According to Theodore Schick, Jr., Eugenie C. Scott’s endorsement of methodological naturalism---roughly, the view that science is limited by its methodology to be neutral vis-à-vis the supernatural---is misguided. He offers three arguments; I contend that none is successful.

Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight’s new edition of William Paley’s Natural Theology deserves to become the standard scholarly edition of what is a historically, theologically, and philosophically important work, despite a certain neglect of philosophical issues on the part of the editors.

The National School Boards Association enlisted Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch to criticize intelligent design bullet point fashion. Here I want to respond to these bullet-point assertions. I would repeat the entire article, but copyright restrictions prevent me. The article is available at http://nsba.org/sbn/02-jul/070202-8.htm.

The appreciation of nature and natural beauty demands our attention as environmental issues become ever more urgent. In this timely introduction, Glenn Parsons provides an overview of philosophical work on the aesthetics of nature, identifying key conceptual questions, clarifying central theories, and analyzing the ethical ramifications of our experience of natural beauty. Outlining five major approaches to understanding the aesthetic value of nature, this second edition explores the aesthetic appreciation of nature as it occurs in wilderness, in gardens, and (...) in the context of appreciating environmental art. Now updated to cover recent developments in the field, it includes: · A new chapter on the sublime, the picturesque, and the beautiful · Expanded discussion of empirical and evolutionary accounts of nature appreciation, as well as the appreciation of the environment in non-Western cultures · A new chapter on the aesthetic appreciation of animals · An in-depth analysis of the appreciation of nature through cinema and photography · Discussion of the relation between environmental appreciation and climate change __ Combining a clear and engaging style with a sophisticated treatment of a fascinating subject, _Aesthetics and Nature_ explores the aesthetic dimension of humanity's relationship with our physical surroundings. This a must-read for anyone who cares about nature and the future of our environment. (shrink)

An account of the conflict between our positive and negative emotional relationships to the Earth and how they will be resolved for the Symbiocene, the next period in the history of the Earth.

Americans today seem to be more divided than at any time since the Civil War. Our differences are not just political and moral, but philosophical and even spiritual. Red and Blue America hardly seem to live in the same reality. Something has gone terribly wrong with the American political community. It has been a long time since the people of the United States fully exercised their sovereign authority to choose the officials in government whose primary job is to protect the (...) people's natural rights according to the Constitution. Our political community has become something different. America, our "regime," has become post-constitutional. Yet it is not entirely clear what this post-constitutional arrangement is, how it operates, who is in charge, or how to fix it. Where did this crisis come from? Can it be overcome? What does the future hold for the survival of the American Constitution? Glenn Ellmers--a senior fellow with the Claremont Institute, prolific analyst of current affairs, and scholar of political philosophy--explores the deepest roots of our political turmoil and shows the connections between government bureaucracy, the misuse of science, and the leftwing ideology that controls so much of our public and private life. (shrink)

The evolutionary theory of artefact proper function holds that an artefact’s proper function is that effect which explains the reproduction of past instances of the artefact type. This theory has many sources but received its clearest presentation in Beth Preston’s essay “Why Is a Wing Like a Spoon?”. More recently, Preston has raised an objection to the theory, based on the phenomenon of ‘phantom functions’: these are functions that an artefact type is unable to perform, but which nonetheless apparently constitute (...) its proper function. Deflecting qi energy, for example, is the proper function of feng shui mirrors, even though no feng shui mirror is able to do this. Preston concludes that the existence of phantom functions refutes the evolutionary theory of artefact proper function. In this paper, the evolutionary theory is defended, by arguing that it can adequately account for phantom function cases. (shrink)

The presence of slavery in the Laws has puzzled and distressed many of Plato's admirers. However, before passing judgment on Plato's attitude toward slavery, we must first have a clear idea of the legal status of the slave under Plato's law, and compare it with the slave's position under Greek law of Plato's day. This work sets out to do just that, as well as to provide a good account of Greek law, much of which has been lost over the (...) course of history. (shrink)

Degrees of belief; Dempster's rule of combination; Simple and separable support functions; The weights of evidence; Compatible frames of discernment; Support functions; The discernment of evidence; Quasi support functions; Consonance; Statistical evidence; The dual nature of probable reasoning.

Difficulties in distinguishing veridical reports of experience from confabulations have implications for theories of consciousness. I develop some of these implications through a consideration of out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Do these variations indicate individual variation in experience or are they post-hoc confabulations, stories told by subjects to themselves in an attempt to make sense of the core phenomenology? I argue that no existent or possible evidence would be sufficient to favour one hypothesis over the other. How such evidence is interpreted depends (...) on prior commitments to one or other of these hypotheses or to a theory of consciousness that is not neutral as to these hypotheses. One of these types of theory, namely vehicle theories, has difficulty accommodating the existence of confabulations and so allows for only the elaborate phenomenology hypothesis. Because we cannot know that reports are not confabulations, vehicle theories are insufficient to explain OBEs. (shrink)

This book is an account of the life and work of the Russian novelist and political essayist Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev, 1831-1891.

Unlocking the debate behind the headlines, this book combines clear thinking with the very latest in science and medicine, enabling readers to decide for themselves exactly what the scientific future should hold.

This chapter contains sections titled: Mothers on Baby Beauty Good Mom, Bad Critic? Beauty, Love, and Prejudice Notes.

Dating back to the early modern theories of Burke and Kant, philosophical accounts have made cognitive failure central to the experience of the sublime. This essay argues for a re-conception of the sublime in terms of the notion of epistemic expansion. Doing so not only provides a plausible account of traditional examples of the sublime, but also provides us with language that can capture an important but neglected aesthetic dimension of experimental science: the expansion of human perception. Recognizing this dimension, (...) it is argued, also enriches our understanding of the ways in which experimental science can facilitate broader public engagement with science. (shrink)

I compare Frith and colleagues’ influential comparator account of how the sense of agency is elicited to the multifactorial weighting model advocated by Synofzik and colleagues. I defend the comparator model from the common objection that the actual sensory consequences of action are not needed to elicit the sense of agency. I examine the comparator model’s ability to explain the performance of healthy subjects and those suffering from delusions of alien control on various self-attribution tasks. It transpires that the comparator (...) model needs case-by-case adjustment to deal with problematic data. In response to this, the multifactorial weighting model of Synofzik and colleagues is introduced. Although this model is incomplete, it is more naturally constrained by the cases that are problematic for the comparator model. However, this model may be untestable. I conclude that currently the comparator model approach has stronger support than the multifactorial weighting model approach. (shrink)

Maynard Adams (1919¿2003) was a profound philosopher and civic humanist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.