This volume analyzes the biological and philosophical disagreements in evolutionary ethics and points out difficulties with the interpretations. The book is divided into four sections. The first is an historical introduction to the origin of evolutionary ethics, showing how different evolutionary ethics was a hundred years ago, and how distant Huxley is from most of us now. The second section argues for a sociobiological interpretation of evolutionary ethics. The third section presents the view opposite to that of the second section (...) and rejects the sociobiological interpretation. The fourth section deals objectively with many complex and fundamental issues from diverse perspectives. (shrink)

They discuss philosophy and methodology, and such topics as the history of evolution and the evolution of history. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

The diversified methodology and expertise of interdisciplinary research teams provide the opportunity to overcome the limited perspectives of individual disciplines. This is particularly true at the interface of Robotics, Neuroscience, and Psychology as the three fields have quite different perspectives and approaches to offer. Nonetheless, aligning backgrounds and interdisciplinary expectations can present challenges due to varied research cultures and practices. Overcoming these challenges stands at the beginning of each productive collaboration and thus is a mandatory step in cognitive neurorobotics. In (...) this article, we share eight lessons that we learned from our ongoing interdisciplinary project on human-robot and robot-robot interaction in social settings. These lessons provide practical advice for scientists initiating interdisciplinary research endeavors. Our advice can help to avoid early problems and deal with differences between research fields, prepare for and anticipate challenges, align project expectations, and speed up research progress, thus promoting effective interdisciplinary research across Robotics, Neuroscience, and Psychology. (shrink)

Moral psychology investigates human functioning in moral contexts, and asks how these results may impact debate in ethical theory. This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on both the empirical resources of the human sciences and the conceptual resources of philosophical ethics. The present article discusses several topics that illustrate this type of inquiry: thought experiments, responsibility, character, egoism v . altruism, and moral disagreement.

In Republic V, Plato makes the astonishing claim that knowledge is a different and independent power from belief, in the way, for example, that sight differs from hearing. I will argue that this is a fundamentally different conception of knowledge than the, also Platonic, conception of knowledge as 'true belief with an account'. I examine the reasons why Plato holds this position, and the ontology and epistemology which sustain its claims.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convictedthree men for their role in the mass rape ofMuslim women during the conflict inBosnia-Hercegovina. That decision is a landmarkin many respects, but primarily for itsdetermination that the rape of Muslim womenamounted to a crime against humanity. Thiscomment provides an overview of the decision,exploring the significance of recognising rapeas a crime against humanity within the contextof other developments in the area of wartimerape and sexual violence. The comment alsoprovides a brief review of the decision inlight (...) of the author's previous scepticism aboutthe capacity for the Tribunal meaningfully toaddress violence against women. The commentconcludes that while many aspects of thedecision are promising, the war crimes trialitself may offer a limiting arena within whichto address wartime rape. (shrink)

The research is devoted to justification of the interdisciplinary approach in the study of consciousness. Studying consciousness as a phenomenon is a very divergent project, the mystery of its nature and appearance makes different ways of studying consciousness possible. Besides, consciousness is an umbrella term which may be interpreted differently in different contexts. Various approaches to comprehension of consciousness have been developed nowadays in Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Medicine, Neurosciences, Sociology, Cognitive and Computer Sciences, Linguistics and a number of other research (...) fields. In the end of the 1980s one can notice an exceptional growth of interest in the problem of consciousness both in Philosophy and Science. The works by Bernard Baars, Daniel Dennett, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick and Christopher Koch, David Chalmers have appeared in these years. They outlined the main approaches to the study of consciousness and demonstrated that study of consciousness became an interdisciplinarity research. The research discusses the features of the phenomenon of consciousness and outlines the main theoretical issues, the most relevant of which are the “hard problem” of consciousness, the problem of mind and body, the problem of “the explanatory gap”, the question of the primacy of the brain in relation to consciousness, the place of consciousness in the modern scientific paradigm, changes of the ethical and worldview interpretation in connection with artificial intelligence, neurochips and neural network. Based on the complexity and multidimensionality of the research field associated with the problem of consciousness, the variety of approaches to studying this problem in Philosophy and Science, the controversial character of the questions raised, and the heated discussion among researches, the author concludes that interdisciplinary studies of consciousness have the greatest heuristic possibilities today. (shrink)

Dans ce texte de Tchaïanov daté de l’été 1917, qu’une traduction partielle rend ici pour la première fois accessible au lectorat francophone, l’agronome, économiste et spécialiste de l’économie paysanne russe défend un collectivisme fondé sur l’idée d’une résistance de la paysannerie au développement du capitalisme. Ce texte a joué un rôle décisif à la fois dans la polarisation des débats sur le collectivisme en Russie à partir de 1917 et dans l’histoire des réceptions du marxisme dans la sociologie rurale tout (...) au long du XX e siècle. En fondant certaines thèses populistes sur des études empiriques de la situation russe, Tchaïanov a permis le développement d’un « néo-narodnisme écologique » dans les sciences sociales à partir des années 1960. (shrink)

The study presents the Russian historical-philosophical process in the context of the discovery of a new object, themes, personae, set of reactions and formation of a product for the intellectual community. The author's reliance on philosophical empirical material and appropriate hermeneutics in its processing allows the author to highlight those factors that influenced individual and collective reception. The author sees as a convenient case study the “discovery” by the Russian philosophical community of the early 20th century of both American philosophy (...) in general and C.S. Peirce in particular. Since the beginning of the 19th century, Russian thinkers have turned their attention to American philosophy in all the diversity of its manifestations. Russian intellectuals paid special attention to American pragmatism and everything associated with it. In Russia, in addition to translations, numerous reviews of foreign publications on this topic are appearing. Of particular interest to us in the Russian “collective reflection” of American ideas is the system of preferences for ideas, texts, events, and names. The point is that what might have been a priority for a European thinker, for a Russian one turned out to be on the “periphery” of his consciousness, as well as vice versa. While James appeared among the priority figures for Russian thinkers, Peirce was in his “shadow”. Using rich empirical material, the author shows all the stages of Peirce’s image formation in the Russian intellectual community. The research shows that “image” of Peirce, which represents not so much the thinker himself, but characterizes the intellectual community that turned to him. The results of the study may be useful both for contemporary foreign and Russian interpreters of Peirce and for historians of philosophy who are rethinking the past and forming in the present new objects of reception and reflection. (shrink)

Along with other definitions, the XX century is also called a century of domination of ideologies, which almost always considered a person as a means to establish one or another type of domination: either national, or class, or bureaucratic. Any but mandatory one that would resist human freedom, and therefore - justice. Ideology exits a person to think freely and make informed decisions. She wants to accustom her to adapt humbly to the existing political and economic conditions, to form a (...) superficial perception of the propagandized reality of the best and the unchangeable. The ideology of totalitarianism seeks to turn a person into a "social dream," self-sacrificed, and a satisfied citizen of every kind, indifferent to spiritual demands. (shrink)

Scheint die Sache aussichtslos, wird das "Prinzip Hoffnung" beschworen. Dessen Urheber, Ernst Bloch, war allerdings nicht ins Scheitern, sondern ins "Gelingen verliebt" Für die Philosophie der "konkreten Utopie", die sich strikt vom utopischen Denken im Sinne eines "wishful thinking" abgrenzt, ist die gesellschaftliche Praxis Orientierungspunkt. Die Trias "Solidarität, Allianztechnik, Heimat" markiert ein Ultimum, das latent im Weltprozess vorscheint, aber der Realisierung durch das menschliche Subjekt immer noch bedarf. Ein entsprechendes philosophisches Begriffsinstrumentarium, dem der Gedanke vom "Prius der Theorie, Primat der (...) Praxis" zugrunde liegt, hat Bloch systematisch in seiner Kategorienlehre entwickelt. Gegenstand ist das universelle menschliche Sein als "Noch-Nicht-Sein". Akzentuiert wird die auf dem Prozesscharakter der Materie beruhende Möglichkeit der Veränderung. Dabei umfasst das Denken nicht nur Gesellschaft, Kunst und Religion, sondern auch die Natur - ein Gebiet, das zunehmend zu philosophischer Insichtnahme auffordert. Die wichtigsten Leitbegriffe der Bloch'schen Philosophie werden im Wörterbuch erläutert. (shrink)