home page other lists my email address Philip Dorrell, 6 September 2005 At talk.origins there is a list of creationist claims with links to accompanying responses. The responses attempt to refute the corresponding claims, but there are errors in some of the refutations. Each item below starts with a link to the section of the talk.origins site that responds to a particular creationist claim.

content" – where big money is involved. The conflict could become a war to the death, and I think we will all be better off if we can find an alternative: a way to pay for premium content without sacrificing our digital freedoms. 26 December, 2006 by Philip Dorrell © 2006 Blog Index Some Previous Articles... Web 2.0? We Haven't Finished Decentralising Yet. Were the Neanderthals Ugly? Zero Divided By Zero: Application to Spherical Coordinates Adding Comments to My (...) Blog The Definition of "Automobile" Are Musical Items Intrinsically Musical? Music is Things that Happen and Things that Don't Happen Is There Musical Syntax Like Language Syntax? Musical Genomics and the Musical Astrocyte Theory How to Get Your Article Onto The Digg Front Page, Twice. (shrink)

In The Evolution of biological complexity, Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier analysed the relationship between evolution by natural selection and the entropy of the genome. There are some similarities between their paper and my own analysis of.

Functional versus Subjective Consciousness The Example of Pain Dieting and Free Will The Production/Judgement Model Judgement is not Reward Feelings are Judgements Low-Bandwidth Channels Candidate Neural Control Channels Timing of Intention and Action Conclusion References Abstract.

The script focusFollowsMouse.user.js provides a very simple implementation of "click-free" web browsing: it defines a mouseover method for every HTML link, input, select and text area which calls the focus() method on that control. (Click on the link to install it as a Greasemonkey script.).

Use left and right arrow keys to move the gun left and right. You reduce a number by shooting it with its prime factors. Each time a prime factor hits a number, the number is divided by that factor. If the number is a prime number you can shoot it with a special "P" ("P" for "prime") missile which reduces it directly to 1. To fire a 2, 3, 5 or 7, just type the corresponding key on the keyboard. To (...) fire 11, 13, 17 or 19, type the first letter of the number (in lower case), i.e. "e" for 11, "t" for 13, "s" for 17 and "n" for 19. Type "p" (lower case) to fire the "P" missile. In all cases a number is "dead" when it is reduced to 1. If a number hits you, then you're dead. (shrink)

The Really Basic Business WebSite 19 April, 2008 The really basic business web-site is a web-site owned by you and controlled by you. It provides the basic facts about your business, and, it can be found when someone searches on Google for the name of your business. Read more ... Synaptic Downscaling and the Dream-Maker 10 February, 2008 Can the Dream-Maker theory of dreams be reconciled with the theory of synaptic downscaling proposed by Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli ? Read (...) more ... How to Create an Audio CD Using Sox and InfraRecorder 23 January, 2008 How to create an audio CD using the open-source applications SoX and InfraRecorder. Read more ... "Music Theory" is not the Same Thing as a Theory of Music 16 January, 2008 Music theory is theory in the sense that it is distinct from musical practice, but it is not theory in the sense of being a scientific theory . Read more ... Music: The Hidden Sense and the Three Ways of Knowing 23 December, 2007 Music perception reveals to us an otherwise hidden sense . The three ways of knowing are genetic, experiential learning and cultural learning . Cultural learning can be verified or unverified. "Musicality" perception is a hidden sense that increases the reliability of unverified cultural learning . Read more ... The Evolutionary Implications of Amusia 4 November, 2007 Both adaptive and non-adaptive theories of music have to deal with the problem of amusia. For adaptive theories , amusia is a deficit in the creation and.. (shrink)

Mitochondria have been fundamental to the eco‐physiological success of eukaryotes since the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). They contribute essential functions to eukaryotic cells, above and beyond classical respiration. Mitochondria interact with, and complement, metabolic pathways occurring in other organelles, notably diversifying the chloroplast metabolism of photosynthetic organisms. Here, we integrate existing literature to investigate how mitochondrial metabolism varies across the landscape of eukaryotic evolution. We illustrate the mitochondrial remodelling and proteomic changes undergone in conjunction with major evolutionary transitions. We (...) explore how the mitochondrial complexity of the LECA has been remodelled in specific groups to support subsequent evolutionary transitions, such as the acquisition of chloroplasts in photosynthetic species and the emergence of multicellularity. We highlight the versatile and crucial roles played by mitochondria during eukaryotic evolution, extending from its huge contribution to the development of the LECA itself to the dynamic evolution of individual eukaryote groups, reflecting both their current ecologies and evolutionary histories. (shrink)

Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

This book argues against the view that mathematical knowledge is a priori,contending that mathematics is an empirical science and develops historically,just as ...

Experiments in particle physics have hitherto failed to produce any significant evidence for the many explicit models of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) that had been proposed over the past decades. As a result, physicists have increasingly turned to model-independent strategies as tools in searching for a wide range of possible BSM effects. In this paper, we describe the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SM-EFT) and analyse it in the context of the philosophical discussions about models, theories, and (bottom-up) (...) effective field theories. We find that while the SM-EFT is a quantum field theory, assisting experimentalists in searching for deviations from the SM, in its general form it lacks some of the characteristic features of models. Those features only come into play if put in by hand or prompted by empirical evidence for deviations. Employing different philosophical approaches to models, we argue that the case study suggests not to take a view on models that is overly permissive because it blurs the lines between the different stages of the SM-EFT research strategies and glosses over particle physicists' motivations for undertaking this bottom-up approach in the first place. Looking at EFTs from the perspective of modelling does not require taking a stance on some specific brand of realism or taking sides in the debate between reduction and emergence into which EFTs have recently been embedded. (shrink)

Examines what is necessary for a group to constitute an agent that can display akrasia, and what steps such a group might take to establish self‐control. The topic has some interest in itself, and the discussion suggests some lessons about how we should think of akrasia in the individual as well as in the collective case. Under the image that the lessons support, akrasia is a sort of constitutional disorder: a failure to achieve a unity projected in the avowal of (...) agency. This image fits well with the constitutional model of the soul in Plato's Republic. (shrink)

Strong claims have been made for emergence as a new paradigm for understanding science, consciousness, and religion. Tracing the past history and current definitions of the concept, Clayton assesses the case for emergent phenomena in the natural world and their significance for philosophy and theology. Complex emergent phenomena require irreducible levels of explanation in physics, chemistry and biology. This pattern of emergence suggests a new approach to the problem of consciousness, which is neither reducible to brain states nor proof of (...) a mental substance or soul. Although emergence does not entail classical theism, it is compatible with a variety of religious positions. Clayton concludes with a defence of emergentist panentheism and a Christian constructive theology consistent with the new sciences of emergence. (shrink)

How Galileo created the problem of consciousness -- Is there a ghost in the machine? -- Can physical science explain consciousness? -- How to solve the problem of consciousness -- Consciousness and the meaning of life.

Abstract In this essay, a new approach for the ethical study of emerging technology ethics will be presented, called anticipatory technology ethics (ATE). The ethics of emerging technology is the study of ethical issues at the R&D and introduction stage of technology development through anticipation of possible future devices, applications, and social consequences. I will argue that a major problem for its development is the problem of uncertainty, which can only be overcome through methodologically sound forecasting and futures studies. I (...) will then consider three contemporary approaches to the ethics of emerging technologies that use forecasting: ethical technology assessment, the techno-ethical scenarios approach and the ETICA approach, and I considered their strengths and weaknesses. Based on this critical study, I then present my own approach: ATE. ATE is a conceptually and methodologically rich approach for the ethical analysis of emerging technologies that incorporates a large variety of ethical principles, issues, objects and levels of analysis, and research aims. It is ready to be applied to contemporary and future emerging technologies. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s11569-012-0141-7 Authors Philip A. E. Brey, Department of Philosophy, School of Behavioral Sciences, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Journal NanoEthics Online ISSN 1871-4765 Print ISSN 1871-4757. (shrink)

This essay provides a critique of mainstream computer ethics and argues for the importance of a complementary approach called disclosive computer ethics, which is concerned with the moral deciphering of embedded values and norms in computer systems, applications and practices. Also, four key values are proposed as starting points for disclosive studies in computer ethics: justice, autonomy, democracy and privacy. Finally, it is argued that research in disclosive computer ethics should be multi-level and interdisciplinary, distinguishing between a disclosure level, a (...) theoretical level, and an an application level. (shrink)

This volume introduces readers to emergence theory, outlines the major arguments in its defence, and summarizes the most powerful objections against it. It provides the clearest explication yet of this exciting new theory of science, which challenges the reductionist approach by proposing the continuous emergence of novel phenomena.

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

In this essay, a new approach to the ethics of emerging information technology will be presented, called anticipatory technology ethics (ATE). The ethics of emerging technology is the study of ethical issues at the R&D and introduction stage of technology development through anticipation of possible future devices, applications, and social consequences. In the essay, I will first locate emerging technology in the technology development cycle, after which I will consider ethical approaches to emerging technologies, as well as obstacles in developing (...) such approaches. I will argue that any sound approach must centrally include futures studies of technology. I then present ATE and some applications of it to emerging information technologies. In ATE, ethical analysis is performed at three levels, the technology, artifact and application levels, and at each levels distinct types of ethical questions are asked. ATE analyses result in the identification and evaluation of a broad range of ethical issues that can be anticipated in relation to an emerging information technology. This ethical analysis can then be used for ethical recommendations for design or governance. (shrink)

There are a number of assumptions made in our accepted psychology of moral decision-making that consequentialism seems to violate:: value connectionism, pluralism and dispositionalism. But consequentialism violates them only on a utilitarian or similar theory of value, not on the rival sort of theory that is sketched here.

Arendt Contra Sociology re-assesses the relationship between Hannah Arendt's work and the theoretical foundations of sociology, bringing her insights to bear on key themes within contemporary theoretical sociology. Departing from the view of Arendt as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from society, and political theory from the social sciences, this book re-examines her distinctions between labour, fabrication and action as a theory of the fundamental ontology of human societies, revisiting her criticism of the tendency of many sociological (...) paradigms to conflate the activity of fabrication with that of action. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of skepticism often frame the skeptic's argument around an instance of the closure principle. Roughly, the closure principle states that if a subject knows p, and knows that p entails q, then the subject knows q. The main contention of this paper is that the closure argument for skepticism is defective. We explore several possible classifications of the defect. The closure argument might plausibly be classified as begging the question, as exhibiting transmission failure, or as structurally inefficient. Interestingly, (...) perhaps, each of these has been proposed as the correct classification of Moore's proof of an external world. (shrink)

The orthodox view in contemporary epistemology is that Edmund Gettier refuted the JTB analysis of knowledge, according to which knowledge is justified true belief. In a recent paper Moti Mizrahi questions the orthodox view. According to Mizrahi, the cases that Gettier advanced against the JTB analysis are misleading. In this paper I defend the orthodox view.

This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker, moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the harm account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the qualified harm account, there is no (...) harm in cases where moral uncertainty is related to innovation that is “for the best” in historical perspective or where uncertainty is the expression of a deliberative virtue. The two accounts are compared by applying them to Baker’s historical case of the introduction of mechanical ventilation and organ transplantation technologies, as well as the present-day case of mass data practices in the health domain. (shrink)

"My interest in [Max] Scheler's critique of Kant runs back nearly a decade.... The more I read of Scheler, the more I began to see the value of a project dealing with his critique of Kant in Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die Materiale Wetethik, which would possess the virtue of focusing in a single project three important strands of philosophical interest: phenomenology, Kantianism, and ethics.... "The study is divided into six chapters and two appendices. Each of the chapters (...) constituting the body of the work contains a brief analysis of the Kantian position or discussion of the basic questions at issue in it, an exposition of Scheler's critique of the Kantian position and its presuppositions, and a detailed appraisal of Scheler's critique." -- from the introduction by the author. (shrink)

Buchanan highlighted the inconsistencies that arise when public services are financed by general taxation. Citizens increase their demand for services, even though citizens are reticent to increase taxation. Buchanan invited readers to explore the impact of different assumptions of politicians’ behaviour. In this chapter, attention focuses on the way that vote maximising governments are likely to respond to the divorce between receipt and payment for services. Buchanan illustrated his analysis with reference to the National Health Service in the UK. Predictions (...) are tested with reference to the pattern of excess demand in the National Health Service between 1970 and 2012. (shrink)

What are the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary philosophy of technology, and how may the field be developed and improved in the future? That is the question I will address in this paper. I will argue that in the past twenty-five years, philosophy of technology has entered a new era. This era has arrived with new and distinct issues and approaches that differ from those that came before it. Many of the new developments have been for the good. Yet, I (...) will also argue, there are still large areas in the field that are currently underdeveloped or have been stagnant. I will identify these areas and suggest ways of moving forward in them. (shrink)

What are the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary philosophy of technology, and how may the field be developed and improved in the future? That is the question I will address in this paper. I will argue that in the past twenty-five years, philosophy of technology has entered a new era. This era has arrived with new and distinct issues and approaches that differ from those that came before it. Many of the new developments have been for the good. Yet, I (...) will also argue, there are still large areas in the field that are currently underdeveloped or have been stagnant. I will identify these areas and suggest ways of moving forward in them. (shrink)

This paper explores the truism that people think about what they say. It proposes that, to satisfy their own goals, people often plan their speech acts to affect their listeners' beliefs, goals, and emotional states. Such language use can be modelled by viewing speech acts as operators in a planning system, thus allowing both physical and speech acts to be integrated into plans. Methodological issues of how speech acts should be defined in a planbased theory are illustrated by defining operators (...) for requesting and informing. Plans containing those operators are presented and comparisons are drawn with Searle's formulation. The operators are shown to be inadequate since they cannot be composed to form questions (requests to inform) and multiparty requests (requests to request). By refining the operator definitions and by identifying some of the side effects of requesting, compositional adequacy is achieved.The solution leads to a metatheoretical principle for modelling speech acts as planning operators. (shrink)

This paper analyzes ethical aspects of the new paradigm of Ambient Intelligence, which is a combination of Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI’s). After an introduction to the approach, two key ethical dimensions will be analyzed: freedom and privacy. It is argued that Ambient Intelligence, though often designed to enhance freedom and control, has the potential to limit freedom and autonomy as well. Ambient Intelligence also harbors great privacy risks, and these are explored as well.

The first on the topic of environmental virtue ethics, this book seeks to provide the definitive anthology that will both establish the importance of environmental virtue in environmental discourse and advance the current research on environmental virtue in interesting and original ways. The selections in this collection, consisting of ten original and four reprinted essays by leading scholars in the field, discuss the role that virtue and character have traditionally played in environmental discourse, and reflect upon the role that it (...) should play in the future. (shrink)

David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewis's negative results. We (...) then introduce what we call the indexicality loophole: if the goodness of a proposition is indexical, partly a function of an agent's mental state, then the negative results have no purchase. Thus we propose a variant of Desire-as-Belief that exploits this loophole. We argue that a number of meta-ethical positions are committed to just such indexicality. Indeed, we show that with one central sort of evaluative belief--the belief that an option is right--the indexicality loophole can be exploited in various interesting ways. Moreover, on some accounts, 'good' is indexical in the same way. Thus, it seems that the anti-Humean can dodge the negative results. (shrink)

This paper sets out an account of trust in AI as a relationship between clinicians, AI applications, and AI practitioners in which AI is given discretionary authority over medical questions by clinicians. Compared to other accounts in recent literature, this account more adequately explains the normative commitments created by practitioners when inviting clinicians’ trust in AI. To avoid committing to an account of trust in AI applications themselves, I sketch a reductive view on which discretionary authority is exercised by AI (...) practitioners through the vehicle of an AI application. I conclude with four critical questions based on the discretionary account to determine if trust in particular AI applications is sound, and a brief discussion of the possibility that the main roles of the physician could be replaced by AI. (shrink)

Suspended judgment poses a serious problem for Russellianism. In this paper I examine several possible solutions to this problem and argue that none of them is satisfactory. Then I sketch a new solution. According to this solution, suspended judgment should be understood as a sui generis propositional attitude. By this I mean that it cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, other propositional attitudes, such as belief. Since suspended judgment is sui generis in this sense, sentences that ascribe (...) this attitude to someone should not be analyzed in terms of other attitude ascriptions, such as belief ascriptions. Instead they should be understood as involving a semantically primitive predicate, corresponding to the state of suspended judgment. (shrink)

It is often argued that human emotions, and the cognitions that accompany them, involve refinements of, and extensions to, more basic functionality shared with other species. Such refinements may rely on common or on distinct processes and representations. Multi-level theories of cognition and affect make distinctions between qualitatively different types of representations often dealing with bodily, affective and cognitive attributes of self-related meanings. This paper will adopt a particular multi-level perspective on mental architecture and show how a mechanism of subsystem (...) differentiation could have allowed an evolutionarily “old” role for emotion in the control of action to have altered into one more closely coupled to meaning systems. We conclude by outlining some illustrative consequences of our analysis that might usefully be addressed in research in comparative psychology, cognitive archaeology, and in laboratory research on memory for emotional material. (shrink)