The author argues that Thomas Hobbes anticipates a set of questions about meaning and semantic order that come to fuller expression in the 20th century, in the writings of W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Despite their different points of departure, these 20th-century writers pose a number of profound questions about the conditions for the stability of meaning, and about the conditions that govern the use of the term “language” itself. Though the more recent debate (...) benefits from a set of philosophical tools unavailable in the seventeenth century, the author further argues that Hobbes performs a number of maneuvers in his texts from which his 20th-century successors would profit. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the relation between technologies that aim to remediate pollution and moral responsibility. Contrary to the common view that successful remediation technologies will permit the wheels of industry to turn without interruption, we argue that such technologies do not exculpate polluters of responsibility. To make this case, we examine several environmental and non-environmental cases. We suggest that some strategies for understanding the moral problem of pollution, and particularly those that emphasise harms, exclude an important dimension of (...) morality. In lieu of these strategies, we employ the concept of respect to characterise the type of attitude that underlies many of our judgments about responsibility. (shrink)

Heidegger affirmed traditional technology, but was opposed to science-based modern technology, in which everything (including man) is considered to be a mere “resource”. This opposition was expressed in the form of deep questioning and a suspicion of superficial evaluation, because the true nature of things was often concealed, though disclosed at times. Ways in which engineers should question technology are proposed, highlighting some of the hazards and injustices associated with technology and also its subtle sociological and psychological influences. The demands (...) of engineering ethics and the use of metaphor in design are other ways in which a narrowly rationalistic technological outlook can be confronted. (shrink)

This paper describes how some aspects of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy resonate strongly with an engineering outlook. He argued that practice was more “primordial” than theory, though preserving an important role for theoretical understanding as well, thus speaking to the gap between engineering education (highly theoretical) and engineering practice (mostly empirical). He also underlined the reality of “average” practices into which we are socialized, though affirming the potential for original work and action too, thus providing the grounds for self-actualization whether within (...) the routine or in transcending it. His notion of “thrownness” emphasizes the importance of context, with which engineers are constantly engaged. While all this relates to the idea of our “being”, Heidegger also dealt with the influence of time on our practices. Future death could be seen as spurring innovation, cultural history as a source for critiquing current practice and the present “situation” as the immediate context for corrective action. His major book is appropriately called “Being and Time”.1. (shrink)

Neuroscience of art might give us traction with aesthetic issues. However it can be seen to have trouble modeling the artistically salient semantic properties of artworks. So if meaning really matters, and it does, even in aesthetic contexts, the prospects for this nascent field are dim. The issue boils down to a question of whether or not we can get a grip on the kinds of constraints present and available to guide interpretive behavior in our engagement with works of fine (...) art. I argue that biased competition models of selective attention can be used to solve this problem, generalize to the affective content of our responses to artworks, and so show that research in cognitive neuroscience is germane to the types of problems of interest within the philosophy of art. (shrink)

The six platinum group metals (pgms: ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum) posed a number of problems for 19th-century chemists, including Mendeleev, for their Periodic classification. This account discusses the discovery of the pgms, the determination of their atomic weights and their classification.

There are a growing number of publications arguing that if we had more wonder in social life, then its quality would be significantly improved, and that we therefore need an “ethics” or a “politics” of wonder. The aim of this paper is to show that that message is unfortunate, and this is for two reasons. First, wonder does not generally have the positive political and moral effects that are attributed to it, so to assume that it does may lead one (...) to adopt unrealistic social policies. Second, wonder does potentially have a number of negative moral and politicaleffects, so social policies that put a premium on wonder may bring adverse consequences. In this way, the paper makes a general case against wonder as a positive force in morality and politics. (shrink)