THE TWO-FOLD PURPOSE OF THIS DISCUSSION IS: (1) TO CRITICIZE THE FIRST THREE OF HUME�S REASONS FOR REJECTING AS UNRELIABLE THE HISTORICAL RECORDS OF MIRACLES; (2) TO DRAW A DISTINCTION BETWEEN DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION WHICH CHALLENGES THE "A PRIORI" JUDGEMENT THAT AUTHENTIC MIRACLE REPORTS CANNOT FORM A RELIABLE PART OF HISTORY. HUME FAILED TO REALIZE THAT THE NATURALISTIC EXPLAINABILITY OF AN EVENT SAID TO BE A MIRACLE IS NOT LOGICALLY IMPLIED BY ITS ACCURATE DESCRIPTION.

Some have argued that because factually meaningful assertions must be falsifiable, putative theistic assertions such as “God loves us” are not meaningful because they are not falsifiable. It is further suggested that every attempt to make a factually significant theistic assertion founders on the same shoal of falsifiability.

1. Introduction : humanity's urge to understand -- 2. Elements of scientific thinking : skepticism, careful reasoning, and exhaustive evaluation are all vital. Science Is universal -- Maintaining a critical attitude. Reasonable skepticism -- Respect for the truth -- Reasoning. Deduction -- Induction -- Paradigm shifts -- Evaluating scientific hypotheses. Ockham's razor -- Quantitative evaluation -- Verification by others -- Statistics : correlation and causation -- Statistics : the indeterminacy of the small -- Careful definition -- Science at the frontier. (...) When good theories become ugly -- Stuff that just does not fit -- 3. Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the "Indies" : it can be disastrous to stubbornly refuse to recognize that you have falsified your own hypothesis -- 4. Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley both test the befuddling phlogiston theory : junking a confusing hypothesis may be necessary to clear the way for new and productive science -- 5. Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction but fails to unify electromagnetism and gravitation : it is usually productive to simplify and consolidate your hypotheses -- 6. Wilhelm Röntgen intended to study cathode rays but ended up discovering X-rays : listen carefully when Mother Nature whispers in your ear : she may be leading you to a Nobel Prize -- 7. Max Planck, the first superhero of quantum theory, saves the universe from the ultraviolet catastrophe : assemble two flawed hypotheses about a key phenomenon into a model that fits experiment exactly and people will listen to you even if you must revolutionize physics -- 8. Albert Einstein attacks the problem "Are atoms real?" from every angle : solving a centuries-old riddle in seven different ways can finally resolve it -- 9. Niels Bohr models the hydrogen atom as a quantized system with compelling exactness, but his later career proves that collaboration and developing new talent can become more significant than the groundbreaking research of any individual -- 10. Conclusions, status of science, and lessons for our time. Conclusions from our biographies -- What thought processes lead to innovation? -- Is the scientist an outsider? -- The status of the modern scientific enterprise -- Lessons for our time -- Can the scientific method be applied to public policy? -- Why so little interest in science? -- Knowledge is never complete. (shrink)

Rutherford and Lindell (2011) review an extensive literature on lateralization of emotion. As they note, an important issue surrounding this question is the nature of emotion, which bears on what, precisely, is lateralized. The present comments are intended to broaden the context of the review, by considering lateralization from the standpoint of a bivariate model of evaluative processes and a neuroevolutionary perspective.

Phosphoinositides are inositol‐containing phospholipids whose hydrolysis is a key step in the rapid responses of animal cells to extracellular signals. Whether they play similar roles in plant cells has not been established, and some have suggested alternative roles as direct modulators of specific proteins. Nonetheless, evidence is accumulating that phosphoinositide hydrolysis mediates transduction of some signal in plants. The evidence is strongest for a role in triggering the shedding of flagella by the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii under acid stress. Rapid (...) kinetic analysis indicates that phosphoinositide hydrolysis occures within half a second and could trigger the rapid loss of flagella. Plant responses to pathogens and osmotic stress, as well as the regulation of turgor changes which underlie stomatal opening and closing and the movement of leaves and flower parts, may also be mediated by phosphoinositide hydrolysis. The evidence thus indicates that at least one reason plants have phosphoinositides is to mediate transduction of environmental signals. (shrink)

The precise relationship between the autonomic nervous system and emotion has been a topic of intense debate and research throughout the history of modern psychology. The present article considers some of the more influential theoretical frameworks that continue to drive contemporary research on the relationship between emotion and physiological processes. In particular, we highlight the multiple routes through which somatovisceral afference influences emotion and how this relates to the topic of emotion-specific patterns of autonomic nervous system activity.

Max Weber famously wrote that world images determine the tracks along which societies move. This article examines the relation between world images and the so-called tracks of society, which in this metaphor resemble the current concept of institution. This concept is now associated with the ‘new institutionalisms’ in social science and has no connection to the civilizational level of analysis that Weber used. This article reexamines Weber’s usage of the terms and employs the terms to analyze differences in the principles (...) of legitimacy between those emerging in the West and those in China, differences that Weber himself did not recognize. (shrink)

Behrendt & Young's (B&Y's) theory offers a potentially important perspective on the neurobiology of schizophrenia, but it remains incomplete. In addition to bottom-up contributions, such as those associated with disturbances in sensory constraints on cognitive processes, a comprehensive model requires the integration of the consequences of abnormal top-down modulation of input processing for the evolution of “underconstrained” perceptions. Dysfunctional cholinergic modulation of input functions represents a necessary mechanism for the generation of false perceptions.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx issued several critiques of political economy writings stressing the exclusive duality of states and the national economies. He argued that capitalism had characteristic features quite apart from those shaped by the idiosyncrasies of national economies. In the first part of this article, we critique the contemporary state-centered explanations for the industrialization of East Asia on same grounds. We claim that most political economists misinterpret or entirely ignore the significance of export-led industrialization, which is a (...) characteristic feature of East Asian capitalism. In the second part of the article, we demonstrate the importance of the retail revolution in the US and Europe on Asian industrialization. In particular, we show that the development of the sequential ordering system that is an inherent feature of Western-based contract manufacturing differentially shaped the industrial organization of East Asian economies. The resulting path-dependent trajectories of development, in turn, encouraged government policy-makers to ‘buy into’ trends of global capitalism in different ways. The trajectories also led business people to privilege and adapt some social institutions and cultural patterns over other ones. (shrink)

Microtubules are organized into diverse cellular structures in multicellular organisms. How is such diversity generated? Although highly conserved overall, variable regions within α‐ and β‐tubulins show divergence from other α‐ and β‐tubulins in the same species, but show conservation among different species. Such conservation raises the question of whether diversity in tubulin structure mediates diversity in microtubule organization. Recent studies probing the function of β‐tubulin isotypes in axonemes of insects(1) suggest that tubulin structure, through interactions with extrinsic proteins, can direct (...) the architecture and supramolecular organization of microtubules. (shrink)

Nearly three decades have passed since Antony Flew first issued his now famous falsification challenge: ‘What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of, God?’ The purpose of the question is to challenge the sophisticated believer to describe a state of affairs in which a basic putative theistic assertion like ‘God exists’ would be false. If the believer admits that he cannot provide such a description (...) then, Flew would argue, he is admitting that at least his putative theistic assertion is compatible with every state of affairs; consequently it is factually meaningless. The reason for this is that every factually significant assertion must deny that some describable state of affairs obtains. To illustrate, just as when we draw a circle we simultaneously draw in and draw out two particular areas, so when we state a fact we simultaneously deny a fact. Here is the difficulty, Flew would say, in which the sophisticated believer puts himself when he uses putative theistic assertions: factually he denies nothing, hence factually he asserts nothing. (shrink)

Evaluative processes have their roots in early evolutionary history, as survival is dependent on an organism’s ability to identify and respond appropriately to positive, rewarding or otherwise salubrious stimuli as well as to negative, noxious, or injurious stimuli. Consequently, evaluative processes are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom and are represented at multiple levels of the nervous system, including the lowest levels of the neuraxis. While evolution has sculpted higher level evaluative systems into complex and sophisticated information-processing networks, they do not (...) come to replace, but rather to interact with more primitive lower level representations. Indeed, there are basic features of the underlying neuroarchitectural plan for evaluative processes that are common across levels of organization—including that of evaluative bivalence. (shrink)

HUME AND HIS FOLLOWERS HAVE TRIED UNSUCCESSFULLY TO ESTABLISH THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES BY APPEALING SOLELY TO THE DEFINITIONS OF MIRACLE AND NATURAL LAW. HUME’S ARGUMENT TRADES UPON THAT PART OF THE DEFINITION OF MIRACLE WHICH PERTAINS TO THE NUMERICAL INSIGNIFICANCE OF MIRACULOUS EVENTS. HE DID NOT REALIZE THAT THE LARGE NUMERICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NON-REPEATABLE IRREGULAR EVENTS AND REPEATABLE REGULAR ONES LOGICALLY CANNOT BE USED AS A CRITERION BY WHICH TO DETERMINE THE EXISTENTIAL STATUS OF NUMERICALLY SMALL NON-REPEATABLE IRREGULAR EVENTS. (...) USING A SIMILAR STRATEGY, THE CONTEMPORARY HUMEAN APPEALS TO PART OF THE DEFINITION OF NATURAL LAW, TO THE IDEA OF ITS ESSENTIAL GENERALITY. WHETHER "ESSENTIALLY GENERAL" IS TAKEN TO MEAN AN INTRINSIC NATURAL NECESSITY OR A NECESSITY IMPUTED TO NATURE, IN NEITHER CASE CAN THE LOGICAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF MIRACLES BE ESTABLISHED. (shrink)

This paper uses a short dialogue between a determinist and a free-will advocate as a basis for exploring some of the elements of circular reasoning which have for centuries kept alive one of the classical debates of philosophy, the freedom-versus-determinism debate. The chronic circularity which infests both sides of the debate arises from a procedural asymmetry in the argument, which in turn is produced by the different metaphysical commitments of the debaters.

In order to show that opposition to capital punishment cannot be both moral and entirely unconditional, Hugo Bedau proposes a fantasy–world scenario in which the execution of a murderer restores his murder victim to life. Were such a world to exist, argues Bedau, the death penalty would then be morally right. The aim of this article is to show that Bedau's argument is mistaken, largely because capital punishment in his fantasy world would not be an instrument of perfect restitution, as (...) he thinks, but instead would be an instrument of unfair restitution. Two attempts are made to repair Bedau's fantasy–world argument, but neither of them is found to be successful. Consequently his fantasy world does not successfully provide the conditions under which opposition to capital punishment morally would have to cease. However, because capital punishment is morally wrong in his fantasy world it does not follow that it is morally wrong in this world. (shrink)

Causal slippery slope arguments with moral conclusions are sometimes stronger than we think. Their strength may be missed either by overlooking the problems of human nature which support the arguments or, upon seeing the problems, by underestimating their influence upon human behaviour. This article aims to correct the oversight and the misjudgement by looking in some detail at four interrelated problems of human nature which have a direct bearing upon moral causal slope arguments.

The charge of homophobia, indiscriminately made in a large part of our Western culture today, is ill conceived, illogical and false. This sweeping charge may be pictured as a triangle of informal logical fallacies. The more prominent side, the one which the general public encounters first, is what I shall call the fallacy of turning the tables: the rhetorical device of making the source of criticism the object of criticism. The other side of the charge is the fallacy of equivocation. (...) The boundary of the term ‘homophobia’ is made so elastic that it can stretch around, not just phobias, but every kind of rational fear as well; and not just around every kind of fear, but also around every critical posture or idea that anyone may have about the practice of homosexuality. At the base of the charge, and undergirding the other two fallacies, is the fallacy of begging the question. A commitment to the complete acceptability of the practice of homosexuality enables its proponents to ‘know’ beforehand that all criticisms against it must originate in the defective psychology of the critic. (shrink)

In this article I shall aim at showing that there exists beneath the surface of many why-questions about human behaviour a nest of deterministic assumptions which can preclude their ever being truly answered. A symptom of the presence of these underlying assumptions can be observed in an explanation-seeking dialogue in which the questioner persistently tries to discover ‘why’ a certain human behaviour occurred. He repeats his why-question until he gets the type of answer he wants, but in the process he (...) effectively reasons in a circle. If the repeated questioning with its implied circular reasoning becomes chronic, then the questioner will beg the question with regards to the answer he desires and consequently run the risk of missing the truth. (shrink)

Los autores abordan el desafío de integrar la medicina convencional, la medicina psicosomática, y la medicina alternativa, necesario, según señalan, no sólo por razones clínicas y económicas, sino por el desafío de crear una teoría comprehensiva que integre la riqueza de datos aparentemente disparatados y teorías de la salud y la enfermedad en un todo organizado. Se trata de llegar a una medicina integrada. En este trabajo los autores identifican ocho visiones fundacionales sobre la naturaleza, cada una de las cuales (...) genera hipótesis diferentes acerca de la naturaleza y de la medicina, y han conducido a tres diferentes conceptos de medicina. El artículo aborda cómo el conocimiento de tales hipótesis puede alcanzar el objetivo de integrar la medicina. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. We reject arbitrary distinctions that deny adequate protections to other animals who share with protected humans relevantly similar vulnerabilities to harms and relevantly similar interests in avoiding such harms. We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as a nonhuman person, Happy should be (...) released from her current confinement and transferred to an appropriate elephant sanctuary, pursuant to habeas corpus. (shrink)