The author provides a description of the method of phenomenological explication he used in his recently completed PhD dissertation. He details the difficulties he experienced as a new researcher in phenomenology, and provides a record of his journey toward discovering a new and innovative approach to applied phenomenology. Finally, he provides a step by step demonstration of applied phenomenological explication and gives examples from his research. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 2, Edition 1, April 2002.

To the Things Themselves: Essays on the Discourse and Practice of the Phenomenology of Religion . Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter Hard Cover (311 pages) Price: US$75 (de Gruyter 2001), US$85 (Amazon 2002). Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 2, Edition 2, September 2002.

This book examines the concept of post-truth and the impact it is having on contemporary life, bringing out both its philosophical and political dimensions. Post-truth is contextualised within the philosophical discourse of truth, with particular reference to theories of scepticism and relativism, to explore whether it can take advantage of these to claim any intellectual credibility. Sim argues that post-truth cannot be defended on either sceptical or relativistic grounds – even those provided by recent iconoclastic philosophical movements such as poststructuralism (...) and postmodernism. The affinity between post-truth and conspiracy theory is emphasised, and the extent to which post-truth plays a role in religious doctrine is also considered. Post-truth is seen to constitute a threat to liberal democratic ideals and our Enlightenment heritage, raising the question of whether we are moving into a post-liberal age where the far right would hold power. To prevent this, post-truth urgently needs to be countered. (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Over the past decade, public discussion has focused on the ethics of issuing Do‐Not‐Resuscitate Orders, and the failure of many hospitals to acknowledge their actions openly. Recent efforts on the part of some hospitals to establish formal DNR guidelines that are prudent, fair, and humane, are a helpful beginning, though they cannot account for all the vagaries of illness and human communication. But concerns about DNR should not divert us from looking closely and rigorously at other, more common treatment/nontreatment decisions (...) in the critical care setting. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein's Remarks on the Foundations of AI_ is a valuable contribution to the study of Wittgenstein's theories and his controversial attack on artifical intelligence, which successfully crosses a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, logic, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, to provide a stimulating and searching analysis.

Imagination is extremely important for science, yet very little is known about how scientists actually use it. Are scientists taught to imagine? What do they value imagination for? How do social and disciplinary factors shape it? How is the labor of imagining distributed? These questions should be high priority for anyone who studies or practices science, and this paper argues that the best methods for addressing them are qualitative. I summarize a few preliminary findings derived from recent interview-based and observational (...) qualitative studies that I have performed. These finding include: (i) imagination is only valued for use in addressing maximally specific problems, and only when all else fails; (ii) younger scientists and scientists who are members of underrepresented groups express less positive views about imagination in general, and have less confidence in their own imaginations; (iii) while scientists seem to employ various epistemological frameworks to evaluate imaginings, overall they appear to be epistemic consequentialists about imagination, and this holds also for their evaluations of the tools they use to extend the power of their imaginations. I close by discussing the epistemic and ethical consequences of these findings, and then suggesting a few research avenues that could be explored next as we move forward in the study of scientific imagination. (shrink)

Studies of primate cognition have conclusively shown that humans and apes share a range of basic cognitive abilities. As a corollary, these same studies have also focussed attention on what makes humans unique, and on when and how specifically human cognitive skills evolved. There is widespread agreement that a major distinguishing feature of the human mind is its capacity for causal reasoning. This paper argues that causal cognition originated with the use made of indirect natural signs by early hominins forced (...) to adapt to variable late Miocene and early Pliocene environments; that early hominins evolved an innate tendency to search for such signs and infer their causes; that causal inference required the existence of incipient working memory; and that causal relationships were stored through being integrated into spatial maps to create increasingly complex causal models of the world. (shrink)

Significant inequalities in health between and within countries have been measured over the past decades. Although these inequalities, as well as attempts to improve sub-standard health, raise profound issues of social justice and the right to health, those working in the field of bioethics have historically tended to devote greater attention to ethical issues raised by new, cutting-edge biotechnologies such as life-support cessation, genomics, stem cell research or face transplantation. This suggests that bioethics research and scholarship may revolve around issues (...) that, while fascinating and important, currently affect only a small minority of the world's population. In this article, we examine the accusation that bioethics is largely dominated by Anglophone and industrialized world interests, and explore what kinds of positive contributions a 'bioethics from below' (as Paul Farmer calls it) can make to the field of bioethics in general. As our guide in this exploration, we make use of some experiences and lessons learned in our collaborative bioethics project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Building Bioethics Capacity and Justice in Health. We conclude that while there is some evidence of increased attention to bioethical challenges in developing countries, this development should be further cultivated, because it could help expand the horizons of the field and enhance its social relevance wherever it is practiced. (shrink)

This intelligent and often subtle introduction to rationalist metaphysics focuses on the development of the concept of substance in Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. After briefly reviewing the Aristotelian background in the introduction, Woolhouse spends the first three chapters presenting the broad outlines of each thinker’s account of substance. These are followed by three chapters devoted more specifically to the metaphysics of extended substance and to foundational issues in early modern physics. Next come two chapters on thinking substance and its relation (...) to extended substance, and finally a chapter on the relation between created and uncreated substance, which Woolhouse describes as "an organizing centre of the whole book". (shrink)

This paper examines expressed hopelessness among environmental activists in Extinction Rebellion. While activists claim that they have lost all hope for a future without global warming and species extinction, through despair emerges a new hope for saving what can still be saved—a hope for what is left. This radical hope, emerging from despair, may make Extinction Rebellion even more effective. Drawing from personal interviews with 25 Extinction Rebellion activists in the United Kingdom and the published work of other Extinction Rebellion (...) activists, this paper identifies signs of radical hope. While activists have cast off false hope and passive hope, a new hope for what is still possible remains. This hope is based on virtue ethics: doing what is right in the moment, rather than being attached to a desired outcome. This drives forward activism despite the results. Through their principle of regenerative culture, Extinction Rebellion activists learn to support each other and be prepared for a more turbulent and challenging future. Through a regenerative culture they can salvage and repair what is left and sustain radical hope. (shrink)

A new science, the science of complexity, is birthing. This science boldly promises to transform the biological and social sciences in the forthcoming century. My own book, Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution, (Kauffman, 1992), is at most one strand in this transformation. I feel deeply honored that Marjorie Grene undertook organizing a session at the Philosophy of Science meeting discussing Origins, and equally glad that Dick Burian, Bob Richardson and Rob Page have undertaken their reading of (...) the manuscript and careful thoughts. In this article I shall characterize the book, but more importantly, set it in the broader context of the emerging sciences of complexity. Although the book is not yet out of Oxford press’s quiet womb, my own thinking has moved beyond that which I had formulated even a half year ago. Meanwhile, in the broader scientific community, the interest in “complexity” is exploding. (shrink)

While some philosophers of history have argued that explanations in human history are of a fundamentally different kind than explanations in the natural sciences, I shall argue that this is not the case. Human beings are part of nature, human history is part of natural history, and human historical explanation is a species of natural historical explanation. In this paper I shall use a case study from the history of the American Civil War to show the variety of close parallels (...) between natural and human historical explanation. In both instances, I shall argue that these explanations involve narrative descriptions of causal mechanisms. I shall show how adopting a mechanistic approach to explanation can provide resources to address some important aspects of human historiographic explanation, including problems concerning event individuation, historical meaning, agency, the role of laws, and the nature of contingency. (shrink)

Contemporary evolutionary theory, derived from the intellectual marriage of Darwin's and Mendel's discoveries, leads us to view organisms as successful, but essentially ad hoc, responses to chance and necessity. Biological universals, the code, the pentadactyl limb, are frozen accidents shared by descent. The source of biological order has come to be seen as selection itself. This paper argues that this view is fundamentally inadequate. It ignores those underlying sources of biological order which derive from the generic self-organizing properties of the (...) biological building blocks. Among these generic properties are almost universal aspects of phase resetting responses in biological rhythmic systems, fascinating properties of continuity, symmetry and handedness seen in pattern regeneration across distant phyla; and statistically robust properties expected of eukaryotic gene regulatory systems persistently subject to mutations which "scramble" regulatory interactions. These examples suggest that many properties in organisms reflect a balance between selection, and the rich generic properties which would occur in the absence of selection. Where the balance is "close" to generic, a new pattern of evolutionary inference, and an ahistorical source of biological universals may be found: Those properties reflect, not selection, but the self-organizing features of the building blocks. (shrink)

The study of adhesion plaques in normal and transformed cells provides a series of phenotypic markers by which the process of transformation can be followed. Several proteins which are concentrated in adhesion plaques have now been identified; a few of these can act as targets for tyrosine kinase. In an attempt to characterize the relationship between tyrosine phosphorylation and cell transformation, the reactions of three such proteins – vinculin, talin and integrin – with a range of tyrosine kinase oncogene products (...) have been studied in detail. (shrink)

From the operation of the universe to DNA, the brain and the economy, natural and social frequently describe their activity as being concerned with discovering mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. This is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international (...) contributors the Handbook is divided into four parts: Historical Perspectives on Mechanisms; The Nature of Mechanisms; Mechanisms and the Philosophy of Science; Disciplinary Perspectives. Within these sections central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; mechanisms as parts and wholes and their interactive powers; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience and the social and political sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science and philosophy the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology and history of science. (shrink)

_Hegel After Derrida_ provides a much needed insight not only into the importance of Hegel and the importance of Derrida's work on Hegel, but also the very foundations of postmodern and deconstructionist thought. It will be essential reading for all those engaging with the work of Derrida and Hegel today and anyone seeking insight into some of the basic but neglected themes of deconstruction.

This article highlights some of the difficulties that accompany any attempt to articulate an understanding of forgiveness that is at once coherent, just and desirable. Through a close examination of Charles Griswold’s book Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration, I suggest that there are good reasons to think that forgiveness is intrinsically ambiguous, both conceptually and morally. I argue that there is an underlying tension between the concerns that shape the definition, and those that are invoked when affirming the good of forgiveness. (...) Using Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I then provide some commentary concerning this ambiguity and make some brief suggestions about how this ambiguity might be theologically fruitful. (shrink)