Denying the antecedent is an invalid form of reasoning that is typically identified and frowned upon as a formal fallacy. Contrary to arguments that it does not or at least should not occur, denying the antecedent is a legitimate and effective strategy for undermining a position. Since it is not a valid form of argument, it cannot prove that the position is false. But it can provide inductive evidence that this position is probably false. In this role, it is neither (...) defective nor deceptive. Denying the antecedent provides inductive support for rejecting a claim as improbable. (shrink)

Contemporary arguments for scientific realism are typically based on some form of inference to the best explanation. Sometimes such arguments concern the methods of science: given the success of scientific methodology, realism offers the best explanation of this success. Sometimes such arguments concern the content of scientific theories: given observed regularities in nature, explanations must be given of those regularities; the best such explanations will be realist. One forceful explanationist argument about the content of science can be based on Hans (...) Reichenbach’s Principle of the Common Cause. Roughly, CC says that whenever an enduring correlation between two events is observed, there must be some preceding event which is the common cause of the two, and is the explanation for the correlation. Rigid adherence to this demand for a common cause, however, supposedly goes beyond the instrumentalist explanatory resources available to the antirealist, and hence CC is taken to be a sufficient condition for realism. Further, one might claim that any argument that realism has greater explanatory power than antirealism depends either explicitly or implicitly on CC, and hence CC is also a necessary condition for realism. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn has argued that scientists never reject a paradigm without simultaneously accepting a new paradigm. Coupled with Kuhn's claim that it is paradigms as a whole, and not individual theories, that are accepted or rejected, this thesis is seen as one of Kuhn's main challenges to the rationality of science. I argue that Kuhn is mistaken in this claim; at least in some instances, science rejects a paradigm despite the absence of a successor. In particular, such a description best (...) fits Kuhn's most discussed example, the Copernican Revolution. By differentiating scientific discoveries into three types, spontaneous, implicit, and directed, we see that Kuhn's thesis holds for spontaneous and implicit discoveries, but not directed discoveries. Directed discoveries must be understood by an alternative account of falsifiability, based on argument by reductio ad absurdum rather than argument by modus tollens as traditional accounts of falsifiability would have it. (shrink)

Both formal semantics and cognitive semantics are the source of important insights about language. By developing precise statements of the rules of meaning in fragmentary, abstract languages, formalists have been able to offer perspicuous accounts of how we might come to know such rules and use them to communicate with others. Conversely, by charting the overall landscape of interpretations, cognitivists have documented how closely interpretations draw on the commonsense knowledge that lets us make our way in the world. There is (...) no opposition between these insights. Sooner or later we will have a semantics that responds to both. However, developing such a semantics is profoundly difficult, because there are certain tensions to be overcome in reconciling the two perspectives. For one thing, the overall landscape of meaning does seem to be characterized by a much richer ontology and more dynamic categories than are exhibited by the fragments typically studied in the formal tradition. One sign of strain is the recent tendency to talk of “procedural”, “non-compositional”, or “computational” semantics, as in Hamm, Kamp and van Lambalgen 2006, hereafter HK&vL. We think such locutions can serve as useful reminders to keep semantics fixed on the central question of how language allows us to share information that some have and others need to get. However, there is some danger that formalists will merely by put off by an idea that, taken literally, may not be such a good one. In this short article, we want to explore and defend the traditional realist view attributed by HK&vL to Lewis among others. In fact, this view offers a well-developed, extremely straightforward and robust account of the relation between semantics and cognition. Moreover, while the realist view has ways of accommodating the representationalist insights of DRT (Lewis 1979; Thomason 1990; Stalnaker 1998), it remains unclear how “computational” semantics can account for the key data for the realist view: cases where we judge interlocutors to be ignorant about aspects of meaning in their native language (Kripke 1972; Putnam 1975; Stalnaker 1979; Williamson 1994).. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to tie together a longstanding dispute between Henry Kyburg and Isaac Levi concerning statistical inferences. The debate, which centers around the example of Petersen the Swede, concerns Kyburg's and Levi's accounts of randomness and choosing reference classes. I argue that both Kyburg and Levi have missed the real significance of their dispute, that Levi's claim that Kyburg violates Confirmational Conditionalization is insufficient, and that Kyburg has failed to show that Levi's criteria for choosing reference class (...) are problematic. Rather, the significance of the Petersen case is to show that other aspects of their respective systems are defective: for Levi his account of credal judgments other than direct inference, and for Kyburg his explanation of how indexes are associated with a body of knowledge. (shrink)

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

The distinction between content and force is ‘a corner-stone of 20-century philosophy of language’ (Recanati 2013, 622). Yet, in recent years it has been argued that (a) the motivation for drawing the content-force distinction is flawed and (b) that making it bars us from solving the problem of the unity of the proposition. In this paper I will go back to the source of the content-force distinction in Frege’s work. Frege argued that ‘the nature of a question’ requires a (...) distinction between force and content. I will reconstruct and defend Frege’s argument for the distinction and outline how the content-force distinction can be combined with a Fregean account of the unity of thought. (shrink)

Kant maintains that while claims to property are morally possible in a state of nature, such claims are merely “provisional”; they become “conclusive” only in a civil condition involving political institutions. Kant’s commentators find this thesis puzzling, since it seems to assert a natural right to property alongside a commitment to property’s conventionality. We resolve this apparent contradiction. Provisional right is not a special kind of right. Instead, it marks the imperfection of an action where public authorization is lacking. Provisional (...) right thereby functions as a methodological device in a sequential elucidation of the moral basis of public law. To develop this reading, we first explain Kant’s two-step account of property rights—his division between ‘having’ and ‘acquiring’. Then we explain what is involved in a sequential exposition of right more generally. (shrink)

In a series of incisive readings of signature historical works, Mark Poster charts the move from social history to new practices of cultural history that are drawing strength from poststructuralist interpretive strategies and raising issues found in feminist and postcolonialist discourse. In the process, he sets forth an outline for a postmodern historiography that can negotiate the contested terrain between the ambiguities of discourse and the pull of the "real." As Poster provides close readings of leading historians and theorists (...) such as Lawrence Stone, Francois Furet, Michel de Certeau, and Michel Foucault, key themes animate his work: the often irreducible difference between past and present; the relationship of writing and representation to power and domination; the dissolving distinctions between high and low culture, production and consumption, and reality and fiction; and, most important, a new perspective on human agency and the construction of political subjects. (shrink)

Certain sorts of disputes about principles of distributive justice that have occupied a great deal of attention in recent political philosophy turn out to be fundamentally unresolvable, when they are conducted in ignorance of whether an important subclass of basic social goods exists within any particular society. I employ the folktale ‘Stone Soup’ to illustrate how such distributional goods might come into existence. Using the debate about John Rawls’s Difference Principle as an example, I argue that a proper appreciation (...) for the axiological status of these goods shows that disputes about principles (at least as these have been conducted within the Rawlsian tradition) should be relegated to a subsidiary status relative to other, more fundamental concerns about the ethics of economic distribution. (shrink)

Der Raum marks a transitional stage in Carnap’s thought, and therefore has both negative and positive implications for his further development. On the one hand, he is here largely a follower of Husserl, and a correct understanding of that background is important if one wants to understand what it is that he later rejects as “metaphysics.” On the other hand, he has already broken with Husserl in certain ways, in part following other authors. His use of Hans Driesch’s Ordnungslehre, in (...) particular, foreshadows the theme of so-called “voluntarism” which will characterize his later thought. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Mark McNulty has been documenting the Liverpool music scene, both in the city and as it has proliferated worldwide. Accompanied by over 100 photographs, Pop Cultured celebrates the city, its music, and its culture through the lens of this highly acclaimed and influential photographer. McNulty has covered a wide array of iconic British bands such as the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Arctic Monkeys, as well as visiting international acts (...) like the White Stripes. Witty, enthralling, and visually stunning, Pop Cultured combines McNulty’s images with his own laconic and humorous commentary and that of his iconic musical subjects, providing a rollercoaster account of the last twenty years of British culture. (shrink)

Templates are a widespread natural language tech- nology that achieves believability within a narrow range of interaction and coverage. We consider templates for embodied conversational behavior. Such templates combine a specific pattern of marked-up text, specifying prosody and conversational signals as well as words, with similarly-annotated gaps that can be filled in by rule to yield a coherent contribution to a dialogue with a user. In this paper we argue that templates can give a de- signer substantial freedom to realize (...) specific combina- tions of behaviors in interactions with users and thereby to explore the relationships among such factors as emo- tion, personality, individuality and social role. (shrink)

As a spiritual or meditative practice solitude implies more than mere silence or being alone. While these are perhaps indispensablecomponents, it is possible to be alone or to live in silence and nevertheless be unable to reconfigure these into genuine solitude. Solitude is also more than being in some remote or inaccessible place. Even though geographical isolation might be conducive to solitude, with rare exceptions human beings have seldom sought solitude in complete seclusion in the wilderness. The places where human (...) beings have sought solitude have in the end been human places, human-built places. It should come as no surprise then that through architecture humans beings have sought to build solitude, to construct, through stone and glass and wooden structures, placesthat are conducive to and encourage solitude. Such structures include individual hermitages, monasteries, temples, and even cathedrals. In each case the purpose is to translate or reconfigure a natural geographical place into a space, a human space, where solitude as a spiritual or meditative practice becomes possible. What the individual sojourner brings to the experience is an inner openness to the architecture, to the natural environment and to the spiritual realm which interweave to create solitude. This paper examines (1) the spiritual need to experience solitude, (2) what it is that solitude requires, and (3) the endeavor to create solitudethrough architecture and the challenges it poses to both architecture and spiritual practice. In particular the paper explores and compares solitude’s architectural expression in three Medieval Christian monastic orders—the Camaldolese Order, the Carthusian Order, and the Cistercian Order. Despite their common heritage these orders realize solitude, as an essential spiritual value, through unique architectural expressions. (shrink)

The Bible ridicules idolaters for bowing down to sticks and stones. Since idolaters worship what the sticks and stones stand for, not the sticks and stones themselves, isn’t the biblical position confused? At the basis of the Bible’s consistent refusal to observe the preceding distinction are found the conceptual underpinnings of its critique of idolatry. Men and women alone among creatures are inspired with God’s breath. Men and women alone among creatures, that is, are like God. They alone among creatures (...) are persons. Since mere pieces of nature cannot understand prayers, entreaties, etc., and hence cannot respond in the personal way, idolatrous practices are incoherent. But while it is true that (sub-person) elements of nature cannot enter into inter-personal relations, idolatry has a sequel: the scientific interrogation of nature, an interrogation which has been magnificently effective in eliciting responses. Elijah’s dramatic confrontation with the Baalites is a stylized version of the clash between the biblical view of men and women as in an irreducible respect non-natural, and the naturalizing scientific view. On the Carmel, the prophets of the Baal are soundly defeated. Must those who inherit from them lose too? That is a live question. Read closely, the story of Elijah implies that those behind the Bible would defend the view of human distinctiveness against the renascent idolatry. (shrink)

The Bible ridicules idolaters for bowing down to sticks and stones. Since idolaters worship what the sticks and stones stand for, not the sticks and stones themselves, isn’t the biblical position confused? At the basis of the Bible’s consistent refusal to observe the preceding distinction are found the conceptual underpinnings of its critique of idolatry. Men and women alone among creatures are inspired with God’s breath. Men and women alone among creatures, that is, are like God. They alone among creatures (...) are persons. Since mere pieces of nature cannot understand prayers, entreaties, etc., and hence cannot respond in the personal way, idolatrous practices are incoherent. But while it is true that (sub-person) elements of nature cannot enter into inter-personal relations, idolatry has a sequel: the scientific interrogation of nature, an interrogation which has been magnificently effective in eliciting responses. Elijah’s dramatic confrontation with the Baalites is a stylized version of the clash between the biblical view of men and women as in an irreducible respect non-natural, and the naturalizing scientific view. On the Carmel, the prophets of the Baal are soundly defeated. Must those who inherit from them lose too? That is a live question. Read closely, the story of Elijah implies that those behind the Bible would defend the view of human distinctiveness against the renascent idolatry. (shrink)

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, founded July 1, 1978, at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, was established by the American scholar, industrialist, and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner. Lectureships are awarded to outstanding scholars or leaders in broadly defined fields of human values and transcend ethnic, national, religious, or ideological distinctions. Volume 32 features lectures given during the academic year 2011–2012 at the University of Michigan; Princeton University; Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Utah; and Yale University. (...) This volume includes the following lectures:_ John Broome_, “The Public and Private Morality of Climate Change”_John Broome is the Whites Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Corpus Christi College in Oxford. He has written six books. John M. Cooper_, “Ancient Philosophies as Ways of Life”_John Cooper is the Henry Putnam University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His books include _Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus _and _Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers_. Stephen Greenblatt_, “Shakespeare and the End of Life History”_Stephen Greenblatt is the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of several books, including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize–winning _The Swerve: How the World Became Modern _and _Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare_. Lisa Jardine_, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: C. P. Snow and J. Bronowski” and “Science and Government: C. P. Snow and the Corridors of Power”_Lisa Jardine is a professor of Renaissance studies at University College London, where she is the director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Research in the Humanities and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. She has published more than fifty scholarly articles and seventeen books, including _Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory_. Samuel Scheffler_, “The Afterlife”_Samuel Scheffler is University Professor and a professor of philosophy and law at New York University. He has published four books in the areas of moral and political philosophy, including _Equality and Tradition_. Abraham Verghese_, “Two Souls Intertwined” Abraham Verghese is a professor of medicine and senior associate chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University. He has published widely across disciplines, including _My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story _and the novel _Cutting for Stone_. He is perhaps best known for his deep interest in bedside medicine and work in the medical humanities. (shrink)

This book analyzes the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory and discusses the most recent applications of sensorimotor theory to human computer interaction, child's play, virtual reality, robotics, and linguistics. -/- Why does a circle look curved and not angular? Why doesn't red sound like a bell? Why, as I interact with the world, is there something it is like to be me? These are simple questions to pose but more difficult to answer. An analytic philosopher might respond to the first (...) by merely observing, ``if we ponder the concept `circle' we find that it is the essence of a circle to be round''; but where does this definition come from? Was it set in stone by the gods, the divine arbiters of circle-ness (red-ness and conscious-ness)? It is a measure of the importance of Kevin O'Regan and Alva Noe's 2001 paper `A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness' that it reveals deep scientific and philosophical insight on these foundational issues of perception. -/- Opening with a chapter from Kevin O'Regan, this collection of new essays continues by presenting fifteen additional essays on as many developments achieved in recent years in this field. It provides readers with a critical review of the sensorimotor theory and in so doing introduces them to a radically new approach in cognitive science. (shrink)

The marketisation of heritage has been a major topic of interest among heritage specialists studying how the online marketplace shapes sales. Missing from that debate is a large-scale analysis seeking to understand market trends on popular selling platforms such as eBay. Sites such as eBay can inform what heritage items are of interest to the wider public, and thus what is potentially of greater cultural value, while also demonstrating monetary value trends. To better understand the sale of heritage on eBay’s (...) international site, this work applies named entity recognition using conditional random fields, a method within natural language processing, and word dictionaries that inform on market trends. The methods demonstrate how Western markets, particularly the US and UK, have dominated sales for different cultures. Roman, Egyptian, Viking and Near East objects are sold the most. Surprisingly, Cyprus and Egypt, two countries with relatively strict prohibition against the sale of heritage items, make the top 10 selling countries on eBay. Objects such as jewellery, statues and figurines, and religious items sell in relatively greater numbers, while masks and vessels sell at generally higher prices. Metal, stone and terracotta are commonly sold materials. More rare materials, such as those made of ivory, papyrus or wood, have relatively higher prices. Few sellers dominate the market, where in some months 40% of sales are controlled by the top 10 sellers. The tool used for the study is freely provided, demonstrating benefits in an automated approach to understanding sale trends. (shrink)

Evidence for instances of astrophysical 'fine tuning' (or 'coincidences') is thought by some to lend support to the design argument (i.e. the argument that our universe has been designed by some deity). We assess some of the relevant empirical and conceptual issues. We argue that astrophysical fine tuning calls for some explanation, but this explanation need not appeal to the design argument. A clear and strict separation of the issue of anthropic fine tuning on one hand and any form of (...) Eddingtonian numerology and teleology on the other, may help clarify arguably the most significant issue in the philosophy of cosmology. (shrink)

Weak emergence has been offered as an explication of the ubiquitous notion of emergence used in complexity science (Bedau 1997). After outlining the problem of emergence and comparing weak emergence with the two other main objectivist approaches to emergence, this paper explains a version of weak emergence and illustrates it with cellular automata. Then it explains the sort of downward causation and explanatory autonomy involved in weak emergence.

An innocent form of emergence—what I call "weak emergence"—is now a commonplace in a thriving interdisciplinary nexus of scientific activity—sometimes called the "sciences of complexity"—that include connectionist modelling, non-linear dynamics (popularly known as "chaos" theory), and artificial life.1 After defining it, illustrating it in two contexts, and reviewing the available evidence, I conclude that the scientific and philosophical prospects for weak emergence are bright.

Hoerl & McCormack's theory defines temporal behavior from an awareness of time, but lacks one critical element: the impact of “psychological presence” in the “moment now.” Central to experience of temporal non-stationarity: “Nowness” links future with past in the context of time flow. Does this differ between species? Evidence suggests not: Different temporal experiences between species requires greater critical evaluation.

Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.

Abstract:Moral imagination is a reasoning process thought to counter the organizational factors that corrupt ethical judgment. We describe the psychology of moral imagination as composed of the four decision processes identified by Rest (1986), i.e., moral sensitivity, moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. We examine each process in depth, distilling extant psychological research and indicating organizational implications. The conclusion offers suggestions for future research.The majority of men are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others—terribly objective sometimes—but the real (...) task is in fact to be objective toward one’s self and subjective toward all others. (shrink)

This book includes ten essays that trace the notion of unconcealment as it develops from Heidegger's early writings to his later work, shaping his philosophy of truth, language and history. 'Unconcealment' is the idea that what entities are depends on the conditions that allow them to manifest themselves. This concept, central to Heidegger's work, also applies to worlds in a dual sense: first, a condition of entities manifesting themselves is the existence of a world; and second, worlds themselves are disclosed. (...) The unconcealment or disclosure of a world is the most important historical event, and Heidegger believes there have been a number of quite distinct worlds that have emerged and disappeared in history. Heidegger's thought as a whole can profitably be seen as working out the implications of the original understanding of unconcealment. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

Teaching graduate students how to do research can be a challenge for many instructors because "research education" is not an established field of research like other areas of teaching such as mathematics education, nursing education, science education, and statistics education. There are no scholarly journals devoted solely to teaching research methods; these sources are instead scattered across disciplines and journals (e.g., Nurse Researcher, Volume 13, Number 2, 2005; Sociology, Volume 15, Issue 4, 1981; and Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Volume (...) 49, Issue 1, 2005). Furthermore, even though research methods courses are a staple in most graduate training programs, instructors were rarely taught how to teach research methods as part of their own graduate programs. Left to their own devices, instructors of research courses must rely on a network of peers, scattered research literature, and much trial-and-error as they develop and improve upon their own research methods courses. (shrink)

Huston Smith has argued that the universal source of wholeness, which he refers to as the primordial tradition, is essential to a meaningful life. Indeed embracing this tradition is, said Smith, an act of rejoining the human race. Our current forms of organized religion offer us ritualized expressions of this tradition, yet often fail to provide us with transpersonal growth; it is this transpersonal growth that reconnects us with the source of religion. This essay differentiates mainstream religion from a way (...) that we can begin to construct a physical theory of the primordial tradition–a necessary first step toward reclaiming the source of religion. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom and many published histories of “Green Chemistry” describe its start as being a result of governmental and/or regulatory actions at the US Environmental Protection Agency during the early 1990’s. But there were many Real World industrial examples of environmentally friendly commercial processes in the oil and commodity chemicals industries for decades prior to the 1990s. Some early examples of commercial “Green Chemistry” are briefly described in this article. The Boots/Hoechst Celanese Ibuprofen process was one of the earliest multiple-award-winning (...) examples of industrial “Green Chemistry” in the fine chemical/pharmaceutical industry. The author, who conceived the BHC Ibuprofen synthetic strategy in 1984, reveals and documents that the BHC Ibuprofen process was not primarily a result of governmental or regulatory mandates, or environmentalist or political motivations. The BHC ibuprofen process, and probably many other early industrial “green” inventions, evolved from, and their development and commercialization motivated and guided by, a long prior industrial culture of both scientific and technical evolution. The invention and commercialization of these early industrial commercialized processes, and the BHC Ibuprofen process were also guided by both competitive and economic market needs, personal human motivations, and a low waste culture of “Quality” and “Continuous Improvement” that the commodity chemical industry internally promoted in the 1980’s. The author comments on some perceptions of the status of Green Chemistry now, and directions it should consider going in the future. The author recommends that young Green Chemists and/or Green Engineers reconsider “Quality” approaches in order to genuinely lead Society toward a Greener future. (shrink)

Public health is a dynamic field. Outbreaks of new diseases, as well as changing patterns of population growth, economic development, and lifestyle trends all may threaten public health and thus demand a public health response. As the practice of public health evolves, there is an ongoing need to reassess its scientific, ethical, legal, and social underpinnings. Such a reappraisal must consider the disagreement among public health officials, public health scholars, elected officials, and the public about the proper role of public (...) health and the distinctions, for example, between public health and clinical care, and public health and health promotion.In this article I will attempt to characterize the main points of contention as well as offer my own views regarding the proper scope of public health. Greater clarity and consensus on the meaning of public health are likely to lead to more efficient and effective public health interventions as well as increased public and political support for public health activities. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and use ontologies and (...) terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

Artificial life uses computer models to study the essential nature of the characteristic processes of complex adaptive systems proceses such as self-organization, adaptation, and evolution. Work in the field is guided by the working hypothesis that simple computer models can capture the essential nature of these processes. This hypothesis is illustrated by recent results with a simple population of computational agents whose sensorimotor functionality undergo open-ended adaptive evolution. These might illuminate three aspects of complex adaptive systems in general: punctuated equilibrium (...) dynamics of diversity, a transition separating genetic order and disorder, and a law of adaptive evolutionary activity. (shrink)