ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

In early 2020, a number of countries developed and published intensive care triage guidelines for the pandemic. Several of those guidelines, especially in the UK, encouraged the explicit assessment...

Imagine that we are considering whether our healthcare system (or insurer) should fund treatment or procedure X. One factor that may be cited is that of so-called ‘medical necessity’. The claim would be that treatment X should be eligible for funding if it is medically necessary, but ineligible if this does not apply. Similarly, (and relevant to the debates in this special issue), if considering whether a particular treatment should be ethically and/or legally permitted, we may wish to distinguish between (...) cases where the treatment is medically necessary, and those were it is not. But what do we mean by this concept? Here I will propose and briefly defend one plausible and practical definition. (shrink)

The debate about positive and negative claims of conscience is, in large part, about ethical consistency. In this commentary I argue that there can be differences between conscientious provision of treatment and conscientious nonprovision of treatment that are ethically relevant. However, in many cases, including those described in this commentary, there is not sufficient ethical reason to treat them differently. This means that asymmetrical conscientious objection policies are potentially unjustified.

This paper is partly to get rid of some irritation which I have felt at the quite common tendency of philosophers to elucidate (for example) ‘is red’ in terms of ‘looks red’. For a relatively recent example see, for example, Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter, ‘An Objectivist′s Guide to Subjectivism about Colour’. However rather than try to make a long list of references, I would rather say ‘No names, no pack drill’. I have even been disturbed to find the use (...) of the words ‘looks red’ that I am opposing ascribed to me by Keith Campbell in his useful article ‘David Armstrong and Realism about Colour’. I am not saying that such talk is necessarily wrong. Talk of ‘looks red’ may be a way of harmlessly referring to the behavioural discriminations with respect to colour of a human percipient. Where it is dangerous, at least to those of us who wish to argue for a broadly physicalist account of the mind, is that it may have concealed overtones of reference to epiphenomenal and irreducibly psychic properties of experiences. Moreover even if it does not do so it may be fence sitting on this issue and liable to misinterpretation. (shrink)

Despite the importance of the “historiographical revolution” in Kuhn’s work, he did not carry out a specific study about it. Without a systematic investigation into it, he even affirms that the “old” historiography of science (OHS) is unhistorical, suggesting its summary disqualification in the face of his “new historiography” of science (NHS). My wider project, of which this paper is a part, is to better discuss the issue of the justification of the NHS. In this paper, I discuss the justification (...) (and the genesis) of the OHS, focusing on Condorcet and Comte and resorting especially to Koyré. This will allow us to understand that the relation between the OHS and the NHS is a new instance of inter-theoretical incommensurability. And, indeed, that the NHS is not stricto senso a new historiography. It is the same historiography used for other disciplines (art, philosophy), which in the twentieth century begins to be applied to science as well. (shrink)

We study logical systems for reasoning about equations involving recursive definitions. In particular, we are interested in "propositional" fragments of the functional language of recursion FLR [18, 17], i.e., without the value passing or abstraction allowed in FLR. The "pure," propositional fragment FLR$_0$ turns out to coincide with the iteration theories of [1]. Our main focus here concerns the sharp contrast between the simple class of valid identities and the very complex consequence relation over several natural classes of models.

Messianic peacemakers: Intertextual relationships between Zechariah 9-14 and the Gospel of Matthew. This article deals with images of war, violence and peace and with the role of messianic leaders in Deutero-Zechariah and the way in which texts from Zechariah 9–14 have been interpreted in the Gospel of Matthew. The first section describes the lines of meaning in Zechariah 9–14 on the basis of word fields related to violence and universal peace. The second section discusses Deutero-Zechariah’s own position in the development (...) of messianic expectations in Old Testament texts. In the third section, the question is asked how the meaning of texts from Zechariah 9–14 about messianic leaders has been influenced by earlier prophetic texts, and how these texts in their turn have been transformed and updated in the Gospel of Matthew, which contains explicit quotations from Deutero-Zechariah in 21:5; 26:15; 26:31 and 27:9–10. The fourth section summarises some interesting semantic shifts appearing in Matthew’s gospel compared to Deutero-Zechariah. Moreover, some critical comments are presented against the idea defended in some recent studies that there is a sharp tension between Jesus’s role in Matthew as the bringer of a peaceful ethical message, and his violent and vindictive role at the final judgement. At the end of this article, the burning question is raised whether Zechariah’s and Matthew’s messages, both of which are characterised by a certain degree of exclusivity, can play a constructive role in modern multi-religious discussions about common roads leading to global peace. (shrink)

Can metaphysics yield the consolations of philosophy? One possibility, defended by Derek Parfit, is that reflection on the nature of identity and time could diminish both fear of death and grief. In this paper, I assess the prospect of such consolation, focussing especially on attempts to console a grieving third party. A shift to a reductionist view of personal identity might mean that death is less threatening. However, there is some evidence to suggest that such a shift does not necessarily (...) translate into less death anxiety. Moreover, applied to grief at loss of another, such a perspective may be misdirected. A temporally neutral perspective offers a theoretically powerful way of reducing the sense of loss at being separated in time from a loved one. However, it is unclear whether it is psychologically possible to achieve. Even if it were possible, it may not diminish the pain of separation.I identify a serious challenge to philosophical consolation for grief. The greater the consolation that is offered, the greater the risk of losing important attachments and the less it may be psychologically accessible. (shrink)

According to Mark 6:14–29, John the Baptist was beheaded by the order of Herod Antipas. This dramatic event became inevitable after a cunning interplay between Herodias and her daughter, who remains nameless in the New Testament. According to Flavius Josephus, she was called Salome ( Jewish Antiquities XVIII, 5.4 § 136–137), and under that name, she went down in history. For the sake of convenience, I also call her ‘Salome’ in this article. Salome is the Greek form of the Hebrew (...) name Shlomith, which was very popular in early Judaic times and means ‘she who brings peace and tranquillity’. Unlike the faithful women elsewhere in Mark’s gospel (5:21–43; 7:24–30; 14:3–9), Herodias and her daughter are not exactly models of virtue. Yet, it is questionable as to whether they are both thoroughly bad and whether they are both equally responsible for the murder of John. This article does not provide a historical reconstruction of what exactly happened at the court of Herod Antipas, but it contains a narrative analysis of what happened in the court of Herod Antipas. This narrative analysis is followed by an intertextual approach in the second part of this article. Firstly, I will compare Mark’s story with what Flavius Josephus tells about the beheading of John. Thereafter, I will highlight the roles of Herodias and Salome in the play Salome by Oscar Wilde from 1894, which, in turn, forms the basis of the libretto for the opera Salome by Richard Strauss from 1905. Do we encounter in these modern artistic recreations (Neuschöpfungen) only transformations of Mark’s story, or also transgressions in which Wilde and Strauss have largely replaced the original meaning of the story with new meaning? (shrink)

This contribution is a review article on the three most important books by F. Gerrit Immink in practical theology. His approach to this discipline is studying faith praxis of the Protestantse Kerk in Nederland which is a church in the Reformed tradition. In his first book he explained his approach to practical theology in a discussion with the action theory and hermeneutical-communucative approaches. His choice for the study of faith praxis opens the way for a more theological approach to him (...) in which communication between God and people is an important aspect. His second book forms the central part of this article. He uses the concept performance in the liturgy which is adopted from the theater world. In the performance by means of the execution of the liturgy by the congregation they all get involved in the message from the Bible of that Sunday, they are touched by it, it has an effect on them, and they get a new perspective on the problems of everyday life. This is possible through the work of the Holy Spirit. The epiclese prayers in the liturgy are prayers for the enlightening and work by the Spirit. He discusses singing, praying, preaching, baptism and Holy Communion in detail. The main idea is that the performance in the liturgy does something to you, it has an effect on you, something happens to you. To my mind there is no need to choose between the ritual approach and the approach he is putting on the table. The approaches can enrich each other. (shrink)

Short-circuit evaluation denotes the semantics of propositional connectives in which the second argument is evaluated only if the first argument does not suffice to determine the value of the expression. Free short-circuit logic is the equational logic in which compound statements are evaluated from left to right, while atomic evaluations are not memorised throughout the evaluation, i.e. evaluations of distinct occurrences of an atom in a compound statement may yield different truth values. We provide a simple semantics for free short-circuit (...) logic and an independent axiomatisation. Finally, we discuss evaluation strategies, some other SCLs, and side effects. (shrink)

Napolitano (The epistemology of fake news, Oxford University Press, 2021) argues that the Minimalist Account of conspiracy theories—i.e., which defines conspiracy theories as explanations, or theories, about conspiracies—should be rejected. Instead, she proposes to define conspiracy theories as a certain kind of belief—i.e., an evidentially self-insulated belief in a conspiracy. Napolitano argues that her account should be favored over the Minimalist Account based on two considerations: ordinary language intuitions and theoretical fruitfulness. I show how Napolitano’s account fails its own purposes (...) with respect to these two considerations and so should not be favored over the Minimalist Account. Furthermore, I propose that the Minimalist Account is the best conception of ‘conspiracy theory’ if we share Napolitano’s goal of advancing the understanding of conspiracy theories. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Exploring the Depth of Dream Experience: The Enactive Framework and Methods for Neurophenomenological Research” by Elizaveta Solomonova & Xin Wei Sha. Upshot: Enaction and neurophenomenology are indeed appropriate and productive theoretical and methodological tools for studying perception. But moving from the perceptual domain to the hallucinatory and dreaming domain with these tools requires a prior careful examination of the similarities and differences across these domains. The authors point in the right direction for studying dream (...) experience, but underestimate the objective and subjective differences between domains, producing thereby both an unwarranted blurring of their boundaries and an unnecessary explanatory burden on the approach defended. (shrink)

“We Need Not hesitate to translate the word eudaimonia by the English ‘happiness’”. So Burnet wrote in 1900, but the hardening consensus is that he was wrong. The differences between the two notions, it is now commonly supposed, are too many and too deep to think that happiness and eudaimonia are very closely related; and consequently “happiness”, the long-established conventional translation, will seriously mislead us in understanding the nature of Aristotelian eudaimonia.

The removal of water from mines was one of the key issues that former miners had to deal with. Roman colonists brought new technology to the Iberian Peninsula that addressed this problem. However, they did not invent this technology because it had already been applied to the growth of other endeavours in the Hellenistic society throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. In the mine, the Archimedes screw, waterwheels, bucket pulleys, and Ctesibius pumps were the primary drainage systems. In this essay, the primary (...) characteristics, and modes of operation of machines are examined. Without leaving out the most significant finds made in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, one of the regions with the longest history of mining exploitation. To serve as a foundation for future research in this field, this work compares the primary mining mechanisms in ancient Huelva on a qualitative and quantitative level by the implementation of a TOPSIS methodology, a multi-criteria decision analysis method. (shrink)

"Written in clear language, this book offers a seasoned historian's effective response to postmodernism's challenge to culture and history.

A reexamination of the Nobel-prize-winning experiment in which the antiproton was discovered reveals that the associated antimesons might be traveling faster than light. The time-of-flight experiment should be repeated with a view toward more accurate measurement of distance and time of flight to discredit or to confirm this tentative conclusion.

In the course of a wider study of stylistic development in Cicero's speeches1 an examination was conducted into the clausal and phrasal structure of a chronological cross-section of the speeches. The examination revealed some clearly distinguishable developments in the orator's maturing style. This paper is restricted to an examination of one aspect of his stylistic development, namely his use of abundantia of phrases. The term abundantia has a long history, but in Cicero's rhetorical treatises it is almost synonymous with amplitudo (...) and copia. (shrink)

In this paper we generalize the pigeonhole principle by using isols as our fundamental counting tool.

The allegedly alternative theories of Phyletic Gradualism and Punctuated Equilibria are examined as regards the nature of their differences. The explanatory value of both models is determined by establishing their actual connection with reality. It is concluded that they are to be considered complementary rather than mutually exclusive at all levels of infraspecific, specific, and supraspecific evolution. So, in order to be described comprehensively, the pathways of evolution require at least two distinct models, each based on a discrete range of (...) real phenomena. [Phyletic Gradualism; Punctuated Equilibria; evolutionary theories; divergence models; additive speciation; microevolution; macroevolution; anagenesis.]. (shrink)

Many attempts have been made at supporting either one of the allegedly complementary divergence models Phyletic Gradualism and Punctuated Equilibria by patterns found in specific fossil sequences. However, assessing each model's connection with reality via such “individual case histories” appears not to constitute a relevant approach. Instead, in order to correctly establish the possible merits of both concepts, the claims of each have to be verified against general evolutionary theory. This is being pointed out herein by analyzing cladogenesis at the (...) specific level as an example. [Phyletic Gradualism; Punctuated Equilibria; evolutionary theory; divergence models; case histories; additive speciation.]. (shrink)

Williamson claims that we are cognitive homeless, and for most aspects of our cognitive life it is not the case that if we are in the mental state S we know or are in a position to know that we are in said mental state. In this paper, I critically examine Williamson’s argument, some common misconceptions, and provide a different understanding of the way we relate to our own mental states that shows how we are not always in a condition (...) of cognitive homelessness. (shrink)