This collection of original essays covers a wide range of issues in current naturalised philosophy of mind. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which concepts drawn from evolutionary biology might enhance our understanding of the place of mind in the natural world. Issues covered include the advantages of construing the mind as an adaptation, the naturalisation of intentional and phenomenal content, the evolution of means-end reasoning, rationality and higher-order intentionality, methodological issues in cognitive ethology and evolutionary psychology.

This work exposes the development of Hegel’s political theory from its origins in Hegel’s reading of Sir James Stewart and the composition of the early theological writings, through the Philosophy of Right. Its principle value lies in showing how careful use may be made of Hegel’s earlier writings in interpreting his mature political philosophy. Avineri describes Hegel’s early dissatisfaction with the understanding of the state as an instrument for the protection of private property, and his attempts to develop a concept (...) of ethical community. Developments of the latter notion are seen in the anti-nationalism of The German Constitution, as well as in the theories of property, class, and representation contained therein. Avineri shows the inappropriateness of ascribing to Hegel a political romanticism, regarding either Prussia or Classical Greece. And in his comments on the System der Sittlicheit [[sic]] and the Realphilosophie, he offers detailed and valuable commentary on Hegel’s early concept of labor. He demonstrates here Hegel’s sensitivity to the complex economic reality of modern society, and shows the early Hegel’s ability to describe labor, class divisions, commodity production, money, and alienation in ways remarkably akin to Marx. Here too Hegel’s notion of the state as that which overcomes the private character of production in civil society and constitutes society as an ethical community is seen. (shrink)

As the third volume of a trilogy which also comprises The Insect Societies and Sociobiology, On Human Nature sets out to identify and to solve certain contemporary spiritual "dilemmas." According to Wilson, we have now clearly recognized that the intersection of the causality of natural selection with that of environmental necessity explains human nature. This awareness, he suggests, has brought us today to experience these three dilemmas: first, that the human species "lacks any goal external to its own biological nature"; (...) second, that "morality evolved as instinct"; and finally, that we will soon be able to control our own evolution through molecular engineering and cloning. For Wilson, human life has no transcendent source of meaning, of moral values, or of guidance for its own future evolution. Having offered this diagnosis of the human condition, Wilson prescribes replacing the old humanistic, religious, and Marxist mythologies with wholehearted assent to "the mythology of scientific materialism." Wilson's sociobiological version of scientific materialism has, he claims, the added power of being able to explain the old mythologies themselves as products of natural selection and cultural determinism. The minimum claims of the "evolutionary epic" are these. (shrink)

Although suicide has traditionally carried a negative sanction in Western societies, this is now being challenged, and while there remains substantial public concern surrounding youth and elder suicide, there is a paradoxical push to relax the prohibition under certain circumstances. Central to the arguments behind this are the principles of respect for autonomy and the importance of rationality. It is argued here that the concepts of rationality and autonomy, while valuable, are not strong enough to substantiate a categorical "right to (...) suicide" and that the concepts of "understandability" and "respect" are more useful and able to provide the foundation for responding to a person expressing a wish to die. Roman suicide, sometimes held as an example of "rational suicide", illustrates the effects of culture, tradition and values on the attitudes to, and the practice of, suicide. (shrink)

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory, COSIT 2005, held in Elliottville, NY, USA in September 2005. The 30 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 82 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on vagueness, uncertainty, and gradation; paths and routes; ontologies and semantics; ontologies and spatial relations; spatial reasoning: cognitive maps and spatial reasoning; time, change, and dynamics; landmarks and navigation; geographic information, and spatial behaviour.

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a comprehensive and (...) rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)