Paul Davies

I had imagined this article beginning quite straightforwardly, if somewhat hyperbolically, with the following assertion and answer: The critical essays of Maurice Blanchot constitute one of the twentieth century's profoundest and most significant philosophical reflections on literature and literary language. This is, after all, not only what I believe to be the case but also an assertion and a belief whose plausibility this article would like to demonstrate. What makes it impossible simply to begin in this fashion is the manner in which such an opening seems to require that the conceptions of literature, of philosophy, and of the relations and tensions between them be fixed in advance. If Blanchot's writing is, to an arguably interesting degree, marginal to and deliberately other than philosophy, then our account of it would seem to require an account of that marginality and its significance. To consider Blanchot in relation to philosophy is to find oneself in danger of being faced with two unsatisfactory and constricting ways of proceeding, although neither is obviously wrong.

This chapter contains sections titled: * 1 The Universe Is Weirdly Fine-Tuned for Life * 2 The Cosmic Code * 3 The Concept of Laws * 4 Are the Laws Real? * 5 Does a Multiverse Explain the Goldilocks Enigma? * 6 Many Scientists Hate the Multiverse Idea * 7 Who Designed the Multiverse? * 8 If There Were a Unique Final Theory, God Would Be Redundant * 9 What Exists and What Doesn’t: Who or What Gets to Decide? * 10 The Origin of the Rule That Separates What Exists From What Doesn’t * 11 Why Mind Matters * 12 The Universe as a Finite Computer Exposes the Fiction of Idealized Laws * 13 Quantum Mechanics Could Permit the Feedback Loop Between Mind and the Laws Of Physics * Notes

The paper notes the tendency and temptation for scholars and critics to find a justification in the novel for silencing or categorising Locke, and for lampooning or reducing to absurdity the project and the arguments of the Essay. It argues that such approaches can miss what is most interesting in the novel’s indebtedness to the Essay, and offers a reading of a famous sequence where Walter, Toby, and Tristram mention, quote, present, rearrange and redistribute one of Locke’s key doctrines, the succession of ideas. It then takes a closer look at the Essay and asks how the focus on uneasiness in Book II might qualify both the argument against innateness in Book I and the treatment of the doctrine of the succession of ideas. It re-interprets that doctrine, with Locke’s conditional support as a “succession of uneasinesses”, and makes one final visit to Shandy Hall to consider the critical role of conscience.

This book is the fourth in a series of essay collections on defences in private law. It addresses defences to liability arising in equity. The essays range from those adopting a mainly doctrinal perspective to others that explore the law from a more philosophical perspective. Some essays concentrate on specific defences, while others are concerned with the links between defences, or with how defences relate to the structure of the law of equity generally. One aim of the book is to shed light on equitable doctrines by analysing them through the lens of defences. The essays offer original contributions to this complex, important but neglected field of scholarly investigation. The contributors – judges, practitioners and academics – are all distinguished jurists. The essays are addressed to all of the major common law jurisdictions.

Many scientists regard mass and energy as the primary currency of nature. In recent years, however, the concept of information has gained importance. In this book, eminent scientists, philosophers, and theologians chart various aspects of information, from quantum information to biological and digital information, in order to understand how nature works. Beginning with a historical treatment of the topic, the book also examines physical and biological approaches to information, and the philosophical, theological, and ethical implications.

There is a widespread assumption that the universe in general, and life in particular, is 'getting more complex with time'. This book brings together a wide range of experts in science, philosophy and theology and unveils their joint effort in exploring this idea. They confront essential problems behind the theory of complexity and the role of life within it: what is complexity? When does it increase, and why? Is the universe evolving towards states of ever greater complexity and diversity? If so, what is the source of this universal enrichment? This book addresses those difficult questions, and offers a unique cross-disciplinary perspective on some of the most profound issues at the heart of science and philosophy. Readers will gain insights in complexity that reach deep into key areas of physics, biology, complexity science, philosophy and religion.

In the atavistic model of cancer progression, tumor cell dedifferentiation is interpreted as a reversion to phylogenetically earlier capabilities. The more recently evolved capabilities are compromised first during cancer progression. This suggests a therapeutic strategy for targeting cancer: design challenges to cancer that can only be met by the recently evolved capabilities no longer functional in cancer cells. We describe several examples of this target‐the‐weakness strategy. Our most detailed example involves the immune system. The absence of adaptive immunity in immunosuppressed tumor environments is an irreversible weakness of cancer that can be exploited by creating a challenge that only the presence of adaptive immunity can meet. This leaves tumor cells more vulnerable than healthy tissue to pathogenic attack. Such a target‐the‐weakness therapeutic strategy has broad applications, and contrasts with current therapies that target the main strength of cancer: cell proliferation.

Being human while trying to scientifically study human nature confronts us with our most vexing problem. Efforts to explicate the human mind are thwarted by our cultural biases and entrenched infirmities; our first-person experiences as practical agents convince us that we have capacities beyond the reach of scientific explanation. What we need to move forward in our understanding of human agency, Paul Sheldon Davies argues, is a reform in the way we study ourselves and a long overdue break with traditional humanist thinking. Davies locates a model for change in the rhetorical strategies employed by Charles Darwin in _On the Origin of Species_. Darwin worked hard to anticipate and diminish the anxieties and biases that his radically historical view of life was bound to provoke. Likewise, Davies draws from the history of science and contemporary psychology and neuroscience to build a framework for the study of human agency that identifies and diminishes outdated and limiting biases. The result is a heady, philosophically wide-ranging argument in favor of recognizing that humans are, like everything else, subjects of the natural world—an acknowledgement that may free us to see the world the way it actually is

  The aim of this paper is to clarify and critically assess the methods of evolutionary psychology, and offer a sketch of an alternative methodology. My thesis is threefold. (1) The methods of inquiry unique to evolutionary psychology rest upon the claim that the discovery of theadaptive functions of ancestral psychological capacities leads to the discovery of thepsychological functions of those ancestral capacities. (2) But this claim is false; in fact, just the opposite is true. We first must discover the psychological functions of our psychological capacities in order to discover their adaptive functions. Hence the methods distinctive of evolutionary psychology are idle in our search for the mechanisms of the mind. (3) There are good reasons for preferring an alternative to the methods of evolutionary psychology, an alternative that aims to discover the functions of our psychological capacities by appeal to the concept of awhole psychology