I examine whether it is possible for content relevant to a computer''s behavior to be carried without an explicit internal representation. I consider three approaches. First, an example of a chess playing computer carrying emergent content is offered from Dennett. Next I examine Cummins response to this example. Cummins says Dennett''s computer executes a rule which is inexplicitly represented. Cummins describes a process wherein a computer interprets explicit rules in its program, implements them to form a chess-playing device, then this (...) device executes the rules in a way that exhibits them inexplicitly. Though this approach is intriguing, I argue that the chess-playing device cannot exist as imagined. The processes of interpretation and implementation produce explicit representations of the content claimed to be inexplicit. Finally, the Chinese Room argument is examined and shown not to save the notion of inexplicit information. This means the strategy of attributing inexplicit content to a computer which is executing a rule, fails. (shrink)

Can we know truth even though certain proof is unattainable? Can we be known by Truth? Is there a relationship between belief and truth, and if so, what is the nature of that relationship? Do we need to have faith in reason and in real meaning to be able to reason towards truth? These are the sorts of questions this book seeks to address. In Faith's Knowledge, Paul Tyson argues that all knowledge that aims at truth is always the (...) knowledge of faith. If this is the case, then--against our modernist cultural assumptions about knowledge--truth cannot be had by proof. Yet, if this is true, then mere information and simply objective facts do not (for us as knowers) exist. Knowledge is always embedded in belief, and knowledge and belief is always expressed in relationships, histories, narratives, shared meanings, and power. Hence, a theological sociology of knowledge emerges out of these explorations in thinking about knowledge as a function of faith."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Is magic real? Could anything be real that can't be quantified or scientifically investigated? Are qualities like love, beauty, and goodness really just about hormones and survival? Are strangely immaterial things, like thought and personhood, fully explainable in scientific terms? Does nature itself have any intrinsic value, mysterious presence, or transcendent horizon? Once we ask these questions, the answer is pretty obvious: of course science can't give us a complete picture of reality. Science is very good at what it is (...) good at, but highly important aspects of human meaning are simply outside of science's knowledge range. So how might we better relate scientific facts to qualitative mysteries? How might we integrate our powerful factual knowledge with wisdom about the higher meaning of things? This book defines magic as the real qualities and mysteries of the world that science just can't grasp. It looks at how we came to put magic in the box of subjective make-believe. It explores how we might get it out of that box and back into our understanding of reality. (shrink)

Hewitt's Conceptual Integrated Science is the most widely used textbook in Integrated Science courses. This course covers chemistry, physics, biology, earth science, and astronomy and is mostly taken by Elementary-Education Majors, i.e. future grade-school teachers who are required to take a survey-of-science course.

Part I. Re-discovering a Christian understanding of reality. Two views of reality -- The Christian Platonism of Lewis and Tolkien -- Bridge -- Part II. Christian Platonism and the history of Western ideas. The mythos of modernity -- Platonist ideas in the New Testament -- How Christian is Christian Platonism? -- So what went wrong? -- Is modern truth, without wisdom, believable? -- Part III. Applied Christian metaphysics. Returning to reality.

Science can reveal or conceal the breathtaking wonders of creation. On one hand, knowledge of the natural world can open us up to greater love for the Creator, give us the means of more neighborly care, and fill us with ever-deepening astonishment. On the other hand, knowledge feeding an insatiable hunger for epistemic mastery can become a means of idolatry, hubris, and damage. Crucial to world-respecting science is the role of wonder: curiosity, perplexity, and astonishment. In this volume, philosopher William (...) Desmond explores the relation of the different modes of wonder to modern science. Responding to his thought are twelve thinkers across the domains of science, theology, philosophy, law, poetry, medicine, sociology, and art restoration. (shrink)

For several terms at Cambridge in 1939, Ludwig Wittgenstein lectured on the philosophical foundations of mathematics. A lecture class taught by Wittgenstein, however, hardly resembled a lecture. He sat on a chair in the middle of the room, with some of the class sitting in chairs, some on the floor. He never used notes. He paused frequently, sometimes for several minutes, while he puzzled out a problem. He often asked his listeners questions and reacted to their replies. Many meetings were (...) largely conversation. These lectures were attended by, among others, D. A. T. Gasking, J. N. Findlay, Stephen Toulmin, Alan Turing, G. H. von Wright, R. G. Bosanquet, Norman Malcolm, Rush Rhees, and Yorick Smythies. Notes taken by these last four are the basis for the thirty-one lectures in this book. The lectures covered such topics as the nature of mathematics, the distinctions between mathematical and everyday languages, the truth of mathematical propositions, consistency and contradiction in formal systems, the logicism of Frege and Russell, Platonism, identity, negation, and necessary truth. The mathematical examples used are nearly always elementary. (shrink)

This dual methods study explored one social studies teacher education program as it attempted to incorporate a cycle of practice-based teacher education into a methods course for the purpose of democratizing the teacher education experience. In addition to detailing the pedagogical decisions of the course instructor, researchers followed two social studies teacher candidates into their student teaching experience. Findings suggested that promoting social studies practice through a pedagogy of enactment is not enough. Rather, mentor teachers, course instructors, and teacher candidates (...) need to be aligned pedagogically as to the purposes and practices of social studies education. (shrink)

As I put down my copy of The Making of Men and take up Volumes III and IV of Philosophy in Process, the period of the diary when Weiss was writing the book, I wondered whether the longer work showed more awareness of human weakness and disability. The philosophic program calls for the overcoming of bias and achievement of neutrality. Has Weiss ever admitted that men are sometimes born tired, suffer weaknesses, yield to the temptation of aiming low rather than (...) high, fail to put out much effort in capturing "the free energy" that Weiss ascribes to us all? If Weiss doesn't correct his account of human life that is too much based on his own great strengths, then the philosophy must be criticized as one-sided. Even if he has swept aside laziness as subhuman, much as a good teacher encourages students by expecting the superhuman and ignoring the subhuman, this practical encouragement cannot fully excuse theoretical failure in adequacy. For surely we who know Weiss know that he is not merely a performing artist who sometimes takes the classroom as a stage, but rather is a coach who knows how to bring the best performance out of his team of intellectual athletes. Most coaches expect to win every game and have a philosophy that never anticipates or prepares for failure. Is that why Weiss found himself so much at home in the world of Sport? (shrink)

Most literature on the ethics of global warming focuses on the obligations of industrialized states to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and to help poor countries do likewise. These books are no exception, arguing that the issue is a matter of international justice and equity.

The world is in the early stages of what will be the greatest health crisis since the advent of modern medical technologies. Millions of people—particularly people in many of the world's poor countries—are infected with HIV. The vast majority of these people will go without modern medical intervention or substantial treatment, and will rapidly develop AIDS. The extent of this problem presents profound moral and ethical questions for the world's wealthy people and countries, for it is they who are most (...) able to assist the poor in managing and reversing this human tragedy. (shrink)

The role of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in neurotransmission is well known. But long before synapses are formed in vertebrates, AChE is expressed in young postmitotic neuroblasts that are about to extend the first long tracts. AChE histochemistry can thus be used to map primary steps of brain differentiation. Preceding an possibly inducing AChE in avian brains, the closely related butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) spatially fore-shadows AChE-positive cell areas and the course of their axons. In particular, before spinal motor axons grow, their corresponding rostral (...) sclerotomes and myotomes express BChE, and both their neuronal source and myotomal target cells express AChE. Since axon growth has been found inhibited by acetylcholine, it is postulated that both cholinetsreases can attract neurite growth cones by neutralizing the inhibitor. Thus, the early expression of both cholinesterases that is at least partially independent from classical cholinergic synaptogenesis, sheds new light on the developmental and medical significance of these enzymes. (shrink)

Climate change diplomacy is routinely characterized by preoccupation with narrow and short-term perceived national interests rather than the pressing need to mitigate global warming and respond agg...

Climate change diplomacy is routinely characterized by preoccupation with narrow and short-term perceived national interests rather than the pressing need to mitigate global warming and respond agg...

Johnson and Stricker published an opinion piece in the Journal of Medical Ethics presenting their perspective on the 2008 agreement between the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Connecticut Attorney General with regard to the 2006 IDSA treatment guideline for Lyme disease. Their writings indicate that these authors hold unconventional views of a relatively common tick-transmitted bacterial infection caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that their opinions would clash with the IDSA's (...) evidence-based guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. Their allegations of conflict of interest against the IDSA resemble those made against the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2000, which were found to be baseless. It is the responsibility of all physicians and medical scientists to stand up to antiscientific, baseless and unethical attacks on those who support an evidence-based approach to caring for patients. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

The reputation of Rudolf Hermann Lotze was high in the philosophic world, especially the English-speaking philosophic world, during the period 1880–1920. One encyclopedia of the period says that “in the U. S. his influence is stronger in academic philosophy, perhaps, than that of any other author.” In typical histories of philosophy Lotze is counted among the great successors in the tradition of Kant and Hegel. I have elsewhere sought to explain the reasons for his great influence. Writers contemporary to Lotze (...) wanted first to classify him as an Herbartian, and in spite of his protests, he seemed some sort of Kantian or Hegelian. The character of his philosophy remained enigmatic, and he was sometimes called an “eclectic” since his philosophy contained aspects that reminded readers of some predecessor or other. But clearly he resisted the tendency to make all questions problems of knowledge: “The constant whetting of the knife is tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with it.” And clearly he is no Hegelian. He considered the rationalistic search for a single principle and a single method to have failed. German philosophy had failed to respect what is given in experience. Even in aesthetics, where surely one might be expected to attend to what the arts present for sensuous enjoyment, German intellectualism, to Lotze’s disgust, tended to use a deductive method. Santayana accused a priori German philosophers of “egotism”; he might have learned this from Lotze who found this same tradition marked by pretension. Only God could satisfy the program of Fichte. The demand of an all-embracing system is that it “make all particular parts of it pass before [us] in the majestic succession of an unbroken development!” Wrote Lotze, “It seemed to me that only a Spirit who stood in the centre of the universe which he himself had made could, with knowledge of the final aim which he had given his creation…” see the whole. Lotze’s kind of philosophy is professedly modest, nondogmatic, fallibilist. (shrink)