Ever since they were first published, the works of Bernard Mandeville have met with a few careful readers as well as with a larger number of stupid or unscrupulous assailants. Both classes are faithfully recorded at the end of F. B. Kaye's splendid edition of The Fable of the Bees , which has helped to revive interest in Mandeville, and which has moulded the current estimate of his ideas: the treatment of Mandeville in such a work as Basil Willey's Eighteenth (...) Century Background is confessedly based almost entirely on Kaye. My purpose in this paper is to suggest some modifications of the account given by Kaye, and to make claims for Mandeville's importance in one particular field, the relation of ethics to politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Amartya Sen’s capability approach is often used in disability research as a normative framework for describing and evaluating the well-being of people with disabilities. Nevertheless, recently, the possibility of going beyond description to the use of the capability approach as an explanatory tool has been raised. However, to allow the use of the capability approach in this way requires grounding it in an appropriate research paradigm. In this paper, critical realism is adopted for this purpose. It is argued that (...) critical realism can provide the ontology needed to justify finding explanations for the way that people with disabilities achieve their valued capabilities. The assumption here is that there are real, emergent structures and mechanisms that underlie empirical capabilities; and that these structures and mechanisms are related to people’s agency, as described by critical realism’s conception of the relationship between structure and agency. (shrink)

The active debate about the return of incidental or secondary findings in research has primarily focused on return to research participants, or in some cases, family members. Particular attention has been paid to return of genomic findings. Yet, research may generate other types of findings that warrant consideration for return, including findings related to the pathology of donated biospecimens. In the case of deceased biospecimen donors who are also organ and/or tissue transplant donors, pathology incidental findings may be relevant not (...) to family members, but to potential organ or tissue transplant recipients. This paper will describe the ethical implications of pathology incidental findings in the Genotype-Tissue Expression project, the process for developing a consensus approach as to if/when such findings should be returned, possible implications for other research projects collecting postmortem tissues and how the scenario encountered in GTEx fits into the larger return of results/incidental findings debate. (shrink)

REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, Henry (...) Stapp. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)

Contains eight contributions which extend feminist ethic-of-care theory to the issue of animal well-being. As a group, the essays aim to suggest ways that theorists can move beyond the notion of animal rights to establish care as a basis for the ethical treatment of animals. Annotation c. by Book.

DNA topoisomerases, capable of manipulating DNA topology, are ubiquitous and indispensable for cellular survival due to the numerous roles they play during DNA metabolism. As we review here, current structural approaches have revealed unprecedented insights into the complex DNA‐topoisomerase interaction and strand passage mechanism, helping to advance our understanding of their activities in vivo. This has been complemented by single‐molecule techniques, which have facilitated the detailed dissection of the various topoisomerase reactions. Recent work has also revealed the importance of topoisomerase (...) interactions with accessory proteins and other DNA‐associated proteins, supporting the idea that they often function as part of multi‐enzyme assemblies in vivo. In addition, novel topoisomerases have been identified and explored, such as topo VIII and Mini‐A. These new findings are advancing our understanding of DNA‐related processes and the vital functions topos fulfil, demonstrating their indispensability in virtually every aspect of DNA metabolism. (shrink)

Ethical decision-making in public health rarely involves simply avoiding a bad choice in favor of a good choice. Instead, it requires policymakers to strike a balance among conflicting goals that are all good—goals such as the health of populations and individuals, knowledge gained through scientific research, autonomy, social justice, and the efficient use of limited resources. This balance can be elusive, and perfect examples are the legal instruments governing dual-use research, a term describing scientific endeavors meant to produce beneficial knowledge (...) or technology, but that could also be misapplied. Dual-use research of concern policies were implemented... (shrink)

Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives—from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon—contribute to literary criticism? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions, including iterary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, (...) and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections between literature, religion and philosophy. (shrink)

In 1885, during initial discussions of J. C. Maxwell's celebrated thermodynamic demon, Whiting(1) observed that the demon-like velocity selection of molecules can occur in a gravitationally bound gas. Recently, a gravitational Maxwell demon has been proposed which makes use of this observation [D. P. Sheehan, J. Glick, and J. D. Means, Found. Phys. 30, 1227 (2000)]. Here we report on numerical simulations that detail its microscopic phase space structure. Results verify the previously hypothesized mechanism of its paradoxical behavior. (...) This system appears to be the only example of a fully classical mechanical Maxwell demon that has not been resolved in favor of the second law of thermodynamics. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

"Neuroscience and Philosophy" begins with an excerpt from "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience," in which Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker question the ...

Multiple Originals: New Approaches to Hebrew Bible Textual Criticism. By Gary D. Martin. SBL Text-Critical Studies, vol. 7. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010. Pp. xiv + 341. $42.95.

Best Book of June 2015 (The Christian Science Monitor) Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical (...) rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years-and did so in dazzling style. (shrink)

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

"Understanding Scientific Progress constitutes a potentially enormous and revolutionary advancement in philosophy of science. It deserves to be read and studied by everyone with any interest in or connection with physics or the theory of science. Maxwell cites the work of Hume, Kant, J.S. Mill, Ludwig Bolzmann, Pierre Duhem, Einstein, Henri Poincaré, C.S. Peirce, Whitehead, Russell, Carnap, A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Nelson Goodman, Bas van Fraassen, and numerous others. He lauds Popper for advancing (...) beyond verificationism and Hume’s problem of induction, but faults both Kuhn and Popper for being unable to show that and how their work could lead nearer to the truth." —Dr. LLOYD EBY teaches philosophy at The George Washington University and The Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC "Maxwell's aim-oriented empiricism is in my opinion a very significant contribution to the philosophy of science. I hope that it will be widely discussed and debated." – ALAN SOKAL, Professor of Physics, New York University "Maxwell takes up the philosophical challenge of how natural science makes progress and provides a superb treatment of the problem in terms of the contrast between traditional conceptions and his own scientifically-informed theory—aim-oriented empiricism. This clear and rigorously-argued work deserves the attention of scientists and philosophers alike, especially those who believe that it is the accumulation of knowledge and technology that answers the question."—LEEMON McHENRY, California State University, Northridge "Maxwell has distilled the finest essence of the scientific enterprise. Science is about making the world a better place. Sometimes science loses its way. The future depends on scientists doing the right things for the right reasons. Maxwell's Aim-Oriented Empiricism is a map to put science back on the right track."—TIMOTHY McGETTIGAN, Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University - Pueblo "Maxwell has a great deal to offer with these important ideas, and deserves to be much more widely recognised than he is. Readers with a background in philosophy of science will appreciate the rigour and thoroughness of his argument, while more general readers will find his aim-oriented rationality a promising way forward in terms of a future sustainable and wise social order."—David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer, 2017/2 "This is a book about the very core problems of the philosophy of science. The idea of replacing Standard Empiricism with Aim-Oriented Empiricism is understood by Maxwell as the key to the solution of these central problems. Maxwell handles his main tool masterfully, producing a fascinating and important reading to his colleagues in the field. However, Nicholas Maxwell is much more than just a philosopher of science. In the closing part of the book he lets the reader know about his deep concern and possible solutions of the biggest problems humanity is facing."—Professor PEETER MŰŰREPP, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia “For many years, Maxwell has been arguing that fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, especially the problem of induction, cannot be solved granted standard empiricism (SE), a doctrine which, he thinks, most scientists and philosophers of science take for granted. A key tenet of SE is that no permanent thesis about the world can be accepted as a part of scientific knowledge independent of evidence. For a number of reasons, Maxwell argues, we need to adopt a rather different conception of science which he calls aim-oriented empiricism (AOE). This holds that we need to construe physics as accepting, as a part of theoretical scientific knowledge, a hierarchy of metaphysical theses about the comprehensibility and knowability of the universe, which become increasingly insubstantial as we go up the hierarchy. In his book “Understanding Scientific Progress: Aim-Oriented Empiricism”, Maxwell gives a concise and excellent illustration of this view and the arguments supporting it… Maxwell’s book is a potentially important contribution to our understanding of scientific progress and philosophy of science more generally. Maybe it is the time for scientists and philosophers to acknowledge that science has to make metaphysical assumptions concerning the knowability and comprehensibility of the universe. Fundamental philosophical problems about scientific progress, which cannot be solved granted SE, may be solved granted AOE.” Professor SHAN GAO, Shanxi University, China . (shrink)

In this paper I set out to solve the problem of how the world as we experience it, full of colours and other sensory qualities, and our inner experiences, can be reconciled with physics. I discuss and reject the views of J. J. C. Smart and Rom Harré. I argue that physics is concerned only to describe a selected aspect of all that there is – the causal aspect which determines how events evolve. Colours and other sensory qualities, lacking causal (...) efficacy, are ignored by physics and cannot be predicted by physical theory. Even though physics is silent about sensory qualities, they nevertheless exist objectively in the world – in one sense of “objective” at least. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to defend a version of the brain process theory, or identity thesis, which differs in one important respect from the theory put forward by J.J.C. Smart. I shall argue that although the sensations which a person experiences are, as a matter of contingent fact, brain processes, nonetheless there are facts about sensations which cannot be described or understood in terms of any physical theory. These 'mental' facts cannot be described by physics for the simple (...) reason that physical descriptions are designed specifically to avoid mentioning such facts. Thus in giving a physical explanation of a sensation we necessarily describe and render intelligible that sensation only as a physical process, and not also as a sensation. If we are to describe and render intelligible a person's sensations, or inner experiences, as sensations, and not as physical processes occurring in that person's brain, then we must employ a kind of description that connot be derived from any set of physical statements. (shrink)

Deeply rooted structures of racism, ableism, misogyny, ageism, and transphobia hurt great numbers of people, exposing them to intolerance, economic exclusion, and physical harm around the globe. Billions of land animals suffer and die annually in concentrated feeding operations and slaughterhouses. Our planet and all who live here are in perilous straights as the climate changes. In the face of such grievous problems, people who want to find positive ways to respond often grapple with difficult questions about how to make (...) a difference. Effective Altruism has arisen as an attempt to help answer these questions, encouraging people to give as much money as they can in the most effective ways to address human and animal suffering. But the Effective Altruists’ answers support some of the very social structures that cause suffering, undermining its efforts to “do the most good.” The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does is the first book-length critique of Effective Altruism. It brings together a diverse group of activists and scholars to explore Effective Altruism’s failure to meaningfully address forms of human and animal suffering. (shrink)

Jeffrey Collins’ new book aims to presents Locke’s views on religious toleration in the light of Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy. At first blush, Hobbes seems an unusual choice as a point of co...

In just a few years, the book became an underground classic. Neither Man Nor Beast takes Adams' thought one step further.

New Tenth Anniversary edition of this classic text with a new preface by the author, compares myths about meat-eating with myths about manliness, and seeks to ...

The Carol J. Adams Reader gathers together Adams's foundational and recent articles in the fields of critical studies, animal studies, media studies, vegan studies, ecofeminism and feminism, as well as relevant interviews and conversations in which Adams identifies key concepts and new developments in her decades-long work. This volume, a companion to The Sexual Politics of Meat (Bloomsbury Revelations), offers insight into a variety of urgent issues for our contemporary world: Why do batterers harm animals? What is the relationship (...) between genocide and attitudes toward other animals? How do activism and theory feed each other? How do race, gender, and species categories interact in strengthening oppressive attitudes? In clear language, Adams identifies the often hidden aspects of cultural presumptions. The essays and conversations found here capture the decades-long energy and vision that continue to shape new ways of thinking about and responding to oppression. (shrink)

In this essay, I will argue that contemporary ecofeminist discourse, while potentially adequate to deal with the issue of animals, is now inadequate because it fails to give consistent conceptual place to the domination of animals as a significant aspect of the domination of nature. I will examine six answers ecofeminists could give for not including animals explicitly in ecofeminist analyses and show how a persistent patriarchal ideology regarding animals as instruments has kept the experience of animals from being fully (...) incorporated within ecofeminism. (shrink)

In this essay, I connect the sexual victimization of women, children, and pet animals with the violence manifest in a patriarchal culture. After discussing these connections, I demonstrate the importance of taking seriously these connections because of their implications for conceptual analysis, epistemology, and political, environmental, and applied philosophy. My goal is to broaden our understanding of issues relevant to creating peace and to provide some suggestions about what must be included in any adequate feminist peace politics.