that color qualities really exist only in the mind. In my commentary I suggest that a realist view of qualitative properties, such as Ross's, together with a direct, active view of perception, and a concept of "extended mind" (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) may provide the materials for a real solution to the notorious hard problem of consciousness. I sketch this solution in outline. - N.J.T.T. (shrink)

In the recent and not-too-distant past many of our parents, grandparents and forbears believed that a person’s skin colour and physiognomy, gender, or sexuality licensed them being regarded and treated in ways that are now widely recognised as blatantly unjust, disrespectful, cruel and brutal. But the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have hosted a series of radical changes in attitudes, beliefs, behaviour and institutionalised practices with regard to the fundamental moral equality of what were once seen as different “kinds of (...) people.” This paper explores the social structure of such “moral revolutions,” via the Wittgensteinian- and Kuhnian- inspired concepts moral perception, moral certainty, normal morality, and moral paradigm. (shrink)

I Am Dynamite ignites an alternative theory of the self and will, wrapped up in a combustible assault upon scholarly convention. Asking why the real effort of constructing and living within an identity is so often overlooked, it examines the subjective experience of existing in the world, with the power to define and transform oneself. Considering the trials and triumphs of five very different modern subjects--Primo Levi, Ben Glaser, Stanley Spencer, Rachel Silberstein and Friedrich Nietzsche--Nigel Rapport asks: can consciousness (...) of being a self in the world enable control over one's life within it? Calling for a renewed appreciation of the extraordinary within us all, this richly inventive work seeks to restore knowledge to its essential practical and moral aims--aiding and informing the lives we actually live. (shrink)

This article examines four related aspects of Hegel's approach to the teaching of philosophy and to the philosophy of the teacher. Specifically, it highlights some of the views Hegel expressed on education in general whilst Rector of the Nuremberg gymnasium; describes his opinions on the place of philosophy within the school curriculum and the structure of the philosophy course which he designed for his pupils; examines the pedagogy which he employed in teaching his system of philosophy; and offers preliminary comments (...) on his insights into the contradictions which resist the abstract identity of the teacher. (shrink)

The received understanding of Winch’s critique of social science is that he propounded a radically relativist, anti-explanatory and a-critical conception of the legitimate task of ‘social studies’. This conception is presumed to be predicated upon an extension of Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy. I argue, against this view, that Winch reads Wittgenstein through a Kantian framework, and that in fact he advanced a rigorously essentialist and universalist picture of ‘social phenomena’. It is Winch’s underlying Kantian metaphysics that has made his ideas (...) attractive to contemporary architects of critical social theory, such as Giddens and Habermas. However, in opposition to the latter, and in spite of his Kantianism, I discern in Winch a genuinely critical attitude towards social understanding. (shrink)

Slavery seems to us to be a paradigm of a morally wrong institutionalized practice. And yet for most of its millennia-long historical existence it was typically accepted as a natural, necessary, and inevitable feature of the social world. This widespread normative consensus was only challenged toward the end of the eighteenth century. Then, within a hundred years of the emergence of radical moral criticism of slavery, the existing practices had been dismantled and the institution itself “abolished.” How do we explain (...) such a “profound transformation in moral perception” (Davis 1975)? It may seem obvious that the moral agency and character of the leaders and activists of the abolition movement, their supporters, and their governmental representatives were the primary motors of change.That is to say, the various actors involved came to see, recognize, or acknowledge the true (morally evil) nature of slavery and were thereby motivated to act against it. This “commonsense,” “moral explanation” is endorsed by most of the philosophers who have reflected on the morality of slavery. But despite the intuitiveness of thinking that it was the moral agency of the actors, pitted against the evil and injustice of slavery, that brought about the latter’s downfall, I will endeavor to show that such thinking is inadequate both to the facts and to the explanatory desiderata. I contend that it was not ignor ance of the supposedly inherent moral status of slavery that maintained people’s complicity with it, but practical barriers to them conceiving it dispensable. (shrink)

Alice Crary claims that “the standard view of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics” is dominated by “inviolability interpretations”, which often underlie conservative readings of Wittgenstein. Crary says that such interpretations are “especially marked in connection with On Certainty”, where Wittgenstein is represented as holding that “our linguistic practices are immune to rational criticism, or inviolable”. Crary's own conception of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics, which I call the “intrinsically-ethical reading”, derives from the influential New Wittgenstein school (...) of exegesis, and is also espoused by James Edwards, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall. To my eyes, intrinsically-ethical readings present a peculiar picture of ethics, which I endeavour to expose in Part I of the paper. In Part II I present a reading of On Certainty that Crary would call an “inviolability interpretation”, defend it against New Wittgensteinian critiques, and show that this kind of reading has nothing to do with ethical or political conservatism. I go on to show how Wittgenstein's observations on the manner in which we can neither question nor affirm certain states of affairs that are fundamental to our epistemic practices can be fruitfully extended to ethics. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon that I call “basic moral certainty”, which constitutes the foundation of our ethical practices, and the scaffolding or framework of moral perception, inquiry, and judgement. The nature and significance of basic moral certainty will be illustrated through consideration of the strangeness of philosophers' attempts at explaining the wrongness of killing. (shrink)

This book addresses concerns about educational and moral standards in a world increasingly characterised by nihilism. On the one hand there is widespread anxiety that standards are falling; on the other, new machinery of accountability and inspection to show that they are not. The authors in this book state that we cannot avoid nihilism if we are simply _laissez-faire_ about values, neither can we reduce them to standards of performance, nor must we return to traditional values. They state that we (...) need to create a new set of values based on a critical assessment of contemporary practice in the light of a number of philosophical texts that address the question of nihilism, including the work of Nietzsche. (shrink)

A major problem in developing an effective gene therapy for the nervous system lies in understanding the principles that maintain or turn off the expression of genes following their transfer into the CNS.

Theology is based on God's true and unchanging Word, but does it supply an unwavering foundation for spiritual certainties? Brush contends that it does not, because, like science, theology is a human discipline and subject to our limitations of knowledge, interpretation, and objectivity. In part one, Brush unpacks this contention, showing how Christians both past and present have arrived at conclusions that actually run counter to biblical teaching, and how these interpretive viewpoints have changed over time. In part two, he (...) makes the case that flawed theological positions have resulted in views that needlessly conflict with science, and that these clashes can be resolved with more accurate formulations. Brush evenly evaluates questions including the age of the earth, the origin of life, and the end of time."--Publisher. (shrink)

Philosopher's zombies are hypothetical beings behaviorally, functionally, and perhaps even physically indistinguishable from normal humans, but who lack our consciousness. Many people seem to be convinced that such zombies are a real conceptual possibility, and that this bare possibility entails that understanding human consciousness must remain forever beyond the reach of science. However, the conceptual entailments of zombiehood have not been sufficiently examined. This brief article shows that any way of understanding the behavior of zombies that does in fact support (...) the suggested entailment, leads to contradictions and absurdities. Zombies are _not_ conceptually possible. (shrink)