Abstracts of Papers, Part 1

Here are abstracts of the papers for the conference’s first concurrent sessions. Over the course of the next week, I’ll post the abstracts both for the other concurrent sessions and for the plenary sessions, as well.

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Call for Papers: “Spirituality in Action: Bringing Transpersonal Psychology to a World in Crisis”

I though this might be relevant for those working on Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and/or Moral Psychology. Best of Luck!

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Does Darwin Get Too Much Credit?

Some apparently think so:

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God, Time, Heidegger, and Personal Identity

Congratulations to Andrew Brenner and Ace Comparato whose projects were accepted for presentation at UNF’s annual Undergraduate Research Symposium!
Here are the abstracts of their projects:
“Special Relativity and Divine Eternality: The Contemporary Debate”
Andrew Brenner

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Adaptation and Testability

Evolution through natural selection is an immensely powerful theory. It is able to synthesize and found the many and various fields within the biological sciences into a coherent, explanatory network. Its explanatory success has in turn led most biologists to regard the phyletic configurations of organisms as aggregates of individual adaptations. Adaptations are gradual, heritable [...]

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Two New Blogs

The first, Matters of  Substance, is a group blog devoted to discussing the manifold issues that metaphysicians work on, as well as the field of metaphysics itself. At Matters of Substance you will find posts dealing with essentialism, causality, and space-time…among other quintessential metaphysical topics.
The second, It’s Only a Theory, is also a group blog which (as the name implies) is [...]

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Knobe and Gopnik on Bloggingheads

Joshua Knobe (UNC-Chapel Hill) and Alison Gopnik (UC-Berkeley) talk about how children think, about scientific thinking, and plenty more!
Note: Further commentary at the Splintered Mind.

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The Milgram Experiment

The Milgram Experiment is standard in psychology classes and a hypothesis Stanley Milgram raised has been increasingly taken up and examined by philosophers, “[O]ften it is not so much the kind of person a man as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act.” This hypothesis, the situationist [...]

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Stimulating the Cerebral Cortex

Stimulating points on the cerebral cortex with the tip of an electrode can make a subject experience various sensations. A patient may move an arm and experience this movement as external, i.e., not originating from the subject, experienced as a reflex. Some have taken this to show there is part of the mind (higher order [...]

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H.M. Dies at 82

A famous participant in neuroscience research, H.M., died last week. NYT reports:
In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation in Hartford to correct a seizure disorder, only to emerge from it fundamentally and irreparably changed. He developed a syndrome neurologists call profound amnesia. He had lost the ability to form new memories.
For the next 55 [...]

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Academeology: A Book by Female Science Professor

An academic blogger, Female Science Professor, began blogging anonymously in 2006. Her blog postings have been collected in a book which might interest our readers who like reading and thinking about science, intersections of philosophy and science, the production of scientific knowledge and the workings of academia. Female Science Professor is, well, a female scientist [...]

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Creationism in the UK

For better or worse, 29% percent of teachers in the UK think that creationism ought to be taught alongside evoultion, according to this blog.
Whether evolutionary theory is the only legitimate scientific explanation for the existence of life begs the question, ‘What is science?’ For, if science classes in schools covers that which falls under the [...]

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The New Riddle of Induction

David Hume, in his An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), first identified the difficulty of rationally justifying future predictions, which has come to be known as the Problem of Induction. He pointed out that since future predictions are neither statements of experience nor logically necessary consequences of such statements, their validity lies in the regularity [...]

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Philosophy on the Radio

For all of the FSPB readers who have better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than listen to NPR, this post will let you hear what you missed. To The Best of Our Knowledge is a program which offers a breath of topics ranging from current events, to post-postmodernism, to existential philosophy. One their shows which I think [...]

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Science Blog

Here is a blog I was just told about, and if anyone else is interested in contemporary science, the history of science, or just reading what scientists think about various topics then you will probably really like Cosmic Variance. The authors are all professional scientists, but I found the posts to be really accessible. Also, [...]

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Philosophy of Science – Some Initial Thoughts

As the semester begins I find myself looking forward into one of my courses with some particularly well-formed expectations and questions.
There seems to be a romanticized folk-notion of Science that has already come into question in the earliest of our readings. Last session, we briefly discussed “naive-inductivism,” which seems to fairly well capture the [...]

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Philosophy Soup, the Second Helping

With the Fall semester fully in swing there are great articles and discussions abound. Here are some for your consideration:
In his most recent post, Efficiency and Value, Richard from Philosophy, Etc. wonders whether supporting high-efficiency superstores provides more value than less efficient craft oriented systems.
Over at Brains, the most recent post is a [...]

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Our Body: The Universe Within

I went to an exhibit at the Orlando Science Center with my brother and my daughter on Saturday. The exhibit is called Our Body: The Universe Within and it features actual human bodies in various states of dissection, preserved using polymer impregnation (see plastination), presenting and focusing on each system of the human body.

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Colbert Using Ockham’s Razor

… to clarify his take on the theory of evolution in a discussion with Kenneth Miller (Brown). Enjoy the whole interview here.

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God’s Existence and the Standard Model of Particle Physics: An Entailment Relation?

In Faith and Philosophy (January 2007), Elliott Sober once again takes up the question of intelligent design (ID) theory, arguing that the minimalist ID (mini-ID) theory–despite what its proponents claim–has theological implications. Here is how Sober describes mini-ID theory:

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Werkmeister Conference: On the Origin of Species

… at FSU March 23rd and 24th. Details are available here.
- Rico Vitz

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Colorado Summer Seminar in Philosophy

[ADMIN NOTE: Moving to the front. Originally posted 03/05/07.]
The Seminar is intended for outstanding undergraduates who are considering graduate school in philosophy. The aim is to introduce students to the atmosphere of a graduate-level seminar, giving participants a chance to explore and sharpen their philosophical abilities before they commit to a graduate program.

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Science in Humanities – Humanities in Science- Human Scientists Conference

March 2, 2007, University of South Florida
Business Building,  Room 1301, 9am-7pm
Organized by
Dr. Pablo Brescia, Department of World Languages
Dr. Adriana Novoa, Department of Humanities and American Studies
Dr. Alex Levine, Department of Philosophy
http://humanitiesscience.org/

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SUNY-Buffalo Grad Student Conference

… on the Philosophy of Science, April 2007. The keynote speaker will be Stephen Leeds (U. of Wisconsin-Madison). The call for papers is available here. The deadline for submissions is February 16th.
- Rico Vitz

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Congratulations to FSU’s Al Mele!

Congratulations to Al Mele for winning an NEH Fellowship for work on his upcoming project, Intentions in Action: Action Theory and Action Science! More details are available here.
- Rico Vitz

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