Results for 'Philip Maxwell Thingbø Mlonyeni'

771 found
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  1. Global Philosophy: What Philosophy Ought to Be.Nicholas Maxwell - 2014 - Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
    These essays are about education, learning, rational inquiry, philosophy, science studies, problem solving, academic inquiry, global problems, wisdom and, above all, the urgent need for an academic revolution. Despite this range and diversity of topics, there is a common underlying theme. Education ought to be devoted, much more than it is, to the exploration real-life, open problems; it ought not to be restricted to learning up solutions to already solved problems - especially if nothing is said about the problems that (...)
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  2. Brief Account of How Nicholas Maxwell Came to Argue for the Urgent Need for a Revolution in Universities.Nicholas Maxwell - manuscript
    We need urgently to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that they take their fundamental task to be, not to acquire and apply knowledge, but rather to help humanity learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that we may make progress towards a good, genuinely civilized, wise world. The pursuit of knowledge would be a vital but subsidiary task. I have argued for the urgent need for (...)
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  3. A critique of Popper's views on scientific method.Nicholas Maxwell - 1972 - Philosophy of Science 39 (2):131-152.
    This paper considers objections to Popper's views on scientific method. It is argued that criticism of Popper's views, developed by Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, are not too damaging, although they do require that Popper's views be modified somewhat. It is argued that a much more serious criticism is that Popper has failed to provide us with any reason for holding that the methodological rules he advocates give us a better hope of realizing the aims of science than any other set (...)
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  4. The rationality of scientific discovery part I: The traditional rationality problem.Nicholas Maxwell - 1974 - Philosophy of Science 41 (2):123-153.
    The basic task of the essay is to exhibit science as a rational enterprise. I argue that in order to do this we need to change quite fundamentally our whole conception of science. Today it is rather generally taken for granted that a precondition for science to be rational is that in science we do not make substantial assumptions about the world, or about the phenomena we are investigating, which are held permanently immune from empirical appraisal. According to this standard (...)
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  5. A New Conception of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 2000 - Physics World 13 (8):17-18.
    When scientists choose one theory over another, they reject out of hand all those that are not simple, unified or explanatory. Yet the orthodox view of science is that evidence alone should determine what can be accepted. Nicholas Maxwell thinks he has a way out of the dilemma.
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  6. The Selection Problem for Constitutive Panpsychism.Philip Woodward - 2021 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 99 (3):564-578.
    ABSTRACT Constitutive panpsychism is the doctrine that macro-level consciousness—that is, consciousness of the sort possessed by certain composite things such as humans—is built out of irreducibly mental features had by some or all of the basic physical constituents of reality. On constitutive panpsychism, changes in macro-level consciousness amount to changes in either the way that micro-conscious entities ‘bond’ or the way that micro-conscious qualities ‘blend’. I pose the ‘Selection Problem’ for constitutive panpsychism—the problem of explaining how high-level functional states of (...)
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  7. Scientific metaphysics.Nicholas Maxwell - 2004 - Philsci Archive.
    In this paper I argue that physics makes metaphysical presuppositions concerning the physical comprehensibility, the dynamic unity, of the universe. I argue that rigour requires that these metaphysical presuppositions be made explicit as an integral part of theoretical knowledge in physics. An account of what it means to assert of a theory that it is unified is developed, which provides the means for partially ordering dynamical physical theories with respect to their degrees of unity. This in turn makes it possible (...)
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    Why Does Possessing Standing to Blame Matter?Philip Yaure - forthcoming - Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
    I argue that moral dialogue concerning an agent’s standing to blame facilitates moral understanding about the purported wrongdoing that her blame targets. Challenges to a blamer’s standing serve a communicative function: they initiate dialogue or reflection meant to align the moral understanding of the blamer and challenger. On standard accounts of standing to blame, challenges to standing facilitate shared moral understanding about the blamer herself: it matters per se whether the blamer has a stake in the purported wrongdoing at issue, (...)
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  9. The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Science.Nicholas Maxwell - 1998 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    The Comprehensibility of the Universe puts forward a radically new conception of science. According to the orthodox conception, scientific theories are accepted and rejected impartially with respect to evidence, no permanent assumption being made about the world independently of the evidence. Nicholas Maxwell argues that this orthodox view is untenable. He urges that in its place a new orthodoxy is needed, which sees science as making a hierarchy of metaphysical assumptions about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, these (...)
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  10. Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented Empiricism.Nicholas Maxwell - 2017 - St. Paul, USA: Paragon House.
    "Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing (...)
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  11. Cutting God in Half.Nicholas Maxwell - 2002 - Philosophy Now 35 (35):22-25.
    In order to solve the problem of the monstrous acts that an all-powerful, all-knowing God would daily be performing, we need to sever the God of Power from the God of Value. The former is the underlying dynamic unity in the physical universe, eternal, omnipresent, all-powerful, but an It, and thus not capable of knowing what It does. It can be forgiven the terrible things It does. The latter is what is of most value associated with our human world - (...)
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  12. A priori conjectural knowledge in physics.N. Maxwell - 2011 - In Michael J. Shaffer & Michael L. Veber (eds.), What Place for the A Priori? Open Court. pp. 211-240.
    The history of western philosophy is split to its core by a long-standing, fundamental dispute. On the one hand there are the so-called empiricists, like Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Mill, Russell, the logical positivists, A. J. Ayer, Karl Popper and most scientists, who hold empirical considerations alone can be appealed to in justifying, or providing a rationale for, claims to factual knowledge, there being no such thing as a priori knowledge – items of factual knowledge that are accepted on grounds other (...)
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  13. Does orthodox quantum theory undermine, or support, scientific realism?Nicholas Maxwell - 1994 - Philosophical Quarterly 44 (171):139-157.
    It is usually taken for granted that orthodox quantum theory poses a serious problem for scientific realism, in that the theory is empirically extraordinarily successful, and yet has instrumentalism built into it. This paper stand this view on its head. I argue that orthodox quantum theory suffers from a number of serious (if not always noticed) defects precisely because of its inbuilt instrumentalism. This defective character of orthdoox quantum theory thus undermines instrumentalism, and supports scientific realism. I go on to (...)
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  14. Intentions, Intending, and Belief: Noninferential Weak Cognitivism.Philip Clark - 2020 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (2):308-327.
    Cognitivists about intention hold that intending to do something entails believing you will do it. Non-cognitivists hold that intentions are conative states with no cognitive component. I argue that both of these claims are true. Intending entails the presence of a belief, even though the intention is not even partly the belief. The result is a form of what Sarah Paul calls Non-Inferential Weak Cognitivism, a view that, as she notes, has no prominent defenders.
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  15. The enlightenment, Popper and Einstein.Nicholas Maxwell - 2007 - In Yong Shi, David L. Olson & Antonie Stam (eds.), Knowledge and Wisdom: Advances in Multiple Criteria Decision Making and Human Systems Management,. IOS Press.
    In this paper I discuss four versions of the basic idea of the French Enlightenment of the 18th century, namely: To learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards an enlightened world. These four versions are: 1. The Traditional Enlightenment Programme. 2. The Popperian Version of the Enlightenment Programme. 3. The Improved Popperian Enlightenment Programme. 4. The New Enlightenment Programme. The Traditional Enlightenment Programme is the version of the idea upheld by the philosophes of the French Enlightenment. It (...)
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  16. Getting Gettier Right: Reply to Mizrahi.Philip Atkins - 2017 - Logos and Episteme 8 (3):347-357.
    Moti Mizrahi has argued that Gettier cases are misleading, since they involve a certain kind of semantic failure. In a recent paper, I criticized Mizrahi’s argument. Mizrahi has since responded. This is a response to his response.
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  17. Discussion between Philip Højme and Andrew P. Keltner: On Tech.Philip Højme & Andrew Keltner - 2023 - Gcas Magazine.
    Both Philip and Andrew are philosophy students whose interests converge around the philosophy of technology broadly understood. Philip's interest is specifically aimed toward the ethics of Transhumanism and depictions of Transhumanism in works of fiction. On the other hand, Andrew finds himself more focused on religious behavior in the technological world. While the two perspectives might not seem that close, there is certain to be an overlap in Andrew and Philip's shared understanding of how technological phenomena play (...)
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  18. Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness.Philip Clayton - 2004 - New York: Oxford University Press UK.
    Strong claims have been made for emergence as a new paradigm for understanding science, consciousness, and religion. Tracing the past history and current definitions of the concept, Clayton assesses the case for emergent phenomena in the natural world and their significance for philosophy and theology. Complex emergent phenomena require irreducible levels of explanation in physics, chemistry and biology. This pattern of emergence suggests a new approach to the problem of consciousness, which is neither reducible to brain states nor proof of (...)
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  19. Hope and Despair in the Political Thought of David Walker.Philip Yaure - 2024 - The Pluralist 19 (1):14-22.
    This paper examines the interplay between hope and despair in David Walker's "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World" (1829). I argue that, in his pamphlet, Walker mobilizes despair about the depth and seeming insurmountability of white supremacy to catalyze collective political agency and thereby emancipatory hope among Black Americans. This emancipatory potential of despair is grounded a distinction between the content of despair (a belief in the insurmountability of white supremacy) and its form as a political judgment made (...)
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  20. Two Varieties of White Ignorance.Philip Yaure - 2024 - Journal of Politics 86 (3):920-933.
    The concept of white ignorance refers to phenomena of not-knowing that are produced by and reinforce systems of white supremacist domination and exploitation. I distinguish two varieties of white ignorance, belief-based white ignorance and practice-based white ignorance. Belief-based white ignorance consists in an information deficit about systems of racist oppression. Practice-based white ignorance consists in unresponsiveness to the political agency of persons and groups subject to racist oppression. Drawing on the antebellum political thought of Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet (...)
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  21. Caretakers of value: A theory of human personhood.Philip Woodward - 2024 - Philosophical Forum 55 (3):251-269.
    According to a traditional view, humans are superior to their non‐human terrestrial companions because they alone are “rational animals.” Although the traditional view is presupposed by our social and legal institutions, it has been called into question by modern science: Darwin himself claimed that humans differ in degree rather than in kind from animals, and recent discoveries in comparative animal cognition have seemed to confirm Darwin's assertion. Sustaining the traditional view in light of these discoveries calls out for a careful (...)
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  22. Universities Betray Reason and as a Result Betray Humanity.Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - Journal Of Anthropological And Archaeological Sciences 4 (5):562-564.
    If universities sought to help promote human welfare rationally, they would give intellectual priority to the tasks of articulating problems of living, and proposing and critically assessing possible solutions, possible actions. Priority would be given to public education about what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. Universities do not remotely proceed in this way. Why not? Because they are dominated by the idea that knowledge must first be acquired; once acquired, it then can be applied (...)
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  23. A Revolution for Science and the Humanities: From Knowledge to Wisdom.Nicholas Maxwell - 2004 - Dialogue and Universalism 15 (1-2):29-57.
    At present the basic intellectual aim of academic inquiry is to improve knowledge. Much of the structure, the whole character, of academic inquiry, in universities all over the world, is shaped by the adoption of this as the basic intellectual aim. But, judged from the standpoint of making a contribution to human welfare, academic inquiry of this type is damagingly irrational. Three of four of the most elementary rules of rational problem-solving are violated. A revolution in the aims and methods (...)
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  24. We Need to Recreate Natural Philosophy.Nicholas Maxwell - 2018 - Philosophies 3 (4):28.
    Modern science began as natural philosophy, an admixture of philosophy and science. It was then killed off by Newton, as a result of his claim to have derived his law of gravitation from the phenomena by induction. But this post-Newtonian conception of science, which holds that theories are accepted on the basis of evidence, is untenable, as the long-standing insolubility of the problem of induction indicates. Persistent acceptance of unified theories only in physics, when endless equally empirically successful disunified rivals (...)
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  25. How Can Our Human World Exist and Best Flourish Embedded in the Physical Universe? A Letter to an Applicant to a New Liberal Studies Course.Nicholas Maxwell - 2014 - On the Horizon 22 (1).
    In this paper I sketch a liberal studies course designed to explore our fundamental problem of thought and life: How can our human world exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? The fundamental character of this problem provides one with the opportunity to explore a wide range of issues. What does physics tell us about the universe and ourselves? How do we account for everything physics leaves out? How can living brains be conscious? If everything (...)
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  26. Ability, Foreknowledge, and Explanatory Dependence.Philip Swenson - 2016 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (4):658-671.
    Many philosophers maintain that the ability to do otherwise is compatible with comprehensive divine foreknowledge but incompatible with the truth of causal determinism. But the Fixity of the Past principle underlying the rejection of compatibilism about the ability to do otherwise and determinism appears to generate an argument also for the incompatibility of the ability to do otherwise and divine foreknowledge. By developing an account of ability that appeals to the notion of explanatory dependence, we can replace the Fixity of (...)
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  27. Replies to Criticisms and Comments.Nicholas Maxwell - 2012 - Dialogue and Universalism 22 (3):133-152.
    This article consists of my replies to criticisms of and comments on a talk I gave at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, in 2011. My original talk was called "The Menace of Science without Civilization: From Knowledge to Wisdom": for the text. In my talk I argued that our extraordinarily successful pursuit of scientific knowledge and technology has vastly increased our power to act, without increasing our power to act wisely. This puts us into a situation of unprecedented (...)
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  28. How Universities Can Help Humanity Learn How to Resolve the Crises of Our Times - From Knowledge to Wisdom: The University College London Experience.Nicholas Maxwell - 2012 - In G. Heam Heam, T. Katlelle & D. Rooney (eds.), Handbook on the Knowledge Economy, vol. 2.
    We are in a state of impending crisis. And the fault lies in part with academia. For two centuries or so, academia has been devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how. This has enormously increased our power to act which has, in turn, brought us both all the great benefits of the modern world and the crises we now face. Modern science and technology have made possible modern industry and agriculture, the explosive growth of the world’s population, global (...)
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  29. We Need an Academic Revolution.Nicholas Maxwell - 2011 - Oxford Magazine 1 (309):15-18.
    Universities today betray both reason and humanity. They are still dominated by the idea, inherited from the past, that the best way the academic enterprise can help promote human welfare is, in the first instance, to pursue the intellectual aim of acquiring knowledge. First, knowledge and technological know-how are to be acquired; then, secondarily, they can be applied to help solve social problems. But academic inquiry conducted in this way – knowledge-inquiry as it may be called – violates the most (...)
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  30. Science and the environment: A new enlightenment.Nicholas Maxwell - 1997 - Science and Public Affairs (Spring 1997):50-56.
    Nicholas Maxwell believes that while we have developed an excellent way of learning about the nature of the universe, we have so far failed in our attempts to apply this method to create a civilized world.
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  31. Replies and Reflections.Nicholas Maxwell - 2009 - In Leemon McHenry (ed.), Science and the Pursuit of Wisdom: Studies in the Philosophy of Nicholas Maxwell. Frankfurt, Germany: Ontos Verlag. pp. 249-314.
    I reply to critical discussion of my work by Copthorne Macdonald, Steve Fuller, John Stewart, Joseph Agassi, Margaret Boden, Donald Gillies, Mathew Iredale, David Hodgson, Karl Rogers, and Leemon McHenry.
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  32. Devotion and Well-Being: A Platonic Personalist Perfectionist Account.Philip Woodward - 2024 - Journal of Value Inquiry 58 (3):403-423.
    According to the traditional Christian understanding, being devoted to God is partly constitutive of human welfare. I explicate this tradition view, in three stages. First, I sketch a general theory of well-being which I call ‘Platonic Personalist Perfectionism.’ Second, I show how being devoted to God is uniquely perfective. I discuss three different components of the posture of devotion: abnegation (surrender of one’s will to God), adoration (responding to God’s goodness with attention, love and praise), and existential dependence (receiving one’s (...)
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  33. Are probabilism and special relativity incompatible?Nicholas Maxwell - 1985 - Philosophy of Science 52 (1):23-43.
    In this paper I expound an argument which seems to establish that probabilism and special relativity are incompatible. I examine the argument critically, and consider its implications for interpretative problems of quantum theory, and for theoretical physics as a whole.
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  34. a variational approach to niche construction.Axel Constant, Maxwell Ramstead, Samuel Veissière, John Campbell & Karl Friston - 2018 - Journals of the Royal Society Interface 15:1-14.
    In evolutionary biology, niche construction is sometimes described as a genuine evolutionary process whereby organisms, through their activities and regulatory mechanisms, modify their environment such as to steer their own evolutionary trajectory, and that of other species. There is ongoing debate, however, on the extent to which niche construction ought to be considered a bona fide evolutionary force, on a par with natural selection. Recent formulations of the variational free-energy principle as applied to the life sciences describe the properties of (...)
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  35. Practical certainty and cosmological conjectures.Nicholas Maxwell - 2006 - In Michael Rahnfeld (ed.), Is there Certain Knowledge? Leipziger Universitätsverlag.
    We ordinarily assume that we have reliable knowledge of our immediate surroundings, so much so that almost all the time we entrust our lives to the truth of what we take ourselves to know, without a moment’s thought. But if, as Karl Popper and others have maintained, all our knowledge is conjectural, then this habitual assumption that our common sense knowledge of our environment is secure and trustworthy would seem to be an illusion. Popper’s philosophy of science, in particular, fails (...)
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  36. How to Create a Better World: Bring about a Revolution in Universities.Nicholas Maxwell - 2013 - Discussion Blog.
    In order to create a better world we need to bring about a revolution in universities so that they become devoted to helping humanity learn how to make progress towards as good a world as possible.
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  37. Declaration in Douglass's My Bondage & My Freedom.Philip Yaure - 2020 - American Political Thought 9 (4):513-541.
    In this paper, I develop an account of Frederick Douglass’s use of declaration as an emancipatory mode of political action. An act of declaration compels an audience to acknowledge the declarer as possessing a type of normative standing (e.g. personhood or citizenship). Douglass, through acts of declaration like his Fifth of July speech and fight with the ‘slavebreaker’ Covey, compels American audiences to acknowledge him as a fellow citizen by forcefully enacting a commitment to resist tyranny and oppression. The distinctive (...)
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  38. (1 other version)Has Science Established that the Cosmos is Physically Comprehensible?Nicholas Maxwell - 2013 - In Recent Advances in Cosmology. Nova Science Publishers. pp. 1-56.
    Most scientists would hold that science has not established that the cosmos is physically comprehensible – i.e. such that there is some as-yet undiscovered true physical theory of everything that is unified. This is an empirically untestable, or metaphysical thesis. It thus lies beyond the scope of science. Only when physics has formulated a testable unified theory of everything which has been amply corroborated empirically will science be in a position to declare that it has established that the cosmos is (...)
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  39. From knowledge to wisdom: a revolution in the aims and methods of science.Nicholas Maxwell - 1984 - Oxford: Blackwell.
    This book argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in (...)
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  40. Prospects for Panentheism as Research Program.Philip Clayton - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11 (1):1-18.
    Panentheism is best understood as a philosophical research program. Identifying the core of the research program offers a strong response to the demarcation objection. It also helps focus both objections to and defenses of panentheism — and to show why common objections are not actually criticisms of the position we are defending. The paper also addresses two common criticisms: the alleged inadequacy of panentheism’s double “in” specification of the relationship between God and world, and the “double God” objection. Once the (...)
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  41. (3 other versions)The Urgent Need for an Academic Revolution.Nicholas Maxwell - 2010 - In Mark Levene, Rob Johnson & Richard Maguire (eds.), History at the End of the World? History, Climate Change and the Possibility of Closure. Humanities-EBooks.
    Two great problems of learning confront humanity: first, learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves as a part of the universe, and second, learning how to live wisely – learning how to make progress towards as good a world as possible. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. A method was discovered for progressively improving knowledge and understanding of the natural world, the famous empirical method of science. (...)
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  42. Equal Moral Opportunity: A Solution to the Problem of Moral Luck.Philip Swenson - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (2):386-404.
    ABSTRACT Many of our common-sense moral judgments seemingly imply the existence of moral luck. I attempt to avoid moral luck while retaining most of these judgments. I defend a view on which agents have moral equality of opportunity. This allows us to account for our anti-moral-luck intuitions at less cost than has been previously recognized.
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  43. The World Crisis - And What To Do About It: A Revolution for Thought and Action.Nicholas Maxwell - 2021 - New Jersey: World Scientific.
    Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the universe, and about ourselves and other living things as a part of the universe; and learning how to create a good, civilized, enlightened, wise world. We have solved the first great problem of learning – we did that when we created modern science and technology in the 17th century. But we have not yet solved the second one. That combination of solving the first problem, failing to solve the second one, (...)
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  44. Our Fundamental Problem: A Revolutionary Approach to Philosophy.Nicholas Maxwell - 2020 - Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press.
    How can the world we live in and see, touch, hear, and smell, the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning, and value - how can all of this exist and flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe, made up of nothing but physical entities such as electrons and quarks? How can anything be of value if everything in the universe is, ultimately, just physics? In Our Fundamental Problem Nicholas Maxwell argues that this problem of (...)
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  45. Decision theory and folk psychology.Philip Pettit - 1991 - In Michael Bacharach & Susan Hurley (eds.), Essays in the Foundations of Decision Theory. Blackwell. pp. 147-175.
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  46. Explaining the Ontological Emergence of Consciousness.Philip Woodward - 2018 - In Mihretu P. Guta (ed.), Consciousness and the Ontology of Properties. New York: Routledge. pp. 109-125.
    Ontological emergentists about consciousness maintain that phenomenal properties are ontologically fundamental properties that are nonetheless non-basic: they emerge from reality only once the ultimate material constituents of reality (the “UPCs”) are suitable arranged. Ontological emergentism has been challenged on the grounds that it is insufficiently explanatory. In this essay, I develop the version of ontological emergentism I take to be the most explanatorily promising—the causal theory of ontological emergence—in light of four challenges: The Collaboration Problem (how do UPCs jointly manifest (...)
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  47. Voluntary Belief on a Reasonable Basis.Philip J. Nickel - 2010 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (2):312-334.
    A person presented with adequate but not conclusive evidence for a proposition is in a position voluntarily to acquire a belief in that proposition, or to suspend judgment about it. The availability of doxastic options in such cases grounds a moderate form of doxastic voluntarism not based on practical motives, and therefore distinct from pragmatism. In such cases, belief-acquisition or suspension of judgment meets standard conditions on willing: it can express stable character traits of the agent, it can be responsive (...)
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  48. Science and Enlightenment: Two Great Problems of Learning.Nicholas Maxwell - 2019 - Cham, Switzerland: Springer Verlag.
    Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and about ourselves and other living things as a part of the universe, and learning how to become civilized or enlightened. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. Solving the first problem without also solving the second puts us in a situation of great danger. All our current (...)
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  49. (1 other version)Disruptive Innovation and Moral Uncertainty.Philip J. Nickel - forthcoming - NanoEthics: Studies in New and Emerging Technologies.
    This paper develops a philosophical account of moral disruption. According to Robert Baker (2013), moral disruption is a process in which technological innovations undermine established moral norms without clearly leading to a new set of norms. Here I analyze this process in terms of moral uncertainty, formulating a philosophical account with two variants. On the Harm Account, such uncertainty is always harmful because it blocks our knowledge of our own and others’ moral obligations. On the Qualified Harm Account, there is (...)
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  50. Quantum propensiton theory: A testable resolution of the wave/particle dilemma.Nicholas Maxwell - 1988 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (1):1-50.
    In this paper I put forward a new micro realistic, fundamentally probabilistic, propensiton version of quantum theory. According to this theory, the entities of the quantum domain - electrons, photons, atoms - are neither particles nor fields, but a new kind of fundamentally probabilistic entity, the propensiton - entities which interact with one another probabilistically. This version of quantum theory leaves the Schroedinger equation unchanged, but reinterprets it to specify how propensitons evolve when no probabilistic transitions occur. Probabilisitic transitions occur (...)
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