Infinite in All Directions is a popularized science at its best. In Dyson's view, science and religion are two windows through which we can look out at the world around us. The book is a revised version of a series of the Gifford Lectures under the title "In Praise of Diversity" given at Aberdeen, Scotland. They allowed Dyson the license to express everything in the universe, which he divided into two parts in polished prose: focusing on the diversity (...) of the natural world as the first, and the diversity of human reactions as the second half. Chapter 1 is a brief explanation of Dyson's attitudes toward religion and science. Chapter 2 is a one-hour tour of the universe that emphasizes the diversity of viewpoints from which the universe can be encountered as well as the diversity of objects which it contains. Chapter 3 is concerned with the history of science and describes two contrasting styles in science: one welcoming diversity and the other deploring it. He uses the cities of Manchester and Athens as symbols of these two ways of approaching science. Chapter 4, concerned with the origin of life, describes the ideas of six illustrious scientists who have struggled to understand the nature of life from various points of view. Chapter 5 continues the discussion of the nature and evolution of life. The question of why life characteristically tends toward extremes of diversity remains central in all attempts to understand life's place in the universe. Chapter 6 is an exercise in eschatology, trying to define possible futures for life and for the universe, from here to infinity. In this chapter, Dyson crosses the border between science and science fiction and he frames his speculations in a slightly theological context. (shrink)

Ethical physicians need to share their biases and prejudices and articulate alternatives and also be tolerant of the decisions of their patients and families.I believe that I am a moral, caring, dedicated doctor working with children and parents who are often faced with ethical problems of large and small dimensions. There is no question that these decisions should be ethical, but, in general, I find ethical theory of little day-to-day use. Indeed, even when an ethicist joins me in a discussion (...) of “What should I do?”, or more appropriately, “What should I advocate be done?”, I usually find their additions to the discussion wanting. Ethical theory gives guidance but does not seem to provide sufficient help in decisions for the individual case: What will be best for the infant with spina bifida while still in utero? Termination of the pregnancy? Birth and long-term care? What is best were that same child already born with a high paraplegia and hydrocephalus? What is best for the infant with a major malformation of the brain and uncontrollable seizures whose only hope for controlling the seizures is removal of half of the brain? What is best for the family in each of these situations and the many others I have encountered? What is best for society?I have been called a Hegelian pragmatist, although my knowledge of Hegel is minimal. I think that the term pragmatist is a badge of honour, because, on the front lines of clinical decision-making, I do not have the philosopher’s luxury of days or weeks for managing words. As a pragmatic doctor, I am forced to be a person of action or inaction. I must make a decision and advocate for the position I take.I am clearly a utilitarian, as I strive to produce the greatest good …. (shrink)

The current concepts of autonomy, surrogate autonomy and informed consent often lead to futile and expensive care at the ends of life. They may impinge on the dignity of the patient as well as subject society to unwarranted expense. In order to provide affordable healthcare for all, these concepts are in need of modification.

In this essay, Weinstein wants to address the issue of argument strength, of how strongly the premises of an argument support a conclusion. Using the framework of the Toulmin model, arguments have warrants which indicate some general connection between the premises and the conclusion of the argument. We may ask for the backing of the warrant, evidence for it. If the connection is an empirical generalization, the backing includes data supporting the generalization. But the backing may include theoretical generalizations, which (...) may explain the warrant. Furthermore, theories may be reduced by more comprehensive theories. A warrant then may ultimately be backed by some deep and very comprehensive theoretical explanation.Weinstein seeks to explicate the relation between the depth of backing for the warrant and the strength of the connection between premises and conclusion which the warrant indicates through the Model of Emerging Truth . Data relevant to confirming the theory have empir .. (shrink)

It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology. Two facts about the coming century are agreed on by almost everyone. Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first (...) century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare. (shrink)

John Searle began to discuss his recently published book `The Construction of Social Reality' with Anthony Freeman, and they ended up talking about God. The book itself and part of their conversation are introduced and briefly reflected upon by Anthony Freeman. Many familiar social facts -- like money and marriage and monarchy -- are only facts by human agreement. They exist only because we believe them to exist. That is the thesis, at once startling yet obvious, that philosopher (...) John Searle explores in The Construction of Social Reality. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

This study investigates the hypothesis that the advantage corporate social performance (CSP) yields in attracting human resources depends on the degree of job choice possessed by the job seeking population. Results indicate that organizational CSP is positively related to employer attractiveness for job seekers with high levels of job choice but not related for populations with low levels suggesting advantages to firms with high levels of CSP in the ability to attract the most qualified employees.

According to behavioural theories deriving from pragmatism, gestalt psychology, existentialism, and ecopsychology, knowledge about the world is gained by intentional action followed by learning. In terms of the neurodynamics described here, if the intending of an act comes to awareness through reafference, it is perceived as a cause. If the consequences of an act come to awareness through proprioception and exteroception, they are perceived as an effect. A sequence of such states of awareness comprises consciousness, which can grow in complexity (...) to include self-awareness. Intentional acts do not require awareness, whereas voluntary acts require self-awareness. Awareness of the action/perception cycle provides the cognitive metaphor of linear causality as an agency. Humans apply this metaphor to objects and events in the world to predict and control them, and to assign social responsibility. Thus, linear causality is the bedrock of technology and social contracts. Complex material systems with distributed non-linear feedback, such as brains and their neural and behavioural activities, cannot be explained by linear causality. They can be said to operate by circular causality without agency. The nature of self-control is described by breaking the circle into a forward limb, the intentional self, and a feedback limb, awareness of the self and its actions. The two limbs are realized through hierarchically stratified kinds of neural activity. Intentional acts are produced by the self-organized microscopic neural activity of cortical and subcortical components in the brain. Awareness supervenes as a macroscopic ordering state, that defers action until the self-organizing microscopic process has reached closure in reflective prediction. Agency, which is removed from the causal hierarchy by the appeal to circularity, re-appears as a metaphor by which events in the world are anthropomorphized, making them appear subject to human control. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: Our sense of free will depends upon a balance between reliability and flexibility in relation to cause-and-effect. Without the former, all outcomes would be arbitrary; without the latter, all outcomes would be predetermined. In neither case would there be any way of putting one's will into effect. So much is clear, yet establishing that precarious balance has proved so difficult that Kant himself declared ‘freedom of the will’ to be one of only three metaphysical problems which lie beyond (...) the powers of the human intellect . Western debate on this topic reflects a complex ethical and religious inheritance. Insights from Greek philosophy and Hebrew scripture were combined and filtered through Christian and Jewish traditions which developed in late antiquity and through the middle ages. These formed the context for the Enlightenment, whose dominant thinkers in turn provide the backdrop against which today's scholars act and react. (shrink)

Traditional cognitive science is Cartesian in the sense that it takes as fundamental the distinction between the mental and the physical, the mind and the world. This leads to the claim that cognition is representational and best explained using models derived from AI and computational theory. The authors depart radically from this model.

This article critically examines the practice of unnamed sourcing in journalism. A literature review highlights arguments in favor of and against their use. The authors examine some common examples of anonymous sourcing using the lens of utilitarianism, the ethical model commonly used to justify the practice. We find that few uses of unnamed sourcing can be justified when weighed against diminished credibility and threats to fair, transparent reporting. The authors suggest specific guidelines for journalists that, if followed, would curb many (...) of the pedestrian uses of unnamed sourcing but still allow for the practice in specific circumstances. (shrink)

Study of electroencephalographic brain activity in behaving animals has guided development of a model for the self-organization of goal-directed behavior. Synthesis of a dynamical representation of brain function is based in the concept of intentionality as the organizing principle of animal and human behavior. The constructions of patterns of brain activity constitute meaning and not information or representations. The three accepted meanings of intention: "aboutness," goal-seeking, and wound healing, can be incorporated into the dynamics of meaningful behavior, centered in the (...) limbic system interacting with the sensory and motor systems. Evidence is noted for the maintenance in cortical neuropil of a felt work of synaptic connections, that have incorporated past experience by changes in learning, and that act as a unified whole in shaping each intentional action at each moment. This constitutes the intentional structure of the brain. Meaning is a focus having a place without edges in this structure. The focus continually moves through it along a chaotic trajectory; the meaning occupies the whole structure. In this view, consciousness is the active state of an intentional structure, and awareness is the subjective aspect of the shifting focus. (shrink)

[opening paragraph]: Walter Freeman discusses with Jean Burns some of the issues relating to consciousness in his recent book. Burns: To understand consciousness we need know its relationship to the brain, and to do that we need to know how the brain processes information. A lot of people think of brain processing in terms of individual neurons, and you're saying that brain processing should be understood in terms of dynamical states of populations?

Introduction to Special Issue on ‘Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion’. Making sense of the mind is the human odyssey. Today, the cognitive sciences provide the vehicles and equipage. As do all culturally shaped activities, they manifest crystallized generalizations and ideological legacies, many of which go unquestioned for centuries. From time to time, these ideologies are successfully challenged, generating revisions and new forms of understanding. We believe that the cognitive sciences have reached a situation in which they (...) have been frozen into one narrow form by the machine metaphor. There is a need to thaw that form and move from a reductionist, atemporal, disembodied, static, rationalist, emotion- and culture-free view, to fundamentally richer understandings that include the primacy of action, intention, emotion, culture, real-time constraints, real-world opportunities, and the peculiarities of living bodies. These essays constitute an array of moves in that direction. (shrink)

Thelen et al. have a strong case for linking behavior with mind through nonrepresentational dynamics. Their case linking mind with brain is less compelling. Modified avenues are proposed for further exploration: greater emphasis on the dynamics of perception; use of chaotic instead of deterministic dynamics with noise; and use of intentionality instead of motivation, taking advantage of its creative dynamics to model genesis of goal-directed behaviors.

A unifing theory of spatiotemporal brain dynamics should incorporate multiple spatial and temporal scales. Between the microscopic (local) and macroscopic (global) components proposed by Nunez, mesoscopic (intermediate-range) elements should be integral parts of models. The corresponding mathematical formalism requires tools of nonlinear dynamics and the use of aperiodic (chaotic) attractors. Some relations between local-mesoscopic and mesoscopic-global components are outlined.

Many critics of the legalization of physician‐assisted death oppose it in part because they fear it will further disadvantage those who are already economically disadvantaged. This argument points to a serious problem of how economic considerations can influence medical decisions, but in the context of PAD, the concern is not borne out. We will provide empirical evidence suggesting that concerns about money influence medical decisions throughout the full course of illness, but at the end of life, financial pressure is much (...) more likely to influence a decision to pursue or reject aggressive life‐extending care than it is to influence a request for PAD. We will also address the question of whether financial pressure as a result of being poor—particularly in the context of an inadequate social safety net—robs people of their autonomy, rendering their informed request and consent invalid. We argue that it does not. We will emphasize the impracticality and injustice of rejecting the role of poverty as a legitimate factor in decision‐making, the irrational distinction between PAD and withdrawal of life‐sustaining care, and the more appropriate focus on the great flaws in the American health care system. (shrink)

Individuals are generally held to be morally and legally responsible only for actions carried out freely and deliberately, that is to say, for actions that result from our free choice. However, there is a quite widespread view that all of our actions are the result of the scientific laws that govern our physical bodies. If this should prove to be the case, then human choice would be an illusion, and therefore -- on the generally accepted principle just stated -- personal (...) responsibility would be a meaningless concept and blame and punishment would be inappropriate responses to wicked or criminal acts. In this paper I shall argue that we need to disentangle ‘responsibility’ from ‘choice'. I shall also outline reasons for holding that responsibility is ultimately a first-person matter -- I am responsible if I feel responsible, irrespective of choice -- and I shall briefly consider some of the consequences of this approach. (shrink)

Cesario claims that all bias research tells us is that people “end up using the information they have come to learn as being probabilistically accurate in their daily lives”. We expose Cesario's flawed assumptions about the relationship between accuracy and bias. Through statistical simulations and empirical work, we show that even probabilistically accurate responses are regularly accompanied by bias.

I do not approach the question of free will as a scientist, like Colin Blakemore, or a lawyer, like David Hodgson, or philosopher, like Daniel Dennett, but as a priest -- someone who feels responsible for my own actions and who is called upon to counsel and absolve such as come to me with their shame and their guilt. Should I say that their sense of responsibility is illusory? Or should I encourage them to accept responsibility, and then to deal (...) with it in the various ways -- religious, psychological and practical -- that are open to them? (shrink)

Too little has been written about the biology of joy. Most of the articles in the medical literature about brains and emotions are devoted to explaining how we feel fear, anger, anxiety and despair. This is understandable, because we don't go to doctors when we are feeling optimistic, happy and joyful. Most of what we know about the chemistry of our emotions has been learned from the disorders and the treatments of people who are sad and depressed. -/- But we (...) can't just accept this and say, ‘Why bother?’, because too many of us are seeking to find joy by taking chemicals. We need to ask, ‘What happens inside our brains when we experience happiness? Is there a way to stimulate pleasure in our brains, and what really happens when we do that?’. (shrink)

“Decortication” does not distinguish between removing all cerebral cortex, including three-layered allocortex or just six-layered neocortex. Functional decortication, by spreading depression, reversibly suppresses only neocortex, leaving minimal intentionality. Removal of all forebrain structures except a hypothalamic “island” blocks all intentional behaviors, leaving only tropisms. To what extent do Merker's examples retain allocortex, and how might such residues affect his interpretations? (Published Online May 1 2007).

A distinction between the self and its superstructure, the ego, supports Mele's conclusions. The dynamics of the limbic system generates the self through behavior that is subject to societal observation. The rest of the brain contributes awareness that, by ingenious back-dating and rationalization, gives the ultimate in self-deception: the illusion of control of the self by its own derivative.