While the theses that human beings are primarily passional creatures and that religion is fundamentally a product of our sensible nature are both closely linked to David Hume, Hume's contemporary Henry Home, Lord Kames , also defended them and explored their implications. Importantly, Kames does not draw the same sceptical conclusions as does Hume. Employing a sophisticated account of the rationality of what he calls the ‘sensitive branch’ of human nature, Kames argues that religion plays a central role in (...) the development and perfection of human life. (shrink)

Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight’s new edition of William Paley’s Natural Theology deserves to become the standard scholarly edition of what is a historically, theologically, and philosophically important work, despite a certain neglect of philosophical issues on the part of the editors.

La guerre d’Algérie a été l’occasion d’une remise en cause de l’image traditionnelle du combattant. Ni les formes de combat, ni les activités demandées aux soldats français, ni les ennemis qu’on les chargeait de poursuivre ne pouvaient les conforter dans l’image que les appelés du contingent avaient du statut militaire. Ces décalages eurent des conséquences sur les modèles de masculinité élaborés et éprouvés pendant la guerre, que ce soit entre hommes ou par rapport aux femmes.

This paper analyzes several properties of infima in Dn, the n-r.e. degrees. We first show that, for every n> 1, there are n-r.e. degrees a, b, and c, and an -r.e. degree x such that a < x < b, c and, in Dn, b c = a. We also prove a related result, namely that there are two d.r.e. degrees that form a minimal pair in Dn, for each n < ω, but that do not form a minimal pair (...) in Dω. Next, we show that every low r.e. degree branches in the d.r.e. degrees. This result does not extend to the low2 r.e. degrees. We also construct a non-low r.e. degree a such that every r.e. degree b a branches in the d.r.e. degrees. Finally we prove that the nonbranching degrees are downward dense in the d.r.e. degrees. (shrink)

By a logical theory I mean a formal system together with its semantics, meta-theory, and rules for translating ordinary language into its notation. Logical theories can be used descriptively (for example, to represent particular arguments or to depict the logical form of certain sentences). Here the logician uses the usual methods of empirical science to assess the correctness of his descriptions. However, the most important applications of logical theories are normative, and here, I argue, the epistemology is that of wide (...) reflective equilibrium. The result is that logic not only assesses our inferential practice but also changes it. I tie my discussion to Thagard's views concerning the relationship between psychology and logic, arguing against him that psychology has and should have only a peripheral role in normative (and most descriptive) applications of logic. (shrink)

While the theses that (1) human beings are primarily passional creatures and that (2) religion is fundamentally a product of our sensible nature are both closely linked to David Hume, Hume's contemporary Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), also defended them and explored their implications. Importantly, Kames does not draw the same sceptical conclusions as does Hume. Employing a sophisticated account of the rationality of what he calls the 'sensitive branch' of human nature, Kames argues that religion plays a central (...) role in the development and perfection of human life. (shrink)

Abeill´e and Godard (1994) seek to show that the rightward branching analysis of French tense auxiliaries shown in (1b), that I argued for in Manning (1992) and which is widely adopted in general, is wrong, and that rather we should adopt a flat analysis for this construction as shown in (1c), and they show how such an analysis can be realized within HPSG (Pollard and Sag 1994).

Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson suggested the need for a broader legal curriculum. As the twenty-first century begins, the practice of law will increasingly demand interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration — between those trained in law and a broad range of scientific and technical fields, including engineering, biology, genetics, ethics, and the social sciences. The practice of public health law provides a model for both the substantive integration of law with science, and for the way its practitioners work. In (...) addition, public health law also provides a model for interdisciphuy and integrative teaching. (shrink)

Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson suggested the need for a broader legal curriculum. As the twenty-first century begins, the practice of law will increasingly demand interdisciplinary knowledge and collaboration — between those trained in law and a broad range of scientific and technical fields, including engineering, biology, genetics, ethics, and the social sciences. The practice of public health law provides a model for both the substantive integration of law with science, and for the way its practitioners work. In (...) addition, public health law also provides a model for interdisciphuy and integrative teaching. (shrink)

In [Ono 1987] H. Ono put the question about axiomatizing the intermediate predicate logicLFin characterized by the class of all finite Kripke frames. It was established in [ Skvortsov 1988] thatLFin is not recursively axiomatizable. One can easily show that for any finite posetM, the predicate logic characterized byM is recursively axiomatizable, and its axiomatization can be constructed effectively fromM. Namely, the set of formulas belonging to this logic is recursively enumerable, since it is embeddable in the two-sorted classical predicate (...) calculusCPC 2. Thus the logicLFin is II 2 0 -arithmetical.Here we give a more explicit II 2 0 -description ofLFin: it is presented as the intersection of a denumerable sequence of finitely axiomatizable Kripke-complete logics. Namely, we give an axiomatization of the logicLB n P m + characterized by the class of all posets of the finite height m and the finite branching n. A finite axiomatization of the predicate logicLP m + characterized by the class of all posets of the height m is known from [Yokota 1989]. We prove thatLB n P m + =,B n being the propositional axiom of the branching n. (shrink)

This paper is a response to the opening of new lines of research on CSR and SMEs (Thompson & Smith, 1991; Spence, 1999; Moore & Smith, 2006; Spence, 2007). It seeks to explore the business case for CSR in this corporate segment. The paper, which is based on four case studies of medium-sized firms in the automotive sector, took the distinctive approach of trying to understand the nature of CSR-like activities developed not by best-in-class CSR-driven companies but by purely competitiveness-driven (...) firms. The case studies provide explicit evidence that the CSR activities of SMEs and the notion of social capital are interrelated, turning social capital into a powerful instrument to better explain what academic literature has called silent CSR practices . The analysis that follows questions some of the basic tenets that underpin the branch of business ethics that deals with the nature of SMEs' approach to CSR. Four basic concerns, which take the form of propositions for further research, serve as the basis for this analysis: a) A definition of CSR that includes most of the actions taken by all companies in the territory contributes no academic value to the discipline b) Any study of the motivation behind these CSR actions must reflect their essentially pragmatic nature. Actions are linked to social values but also, more importantly, to the nature of the competitive environment c) Business ethics must seek common ground with other more sociological disciplines if it is to explain the reasons behind this type of action d) Any study of this kind of practice requires a dual approach: a) normative when using tools developed by CSR; and b) descriptive and instrumental using the notion of social capital. (shrink)

Article III of the U.S. Constitution establishes an independent federal judiciary: federal courts constitute a separate branch of the national government, federal judges enjoy tenure during good behavior, and their salaries cannot be diminished while they hold office. The framers who drafted Article III in 1787 were not working from whole cloth. Rather, they were familiar with the preceding colonial and state practices, including those from New York. This essay provides a case study of New York's judicial history: the (...) Dutch period, 1621-1664; the Ducal proprietary period, 1664-1685; the Royal period, 1685-1776; and the early state period. As will be seen, New York—among the most significant of the original thirteen states—was a state groping towards a new ideal of judicial independence: an ideal that became a reality a decade after its own constitution was enacted in 1777 and at a different level of government. Significantly, the uncertain status of New York's judiciary had profound consequences for the ultimate expression of judicial independence, judicial review. (shrink)

From the reviews: "A good textbook can improve a lecture course enormously, especially when the material of the lecture includes many technical details. Van Dalen's book, the success and popularity of which may be suspected from this steady interest in it, contains a thorough introduction to elementary classical logic in a relaxed way, suitable for mathematics students who just want to get to know logic. The presentation always points out the connections of logic to other parts of mathematics. The reader (...) immediately see the logic is "just another branch of mathematics" and not something more sacred." Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum, Hungary. (shrink)

Rough polyadic modal logics, introduced in the paper, contain modal operators of many arguments with a relational semantics, based on the Pawlak's rough set theory. Rough set approach is developed as an alternative to the fuzzy set philosophy, and has many applications in different branches in Artificial Intelligence and theoretical computer science.

In larger animals a considerable part of the total body mass (e.g. body water, dissolved substances, mineral and organic deposits) does not consume significant amounts of oxygen. These materials can be considered to form a metabolically inert infrastructure which mainly serves three functions: (1) structural support to the organism, (2) storage of nutrients (building material and energy stores) and (3) transport and distribution of these materials. Considering the transport and support function of the metabolically inert structures and their interconnections it (...) is likely that the infrastructure will basically show some tree-like, branching building plan. The weight of the metabolically inert infrastructure of an organism, can be given by bW/(c+W), in which W=body weight, b and c are constants. With increasing size the weight of the metabolic inert infrastructure increases disproportionably. Experimental data concerning basic metabolic rate (M) in relation to body weight (W) better fit the equation M=a W(1-bW)/(c+W), (a=constant) than the conventional power law. (shrink)

If Bertrand Russell had lived in an earlier century, no one would have hesitated to call him a moral philosopher. In our more finicking age, some academics may want to say that, great as his achievements have been in other branches of philosophy, he is less a moral philosopher than a moralist. That is to say, he has consistently advocated ideals and expressed beliefs which have made him, along with Shaw and Wells, if not quite with Marx and Freud, one (...) of the formative influences on the modern mind; but he has usually addressed these writings to the general public, and, although writing always with great force, clarity and skill, he has not always troubled his readers with the minutiae of philosophical argument. But this point should not be exaggerated. Even in his most popular works, Russell never loses sight of the philosophical problems in his concern for the political or psychological ones, and he certainly has views on meta-morals and meta-politics as well as on morals and politics. Indeed, his attempts to reconcile the two are highly illuminating; for they show one of the clearest minds of our time faced with one of the central problems of our time: how to justify passionately-held moral convictions when all the evidence seems to lead to moral scepticism. (shrink)

This Tractatus-style sequence of propositions describes logical features of natural language discourse, pre-linguistic levels of signs interpreted in associative learning and animal communication, and the specialized discourses of the institutions of science, religion, law, politics, and the arts. Its comprehensive scope is designed to help overcome the compartmentalization of philosophy into its branches of epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics. The general perspective is that of pragmatic naturalism as developed by the classical pragmatists Peirce, James, Schiller, and Dewey. Central to (...) pragmatism is its emphasis on the use of practical inferences combining descriptive and expressive premisses with prescriptive “ought” conclusions guiding conduct. I argue that by making such inferences its focus, pragmatism enables contemporary philosophy to offset the effects of social specialization. (shrink)

The Erfurtensis , now lat. 2°.252 in the Staatsbibliothek Preuβischer Kulturbesitz at Berlin , was assembled by Wibald of Corvey in the mid twelfth century, and is the most comprehensive medieval manuscript of Cicero, containing nearly half of what was eventually to survive. The manuscript as it exists today has lost one or more folios at several different points, but in some of these places readings were recorded by sixteenth and seventeenth-century scholars before the mutilations occurred. There is, however, only (...) one lacuna where early collations survive and where, also, E is a manuscript of primary importance for the reconstruction of the text. The omission in question, caused by the removal of folios at some unknown date between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the early nineteenth century, comprises the end of pro Caecina and virtually all pro Sulla . No readings are known to have been taken from the end of pro Caecina, but from the bulk of pro Sulla, before the manuscript as we have it resumes, a sizeable number of readings has fortunately been preserved. The tradition of pro Sulla takes the form of two branches, one consisting of Munich, Bayer. Staatsbibliothek, Clm 18787, olim Tegernseensis, and all the deteriores , the other consisting of just two manuscripts, E and its twin, Vatican, Pal. lat. 1525 . V comes to a halt at §43; the early collations of E are therefore of the highest importance for pro Sulla until §81, especially from §43 onwards where they comprise our only record for one of the tradition's two branches. (shrink)

Recently there has been noticeable, in the writings of some philosophers , efforts to proclaim the psychophysiological problem to be a vestige of the old Naturphilosophie. Such tendencies are in conflict with those branches of natural science that concentrate their efforts upon investigating the functions of the brain. Therefore one has to subject such trends to detailed critical examination.

Humanity has thrown everything we have at implacable luck—novel theologies, entire philosophical movements, fresh branches of mathematics—and yet we seem to have gained only the smallest edge on the power of fortune. The Myth of Luck tells us why we have been fighting an unconquerable foe. Taking us on a guided tour of one of our oldest concepts, we begin in ancient Greece and Rome, considering how Plato, Plutarch, and the Stoics understood luck, before entering the theoretical world of probability (...) and exploring how luck relates to theology, sports, ethics, gambling, knowledge, and present-day psychology. As we travel across traditions, times and cultures, we come to realize that it’s not that as soon as we solve one philosophical problem with luck that two more appear, like heads on a hydra, but rather that the monster is altogether mythological. We cannot master luck because there is nothing to defeat: luck is no more than a persistent and troubling illusion. By introducing us to compelling arguments and convincing reasons that explain why there is no such thing as luck, we finally see why in a very real sense we make our own luck, that luck is our own doing. The Myth of Luck helps us to regain our own agency in the world - telling the entertaining story of the philosophy and history of luck along the way. (shrink)

The relations between different areas of knowledge have been a subject of interest to philosophers as well as to scientists and mathematicians from antiquity. While recent work in this direction has been largely concerned with the question whether one branch of knowledge can be reduced to another , the questions which exercised the Greek philosophers on these matters have a different starting point. Taking for granted that there are a number of distinct areas of knowledge, they proceeded to consider (...) a variety of relations which they observed to hold among the sciences as they knew them; the question of the priority of one science to another is a recurrent theme. In fact, three sorts of orderings were noticed, and the associated conceptions of priority are interesting. Only one of them is the concern of the present paper, though, and I shall briefly describe the remaining two only for purposes of contrast. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results (...) between studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

Bayesian methods have become among the most popular methods in phylogenetics, but theoretical opposition to this methodology remains. After providing an introduction to Bayesian theory in this context, I attempt to tackle the problem mentioned most often in the literature: the “problem of the priors”—how to assign prior probabilities to tree hypotheses. I first argue that a recent objection—that an appropriate assignment of priors is impossible—is based on a misunderstanding of what ignorance and bias are. I then consider different methods (...) of assigning prior probabilities to trees. I argue that priors need to be derived from an understanding of how distinct taxa have evolved and that the appropriate evolutionary model is captured by the Yule birth–death process. This process leads to a well-known statistical distribution over trees. Though further modifications may be necessary to model more complex aspects of the branching process, they must be modifications to parameters in an underlying Yule model. Ignoring these Yule priors commits a fallacy leading to mistaken inferences both about the trees themselves and about macroevolutionary processes more generally. (shrink)

A phylogeny that allows for lateral gene transfer (LGT) can be thought of as a strictly branching tree (all of whose branches are vertical) to which lateral branches have been added. Given that the goal of phylogenetics is to depict evolutionary history, we should look for the best supported phylogenetic network and not restrict ourselves to considering trees. However, the obvious extensions of popular tree-based methods such as maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood face a serious problem—if we judge networks by (...) fit to data alone, networks that have lateral branches will always fit the data at least as well as any network that restricts itself to vertical branches. This is analogous to the well-studied problem of overfitting data in the curve-fitting problem. Analogous problems often have analogous solutions and we propose to treat network inference as a case of model selection and use the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC). Strictly tree-like networks are more parsimonious than those that postulate lateral as well as vertical branches. This leads to the conclusion that we should not always infer LGT events whenever it would improve our fit-to-data, but should do so only when the improved fit is larger than the penalty for adding extra lateral branches. (shrink)

One branch of bioethics assumes that mainly agents of the state are responsible for public health. Following Susan Sherwin’s relational ethics, we suggest moving away from a “state-centered” approach toward a more thoroughly relational approach. Indeed, certain agents must be reconstituted in and through shifting relations with others, complicating discussions of responsibility for public health. Drawing on two case studies—the health politics and activism of the Black Panther Party and the work of the Common Ground Collective in post-Katrina New (...) Orleans—we argue for the need to attend more carefully to the limitations of states and state-driven public health programs. (shrink)

The aim of this Web-based survey of 15 German companies with an international profile was to identify which higher-level values serve as a basis for a company culture that promotes integrity and can thereby also be used to promote crime prevention. Results on about 2000 managers in German parent companies and almost 600 managers in Central and North European branch offices show that a major preventive role can be assigned to a company culture that promotes integrity. This requires a (...) ‘tone from the top’, ‘ethical leadership’ from the direct superior, and a general set of values that can be encouraged through training courses. Moreover, employees have to perceive these values as promoting their careers. The survey reveals that the companies in this study have basically succeeded in establishing their system of values in their Central and North European as well as their Asian branch offices. Moreover, it shows that the main values preventing crime on the management level are trustworthiness and consistency. Open communication is an important value on all levels of a company, and this is supplemented by transparency, compliance with the rules, and a rejection of behaving in one’s own interest. It is concluded that in spite of regional differences, major international companies can possibly make an important contribution to bringing about cultural change in regions with an affinity for corruption by implementing a culture that promotes integrity in both their company and their daily business. (shrink)

An ongoing debate among legal scholars and public health advocates is the role of litigation in shaping public policy. For the most part, the debate has been waged at a conceptual level, with opponents and proponents arguing within fairly well-defined boundaries. The debate has been based either on speculation of what litigation could achieve or on ideological grounds as to why litigation should or should not be used this way. With the exception of Rosenberg's study of how litigation shaped policy (...) in civil rights, abortion, and environmental matters, there is almost no empirical support for either position.In recent years, the most ardent proponents of litigation as public policy have been public health advocates. Perhaps out of frustration with the inability to achieve desired public health goals through the legislative branch of government, public health advocates have pursued litigation as an alternative strategy. Beginning with tobacco class action litigation in the early 1990s and continuing with litigation against gun manufacturers at the end of that decade, public health advocates have waged a veritable litigation assault aimed at changing how public health policy is formed. (shrink)

An ongoing debate among legal scholars and public health advocates is the role of litigation in shaping public policy. For the most part, the debate has been waged at a conceptual level, with opponents and proponents arguing within fairly well-defined boundaries. The debate has been based either on speculation of what litigation could achieve or on ideological grounds as to why litigation should or should not be used this way. With the exception of Rosenberg's study of how litigation shaped policy (...) in civil rights, abortion, and environmental matters, there is almost no empirical support for either position.In recent years, the most ardent proponents of litigation as public policy have been public health advocates. Perhaps out of frustration with the inability to achieve desired public health goals through the legislative branch of government, public health advocates have pursued litigation as an alternative strategy. Beginning with tobacco class action litigation in the early 1990s and continuing with litigation against gun manufacturers at the end of that decade, public health advocates have waged a veritable litigation assault aimed at changing how public health policy is formed. (shrink)

De Jaegher’s (2009) paper argues that Gallagher, who aims to replace traditional theory-of-mind accounts of social understanding with accounts based on direct perception (hereafter DP), has missed an important opportunity. Despite a desire to break faith with tradition, there is a danger that proponents of DP accounts will remain (at least tacitly) committed to an unchallenged, and perhaps unnoticed, sort of individualism inherent in traditional theories (i.e. those that regard our engagement with others as a ‘problem’ to be solved: a (...) problem of other minds). Taking a more root and branch approach, De Jaegher recommends a complete shift of focus. She proposes that a more thoroughgoing and fruitful response to traditional approaches must attend to, and seek to understand, interactional phenomena proper—for it is the nature of interactions themselves that importantly influence individuals. Hence, it is the processes of interacting which ‘span individuals’ and their specific, dynamic evolution over time that should take pride of place in research into social cognition. De Jaegher wants to put interactional processes – those that can ‘take on life of their own’ and ‘influence interactors’ – at the heart of enquiries into intersubjectivity. Citing other recent work she has done with Di Paolo, she bills this as ‘‘the central task of any account of intersubjectivity” (De Jaegher, 2009, p. 2; De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007). The trouble is that this way of putting matters can make it look as if there is just one task facing researchers in this area; that we are faced with an either/or choice. But it is clear that any fully illuminated understanding of interactional phenomena will require accounts of what individuals and their sub-personal processes/mechanisms are doing in this larger process and, presumably, how their mechanisms/tendencies of response constrain and shape local bouts of interacting, even if we assume it is the dynamics of such encounters that importantly influence and shape what comes next.. (shrink)

Given its non-invasive nature, there is increasing interest in the use of transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation across basic, translational and clinical research. Contemporaneously, tVNS can be achieved by stimulating either the auricular branch or the cervical bundle of the vagus nerve, referred to as transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation and transcutaneous cervical VNS, respectively. In order to advance the field in a systematic manner, studies using these technologies need to adequately report sufficient methodological detail to enable comparison of results (...) between studies, replication of studies, as well as enhancing study participant safety. We systematically reviewed the existing tVNS literature to evaluate current reporting practices. Based on this review, and consensus among participating authors, we propose a set of minimal reporting items to guide future tVNS studies. The suggested items address specific technical aspects of the device and stimulation parameters. We also cover general recommendations including inclusion and exclusion criteria for participants, outcome parameters and the detailed reporting of side effects. Furthermore, we review strategies used to identify the optimal stimulation parameters for a given research setting and summarize ongoing developments in animal research with potential implications for the application of tVNS in humans. Finally, we discuss the potential of tVNS in future research as well as the associated challenges across several disciplines in research and clinical practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical Ethics: Balancing Praxis and TheoryEdmund D. Pellegrino (bio)When André Hellegers founded the Kennedy Institute, he envisioned a close collaboration between ethics and clinical practice. He even called for physician specialists whose expertise would be in both fields (Reich 1994, p. 324). A quarter of a century later, his vision and prediction have become realities. Clinical ethics is today a thriving entity with its own literature, practitioners, and methodology.This (...) clinical turn has, on the whole, been salutary. The abstractness of ethical theory has been tempered by the concreteness of clinical realities; clinicians have been helped to make bedside decisions even in the face of theoretical uncertainty and dissonance; and a variety of disciplines besides theology and philosophy have entered ethical discourse and enriched it.These advantages notwithstanding, clinical ethics has certain inherent traits that make it problematical. Some seek its norms in what “works” in practice or in paradigm cases (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988); others shape it to achieve consensus or satisfy the needs of public policy (Meilaender 1995); still others reduce bioethics to merely a method for the resolution of moral conflict. Rather than simply modulating theory by practice, clinical ethics can end up by repudiating theory entirely (Toulmin, in press). Taken to their logical conclusion, these tendencies make clinical ethics a species of the antifoundationalism that has strongly influenced moral philosophy in the last decade (Tollefsen 1995, pp. 3–18; Rockmore and Singer 1992). But antifoundationalism itself is a theory of ethics even though it supposedly denies the validity of any overarching theories.Antifoundationalism presents its own difficulties. For one thing it begs important questions that will not go away: for example, how do we know that a decision is a good one? what does it mean to say that a decision “works”? is the [End Page 347] outcome of a good decisional procedure itself a good decision? and to what extent are compromise and exigency admissible in moral decisions? Theoretical and “foundational” questions of this sort will not evaporate because they are ignored. They inevitably will be answered by begging the essential questions or grounding them solely in prelogical presuppositions.To avoid these difficulties, the advantages of clinical ethics must be retained without capitulation to the anti-theory bias of contemporary philosophy. This means that theory and practice must both be retained and be conceptually related to each other. To effect this we must take account of the long intellectual history of the relationship between the speculative and the practical intellect—i.e., between knowledge sought for its own sake and knowledge sought for some use beyond simply the possession of it (Lobkowicz 1967, pp. 78–81). Suffice it to say that medicine has long been the paradigm case for the union of theory and praxis. Relating them conceptually is an essential propaedeutic to any theory of moral praxis in medicine.The rest of this essay examines the inextricability of theory and practice in two of the three major branches of clinical ethics—the substantive and the professional. The third branch, procedural ethics—i.e., the ethics of the process of decision making—deals with informed consent, with respect for persons, professional colleagues, and families, and with the ethics of conflict resolution. Obviously, there are theoretical issues here as well. For want of space, procedural ethics will not be discussed, but it presents the same conjunction of theory and practice encountered in professional and substantive ethics.Substantive EthicsSubstantive ethics refers to the moral content rather than the process of moral decisions, to the moral status and permissibility of the specific clinical medical acts themselves—e.g., abortion, euthanasia, pre-implantation diagnosis, surrogate motherhood, withholding and withdrawing treatment, the physician as gatekeeper, and the like—the whole range of moral questions clinicians face in treating patients. Moral diversity and plurality on these issues is the most powerful force behind the dominance of procedural ethics. But, unfortunately, a morally valid decision-making procedure does not confer normative validity on the decision itself. Moral validity rests on questions that go beyond prevailing practices, on what we take to be the nature and moral status of persons, fetuses, and brain-damaged humans, the value or disvalue of... (shrink)

The project of this paper is to understand what a phylogenetic tree represents and to discuss some of the implications that this has for the practice of systematics. At least the first part of this task, if not both parts, might appear trivial—or perhaps better suited for a single page in a textbook rather than a scholarly research paper. But this would be a mistake. While the task of interpreting phylogenetic trees is often treated in a trivial way, their interpretation (...) is tied to foundational conceptual questions at the heart of systematics—questions whose answers are hotly disputed. I have previously argued that widely shared ideas about the meaning and interpretation of phylogenetic trees are inconsistent with species concepts other than some genealogical version of a phylogenetic species concept (Velasco 2008). Here I rely on a similar approach and concentrate on the implications of the necessary conditions underlying the inferences that we make using phylogenetic trees. I argue that common practices for the interpretation and use of trees are in conflict and that unacceptable principles about species as units of phylogeny must be given up. According to the view that I will develop, all phylogenetic trees depict the history of populations. The branches on trees represent collections of population lineages through time and the splits represent population lineage splits. This is true regardless of whether the tips of the trees are themselves populations, or are species or higher taxa. Although this conclusion might be paired naturally with a view that species must be monophyletic groups, this population-centric view of trees is independent of that view of species. If we still want to have species that are paraphyletic groups of populations, this is permissible as long as we also do not treat species as the units of phylogeny. This population-centric view opposes a species-centric view of phylogeny and might be called a “rank-free” approach since it entails that we do not need to determine which groups are species (which is partly a ranking question) in order to build a tree. This conclusion and the argument for it are meant to be consistent with, but not require, acceptance of the conclusions of Velasco (2008) regarding species. (shrink)

Sports Medicine as an apparent sub-class of medicine has developed apace over the past 30 years. Its recent trajectory has been evidenced by the emergence of specialist international research journals, standard texts, annual conferences, academic appointments and postgraduate courses. Although this field of enquiry and practice lays claim to the title ‘sports medicine’ this paper queries the legitimacy of that claim. Depending upon how ‘sports medicine’ and ‘medicine’ are defined, a plausible-sounding case can be made to show that sports medicine (...) is not in fact a branch of medicine. Rather, it is sometimes closer to practices such as non-therapeutic cosmetic surgery. The argument of the paper is as follows. It begins with a brief statement concerning methodology. We then identify and subscribe to a plausible defining goal of medicine taken from a recognised authority in the field. Then two representative, authoritative, definitions of sports medicine are discussed. It is then shown that acceptance of these definitions of sports medicine generates a problem in that if they are accepted, no necessary commitment to the defining goal of medicine is present within sports medicine. It seems to follow that sports medicine is not medicine. In the final part of the paper a critical response to that conclusion is presented and rebutted. The response is one which rejects the identification of the defining goal of medicine upon which our argument rests. (shrink)

This book discusses in dialogue form the basic principles of mathematics and its applications including the question: What is mathematics? What does its specific method consist of? What is its relation to the sciences and humanities? What can it offer to specialists in different fields? How can it be applied in practice and in discovering the laws of nature? Dramatized by the dialogue form and shown in the historical movements in which they originated, these questions are discussed in their full (...) complexity, yet are easily comprehended. The first dialogue, whose chief actor is Socrates, leads the reader to the source of modern mathematics in Athens in the 5th Century BC. The second dialogue, featuring Archimedes, takes place during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC and shows the birth of applied mathematics. The third dialogue occurs in the year 1633 in Rome, its chief character being Galileo Galilei who fully realized the central importance of the mathematical method in discovering the laws of nature. Intended as supplemental reading for philosophy of mathematics courses at the high school or college level it will be of interest to both specialists and non-specialists in mathematics. Alfréd Rényi was born in Budapest Hungary in 1921. He studied mathematics and physics at the University of Budapest and received his Ph. D. from the University of Szaged in 1945. Since 1950 he has been Director of the Mathematical Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and since 1952 a professor at the University of Budapest. Dr. Renyi was a visiting professor at Michigan State University in 1961, at the University of Michigan in 1964 and at Stanford University in 1966. His main fields of research are probability theory, mathematical statistics and information theory, and he has also worked in analytic number theory as well as in various branches of analysis, combinatorial analysis and geometry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IRBs Under the MicroscopeJonathan D. Moreno (bio)The spring and summer of 1998 were seasons in the sun for institutional review board (IRB) aficionados. Rarely have the arcana of the local human subjects review panels been treated to so much attention in both the executive and the legislative branches of government, not only at the federal but also at the state level. And it looks as if the attention will (...) continue for some time. The spate of interest is due to a series of coincidences: a powerful House of Representatives subcommittee held hearings after its chairman learned about the IRB system during a previous session on research in underdeveloped communities; the Department of Health and Human Services’s Inspector General (DHHS-IG) released a report on IRBs; the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Extramural Research completed a report on clinical trial monitoring; the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) readied a report on research involving persons with mental disorders; the states of Maryland and New York completed studies of research with subjects who lack decision-making capacity; and advocacy groups protested a psychiatric research project involving inner city children.Underlying these proximate causes for the IRB blitz is a growing realization that the already considerable clinical trial enterprise will expand significantly over the next few years. Congress is talking about giving the politically popular NIH half again the budget it currently receives, which in turn will stimulate more commercially supported research. The director of the National Cancer Institute is considering a five-fold increase in the number of subjects enrolled in oncology studies over the next several years. Phase I cancer studies are among the most ethically sensitive, so IRBs will have more work cut out for them if this goal is reached. Adding to the rush of interest in IRBs are the government’s recent apology to the survivors of the syphilis study in Tuskegee, continuing congressional dissatisfaction with the way the Pentagon handled its vaccine distribution during the Gulf War, and the controversy about AZT trials in developing countries.On the HillCongressman Christopher Shays, the moderate Connecticut Republican who has developed an interest in human research issues, convened hearings on human [End Page 329] subjects research and the IRB system on 11 June 1998. Shays chairs the House Government Reform/Human Resources Subcommittee. The committee’s ranking minority member is Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn, NY, who shares Shays’s interest in this area.The immediate rationale for the hearings was the release that day of the DHHS-IG report, Institutional Review Boards: A Time for Reform. The subtitle was changed from A System in Jeopardy apparently after some people in DHHS expressed reservations about its seemingly alarmist tone, but the IG staffers who testified before Shays’s subcommittee insisted that they stood behind the message that the IRB system is in trouble if considerable reforms are not undertaken. Among the factors in the research environment cited as support for the bleak forecast: managed care, commercialization, multi-site trials, high IRB workloads, minimal IRB oversight of approved studies, conflicts of interest, insufficient training of IRB members and investigators, and lack of IRB self-studies (DHHS-IG 1998).As is normally the case for congressional oversight hearings, the first panel of witnesses consisted of executive branch officials, including Eric Meslin, Executive Director of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and Gary Ellis, Director of the Office for Protection from Research Risks (OPRR). Shays pressed Ellis on the extent to which OPRR conducts on-site investigations of complaints about abuse of human subjects. Admitting that on-site investigations are rare, Ellis suggested that the agency is inadequately staffed to follow up on complaints as quickly as it might wish. The members of Congress who were present at the hearings generally expressed concern about the DHHS-IG’s findings.The second panel that day, which Shays was unable to attend, set a different tone. Four of the panelists—Paul Appelbaum of the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, Robert Levine of Yale University, Angela Bowen of the Western IRB (a private clinical trials review firm), and I—were invited as authorities on the current condition of the IRB system. Bert Spilker... (shrink)

Psychiatry has come up as one of the most dynamic branches of medicine in recent years. There are a lot of controversies regarding concepts, nosology, definitions and treatments in psychiatry, all of which are presently under a strict scanner. Differences are so many that even the meaning of psychiatry varies amongst individual psychiatrists. For us, it is an art to practice psychiatry and give the patient what he needs. Still, it should be practiced with great caution and utmost sincerity towards (...) the patient, based on scientific knowledge and not to be guided by individual conceptions alone. Ethics in psychiatry forms an integral part of its basic concept and meaning, and a tight balance should be maintained between professional advancement and patient benefit. In recent years, the scope of psychiatry has enlarged considerably, with wide ranging influences from Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy on the one hand, and Neurology and Medicine on the other. (shrink)

This chapter discusses Statistical Prediction Rules and provides an explanation for their success. SPRs are simple, formal rules that have been shown to be typically more reliable, than the predictions of human experts on a wide variety of problems. Based on testable results, psychology can make normative recommendations about how we ought to reason. The branches of psychology that provide normative recommendations are dubbed as ‘Ameliorative Psychology’. Two central lessons of Ameliorative Psychology are that when it comes to social judgment, (...) proper unit weight models outperform humans in terms of reliability and improper unit weight models often perform nearly as well as proper models and therefore better than humans. It is argued that the reason people resist this ‘practical conclusion’ is partly because the SPR results are noxious to our conception of ourselves as good reasoners. Further, they undermine our hope — so evident in the a priorism of so much contemporary epistemology — that we can be experts at recognizing good reasoning without massive empirical aid. (shrink)

Illustrations: 1 B/w Illustration Description: Pranab Kumar Sen, Professor Emeritus, Jadavpur University in whose honour this volume has been prepared was one of the leading philosophers of our country and a highly respected teacher. It carries thirty-five articles which deal with different branches of philosophy,viz., philosophical logic, philosophy of language, ontology, theory of knowledge, Kant exegesis, moral philosophy, social philosophy, philosophy of art. As Sen's philosophical interests and expertise were wide the authors had ample freedom in their choice of topics. (...) This volume will be of interest to those who are acquainted with sophisticated literature in analytic philosophy, scholars working in different branches of philosophy and also general readers of modern philosophy. (shrink)

Interface theory is the hypothesis that inferential, representational theories of perception entail that fitness, not truth, dictates the evolution of perceptual systems. They show, with simulations, that “veridical” perceptual mappings (ones that preserve at least some of the structure of the world) are routinely out-competed by “non-veridical” interfaces (ones that make no attempt to preserve that structure). They therefore take particular aim at the direct perception, ecological approach to perception and work to show that such a system, even if technically (...) an option, would never be selected for by evolution. This paper defends the ecological approach from this novel, existential attack by showing that the ecological hypothesis is so different in kind to the inferential, representational view of perception that it simply falls outside the scope of interface theory’s critiques; ecological psychology remains a viable scientific endeavor. This analysis will show that, far from being a radical new approach to perception, interface theory is simply a clear and elegant formalization of mainstream representational psychology, and any implications interface theory may have belong solely to that branch of science. (shrink)

Despite the enormous importance and widespread use of the term, it is unclear exactly what a phylogeny represents. It is important to define phylogeny precisely since other central terms like “clade” and “monophyletic” are often defined relative to phylogenetic trees and on some views in taxonomy, taxa must be clades. Edwards presents the common picture in contemporary systematics as depending on the existence of a “species tree” in which phylogeny “records the branching pattern of evolving lineages through time”. But what, (...) precisely, does this mean? (shrink)

In his article “On Mechanical Recognition” R. J. Nelson brings to bear a branch of mathematical logic called automata theory on problems of artificial intelligence. Specifically he attacks the anti-mechanist claim that “[i]nasmuch as human recognition to a very great extent relies on context and on the ability to grasp wholes with some independence of the quality of the parts, even to fill in the missing parts on the basis of expectations, it follows that computers cannot in principle be (...) programmed to recognize or learn to recognize all patterns”, p. 24). Nelson proposes, contrary to this claim, that “gestalt recognition is not beyond digital automata”. in particular, he claims, he will establish by what he calls “Turing machine arguments” that the following four theses are true: automata can recognize different pattern types in one and the same set of instances;automata can recognize the “same” pattern in different sets of instances;automata can recognize incomplete, degraded patterns having missing or indeterminate parts;automata can recognize family resemblances. (shrink)

Theoretical Perspective on Smell is the first collection of scholarly articles to be devoted exclusively to philosophical research on olfaction. The essays, published here for the first time, bring together leading theorists working on smell in a format that allows for deep engagement with the emerging field, while also providing those new to the philosophy of smell with a resource to begin their journey. The volume’s 14 chapters are organized into four parts: -/- I. The Importance and Beauty of Smell (...) II. Smell in Time and Space III. What We Perceive through Smell IV. Smell and Other Senses -/- The collection solidifies the area as an important emerging branch of perceptual philosophy by presenting the cutting edge research being done by innovative early career researchers, as well as by those more senior and established within the field. -/- Table of Contents 1. Introduction Andreas Keller and Benjamin Young -/- Part I: The Importance and Beauty of Smell -/- 2. The Role of Smell in Consciousness Barry C. Smith -/- 3. The metacognitive gap: Why we both trust and mistrust our sense of smell Ophelia Deroy -/- 4. Perfumes and the Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature Chiara Brozzo -/- 5. Aesthetics, Olfaction, & Environment Michael Aaron Lindquist -/- Part II: Smell in Time and Space -/- 6. Smell and the Space Between Us Clare Batty -/- 7. The Temporal Structure of Olfactory Experience Keith A. Wilson -/- Part III: What We Perceive through Smell -/- 8. How Biology Perceives Chemistry: A Causal Analysis of the Stimulus in Olfaction and its Implications for Scientific and Philosophical Theorizing Ann-Sophie Barwich -/- 9. The Accuracy Conditions of Olfactory Perception Andreas Keller -/- 10. Maybe We Don't Smell Molecular Structure Benjamin D. Young -/- 11. Stuff & Nonsense: Against Mizrahi on Olfaction Harry Sherwood -/- 12. The Layering of Smell William G. Lycan -/- Part IV: Smell and the Other Senses -/- 13. From Odors to Flavors: Perceptual organization in the chemical senses Becky Millar -/- 14. Seeing and hearing flavors Błażej Skrzypulec -/- 15. Smelling Gustatory Qualities Louise Richardson. (shrink)