In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Narrating Communal History in the Nineteenth-Century Finnish Historical NovelMari Hatavara (bio)Det var en mulen och dyster afton om våren 1718. Klockan knäppte fem minuter till sex i salen på den ståtliga herrgård, som tillhört den stolte Baronen Göran Boije, och som nu ägdes af hans enka, fru Catharina Boije. I detsamma hördes en klocka ringa gårdsfolket tillsamman för aftonbönen. I nedra ändan af salen samlades (...) med sakta steg allt gårdsfolket i tyst förbidan. Nu slog vägguret sex. […]It was a cloudy and dreary evening in the spring of 1718. The clock turned five to six in the great hall of the stately manor which once had belonged to the proud Baron Göran Boije, and which now was in the possession of his widow, Lady Catharina Boije. At the very moment, a bell was heard to summon all the folk together for an evening prayer. The servants gathered in the lower end of the hall with silent footsteps in a quiet waiting. The clock struck six now. […](All translations mine.)Finland's first historical novel, Fredrika Runeberg's Fru Catharina Boije och hennes döttrar (Lady Catharina Boije and Her Daughters) (1858),1 begins with this passage after a short frame narrative. The very first sentence provides the date where the story-world is set, and the lines following describe a setting suitable for that period of time. This is in accordance with the generic tradition of the historical novel. Even if the historical novel has very few characters whom theorists would agree upon, most theories of historical novel concur on the statement that the genre is "by definition referential, gesturing toward a world commonly understood to have existed" (Maxwell 545). This emphasis on the story-world has dominated the study of the historical novel. What I want to stress, however, are the specific ways in which a historical novel—to use Richard Maxwell's words—gestures toward this commonly comprehensible, preexistent world. How is the story-world made understandable to a reader and offered as the past? I want to demonstrate the importance of the literary means that help mediate between the past of the story-world and the present of the reader.The passage above begins with the retrospective view: the narrator refers to a date over two hundred years ago, and the passage is in the past tense. The text does, however, also apply expressions like "now." This indicates a point of view that is present in the story-world, at least in terms of temporality. The impression of a viewpoint present in the story-world is further emphasized by the frequent references to aural experience; the [End Page 21] sounds heard (the bell and the clock) and not heard (silent footsteps and quiet waiting) offer the reader an interpretative position that takes her into the story-world through experience. The origin of the experience, however, is not specified. Two questions arise that are crucial to my argument: Is the experiencing subject located temporally in the story-time or in the narrator's retrospective time? Is there a single experiencing subject? While the first question tackles the relationship between the past tense and the deictic markers indicating the present ("now"), the second question is concerned with features like the hearing of the sound of the bell in the passage: because the hearing is depicted in the passive mode, the hearer could be anybody or everybody.These two questions, the first about temporality and the second about the experiencing subject, intersect in the study of narrative identity. Alan Palmer suggests that in current research on narrative literature the individual consciousness has been emphasized at the expense of the social, and he stresses the importance of studying the latter (136). Still, individual and social modes of narrativizing one's past and present share common features, with the most important one perhaps being the need to mediate between different levels of time. Whereas self-narrations attempt to bridge the gap between the former, experiencing I, and the present, narrating I, historical narratives attempt to bridge the gap between characters experiencing the... (shrink)

Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983) claim that the relationship between age and crime is similar in all social and cultural conditions and that no current sociological or criminological theory can account for this similarity. We introduce the new field of evolutionary psychology and extend Daly and Wilson's (1988) work on homicide to construct a general theory of male criminality, which explains why men commit violent and property crimes. The theory can also explain the age-crime curve. It might also account for some (...) empirical anomalies such as why physically smaller boys are more delinquent, and why violent criminals desist more slowly. (shrink)

Subjective feelings of familiarity associated with a stimulus tend to be strongest when specific information about the previous encounter with the stimulus is difficult to retrieve . Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence. Psychological Review, 87, 252–271.]). When a stimulus has been encountered previously and the circumstances of the encounter cannot be recollected, additional cognitive resources may be directed toward recollection processes; this resource allocation is accompanied by autonomic arousal [Dawson, M. E., Filion, D. L., & Schell, A. M. . (...) Is elicitation of the autonomic orienting response associated with allocation of processing resources?. Psychophysiology, 26, 560–572]. One easily measurable index of autonomic arousal is the skin conductance response . In the present study, participants studied lists of words and then gave recognition ratings to briefly displayed and masked studied and nonstudied test words while their SCRs were monitored. Results revealed a relationship between recognition ratings and the temporal characteristics of the SCR, supporting the idea that feelings of familiarity are indeed “feelings” in that they stem from autonomic arousal associated with cognitive resource allocation. (shrink)

Science as Salvation discusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather round the notion of science. Officially, science claims only the modest function of establishing facts. Yet people still hope for something much grander from it--namely, the myths by which to shape and support life in an increasingly confusing age. Our faith in science is abused by some scientists whose adolescent fantasies have spilled over into their professional lives. Salvation, immortality, mastery of the universe, humans without bodies, and intelligent (...) self-reproducing computers are just some of the notions and speculations that are now found--not on the pages of science fiction--but on the pages of science itself. The danger is that these concepts are given to a myth-hungry public who turn to science now that religion has lost its ability to create myth. Science as Salvation discusses the function and meaning of such fantasies. Midgley examines the need for and the use of myth in science, and how science and religion are related. She argues that we need to develop a realistic understanding of scientific imagination and its importance. Taking them seriously as symptoms of a genuine myth-hunger, it suggests that the proper function of science may need to include wider perspectives, which would make it plain that such desperate, compensatory dramas are unnecessary. (shrink)

In The Ethical Primate , Mary Midgley, 'one of the sharpest critical pens in the West' according to the Times Literary Supplement , addresses the fundamental question of human freedom. Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.

As Medicine shifts from a paternalistic practice to a patient-centered approach, the concept of medical informed consent (IC) has evolved to safeguard patient autonomy. However, its current implementation still presents many challenges in clinical practice. We assessed the knowledge and attitudes of the general Lebanese population regarding the IC process as well as their sociodemographic and medical correlates. An anonymous online survey was distributed to the Lebanese population using social media channels. A sample of 500 adults with an average age (...) of 36.2 ± 13.5 years, including 319 females and 181 males, was recruited. Most of the respondents had a university degree (85.8%), reported previous hospital admissions (75.9%) and had signed an IC for surgical procedures (40.7%). Few participants were knowledgeable about IC Lebanese law. Variability in knowledge level was significantly related to gender and a previous hospitalization history. Positive attitudes toward patient autonomy (53.1%) and shared decision-making (57.5%) correlated with older age, female gender, graduate education, and a previous history of signing an IC document. Males were more likely to believe that IC has positive effects on health than females. This is the first study that provides novel findings regarding Lebanese peoples’ awareness of the ethico-legal components of medical IC. (shrink)

In this book, Michael Arbib, a researcher in artificial intelligence and brain theory, joins forces with Mary Hesse, a philosopher of science, to present an integrated account of how humans 'construct' reality through interaction with the social and physical world around them. The book is a major expansion of the Gifford Lectures delivered by the authors at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1983. The authors reconcile a theory of the individual's construction of reality as a network of (...) schemas 'in the head' with an account of the social construction of language, science, ideology and religion to provide an integrated schema-theoretic view of human knowledge. The authors still find scope for lively debate, particularly in their discussion of free will and of the reality of God. The book integrates an accessible exposition of background information with a cumulative marshalling of evidence to address fundamental questions concerning human action in the world and the nature of ultimate reality. (shrink)

Could there be a power world? That is to say, could there be a world consisting of nothing but dispositional properties? If there couldn't be, then, obviously, the actual world is not such a world. That is one reason why answering this question is important. However, even if one thinks it is already obvious that the actual world is not a power world, answering this question is still important, because whether there could be a power world depends, in part, on (...) whether all the properties in a world could be dispositional . It also depends on whether dispositional properties require nondispositional bases. Could water solubility, for example, be a brute feature of salt, or must this disposition be explicable in terms of some further, nondispositional property that salt also possesses? Answering these questions about the nature of properties is clearly essential to arriving at a plausible ontology of the actual world. (shrink)

"Gill's and Ryan's Parmenides is, simply, superb: the Introduction, more than a hundred pages long, is transparently clear, takes the reader meticulously through the arguments, avoids perverseness, and still manages to make sense of the dialogue as a whole; there is a fine selective bibliography; and those parts of the translation I have looked at in detail suggest that it too is very good indeed." --Christopher Rowe, _Phronesis_.

For the past three decades, notebooks and note?taking practices have elicited growing interest in various fields of research: anthropology, media and literature studies, history of the book, history of science. In this renewal, however, scientific travelers? notes have not received all the attention they deserve. To be sure, historians of discovery and exploration are used to considering travel diaries and field notes as a principal resource, on the basis of which they can assess a traveler?s accomplishment or document his itinerary. (...) From a different perspective, field journals offer rich material to literary scholars, critics, and specialists of travel writing. Notebooks of well?known travelers like Bougainville or Humboldt are thus scrutinized in their poetic and aesthetic dimensions, from the perspective of the genesis of travel writing. Still, few studies have taken up the task, a rather mundane and down?to?earth endeavor, to look at travel notebooks for their own sake, as material objects, made of paper and cardboard, and meant to store observational data and to insure their availability through time and space. The paper sets out to do just that: to take a set of manuscript notebooks written by eighteenth? and early nineteenth?century French, German, and Swiss naturalist travelers and scientists on the move together with the techniques at work in their writing, as the focus of a historical investigation. (shrink)

The essentialism story is a version of the history of biological classification that was fabricated between 1953 and 1968 by Ernst Mayr, who combined contributions from Arthur Cain and David Hull with his own grudge against Plato. It portrays pre-Darwinian taxonomists as caught in the grip of an ancient philosophy called essentialism, from which they were not released until Charles Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species. Mayr's motive was to promote the Modern Synthesis in opposition to the typology of idealist morphologists; (...) demonizing Plato served this end. Arthur Cain's picture of Linnaeus as a follower of 'Aristotelian' (scholastic) logic was woven into the story, along with David Hull's application of Karl Popper's term, 'essentialism', which Mayr accepted in 1968 as a synonym for what he had called 'typological thinking'. Although Mayr also pointed out the importance of empiricism in the history of taxonomy, the essentialism story still dominates the secondary literature. The history of the first telling of the essentialism story exposes its scant basis in fact. (shrink)

Discussion of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is currently dominated by two opposing interpretations of the work: a metaphysical or realist reading and the 'resolute' reading of Diamond and Conant. Marie McGinn's principal aim in this book is to develop an alternative interpretative line, which rejects the idea, central to the metaphysical reading, that Wittgenstein sets out to ground the logic of our language in features of an independently constituted reality, but which allows that he aims to provide positive philosophical insights into (...) how language functions. McGinn takes as a guiding principle the idea that we should see Wittgenstein's early work as an attempt to eschew philosophical theory and to allow language itself to reveal how it functions. By this account, the aim of the work is to elucidate what language itself makes clear, namely, what is essential to its capacity to express thoughts that are true or false. However, the early Wittgenstein undertakes this descriptive project in the grip of a set of preconceptions concerning the essence of language that determine both how he conceives the problem and the approach he takes to the task of clarification. Nevertheless, the Tractatus contains philosophical insights, achieved despite his early preconceptions, that form the foundation of his later philosophy. -/- The anti-metaphysical interpretation that is presented includes a novel reading of the problematic opening sections of the Tractatus, in which the apparently metaphysical status of Wittgenstein's remarks is shown to be an illusion. The book includes a discussion of the philosophical background to the Tractatus, a comprehensive interpretation of Wittgenstein's early views of logic and language, and an interpretation of the remarks on solipsism. The final chapter is a discussion of the relation between the early and the later philosophy that articulates the fundamental shift in Wittgenstein's approach to the task of understanding how language functions and reveal the still more fundamental continuity in his conception of his philosophical task. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has recently become recognised as a self-standing philosophical sub-discipline. Still, metaphysics has remained largely dismissive of feminist insights. Here I make the case for the value of feminist insights in metaphysics: taking them seriously makes a difference to our ontological theory choice and feminist philosophy can provide helpful methodological tools to regiment ontological theories. My examination goes as follows. Contemporary ontology is not done via conceptual analysis, but via quasi-scientific means. This takes different ontological positions to be competing (...) hypotheses about reality’s fundamental structure that are then assessed with a loose battery of criteria for theory choice. Such criteria make up the constitutive values of ontology. These values are distinguished from contextual values of a practice: the political and moral values embedded in the social context of inquiry.. (shrink)

This qualitative study explores how business leaders narrate their personal ways of recognizing, reasoning, and resolving moral conflicts and what these stories reveal about their moral identity processes within organizational contexts. Based on interviews with 25 business leaders, 4 moral identity statuses were identified: achievement, moratorium, foreclosure, and diffusion. The moral identity statuses were based on how leaders approached and interpreted moral conflicts and what the influence of the organizational context was in their moral decision-making processes. Some remained steadfast in (...) adhering to their previous value commitments, while others tried to avoid taking any clear moral standpoint. Still others experienced moral conflicts as disequilibrating events that triggered reflective processes and developmental cycles of moral identity change. These moral identity statuses hold implications for facilitating moral identity development among business leaders in the context of work. (shrink)

Why should anybody take an interest in philosophy? Is it just another detailed study like metallurgy? Or is it similar to history, literature and even religion: a study meant to do some personal good and influence our lives? In her last published work, Mary Midgley addresses provocative questions, interrogating the various forms of our current intellectual anxieties and confusions and how we might deal with them. In doing so, she provides a robust, yet not uncritical, defence of philosophy and the (...) life of the mind. This defence is expertly placed in the context of contemporary debates about science, religion, and philosophy. It asks whether, in light of rampant scientific and technological developments, we still need philosophy to help us think about the big questions of meaning, knowledge, and value. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Human Gene TherapyMary Carrington Coutts (bio)On September 14, 1990, researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) performed the first approved gene therapy procedure on a four-year-old girl named Ashanti DeSilva. Born with a rare genetic disease, severe combined immune deficiency (SCID), Ashanti lacked a healthy immune system and was extremely vulnerable to infection. Children with SCID usually develop overwhelming infections and rarely survive to adulthood; even a (...) common childhood illness like chicken pox is life-threatening. Ashanti led a cloistered existence, avoiding contact with people outside her family, remaining in the sterile environment of her home, and battling frequent illnesses with massive amounts of antibiotics.In Ashanti's gene therapy procedure, her own white blood cells were genetically modified and then infused back into her bloodstream. Laboratory tests show that the therapy has strengthened Ashanti's immune system. She no longer has recurrent colds, has been allowed to attend school, and has been immunized against whooping cough. This gene therapy procedure is not a cure, however. The genetically-treated white blood cells only survive for a few months and must then be replaced, but Ashanti's future is much brighter because of the new therapy (VI, Thompson [The First] 1993).Although this simplified description of Ashanti's gene therapy procedure sounds like a happy ending, it is little more than an optimistic chapter in a long story. The road to the first approved gene therapy procedure was rocky and fraught with controversy. The biology of human gene therapy is very complex, and there are still many techniques that need to be developed and diseases that need to be understood more fully before gene therapy is well established. The public policy debate surrounding the possible use of genetically engineered material in human subjects is equally complex. Major participants in the debate come from the fields of biology, government, law, medicine, philosophy, politics, and religion, each bringing different views to the discussion.In studying the ethics of gene therapy, one should draw a distinction between [End Page 63] therapy on somatic (non-reproductive) cells and germ (reproductive) cells. Only the germ cells carry the genes that will be passed on to the next generation. Reactions to gene therapy have varied widely. Some commentators on gene therapy object to any form of genetic manipulation, no matter how well-intentioned (VI, Rifkin 1983). Another reaction is to allow the use of somatic-cell therapy, but not to approve the use of germ-line therapy, which could have unforeseeable effects on future generations. A different stance is that, with proper regulation and safeguards, germ-line gene therapy is a logical extension of the progress made to date and that it is an ethically acceptable procedure.TechniquesTo date, 43 research protocols have been approved for somatic-cell gene therapy in the United States. The techniques employed in each protocol vary, but in general a virus is used as a "vector" to insert the desired gene into the DNA of the patient's cells, in order to compensate for a defective gene. For Ashanti's gene therapy, this technique involved obtaining white blood cells and introducing properly functioning genes into as many of the cells as possible. The normal genes were delivered through the use of a specially-engineered virus.Although similar techniques are used in germ-line gene therapy, the procedure is more difficult. There are two basic ways to perform germ-line gene therapy: (1) to treat a preimplantation embryo that carries a serious genetic defect before its implantation in the mother, which necessitates the use of in vitro fertilization techniques; or (2) to treat the germ cells (sperm or egg cells) of afflicted adults so that the genetic defects would not be passed on to their offspring, which requires the technical expertise to delete the defective gene and insert a properly functioning replacement. Because of the complexity of the procedures involved and the attendant ethical controversy, germ-line therapy is not currently performed.Candidate Diseases for Gene TherapyAt present, gene therapy is likely to be most successful in treating diseases that are caused by single-gene defects and has been approved for treating diseases such... (shrink)

To test if dreams contain remote or never-experienced motor skills, we collected during 6 weeks dream reports from 15 paraplegics and 15 healthy subjects. In 9/10 subjects with spinal cord injury and in 5/5 with congenital paraplegia, voluntary leg movements were reported during dream, including feelings of walking , running , dancing , standing up , bicycling , and practicing sports . Paraplegia patients experienced walking dreams just as often as controls . There was no correlation between the frequency of (...) walking dreams and the duration of paraplegia. In contrast, patients were rarely paraplegic in dreams. Subjects who had never walked or stopped walking 4–64 years prior to this study still experience walking in their dreams, suggesting that a cerebral walking program, either genetic or more probably developed via mirror neurons is reactivated during sleep. (shrink)

Ethics education and training are especially important in post-socialist countries where an understanding of ethical and responsible leadership is not yet fully developed. In such countries planning for the short term still dominates, and organisations focus their attention mainly on earning profit. In this article we show why the need has emerged to improve the general awareness of ethical issues in Estonia and teach ethical reasoning skills to business and government leaders. We describe the activities we have pursued at our (...) ethics centre, officially founded at Estonian Business School at the end of 2001, and the research we have conducted over the last seven years. (shrink)

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was a ground-breaking work of literature which still resonates in feminism and human rights movements of today.

University research ethics boards, although well established in North American since the 1980s, sometimes still have a poor reputation among researchers. They may be seen by members of the academic community as a bureaucratic system designed to prevent or slow down research, and one that does not understand the reality of researchers. This negative view is often the result of misunderstanding by 1) researchers and 2) some REBs about what an REB’s mandate is and how it should work. Based on (...) the experience of an REB President and a bioethicist, this series of Frequently Asked Questions aims to demystify research ethics so that researchers and REBs can collaborate in the advancement of knowledge, while ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of research. (shrink)

The purpose of this exploratory and descriptive study was to examine old-age dementia in the Hmong community of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Formal and informal Hmong leaders were interviewed to determine the prevalence of dementia in the Hmong community and how it is perceived and experienced. Interviews revealed few cases of dementia among the Hmong. Dementia was perceived as a natural part of the life cycle, rather than as a devastating disease that robs individuals of their autonomy. Treatment is not sought for (...) dementia. Some of the common manifestations of dementia, such as wandering and combativeness, were rare or non-existent in the Hmong community. Individuals with dementia are cared for in their sons' homes. Nursing home placement in advanced dementia was only acceptable if sanctioned by the entire extended family. Further research on the Hmong perception of and experience with dementia needs to be conducted in other Hmong communities to validate the generalizability of these results. (shrink)

RNA localization is a powerful strategy used by cells to localize proteins to subcellular domains and to control protein synthesis regionally. In germ cells, RNA targeting has profound implications for development, setting up polarities in genetic information that drive cell fate during embryogenesis. The frog oocyte offers a useful system for studying the mechanism of RNA localization. Here, we discuss critically the process of RNA localization during frog oogenesis. Three major pathways have been identified that are temporally and spatially separated (...) in oogenesis. Each pathway uses a different mechanism to effect RNA localization. In some cases, localization elements within the 3' untranslated region have been identified and have provided unique insights into the localization process. This important field is still in its infancy, however, and much remains to be learned. BioEssays 21:546–557, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

While researchers have examined the types of ethical issues that arise in long-term care, few studies have explored long-term care nurses’ experiences of moral distress and fewer still have examined responses to initial moral distress. Using an interpretive description approach, 15 nurses working in long-term care settings within one city in Canada were interviewed about their responses to experiences of initial moral distress, resources or supports they identified as helpful or potentially helpful in dealing with these situations, and factors that (...) hindered nurses in their responses. Using a thematic analysis process, three major themes were identified from the nurses’ experiences: (i) the context of the situation matters; (ii) the value of coming together as a team; and (iii) looking for outside direction. The work of responding to initial moral distress was more fruitful if opportunities existed to discuss conflicts with other team members and if managers supported nurses in moving their concerns forward through meetings or conversations with the team, physician, or family. Access to objective others and opportunities for education about ethics were also identified as important for dealing with value conflicts. (shrink)

University research ethics boards, although well established in North American since the 1980s, sometimes still have a poor reputation among researchers. They may be seen by members of the academic community as a bureaucratic system designed to prevent or slow down research, and one that does not understand the reality of researchers. This negative view is often the result of misunderstanding by 1) researchers and 2) some REBs about what an REB’s mandate is and how it should work. Based on (...) the experience of an REB President and a bioethicist, this series of Frequently Asked Questions aims to demystify research ethics so that researchers and REBs can collaborate in the advancement of knowledge, while ensuring the ethical and responsible conduct of research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fetal Tissue ResearchMary Carrington Coutts (bio)I. IntroductionThe use of tissue from fetal remains for transplantation and biomedical research has become a controversial issue in recent years, involving scientists, doctors, patients, and the federal government. Fetal tissue is potentially useful in a wide range of treatments for a number of serious diseases, some of them affecting millions of people. Despite the promise, transplantation research using fetal tissue from induced abortion (...) slowed dramatically in the U.S. in 1988, when a moratorium was declared on federal funding for such research involving humans. That moratorium was lifted by President Clinton on January 21, 1993. Though the future of fetal tissue transplantation research is brighter, public debate on the issue is likely to continue, exacerbated by the "acrimonious abortion debate" (VI, Post 1991, p. 14).Using fetal tissue in biomedical research and in transplantation is not a new practice. As early as 1928 unsuccessful attempts were made to transplant fetal pancreas cells into diabetics (VII, Fichera 1928). Fetal tissue was used effectively in biomedical research during the 1950s, and was instrumental in the culture of the polio virus, which led to the development of the polio vaccine. Fetal tissue cultures were also essential in the development of the rubella vaccine, and continue to be used in virology research. Transplantation of fetal thymus cells into patients with DiGeorge Syndrome has been recognized as effective therapy since the late 1960s.Many of the therapeutic applications involving fetal tissue are still experimental, so it is difficult to pinpoint fetal tissue transplantation's therapeutic potential. One promising application is the transplantation of human fetal brain cells into the substantia nigra of patients with Parkinson's disease to restore motor function. Fetal neural transplants have also shown promise for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord and other neural tissue injuries, and possibly some forms of cortical blindness. Fetal liver cells may be useful for treatment of some kinds of bone marrow disease seen in leukemia and aplastic anemia patients. [End Page 81] Fetal tissue transplantation may also help those suffering from blood clotting disorders, such as sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, and hemophilia. Fetal pancreatic tissue has potential applications in the treatment of diabetes, especially juvenile onset diabetes. Human gene therapy may also employ embryonic and early fetal cells.The Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota reports that more than 1,000 patients have received transplanted fetal tissue worldwide. Countries where fetal tissue transplantation has occurred include: Australia, Canada, China, the Commonwealth of Independent States (formerly the U.S.S.R.), Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Yugoslavia (IV, Vawter 1992, p. 2; I, Spain 1988; VII, Reinikainen 1989).Fetal tissue has unique characteristics that make it especially valuable in some treatments. Fetal cells develop much faster than adult cells, hastening the therapeutic effect—a potentially significant benefit for gravely ill patients. They are also less likely to be rejected by transplant recipients because they are less antigenic than adult cells. This reduces the need for the exact tissue matches that can be so difficult to obtain. Fetal tissue is also easier to culture and proliferates more readily than comparable adult tissue. Furthermore, fetal tissue is in greater supply, due to the number of elective abortions.Questions about the use of fetuses and fetal tissue in biomedical research were raised in the United States in the early 1970s. Between 1969 and 1973, all 50 states enacted the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, allowing for the donation of all or part of the body of a dead fetus for research or therapeutic research. Prospects for the use of fetal tissue increased after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. As the availability of fetal tissue increased so did the concern over the potential for controversial research on living, soon-to-be-aborted fetuses, and anxiety over maltreatment of dead abortuses. Vivid examples include Geoffrey Chamberlain's 1968 report of an experiment on a fetus of 26 weeks gestational age. Delivered by hysterotomy from a 14-year-old patient, the fetus was attached to an "artificial placenta" and kept alive for more than... (shrink)

ABSTRACTBrian Epstein’s The Ant Trap is a praiseworthy addition to literature on social ontology and the philosophy of social sciences. Its central aim is to challenge received views about the social world – views with which social scientists and philosophers have aimed to answer questions about the nature of social science and about those things that social sciences aim to model and explain, like social facts, objects and phenomena. The received views that Epstein critiques deal with these issues in an (...) overly people-centered manner. After all, even though social facts and phenomena clearly involve individual people arranged in certain ways, we must still spell out how people are involved in social facts and phenomena. There are many metaphysical questions about social properties, relations, dependence, constitution, causation, and facts that cannot be answered just be looking at individual people alone. In order to answer questions about how one social entity depends for its existence on another, we need different metaphysical tools. Epstein thus holds that social ontological explanations would greatly benefit from making use of the theoretical toolkit that contemporary analytical metaphysics has to offer. He focuses specifically on two metaphysical instruments: grounding and anchoring. This paper examines Epstein’s understanding and use of these tools. I contend that Epstein is exactly right to say that contemporary metaphysics contains many theoretical instruments that can be fruitfully applied to social ontological analyses. However, I am unconvinced that Epstein’s tools achieve what they set out to do. In particular, I will address two issues: How is grounding for Epstein meant to work? Is anchoring distinct from grounding, and a relation that we need in social ontology? (shrink)

Scholars have argued that Socrates’s activity in Plato’s early dialogues involves generating, or exposing, logical inconsistencies within his interlocutors belief-sets. Possessing an inconsistent set of beliefs undermines coherence and is considered a great danger. In contrast to the prevailing view, I claim that it is not inconsistency as much as consistency that Socrates often regards as the greatest threat. Using the figure of Protagoras in Plato’s Protagoras and insights gained from Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology,” I suggest that it is (...) Protagoras’s emphasis on technology and science (techne) that Socrates finds disturbing. It is Protagoras’s consistent shift in worldview away from Athenian belief in chance or luck (tuché), that poses the greatest danger, according to Socrates---a danger still evident, according to Heidegger, in the modern world. (shrink)

Comparisons between related species often allow the detailed genetic analysis of evolutionary processes. Here we advocate the use of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (and several other rhabditid species) as model systems for microevolutionary studies. Compared to Drosophila species, which have been a mainstay of such studies, C. elegans has a self‐fertilizing mode of reproduction, a shorter life cycle and a convenient cell‐level analysis of phenotypic variation. Data concerning its population genetics and ecology are still scarce, however. We review molecular, behavioral (...) and developmental intraspecific polymorphisms for populations of C. elegans, Oscheius sp. 1 and Pristionchus pacificus. Focusing on vulval development, which has been well characterized in several species, we discuss relationships between patterns of variations: (1) for a given genotype (developmental variants), (2) after mutagenesis (mutability), (3) in different populations of the same species (polymorphisms) and (4) between closely related species. These studies have revealed that evolutionary variations between sister species affect those characters that show phenotypic developmental variants, that are mutable and that are polymorphic within species. BioEssays 23:807–819, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The model and framework presented in the target article by Thelen et al. is an interesting effort that is able to account for the contextual variability in the A-not-B performance of 7–12-month-old infants. In the process of developing their framework, the authors discounted the concept of object as a useful notion in discussions of A-not-B performance. For Piaget and other developmentalists, the main evidence for the acquisition of the concept of object was the disappearance of A-not-B errors after age 12 (...) months. However, the Thelen et al. model makes predictions of A-not-B outcomes over a much shorter, trial-to-trial time scale. Given the mismatch in the time scales over which analyses in the two approaches have been based, we wonder if the challenge to the concept of object has been misplaced. (shrink)

The interesting thing about the word for ‘palace’ in Homer is that there is no such word. All the words that mean ‘house’ may be applied to a royal palace, but all of them may equally well be used of the house of an ordinary citizen, μέγαρον is often translated ‘palace’, or some other word with connotations of kingly majesty. But it too, when it is not more narrowly localised to the living-room, means just a house in general.Just as there (...) is no separate word to designate a palace in Homer, so a qualifying adjective is never used to indicate that a particular house is ‘royal’. In fact, to Homer there is no sharp distinction between a palace and a house, except that a king is likely to have a bigger and better home, more sumptuously furnished.The Iliad and the Odyssey are much concerned with kings. So it is odd that no word serves to designate the king's palace and no other dwelling, especially when the poet so delights in describing the splendour of royal homes. The major archaeological sites of the Mycenaean period, in which the main stories of the poems are set, all contain a palace which is easily recognised, even in its ruinous state. Can one imagine a new arrival at a great Mycenaean site needing to be shown which was the palace, as Odysseus was shown at Phaeacia? It seems highly unlikely that the Mycenaeans should have had no special word for a palace, though there is so far no firm evidence for the existence of such a word in Linear B. If a ‘palace’ word existed, its special significance, if not the word itself, must have been forgotten by Homer's time, when a great many houses might be found within the city wall, as at Smyrna. There may, however, be traces of the ‘palace’ meaning still detectable.In Table 1, which has been compiled from the concordances of Prendergast and Dunbar, I have tabulated the frequency with which each of the regular words for ‘house’ is used to denote a dwelling occupied by gods, lesser divinities, mortals or animals. Various interesting points arise from this table.It is apparent that there is a far higher proportion of gods' houses mentioned in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. The figures for δόμος and δῶμα show this particularly clearly. But the difference is probably due entirely to the subject-matter: far more of the action is taken up with scenes among the gods in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. (shrink)

Kathleen Higgins argues that the arguments that Plato used to defend the ethical value of music are still applicable today. Music encourages ethically valuable attitudes and behavior, provides practice in skills that are valuable in ethical life, and symbolizes ethical ideals.

In _The Ethical Primate_, Mary Midgley, 'one of the sharpest critical pens in the West' according to the _Times Literary Supplement_, addresses the fundamental question of human freedom. Scientists and philosophers have found it difficult to understand how each human-being can be a living part of the natural world and still be free. Midgley explores their responses to this seeming paradox and argues that our evolutionary origin explains both why and how human freedom and morality have come about.

Living kidney transplantation offers the best results for patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). This form of transplantation is no longer restricted to genetically or emotionally related donors, as shown by the acceptance of non-directed living anonymous donors, and the development of exchange programmes (EPs). EPs make it possible to perform living kidney transplantation among incompatible pairs, but while such programmes can help increase living organ donation, they can also create a degree of unfairness. Kidney transplant recipients in the O (...) blood group are at a disadvantage when it comes to EPs because they can only receive organs from O donors, whereas O donors are universal donors. This poses a major challenge in terms of distributive justice and equity. A way to remedy this situation is through altruistic unbalanced paired kidney exchange (AUPKE), in which a compatible pair consisting of an O blood group donor and a non-O recipient is invited to participate in an EP. Although the AUPKE approach appears fairer for O recipients, it still raises ethical questions. How does this type of exchange affect the donor/recipient gift relationship? Should recipients in compatible pairs receive a ‘better organ’ than the one they would otherwise have received from their intended donor? Finally, what is the role of transplant teams in AUPKE? This article will examine the organisational and ethical challenges associated with EPs and AUPKE, and compare different EP policies in countries where such programmes exist. (shrink)

Our knowledge, beliefs, doubts, etc., concern primarily logical constructions of propositions. If we assume that iterating ‘belief attitudes’ is valid, i.e., that the agent is perfectly introspective, he knows what he knows, believes, etc., then the so-called propositional attitudes are actually hyperintensional attitudes, i.e., they are relations of an agent to the construction–concept expressed by the embedded clause. Their implicit counterparts, relations of an agent to the proposition denoted by the embedded clause, are just idealised cases of an agent with (...) unlimited inferential abilities. On the other hand, our wishes, intentions, seeking, finding, etc., concern particular intensions , and the so-called notional attitudes are not hyperintensional. In the paper we formulate some criteria for notional attitudes and examine basic categories of them. In general, notional attitudes are relations-in-intension between an agent and an object to which the agent is intentionally related. Even relations of an agent to a proposition can be notional ones, in case there is no salient constructional counterpart, the attitude is not influenced by agent’s inferential abilities. Another problem we meet is the ambiguity of sentences expressing notional attitudes. These statements can often be read both in the de dicto and in the de re way. Yet, a common feature that characterizes notional attitudes is using the construction of the respective intension in the de dicto way. The respective intension is mentioned; referring on such a situation, the reporter may use any of the equivalent constructions of the intension, but not just a co-referring notion of another intension. Still, unlike the cases of relations of an agent to an individual when the respective individual office serves just as a pointer to the individual, when referring on notional attitudes the use of the respective notion of the intension is indispensable, which might perhaps justify calling such attitudes notional, though they actually are intensional. We also show that a passive form of a sentence cannot be usually read in the de dicto way . Thus a common belief at the equivalence of the active and passive form of a statement is generally not justified. (shrink)

This essay considers the divergent efforts of Judith Butler, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek to arrive at a postmetaphysical conception of ethics that would sidestep the pitfalls of traditional Western humanism yet still possess universal applicability. Butler approaches this task through her ethics of precarity, which posits vulnerability as a foundation for a generalizable ethics of relationality in the Levinasian vein. Badiou and Žižek, in turn, work from a more Lacanian perspective, attempting to leap directly from the singular to the (...) universal by bypassing the particular. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches, I propose that posthumanist theory needs to reconsider its resistance to a priori norms, for such norms do not need to be metaphysically grounded to be ethically compelling and politically useful. (shrink)

In the past, several researchers in the field of physiotherapy have asserted that physiotherapy clinicians rarely use ethical knowledge to solve ethical issues raised by their practice. Does this assertion still hold true? Do the theoretical frameworks used by researchers and clinicians allow them to analyze thoroughly the ethical issues they encounter in their everyday practice? In our quest for answers, we conducted a literature review and analyzed the ethical theoretical frameworks used by physiotherapy researchers and clinicians to discuss the (...) ethical issues raised by private physiotherapy practice. Our final analysis corpus consisted of thirty-nine texts. Our main finding is that researchers and clinicians in physiotherapy rarely use ethical knowledge to analyze the ethical issues raised in their practice and that gaps exist in the theoretical frameworks currently used to analyze these issues. Consequently, we developed, for ethical analysis, a four-part prism which we have called the Quadripartite Ethical Tool (QET). This tool can be incorporated into existing theoretical frameworks to enable professionals to integrate ethical knowledge into their ethical analyses. The innovative particularity of the QET is that it encompasses three ethical theories (utilitarism, deontologism, and virtue ethics) and axiological ontology (professional values) and also draws on both deductive and inductive approaches. It is our hope that this new tool will help researchers and clinicians integrate ethical knowledge into their analysis of ethical issues and contribute to fostering ethical analyses that are grounded in relevant philosophical and axiological foundations. (shrink)

Early-career philosophers of science often find themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, facing conflicting demands. While they have to meet the rigorous standards of a career in philosophy, they are at the same time expected to possess detailed knowledge of the sciences they study. By pulling in different directions, these two poles can be difficult to bridge. Interdisciplinarily engaged philosophers of science face not just an increased workload but also institutional conditions that are not always supportive for (...) their engagement. For instance, while the need for interdisciplinary research is impressed upon young researchers by their advisers and by the subject matters of their research, universities and funding institutions, by contrast, still follow rather conservative and disciplinary policies when they fill positions or allocate funding. In March 2013, the interdisciplinarity of philosophy of science and the resulting situation for early career researchers was the subject of a workshop and a panel discussion funded by the Andrea von Braun Foundation. This paper takes up several of the issues that were controversially disputed at that event. (shrink)

Mary Anne Perkins re-examines Coleridge's claim to have developed a "logosophic" system which attempted "to reduce all knowledges into harmony." She pays particular attention to his later writings, some of which are still unpublished. She suggests that the accusations of plagiarism and of muddled, abstruse metaphysics which have been levelled at him may be challenged by a thorough reading of his work in which its unifying principle is revealed. She explores the various meanings of the term "logos," a recurrent theme (...) in every area of Coleridge's thought--philosophy, religion, natural science, history, political and social criticism, literary theory, and psychology. Coleridge was responding to the concerns of his own time, a revolutionary age in which increasing intellectual and moral fragmentation and confusion seemed to him to threaten both individuals and society. Drawing on the whole of Western intellectual history, he offered a ground for philosophy which was relational rather than mechanistic. He is one of those few thinkers whose work appears to become more interesting and his perceptions more acute as the historical gulf widens. This book is a contribution to the reassessment that he deserves. (shrink)

Is Architecture Today Still an Art?Theoretical Considerations and Ethical Consequences Architecture has been proposing, for many decades now, more and more spectacular buildings. This could lead to believe that architecture has reached the top of its art. But this question requires first to define art in general, and also the authentic art of architecture. For this purpose, we will use a Bergsonian methodology in order to unveil in an unprecedented way the two different natures of art. The first nature, "ephemeral (...) art", will be analyzed as an artistic performance, which is powered by the creative gesture. The second nature, "persistent art", relies on durable productions. Using a multidisciplinary approach, we will create links between the two natures of art and German musicology: "pathogenic" and "logogenic" architectural productions will be presented to validate if architecture respects its own profound nature. We will finally analyze the modern paradigm of occidental "occulocentric" way of creating with its lack of hermeneutic substance and, thus, its important ethical consequences. (shrink)

Over the past few years we have seen an increasing number of legal proceedings related to inappropriately implemented technology. At the same time career paths have diverged from the foundation of statistics out to Data Scientist, Machine Learning and AI. All of these new branches being fundamentally branches of statistics and mathematics. This has meant that formal training has struggled to keep up with what is required in the plethora of new roles. Mathematics as a taught subject is still based (...) in decades old teaching specifications and has not been updated centrally as a curriculum to include new technologies, coding or ethics. This subject area is firmly split between ICT and Mathematics in secondary school, continuing on to be split between Computer Science and Mathematics at University. As we move forwards with technology we see these once seperate fields becoming increasingly intertwined. We propose that existing provision for concepts such as ethics and societal responsibility in analysis currently exist but have not been incorporated into the mainstream curriculum of School or University. This is partially due to the split between fields in an educational setting but also the speed with which education is able to keep up with Industry and its requirements. Principles and frameworks of socially responsible modelling beginning at school level means that ethics and real-life modelling are introduced much earlier than normal. Integrating these concepts with philosophical principles of society and politics ensures a suitable background for future modellers and users of technology to draw on. Modelling is currently undertaken in technical sciences at University but the Subject Benchmark Statements are not current (Subject Benchmark Statements describe the nature of study and the academic standards expected of graduates in specific subject areas. They show what graduates might reasonably be expected to know, do and understand at the end of their studies). Even in 2019 the UK did not yet have Benchmark Statements that discuss the learning to be done in Higher Education around AI and advanced Machine Learning. Where there is provision for AI and Data Science within degree courses ethics is not generally highlighted as a key concept. As such there can be a lack of focus on the teaching of modelling or ethics as specific skills. The skills required to use a basic statistical model, for example would not be sufficient to start from scratch and build an ethical model reflecting real-world scenarios with which to inform policy or organisational decision making. This is a skill in itself and includes such aspects as awareness of data quality, ethics, user implementation problems, context and an understanding of the environment that the model is being created in. As the field of analytics has progressed so quickly in the last decade modules such as those covering AI have simply been bolted on to Maths or Computing degrees rather than being fully detailed as key areas of study or driving new, more integrated courses of study. This paper posits that gaps at primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels need to be addressed. Implementing and integrating key concepts from school level is essential so that areas such as assumptions, caveats, quality assurance and answering the right questions with constructive challenge become a cultural fixture. This not only helps developers of technology but users of rapidly developing technology also. In addition, leadership and soft skills as part of this education will ensure that a cultural shift can take place and promote continuous improvement in analysis within organisations. The addition of key concepts throughout the educational system and the updating of potentially outdated curriculums is key to ensuring a functional society. A society where every citizen is a user of tech and those that develop it can be ethical and socially responsible in its development. (shrink)

This essay compares decade-long commemorations between American and Japanese veterans of Pearl Harbor, and the ancient kabuki legend of “Treading the Tiger's Tail”, which also concerns enemies who come to appreciate their commonalities. The “danger zones” in the joint Pearl Harbor reunions had less to do with enemies still fighting an old war, than with each nation's internally unresolved tensions and with sensitivities across a broader, more complex constellation of postures toward war memory. Hawai'i played a significant role in providing (...) a more culturally porous milieu for the veterans to meet, away from the mainstream tensions in each of their respective nations. (shrink)

Emotions are an everyday occurrence. Much work has been done into what the point of emotion is and what part emotions might play in our lives. The great impact emotions have on our lives means it’s not surprising that great philosophers have studied them over the centuries. Anger is an emotion that we encounter every day and most of us are very familiar with. Anger is a response to some ‘wrongfully’ inflicted damage to someone or something that one cares about. (...) When this happens, it is natural for us to feel the need for ‘payback. It is generally agreed by most philosophers that this wish for retribution is a key part of feeling anger. If there is no wish for retribution in your mind when you think you experience anger then perhaps you are experiencing grief or some other emotion. Nussbaum states that anger is a central threat to decent human interactions and posits that a necessary component of anger is the wish for retribution. She states that a wish for retribution can occur independently of anger but anger cannot occur independently of a wish for retribution. In this case – we would be feeling different emotion. This paper has two sections; In section One I will discuss in detail Nussbaum’s view, the two concepts of anger she presents: ‘Payback Anger’ and ‘Status Anger’. The former being anger with a retributive element and the latter being where one would react to an insult or wrong with anger in order to ‘put someone back in their place’ so to speak. This is followed by a brief word on why Nussbaum thinks anger might be beneficial in some circumstances. Section Two discusses cases of anger without the retributive element and how Nussbaum might respond to these cases. We will see how we can be angry at something within our circle of concern but simply want an end to the issue such as a war. This may not involve retribution but still generates anger. I discuss how we can be angry at a flatmate or family member but not want retribution. “Self-Retributive anger” comes up as another case where there does not seem to be retribution involved in anger towards the self. I also discuss here what retribution might consist of and how Nussbaum’s view is unclear on this. The conclusion will summarise the objections to Nussbaum’s view and the objections to that view culminating in a request for further empirical research to determine if we can establish the nature of the feeling of anger in humans. (shrink)

Though I doubt it has put a Rolls Royce in anybody’s garage, the criticism industry is a reality not to be overlooked. Academics have a responsibility to stay self-aware and self-critical about their own and their profession’s interests. All academic activity has a careerist dimension, but it obviously cannot be explained by that dimension alone, and in this sense Fromm’s point is simply reductive. But of course it is not all academic activity that Fromm is objecting to, only some and (...) notably mine.The image of academic colonization suggests one has stepped beyond some legitimate borders and laid claim to territory rightfully inhabited by others. Whose world was invaded by my essay, or by the “Race,” Writing, and Difference issue in general? Mr. Fromm’s, evidently. Fromm wants a world where words stand still and refer, and don’t get changed. In particular, to use his own examples, he wants a world where blacks are blacks, whites are whites, Americans are Americans, knives are knives, brothers are brothers, and Indians are Indians . Mary Louise Pratt is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Program in Comparative Literature at Stanford University. She is the author of Toward a Speech-Act Theory of Literary Discourse. (shrink)

Various human groups, from food foragers to inner-city urban Americans, have used widespread sharing of resources through kin networks as a means of buffering themselves against fluctuations in resource availability in their environments. This paper addresses the effects of progressive incorporation into a wage-labor economy on the benefits of traditional kin networks for two social classes in urban South India. Predictions regarding the effects of kin network wealth, education, and size on child and spouse characteristics and methods of financing marriages (...) are tested using various regression techniques. Despite the rapid growth of participation in a wage-labor economy, it is found that kin network characteristics still have an important impact on investment behavior among families in Bangalore in both social classes. Network wealth is found to have a positive effect on child and spouse characteristics, and large networks are found to act as significant drains on family resources. However, the results for education are broadly consistent with an interpretation of increasing family autonomy as parents’ education has a far stronger influence on child and spouse characteristics across categories than network education does. Finally, professional-class parents are found to prefer financing marriages using formal mechanisms such as savings and bank loans while working-class parents preferentially finance marriages using credit from relatives and friends. (shrink)

Are human beings in some sense central to the cosmos? It used to seem obvious that they were. It seems less obvious now. But the idea is still powerful in our thinking, and it may be worth while asking just what it has meant.

The old proverb can still more accurately be applied to their biographers.‘ Even the more plausible and psycho logically tempting details in the lives of literary figures derive from these authors’ fictional works, poems, and dramas, and not from the kind of source material biographers use today, letters, documents, eyewitness testimony. Critics and readers eager to establish some historical correlation between any ancient poet's life and his work should expect to be disappointed. But even if the ancient lives are useless (...) to the historian or critic trying to explain what in Euripides’ experience compelled him to write about Medea, these stories are of interest to mythologists. If we stop being angry at the Lives for failing to be historical, and look at them rather as myths or fairy tales, some informative patterns begin to emerge. (shrink)

Figuring Animals is a collection of fifteen essays concerning the representation of animals in literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and cultural practice. At the turn of the new century, it is helpful to reconsider our inherited understandings of the species, some of which are still useful to us. It is also important to look ahead to new understandings and new dialogue, which may contribute to the survival of us all. The contributors to this volume participate in this dialogue in a (...) variety of ways--through personal experience, natural history, cultural studies, philosophical inquiry, art history, literary analysis, film studies, and theoretical imagining, and through a combination of these trains of thought. The essays expose weaknesses in western epistemological frames of reference that for centuries have limited our views and, thus, our experiences of animal being, including our own. (shrink)

Although logical empiricism is now mostly decried, their naturalist claim that the content of a theory can be read off from its structure, without any philosophical considerations needed, still supports traditional strategies to escape cases of underdetermination. The appeal to theoretical equivalence or to theoretical virtues, for instance, both assume that there is a neutral standpoint from which the structure of the theories can be analyzed, the physically relevant from the superfluous separated, and a comparison made between their theoretical content (...) and virtues. In my dissertation, I examine the presuppositions upon which such strategies depend. I argue that the methodological principle underlying them, according to which theories with no superfluous structure should be preferred, is unpractical, for what constitutes relevant structure is determined by epistemic considerations about the aim of scientific theories. In chapter 1, I analyze the claim that theories with ordinary bosons and fermions are theoretically equivalent to theories with exotic `paraparticles'. I argue that this claim does not do justice to the latter, as the proof is formulated in a vocabulary parochial to the former and thus favors one of the theory while giving an impoverished version of the second. In chapter 2, I examine recent arguments to the effects that any interpretation of Quantum Mechanics that can offer a no-go theorem against paraparticles possesses an explanatory advantage over other interpretations and should, as such, be favored over others. Given that most physicists consider paraparticles as surplus structure whose non-observation does not require an explanation, I evaluate arguments of both sides and suggest a third way to approach the question. Finally, in chapter 3, I turn my attention to methods for excluding another kind of unphysical structure, mathematical artifacts, from rival dark matter models. Simulations are our only window into what rival models predict about the universe’s structure. But for them to play a useful role in generating knowledge, we need to distinguish reliably between real predictions and artifacts. I argue that robustness analysis fails to fulfill this task. I propose in its place another methodology, that of crucial simulations. (shrink)