Books on the topic 'Human centric light'

Chapter 4 begins the applied part of the book by examining modern law enforcement tactics in light of the theoretical framework from the prior chapters. The chapter explores the extent to which agreements between the police and informants track the structure of legal contracts. The central argument is that the underlying normative principles of the legal doctrine of unconscionability provide weight in determining whether these agreements are justified. In the cases in question, the state leverages its bargaining power over a person to facilitate an agreement in which the person acts in a way that is (otherwise) illegal, as well as in a way that subjects the person to the risk of harm. If these sorts of interactions are unconscionable in the sense that they constitute an affront to liberal principles—including liberal personhood—then they cannot be construed as just even if they achieve a competing state end.

The animal-human boundary was central to the revolt against mechanism over the course of the eighteenth century: if humans were not machines, then neither were animals. But then, what were they? And how could they be explained? Hermann Samuel Reimarus embraced the view that only a supernatural recourse was possible. By contrast, Herder sought to naturalize the issue. His treatise on language is usually seen as a dispute with Süßmilch, rejecting the idea of a divine origin of human language, and, with Condillac, denying continuity with mere animal sounds. What needs to be brought to light is the central role of his engagement with Reimarus and the theory of animal instinct. It is this third interlocutor who brought out what was most distinctive in Herder’s naturalistic theory of the origin of human language, by drawing a new conception of the animal-human boundary.

This handbook provides an overview of approaches to, and methods and topics on a historical anthropology of technology. This includes basic concepts, the variety of human technical concepts, technicised practices and the technicisation of senses and skills. Furthermore, it presents important representatives of an anthropology of technology since the early modern period. With its interdisciplinary approach, this volume historically and systematically approaches various problems relating to humans and machines that are currently being debated. At the centre of attention is the quintessential anthropological question of what a ‘human being’ is with respect to technology. However, this consideration does not derive from the concept of a unique, unchanging essence of man, but examines the historical changes of man through and with technology. Particularly in light of new technologies such as digitisation and artificial intelligence research, the relationship between humans and machines is once again on the agenda, in which humans and humanity seem to be the subject of discussion.

“Imagination,” a word evidently central to the vocation and sensibility of English Romantic poets, is likewise invoked often as a defining term in American literary history. But what are the theological implications of this crucial category, beginning with Coleridge’s seminal statements about it? How might the human faculty of imagination—often but doubtfully associated with an abstractly ethereal quality of mind—bear upon concrete facts of the world humans experience? And how, in the light of philosophic perspectives, together with Wendell Berry’s provocative reflections on “imagination in place,” might Imagination be understood as integral with the phenomenology of place? Such questions are addressed here by means of themes bearing on the Earthiness of Imagination, the Contemplative Reach of Imagination, and Numinous Layers of Place as Palimpsest. Literary texts analyzed to develop these themes include Whitman’s verse and works by two contemporary writers—poet Marilyn Nelson and novelist Alfred Véa.

Translating the UDHR into a binding treaty ‘with teeth’ was an acid test for the international community. This chapter places the genesis of the ICESCR and the ICCPR in its political context. It highlights the interlocking challenges of the Cold War and of decolonization and also underscores disagreement among allied nations as well as attempts to ‘export’ the domestic conception of human rights. Three issues central to completing the International Bill of Human Rights are analysed: (1) identification of the rights to be included; (2) States’ obligations to give effect to human rights on the domestic level; and (3) international supervision mechanisms. These issues are closely related to the decision to divide human rights into two Covenants. In tracing the major controversies and decisions reached, light is also cast on the relationship and characteristics of civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights, as understood at the time.

The American scholar, traveler, political adviser, and public intellectual Owen Lattimore strongly shaped American public opinion toward China and Central Eurasia in the twentieth century, but he also wrote major works on the geography and environment of the frontiers of Asia that still influence global historians today. His writings asserted the vital importance of China’s relationship with the nomads of the steppe, including the Mongols, for defining the boundaries, cultures, and geopolitical strategy of empires and nation states. He argued for sophisticated explanations of relationships between environmental forces like climate and human culture, and he analyzed China and Central Eurasia so as to provide new perspectives on world history. This article evaluates Lattimore’s contributions to world history in the light of his dynamic political and academic life.

Prehistory covers the period of some four million years before the start of written history, when our earliest ancestors, the Australopithecines, existed in Africa. Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction invites us to think about who we are by considering who we have been. There have been many archaeological discoveries over the last ten years, with a new framework for prehistory emerging. Greater understanding of Chinese and central Asian prehistory shows Eurasian prehistory in a different light, changing the traditional view of human progress around the invention of agriculture and development of cities. This VSI explores the new landscape of our prehistory, considering the way the different geographical locations weave together.

Global supply chains extend throughout the developing world, but we know surprisingly little about company–community interaction. This book engages multiple sources of data to map the evolution and contemporary scope of “stakeholder dialogue” in the business and human rights arena. It draws on the 7,000-company database of the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, and on original interviews with community members in two factory towns in the Dominican Republic, to illustrate economic rights challenges in light manufacturing communities. Tethered Fates maps trends in stakeholder dialogue by region and industry sector globally. It demonstrates that companies tend to engage stakeholders in sectors where the sunk costs are high (such as the extractive sector) rather than in sectors where the threat of exit looms large (such as light manufacturing). The book then offers a view into local community members’ perceptions of the prospects for dialogue with companies and the challenges of everyday life, through comparative case studies of two textile manufacturing towns in the Dominican Republic. Tethered Fates does more than simply explain why stakeholder dialogue often falls short as a vehicle for safeguarding economic rights and promoting community development; it also offers an assessment of the varieties of emerging policy alternatives for moving beyond the current state of practice.

Trade has made the world. Still, trade remains an elusive and profoundly difficult area for philosophical thought. This account of trade justice stresses the role of exploitation, emphasizing philosophical ideas about global justice but also contributing to moral disputes about practical questions. The book is a philosophical plea for a new global deal, in continuation of, but also at appropriate distance to, postwar efforts to design a fair global-governance system in the spirit of the American New Deal of the 1930s. It is written in the tradition of contemporary analytical philosophy but also puts its subject into a historical perspective. The book covers the subject of trade justice, from its theoretical foundations to several specific issues on which this book throws light. The state as an actor in the domain of global justice is central to the discussion but the book also explores the obligations of business extensively, recognizing the importance of the modern corporation for trade. So, topics such as wages injustice, collusion with authoritarian regimes, relocation decisions, and obligations arising from interaction with suppliers and sub-contractors all enter prominently. Another central actor in the domain of trade is the World Trade Organization. The WTO needs to see itself as an agent of justice. This book explores how this organization should be reformed in light of proposals made herein. In particular, the WTO needs to endorse a human-rights and development-oriented mandate. Overall, the book hopes to make a theoretical contribution to the creation of an exploitation-free world.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argued that human reason is inherently conflicted, because it demands a form of unconditioned knowledge that transcends its capacity; his solution to this conflict of reason relies on the idea that reason’s quest for the unconditioned can only be realized practically. This book proposes to view the conflict of reason, and Kant’s solution to this conflict, as the central problem shaping the contours of post-Kantian German Idealism. I contend that the rise and fall of German Idealism is to be told as a story about the different interpretations, appropriations, and radicalization of Kant’s prioritizing of the practical. The first part of the book explains why Kant’s critics and followers came to understand the aim of Kant’s critical philosophy in light of the conflict of reason. I argue that F. H. Jacobi and Salomon Maimon set the stage for the reception of Kant’s critical philosophy by conceiving its aim in terms of meeting reason’s demand for unconditioned knowledge, and by understanding the conflict of reason as a conflict between thinking and acting, or knowing and willing. The manner in which the post-Kantian German Idealists radicalized Kant’s prioritizing of the practical is the central topic of the second part of the book, which focuses on works by J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. Schelling. The third part of the book clarifies why, in order to solve the conflict of reason, Schelling and Rosenzweig developed the view that human experience is grounded in three irreducible elements—God, the natural world, and human beings—which relate in three temporal dimensions: Creation, Revelation, and Redemption.

This Section examines several moral dilemmas and epistemological aporias in clinical practice and shows how clinicians can benefit from the introduction of philosophical methods and discourse. The authors develop these issues having in mind emblematic mental disorders (e.g. depression, personality disorders, schizophrenia) and typical clinical situations (e.g. how to establish an effective therapeutic relationship with borderline persons, dream interpretation, cognitive-behavioural therapy). One important claim shared by the Authors is that a great effort has been made to ground psychiatry on evidence-based science, and to tie it to our growing understanding of the human brain. This is obviously an exceedingly important project, but it would be a mistake to assume that the central questions of psychiatry can be completely resolved through scientific inquiry. Science offers guidance for clinical practice only in light of our concepts and normative judgments.

This book addresses a critical gap in existing scholarship by examining statelessness through the prism of international refugee law, in particular by examining the extent to which the 1951 Refugee Convention protects de jure stateless persons. It responds to the need for a coherent and inclusive legal framework to address the plight of stateless individuals who fear persecution. The central hypothesis of this book is that the capacity and potential of the 1951 Refugee Convention to protect stateless persons has been inadequately developed and understood. This is particularly so when we consider the significant transformation that has occurred over the past sixty years in delimiting state discretion in matters of nationality, including in relation to the acquisition and deprivation of nationality, and the treatment of non-nationals. While it may once have been correct to assume that matters of nationality were largely outside the realm of international law, the advent of international human rights law in particular has limited state sovereignty in this respect. Accordingly, whether a stateless person is also a refugee potentially admits of a very different answer in light of modern international human rights law as compared to 1951.

The rabbinic corpus begins with a question — “when?” — and is brimming with discussions about time and the relationship between people, God, and the hour. This book explores the rhythms of time that animated the rabbinic world of late antiquity, revealing how rabbis conceptualized time as a way of constructing difference between themselves and imperial Rome, Jews and Christians, men and women, and human and divine. Each chapter explores a unique aspect of rabbinic discourse on time. The book shows how the ancient rabbinic texts artfully subvert Roman imperialism by offering “rabbinic time” as an alternative to “Roman time.” It examines rabbinic discourse about the Sabbath, demonstrating how the weekly day of rest marked “Jewish time” from “Christian time.” The book looks at gendered daily rituals, showing how rabbis created “men's time” and “women's time” by mandating certain rituals for men and others for women. The book delves into rabbinic writings that reflect on how God spends time and how God's use of time relates to human beings, merging “divine time” with “human time.” Finally, it traces the legacies of rabbinic constructions of time in the medieval and modern periods. In doing so, the book sheds new light on the central role that time played in the construction of Jewish identity, subjectivity, and theology during this transformative period in the history of Judaism.

Agential-being models of ultimate reality affirm that ultimate reality is an aware, agential being. The Central Result of the scientific study of religion—that human beings will spontaneously create anthropomorphic supernatural agents to believe in, and to make religious use of, whether or not those agents actually exist—erodes the plausibility of any belief in supernatural agents, without proving such beliefs false, so it imposes a heavy burden on proponents of agential-being theism to show that the agential-being God hypothesis is plausible in light of all relevant information, and convincingly superior to competitor views. Agential-being ultimacy models resist the Rational Practicality and Narrative Comprehensibility dimensions of anthropomorphism to some degree but continue to employ the Intentionality Attribution dimension of anthropomorphism, resulting in a strategy of judicious anthropomorphism. Variations, strengths, and weaknesses of the agential-being class of ultimacy models are discussed.

The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump provides a coherent and nuanced psychological portrait of the 45th president of the United States. Drawing on biographical events in Trump’s life and on contemporary research and theory in personality, social, and developmental psychology, the book explores the personality traits and psychological dynamics that have shaped Trump’s life, with an emphasis on the strangeness of the case—how Trump again and again defies psychological expectations regarding what it means to be a human being. The book’s central thesis is that Donald Trump is the episodic man. He lives in the moment, outside of time, without an internal story to connect the discrete scenes in his life. As such, Trump perceives himself to be more like a superhero or a primal force, supernatural and timeless, rather than a flesh-and-blood human being with an inner life, a remembered past, and an imagined future. Trump’s psychological status as the episodic man helps us understand both Trump’s appeal (in the minds of millions) and his failings. The book’s interpretation of Trump sheds new light on Trump’s charisma, his deal-making, his volatile temperament, his approach to personal relationships, his narcissism, and his emergence as a new kind of authoritarian leader in American history.

For thirty years Sudan has been a country in crisis, wracked by near-constant warfare between the north and the south. But on July 9, 2011, South Sudan became an independent nation. As Sudan once again finds itself the focus of international attention, former special envoy to Sudan and director of USAID Andrew Natsios provides a timely introduction to the country at this pivotal moment in its history. Focusing on the events of the last 25 years, Natsios sheds light on the origins of the conflict between northern and southern Sudan and the complicated politics of this volatile nation. He gives readers a first-hand view of Sudan's past as well as an honest appraisal of its future. In the wake of South Sudan's independence, Natsios explores the tensions that remain on both sides. Issues of citizenship, security, oil management, and wealth-sharing all remain unresolved. Human rights issues, particularly surrounding the ongoing violence in Darfur, likewise still clamor for solutions. Informative and accessible, this book introduces readers to the most central issues facing Sudan as it stands on the brink of historic change.

This book explores the value for literary studies of relevance theory, an inferential approach to communication in which the expression and recognition of intentions plays a major role. Drawing on a wide range of examples from lyric poetry and the novel, nine of the ten chapters are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as an overall framework and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final chapter, written by the co-founder of relevance theory, reviews the issues addressed by the volume and explores their implications for cognitive theories of how communicative acts are interpreted in context. Originally designed to explain how people understand each other in everyday face-to-face exchanges, relevance theory—described in an early review by a literary scholar as ‘the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle’s’—sheds light on the whole spectrum of human modes of communication, including literature in the broadest sense. Reading Beyond the Code is unique in using relevance theory as a prime resource for literary study, and is also the first to apply the model to a range of phenomena widely seen as supporting an ‘embodied’ conception of cognition and language where sensorimotor processes play a key role. This broadened perspective serves to enhance the value for literary studies of the central claim of relevance theory: that the ‘code model’ is fundamentally inadequate to account for human communication, and in particular for the modes of communication that are proper to literature.

Early in the nineteenth century, British Quakers broke through a century-long hedge of Quietism which had gripped their Religious Society since the death of their founding prophet, George Fox. After 1800, the majority of Friends in England and Ireland gradually embraced the evangelical revival, based on the biblical principle of Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice as the effective source of salvation. This evangelical vision contradicted early Quakerism’s central religious principle, the saving quality of the Light of Christ Within (Inward Light) which led human beings from sinful darkness into saving Light. The subsequent, sometimes bitter struggles among British Quakers turned on the question of whether the infallible Bible or leadings from the Light should be the primary means for guiding Friends to eternal salvation. Three of the most significant upheavals originated in Manchester. In 1835 Isaac Crewdson, a weighty Manchester Friend, published A Beacon to the Society of Friends which questioned the authority of the Inward Light and the entire content of traditional Quaker ministry as devoid of biblical truth. The ensuing row ended with Crewdson and his followers separating from the Friends. Following this Beacon Separation, however, British Quakerism was increasingly dominated by evangelical principles. Although influenced by J.S. Rowntree’s Quakerism, Past and Present, Friends agreed to modify their Discipline, a cautious compromise with the modern world. During the 1860s a new encounter with modernity brought a second upheaval in Manchester. An influential thinker as well as a Friend by marriage, David Duncan embraced, among other advanced ideas, higher criticism of biblical texts. Evangelical Friends were not pleased and Duncan was disowned by a special committee investigating his views. Duncan died suddenly before he could take his fight to London Yearly Meeting, but his message had been heard by younger British Friends. The anti-intellectual atmosphere of British Quakerism, presided over by evangelical leader J.B. Braithwaite, seemed to be steering Friends towards mainstream Protestantism. This tendency was challenged in a widely read tract entitled A Reasonable Faith, which replaced the angry God of the atonement with a kinder, gentler, more loving Deity. A clear sign of changing sentiments among British Friends was London Yearly Meeting’s rejection of the Richmond Declaration (1887), an American evangelical manifesto mainly written by J.B. Braithwaite. But the decisive blow against evangelical dominance among Friends was the Manchester Conference of 1895 during which John Wilhelm Rowntree emerged as leader of a Quaker Renaissance emphasizing the centrality of the Inward Light, the value of social action, and the revival of long-dormant Friends’ Peace Testimony. Before his premature death in 1905, J.W. Rowntree and his associates began a transformation of British Quakerism, opening its collective mind to modern religious, social, and scientific thought as the means of fulfilling Friends’ historic mission to work for the Kingdom of God on earth. During the course of the nineteenth century, British Quakerism was gradually transformed from a tiny, self-isolated body of peculiar people into a spiritually riven, socially active community of believers. This still Dissenting Society entered the twentieth century strongly liberal in its religious practices and passionately confident of its mission ‘to make all humanity a society of Friends’.

This book opens by establishing the substantial convergence in reflection on Christian tradition proposed by a 1963 report of the Faith and Order Commission (of the World Council of Churches) and the teaching of Vatican II (1962–5). Despite this ecumenical consensus, in recent years few theologians have written about tradition, and none has looked to the social sciences for insights into the nature and functions of tradition. Drawing above all on sociologists, this work shows the difference that tradition makes in human and religious life. In the light of the divine self-revelation that climaxed with Jesus Christ, the central characteristics of tradition are set out: in particular, its relationship to and distinction from culture. The risen Christ himself is the central Tradition (upper case) at the heart of Christian life. All the baptized faithful, and not merely their ordained leaders, play a role in transmitting tradition. The ‘sense of the faithful’ amounts to a ‘sense of the tradition’. The essential, if invisible, agent of tradition remains always the Holy Spirit. Scripture and tradition function in mutual dependence, as shown by the emergence of the creeds, the image of Christ as the New Adam, and the doctrine of justification (on which a 1999 joint declaration shows substantial agreement now reached by Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and others). The full context of Christian life and history focuses the relationship between Scripture and tradition. The book deals with the challenge of discerning and reforming particular traditions. A closing appendix shows how modern studies of memory—above all, collective memory—can illuminate ways in which tradition works to maintain Christian identity and continuity.

Pragmatist Egalitarianism argues that a deep impasse plagues philosophical egalitarianism, and sets forth a conception of equality rooted in American pragmatist thought that successfully mediates that impasse. The book argues that there is a division within egalitarianism between those who regard equality as a fundamentally distributive ideal and those who construe it as a normative conception of human relationships. These rival conceptions are referred to as “vertical” and “horizontal” egalitarianism, respectively. Despite their close connection, these ideals may come apart. And yet, so much philosophical writing on equality is marked by what looks like a zero-sum competition for the same conceptual turf, as if the whole truth about equality must be captured by a single idea or an exclusive set of principles. One of the book’s core arguments is that we should reject the central premises upon which such disagreement turns: that equality is a single idea, that it has a fundamental locus, and that there is a singular or primary route to the achievement of a genuinely egalitarian society. The pragmatist view the book sets forth recasts egalitarianism in light of three mutually reinforcing variables—the institutional, the personal, and the cultural—each of which is best accentuated in one of a trio of pragmatists, John Dewey, William James, and Richard Rorty. If the three variables are mutually complicit in promoting inequality, an egalitarianism that takes this seriously will treat all three as equally (though differently) important in making things better.

P. F. Strawson was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his 1962 paper “Freedom and Resentment” is one of the most influential in modern moral philosophy, prompting responses across multiple disciplines, from psychology to sociology. This book closely reexamines Strawson's paper and concludes that his argument has been underestimated and misunderstood. Line by line, the book carefully untangles the complex strands of Strawson's ideas. After elucidating his conception of moral responsibility and his division between “reactive” and “objective” responses to the actions and attitudes of others, the book turns to its central argument. Strawson argues that, because determinism is an entirely general thesis, true of everyone at all times, its truth does not undermine moral responsibility. The book finds the two common interpretations of this argument, “the simple Humean interpretation” and “the broadly Wittgensteinian interpretation” both deficient. Drawing on Strawson's wider work in logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics, the book concludes that the argument rests on an implicit, and previously overlooked, metaphysics of morals, one grounded in Strawson's “social naturalism.” The final chapter defends this naturalistic picture against objections. The book sheds new light on Strawson's thinking and has profound implications for future work on free will, moral responsibility, and metaethics. It also features the complete text of Strawson's “Freedom and Resentment.”

What Happened to governance in Kashmir? studies the state of Jammu and Kashmir from the perspective of an ‘exceptional state’ rather than a ‘normal state’, a periphery on the margins of the centre, and thus shifts the focus from the central grid to the local arena. It contains a mass of information on what successive governments did to manage the conflicted state of Jammu and Kashmir. It identifies the various issues and problems the state has been confronted with since the transfer of power to ‘popular’ government in 1948 to 1989. The book makes a critical study of the engagement of Indian state and its clientele governments and patronage democracies with political instability to create ‘order’ in ‘durable disorder’. With having examined the different political, military, legal, economic, social, and cultural strategies, instruments and tactics employed by the state at different times to suit changing environments, this is the first work on post 1947 Kashmir which brings together many capital dimensions of state, politics, and governance in Kashmir under one cover. While critically delineating the doings of the governments, the book does not only provide flesh and blood to some existing narratives, it also modifies and even refutes some of the long held assumptions on the basis of hitherto unexamined evidence. All in all, the book illuminates the reader about the policies of Indian state towards Kashmir and the extent the successive governments have succeeded in winning the emotional integration of Kashmiris with the Indian Union. As Sheikh Abdullah was a central figure of Kashmir politics and governance, the readers will find a refreshingly new light on his governance when he was in power, and a most influential agency to mould the public opinion when he was out of state power. Similar revealing information on the other governments are documented for the first time. Having studied each government in its own right, we find the governance characterized by change in continuity. Indeed, governance in Kashmir does not constitute one single development. In essence it is a diachronic assemblage, a composite result of different systems each with its own internal or imposed coherence moving at different speeds—some are stable, some move slowly, and some wear themselves out more quickly depending on various forces and factors. What Happened to Governance in Kashmir? is a telling tale on the state of governance in Kashmir; the policies and strategies adopted by Indian state and the successive patronage governments to grapple with the multifarious problems of the state. Kashmir is an ailing state. It is the victim of colonialism and partition, which subverted its geographical centrality with serious economic implications besides making it a permanent conflict state causing immense human and material loss. Besides being claimed by India, Pakistan, and Kashmiris, it is also a rainbow state very difficult to manage with various ethno-regional and sub-regional nationalities at cross-purposes. Added to this, it is a dependent state. This book situates governance in its total milieu and examines the governance in the framework of challenge and response continuum. It unfolds how in a conflict state like Kashmir democracy and governance is always guided and controlled. This is the first comprehensive book on the post 1947 governance in Kashmir.

Embodiment—defined as having, being in, or being associated with a body—is a feature of the existence of many entities, perhaps even of all entities. Why entities should find themselves in this condition is the central concern of the present volume. The problem includes, but also goes beyond, the philosophical problem of body: that is, what the essence of a body is, and how, if at all, it differs from matter. On some understandings there may exist bodies, such as stones or asteroids, that are not the bodies of any particular subjects. To speak of embodiment by contrast is always to speak of a subject that variously inhabits, or captains, or is coextensive with, or even is imprisoned within, a body. The subject may in the end be identical to, or an emergent product of, the body. That is, a materialist account of embodied subjects may be the correct one. But insofar as there is a philosophical problem of embodiment, the identity of the embodied subject with the body stands in need of an argument and cannot simply be assumed. The reasons, nature, and consequences of the embodiment of subjects as conceived in the long history of philosophy in Europe as well as in the broader Mediterranean region and in South and East Asia, with forays into religion, art, medicine, and other domains of culture, form the focus of these essays. More precisely, the contributors to this volume shine light on a number of questions that have driven reflection on embodiment throughout the history of philosophy. What is the historical and conceptual relationship between the idea of embodiment and the idea of subjecthood? Am I who I am principally in virtue of the fact that I have the body I have? Relatedly, what is the relationship of embodiment to being and to individuality? Is embodiment a necessary condition of being? Of being an individual? What are the theological dimensions of embodiment? To what extent has the concept of embodiment been deployed in the history of philosophy to contrast the created world with the state of existence enjoyed by God? What are the normative dimensions of theories of embodiment? To what extent is the problem of embodiment a distinctly western preoccupation? Is it the result of a particular local and contingent history, or does it impose itself as a universal problem, wherever and whenever human beings begin to reflect on the conditions of their existence? Ultimately, to what extent can natural science help us to resolve philosophical questions about embodiment, many of which are vastly older than the particular scientific research programs we now believe to hold the greatest promise for revealing to us the bodily basis, or the ultimate physical causes, of who we really are?