National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. (...) Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

Current psychiatric classification adopts a disorder-focused diagnostic approach, as exemplified within ICD-11 and DSM-V. Although this approach has improved reliability of categorization, its validity and utility has been questioned (Harvey, Watkins, Mansell, & Shafran, 2004; Insel et al., 2009; Sanislow et al., 2010). Limitations include high comorbidity between supposedly distinct disorders; heterogeneity within diagnoses; limited treatment efficacy; and similarities across disorders in aetiology, latent symptom structure, and underlying biology. There is also evidence of transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioural processes (Harvey et al., 2004). (...) An alternative approach is therefore to focus on fundamental underlying mechanisms of psychopathology rather than observed symptom clusters. This article considers the possible benefits, hurdles, and steps towards implementation of this transdiagnostic mechanistic approach, using the example of repetitive negative thought. (shrink)

Mathematical pluralism can take one of three forms: (1) every consistent mathematical theory consists of truths about its own domain of individuals and relations; (2) every mathematical theory, consistent or inconsistent, consists of truths about its own (possibly uninteresting) domain of individuals and relations; and (3) the principal philosophies of mathematics are each based upon an insight or truth about the nature of mathematics that can be validated. (1) includes the multiverse approach to set theory. (2) helps us to understand (...) the significance of the distinguished non‐logical individual and relation terms of even inconsistent theories. (3) is a metaphilosophical form of mathematical pluralism and hasn't been discussed in the literature. In what follows, I show how the analysis of theoretical mathematics in object theory exhibits all three forms of mathematical pluralism. (shrink)

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an open access, dynamic reference work designed to organize professional philosophers so that they can write, edit, and maintain a reference work in philosophy that is responsive to new research. From its inception, the SEP was designed so that each entry is maintained and kept up to date by an expert or group of experts in the field. All entries and substantive updates are refereed by the members of a distinguished Editorial Board before they (...) are made public. (shrink)

A provocative critique of Western attitudes about the Orient, this history examines the ways in which the West has discovered, invented, and sought to control the East from the 1700s to the present.

The standard philosophical project of analysing the concept of knowledge has radical defects in its arbitrary restriction of the subject matter, and its risky theoretical presuppositions. Edward Craig suggests a more illuminating approach, akin to the `state of nature' method found in political theory, which builds up the concept from a hypothesis about the social function of knowledge and the needs it fulfils. Light is thrown on much that philosophers have written about knowledge, about its analysis and the obstacles (...) to its analysis, and on the debate over scepticism. It becomes apparent why many languages not only have such constructions as `knows whether' and `knows that', but also have equivalents of `knows how to' and `know' followed by a direct object. Thus the inquiry is both broadened in scope and made theoretically less fragile. (shrink)

What sense could it make to describe your life as ‘unlivable’? What is it not only to be alive but to have a life that you live or lead? I answer by developing a social understanding of the pursuit of meaning in life. True to other uses of ‘meaning,’ I propose, meaning in a life is communicative. If you experience your life as ‘unlivable,’ recovery can lie in this communicative dynamic: you regain the experience of leading your life by letting (...) others remind you of meanings you have communicated to them in leading it. My argument develops an analogy between two dimensions in which you project an investment – a care, concern, love, or the like – when you form an intention or plan. Intrapersonally, you project your investment as communicatively intelligible to your own future self at ‘plan’s end.’ Interpersonally, you project it as communicatively intelligible to others who might come to love this thing that you love simply because you love it, as an expression of love for you. The normativity of meaning in your life puts rational pressure on you not only to abandon investments that you cannot communicate but to experience the meaning in investments that you retain. (shrink)

welcomed by a new generation of students and scholars in all branches of learning.

As a means of overcoming the "Third Man" argument, several commentators have developed an influential theory of the relationship between Platonic Forms and particulars based on Plato's use of "image" analogies. This essay explores the viability of this "image-analogy" hypothesis and, in particular, examines an important, but neglected, argument advanced by R. E. Allen intent on establishing an ontological distinction between an image and its object-source.

It is customary to draw a distinction between statements unconfirmable in practice and statements unconfirmable in principle. It may be impossible, for example, to confirm the statement “The star most distant from us in the universe has recently doubled in size,” but this impossibility is not of a logical kind. We could conceive of tests which would either confirm or disconfirm the statement, even if in fact we cannot carry them out. In contrast, the statement ‘Everything has recently doubled in (...) size’ cannot be confirmed for logical reasons, or so some philosophers have claimed. If everything were to double in size, including the very measuring rods used to detect expansions, it would be logically impossible, so the argument runs, to either confirm or disconfirm the above statement. (shrink)

Michael Faraday’s laboratory experiments have dominated traditional histories of the electrical sciences in 1820s and 1830s Britain. However, as this article demonstrates, in the mining region of Cornwall, Robert Were Fox fashioned a very different approach to the study of electromagnetic phenomena. Here, it was the mine that provided the foremost site of scientific experimentation, with Fox employing these underground locations to measure the Earth’s heat and make claims over the existence of subterranean electrical currents. Yet securing philosophical claims cultivated (...) in mines proved challenging for Fox, with metropolitan audiences, including Faraday, loath to give credit to the results of these underground experiments. This article explores how Fox developed a way of modeling his mine experiments, using clay samples, to communicate knowledge from industrial Cornwall to urban centers of elite science. It argues that the mine was an epistemologically complex venue of scientific activity, at once seeming to provide a way of examining nature directly, without recourse to laboratory contrivance, while simultaneously being a place where knowledge claims were hard to verify without access to these physically challenging locations. In exploring Fox’s work, this study contributes to a growing literature of spatial investigation that takes the vertical as its unit of analysis. (shrink)

Any study of the philosophical literature dealing with the cluster of topics generally identified as ‘functional description’, ‘functional analysis’, and ‘teleological explanation’ naturally raises the problem of confirming, disconfirming, or at least relating the alternative logical models proposed by philosophers to the actual usage of biologists. A close examination of current biological literature reveals that acceptance or rejection of what philosophers or sociologists might call a ‘functionalist’ perspective or approach is not significant for the division of biologists into schools or (...) factions. It is certainly not the case that a functionalist perspective distinguishes the wholistic or organismic faction from the molecular biologists. In fact, molecular biologists shift back and forth from ‘functional’ to simple causal perspectives with considerable indifference. This is particularly true of the literature based upon the so-called operon hypothesis developed by the Nobel laureates Jacob and Monod. (shrink)

Seeking to rediscover the connection between philosophy as studied in universities and those general views of man and reality which are 'philosophy' to the educated layman, Edward Craig here offers a view of philosophy and its history since the early seventeenth century. He presents this period as concerned primarily with just two visions of the essential nature of man. One portrays human beings as made in the image of God, required to resemble him as far as lies in our (...) power; the other sees us as autonomous creators of our own environment and values. The author writes with a broad sweep not encouraged by recent fashion, yet shows how textual detail which previous commentators have found opaque becomes transparent when viewed against such a background. In the final chapter he treats passages from recent work in the same way. The general conceptions which philosophical thought embodies can equally well be embodied in other media, especially literary. The author illustrates this point with German and English examples and thereby draws together disciplines often felt to be far apart. He also reveals striking similarities between Anglo-American and certain twentieth-century continental European lines of thought. (shrink)

Science provides us with representations of atoms, elementary particles, polymers, populations, genetic trees, economies, rational decisions, aeroplanes, earthquakes, forest fires, irrigation systems, and the world’s climate. It's through these representations that we learn about the world. This entry explores various different accounts of scientific representation, with a particular focus on how scientific models represent their target systems. As philosophers of science are increasingly acknowledging the importance, if not the primacy, of scientific models as representational units of science, it's important to (...) stress that how they represent plays a fundamental role in how we are to answer other questions in the philosophy of science (e.g. the scientific realism debate). This entry begins by disentangling ‘the’ problem of scientific representation, before critically evaluating the current options available in the literature. (shrink)

The dominant, individualistic understanding of autonomy that features in clinical practice and research is underpinned by the idea that people are, in their ideal form, independent, self-interested and rational gain-maximising decision-makers. In recent decades, this paradigm has been challenged from various disciplinary and intellectual directions. Proponents of ‘relational autonomy’ in particular have argued that people’s identities, needs, interests – and indeed autonomy – are always also shaped by their relations to others. Yet, despite the pronounced and nuanced critique directed at (...) an individualistic understanding of autonomy, this critique has had very little effect on ethical and legal instruments in clinical practice and research so far. In this article, we use four case studies to explore to what extent, if at all, relational autonomy can provide solutions to ethical and practical problems in clinical practice and research. We conclude that certain forms of relational autonomy can have a tangibl... (shrink)

Offers a philosophical exploration of the pervasiveness of place. Presenting an account of the role of place in human experience, this book points to place's indispensability in navigation and orientation. The role of the lived body in matters of place isconsidered, and the characteristics of built places are explored.

The so-called ergodic hierarchy (EH) is a central part of ergodic theory. It is a hierarchy of properties that dynamical systems can possess. Its five levels are egrodicity, weak mixing, strong mixing, Kolomogorov, and Bernoulli. Although EH is a mathematical theory, its concepts have been widely used in the foundations of statistical physics, accounts of randomness, and discussions about the nature of chaos. We introduce EH and discuss its applications in these fields.

[Michael Smith] The requirements of instrumental rationality are often thought to be normative conditions on choice or intention, but this is a mistake. Instrumental rationality is best understood as a requirement of coherence on an agent's non-instrumental desires and means-end beliefs. Since only a subset of an agent's means-end beliefs concern possible actions, the connection with intention is thus more oblique. This requirement of coherence can be satisfied either locally or more globally, it may be only one among a number (...) of such requirements on an agent's total set of desires and beliefs, and it has no special connection with reasoning. An appreciation of these facts leads to a better understanding of both the nature and the significance of instrumental rationality. /// [Edward Harcourt] I argue that the incoherence Smith claims to identify in agents who desire that q, believe that p is a necessary means to q, but fail to desire that p is illusory, since it rests on the false assumption that every property I know to be possessed by an object of my desire is an object of my desire. Though the failure of Smith's account of the irrationality of this pattern of attitudes leaves it open that the pattern is indeed irrational, I argue that there are instances of it that are not irrational where the desires are desires for what the agent knows to be impossible for him. This conclusion casts doubt on the overall strategy-that of making a Humean theory of action explanation do duty as a theory of instrumental rationality-which implies that the norms of instrumental rationality apply to desires simply as such. I then try to criticise the strategy in such a way as to leave the Humean theory of action explanation unaffected. (shrink)

This book is a treatise on time and on background independence in physics. It first considers how time is conceived of in each accepted paradigm of physics: Newtonian, special relativity, quantum mechanics (QM) and general relativity (GR). Substantial differences are moreover uncovered between what is meant by time in QM and in GR. These differences jointly source the Problem of Time: Nine interlinked facets which arise upon attempting concurrent treatment of the QM and GR paradigms, as is required in particular (...) for a background independent theory of quantum gravity. A sizeable proportion of current quantum gravity programs - e.g. geometrodynamical and loop quantum gravity approaches to quantum GR, quantum cosmology, supergravity and M-theory - are background independent in this sense. This book's foundational topic is thus furthermore of practical relevance in the ongoing development of quantum gravity programs. This book shows moreover that eight of the nine facets of the Problem of Time already occur upon entertaining background independence in classical (rather than quantum) physics. By this development, and interpreting shape theory as modelling background independence, this book further establishes background independence as a field of study. Background independent mechanics, as well as minisuperspace (spatially homogeneous) models of GR and perturbations thereabout are used to illustrate these points. As hitherto formulated, the different facets of the Problem of Time greatly interfere with each others' attempted resolutions. This book explains how, none the less, a local resolution of the Problem of Time can be arrived at after various reconceptualizations of the facets and reformulations of their mathematical implementation. Self-contained appendices on mathematical methods for basic and foundational quantum gravity are included. Finally, this book outlines how supergravity is refreshingly different from GR as a realization of background independence, and what background independence entails at the topological level and beyond. (shrink)

Many philosophers, including direct reference theorists, appeal to naively to 'modes of presentation' in the analysis of belief reports. I show that a variety of such appeals can be analyzed in terms of a precise theory of modes of presentation. The objects that serve as modes are identified intrinsically, in a noncircular way, and it is shown that they can function in the required way. It is a consequence of the intrinsic characterization that some objects are well-suited to serve as (...) modes that present individuals and while others are well-suited to serve as modes that present properties (though such modes do not `determine' the objects they present---there is no necessary connection between a mode m and the individual x or property F that it presents). Moreover, it is also a consequence that the modes for properties and individuals can be organized into complexes that are structurally identical to Russellian propositions having the represented properties and individuals as constituents. Not only is the relationship between modes and Fregean senses and modes of presentation explored in the paper, but also the idea that the theory of modes of presentation developed in the paper can serve as a theory of concepts. (shrink)

After defining a standard modal language and semantics, we offer some clear examples of logical and analytic truths that are not necessary. These examples: (a) are far simpler than the ones cited in the literature, (b) show that a popular conception of logical truth in modal languages is incorrect, and (c) show that there are contingent truths knowable ``a priori'' that do not depend on fixing the reference of a term.

This article investigates a high-profile and ongoing dilemma for healthcare professionals, namely whether the existence of a duty of care to genetic relatives of a patient is a help or a hindrance in deciding what to do in cases where a patient’s genetic information may have relevance to the health of the patient’s family members. The English case ABC v St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust and others considered if a duty of confidentiality owed to the patient and a putative duty (...) of care to the patient’s close relatives could coexist in this context. This article examines whether embracing the concept of coexisting duties could enable HCPs to respect duties in line with their clinical judgement, thereby providing legal support and clarity to professionals to allow them to provide the best possible genetics service to both the patient and their family. We argue that these dual duties, framed as a novel, composite duty to consider the interests of genetic relatives, could allow HCPs to exercise and act on their professional judgements about the relative value of information to family members, without fears of liability for negligence or breach of confidence. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Two experiments examine the effects of unreportable hints on anagram solving performance and on solvers' subjective experience of insight. In Experiment 1, after seeing a hint presented too briefly to identify, participants solved anagrams preceded by the solution fastest and solved anagrams preceded by unrelated hints slowest. Participants' “warmth” ratings for solution hints were more insight-like than those for unrelated hints. In Experiment 2 a hint, or no hint, was presented at one of three different exposure durations. Participants benefited from (...) solution-relevant hints that were either unreportable or reportable, but showed a cost only for unrelated hints that were reportable. Participants' ratings of their insight experiences showed that unreportable solution and semantically related hints produced more insight-like experiences than did unrelated hints. The results suggest that unreportable processing of solution-related information is important for the insight experience. (shrink)

Spurred by a confluence of factors, most notably the decreasing cost of high-throughput technologies and advances in information technologies, a number of population research initiatives have emerged in recent years. These include large-scale, internationally collaborative genomic projects and biobanks, the latter of which can be defined as an organized collection of human biological material and associated data stored for one or more research purposes. Biobanks are a key emerging research infrastructure, and those established as prospective research resources comprising biospecimens and (...) data from many participants are viewed as particularly promising drivers of biomedical progress. Such biobanks, particularly those publicly funded and set up to promote the public interest, have expanded across the globe in recent years. (shrink)

This edition goes beyond others that largely leave readers to their own devices in understanding this cryptic work, by providing an entrée into the text that parallels the traditional Chinese way of approaching it: alongside Slingerland's exquisite rendering of the work are his translations of a selection of classic Chinese commentaries that shed light on difficult passages, provide historical and cultural context, and invite the reader to ponder a range of interpretations. The ideal student edition, this volume also includes a (...) general introduction, notes, multiple appendices--including a glossary of technical terms, references to modern Western scholarship that point the way for further study, and an annotated bibliography. (shrink)

Natural philosophy encompassed all natural phenomena of the physical world. It sought to discover the physical causes of all natural effects and was little concerned with mathematics. By contrast, the exact mathematical sciences were narrowly confined to various computations that did not involve physical causes, functioning totally independently of natural philosophy. Although this began slowly to change in the late Middle Ages, a much more thoroughgoing union of natural philosophy and mathematics occurred in the seventeenth century and thereby made the (...) Scientific Revolution possible. The title of Isaac Newton's great work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, perfectly reflects the new relationship. Natural philosophy became the 'Great Mother of the Sciences', which by the nineteenth century had nourished the manifold chemical, physical, and biological sciences to maturity, thus enabling them to leave the 'Great Mother' and emerge as the multiplicity of independent sciences we know today. (shrink)

The problem of the one and the many is central to ancient Greek philosophy, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to Aristotle's treatment of it in the Metaphysics. The Central Books of the Metaphysics are widely recognised as the most difficult portion of a most difficult work. This title aims to examine the Central Books.

Alexander Herzen was the most outstanding figure in the early period of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin claimed him as a forerunner of the Bolsheviks, and Soviet scholars have sought to establish his latent sympathy with Marxism. In the west on the other hand, he has been seen as a precursor of Solzhenitsyn, the personification of protest against all forms of oppression. Dr Acton provides a compelling intellectual biography. The focus is on the years between 1847 and 1863. Herzen's ideas (...) are set in the context of those political developments and dramatic private experiences that affected his outlook. His profound faith in human nature and in the inevitable triumph of socialism was undermined not only by the failure of the revolutions of 1848, but even more deeply by personal catastrophe - the discovery of the infidelity of his beautiful wife Natalie. This dual blow, Dr Acton shows, had a decisive impact upon Herzen's approach to Russian problems. It lay at the root of the ambivalent attitude he adopted towards peasant revolution in the critical period of Emancipation. (shrink)

Life sciences research is increasingly international and data-intensive. Researchers work in multi-jurisdictional teams or formally established research consortia to exchange data and conduct research using computation of multiple sources and volumes of data at multiple sites and through multiple pathways. Despite the internationalization and data intensification of research, the same ethics review process as applies to single-site studies in one country tends to apply to multi-site studies in multiple countries. Because of the standard requirement for multi-jurisdictional or multi-site ethics review, (...) international research projects are subjected to multiple ethics reviews of the same research protocol. Consequently, the reviews may be redundant and resource-consuming, whilst the opinions delivered by ethics committees may be inconsistent both within and across jurisdictions. In this article, we present findings based on interviews conducted with international experts in research ethics on the topic of et... (shrink)