Human Nature and Aspiring the Divine: On Antiquity and Transhumanism.

Many transhumanists see their respective movement as being rooted in ancient ethical thought. However, this alleged connection between the contemporary transhumanist doctrine and the ethical theory of antiquity has come under attack. In this paper, we defend this connection by pointing out a key similarity between the two intellectual traditions.

Mechanistic reasoning and informed consent.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) proponents have argued that mechanistic evidence concerning medical treatments should be considered secondary to evidence derived from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). One common criticism of RCTs is that they often do not yield results that are generalizable to clinical practice, and that for clinical practice application, mechanistic evidence is needed. However, proponents of EBM have argued that mechanistic reasoning is often unreliable and thus not very useful.

The spine problem: finding a function for dendritic spines.

Why do neurons have dendritic spines? This question-the heart of what Yuste calls "the spine problem"-presupposes that why-questions of this sort have scientific answers: that empirical findings can favor or count against claims about why neurons have spines. Here we show how such questions can receive empirical answers. We construe such why-questions as questions about how spines make a difference to the behavior of some mechanism that we take to be significant.