Stephen Downes

Debates about human nature inform every philosophical tradition from their inception (see Stevenson 2000 for many examples). Evolutionarily based criticisms of human nature are of much more recent origin. Ironically, most evolutionarily based criticisms of human nature are directed at work whose avowed goal is to biologicize human nature and even to place human nature within an evolutionary frame. Here I will focus on accounts of human nature that begin with and come after E.O. Wilson’s sociobiology. I will also focus on criticisms of human nature that arose first as responses to sociobiology. There are some more recent approaches to human nature that have much in common with the sociobiological approach and I will show that critical arguments developed to target sociobiology have purchase on related recent approaches to human nature. In what follows I will briefly outline some well-known accounts of human nature. Next I will briefly outline some key evolutionarily based arguments against such accounts of human nature. I conclude by summarizing the evolutionary case against biological accounts of human nature and endorsing it.

In this paper it will be shown that when a conditional statement is understood or known to be true, a number of implicitly specified variables are given more or less concrete values. Each of the variables will be defined and examples will be employed to demonstrate their use in conditional evaluation. From time to time this analysis in terms of variables will be contrasted with a 'possible worlds' analysis of conditionals. The purpose of this paper is not to argue against the possible worlds analysis but rather to provide an alternative to that analysis.

Aesthetics of Music: Musicological Approaches is an anthology of fourteen essays, each addressing a single key concept or pair of terms in the aesthetics of music, collectively serving as an authoritative work on musical aesthetics that remains as close to 'the music' as possible. Each essay includes musical examples from works in the 18th, 19th, and into the 20th century. Topics have been selected from amongst widely recognised central issues in musical aesthetics, as well as those that have been somewhat neglected, to create a collection that covers a distinctive range of ideas. All essays cover historical origins, sources, and developments of the chosen idea, survey important musicological approaches, and offer new critical angles or musical case studies in interpretation.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline some of the thinking behind new e-learning technology, including e-portfolios and personal learning environments. Part of this thinking is centered around the theory of connectivism, which asserts that knowledge - and therefore the learning of knowledge - is distributive, that is, not located in any given place (and therefore not 'transferred' or 'transacted' per se) but rather consists of the network of connections formed from experience and interactions with a knowing community. And another part of this thinking is centered around the new, and the newly empowered, learner, the member of the net generation, who is thinking and interacting in new ways. These trends combine to form what is sometimes called 'e-learning 2.0' - an approach to learning that is based on conversation and interaction, on sharing, creation and participation, on learning not as a separate activity, but rather, as embedded in meaningful activities such as games or workflows.