Navigator, December, 2003
Editor's Desk
Feature Story:
Better Never? by Sam Kazman
The Precautionary Principle is the idea that society should permit no new technologies to be developed without the certainty that they will cause no environmental harm. But to stop technologies in their infancy may well mean stopping them dead. And given that so much of human survival and flourishing depends on new technologies, stopping technology means curtailing civilization.
Perspectives:
Review: The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett by Eyal Mozes
In Freedom Evolves, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett defends the view called "compatibilism," the idea that freedom of the will should be redefined so that it is compatible with determinism. Yet his entire project is motivated by one assumption that he refuses to give up: the assumption that causality is a relation between events.
Essentials of Objectivism: What Is the Objectivist View of Free Will? by William R Thomas
In this essay, Thomas explains Objectivism's understanding that volition resides in the exercise of reason, demonstrates that our knowledge of volition's existence has axiomatic status in the hierarchy of knowledge, and shows that any attempt to deny the existence of free will is therefore self-refuting.
Cultural Calender:The Wright Stuff by Ralph Kinney Bennett
It has taken a hundred years, and it is still sinking into the minds of scientists and aeronautical engineers and craftsmen just how deep, how original, how prescient was the genius of the Wright brothers.