Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Thomas L. Kane, a crusader for antislavery, women's rights, and the downtrodden, rose to prominence in his day as the most ardent and persuasive defender of Mormons' religious liberty. Though not a Mormon, Kane sought to defend the much-reviled group from the "Holy War" waged against them by evangelical America. His courageous personal intervention averted a potentially catastrophic bloody conflict between federal troops and Mormon settlers in the now nearly forgotten Utah War of 1857-58. Drawing on extensive, newly (...) available archives, this book is the first to tell the full story of Kane's extraordinary life. The book illuminates his powerful Philadelphia family, his personal life and eccentricities, his reform achievements, his place in Mormon history, and his career as a Civil War general. Further, the book revises previous understandings of nineteenth-century reform, showing how Kane and likeminded others fused Democratic Party ideology, anti-evangelicalism, and romanticism. (shrink)

A number of philosophers and theologians have recently challenged the common assumption that it would be impossible for God to cause humans actions which are free in the libertarian or incompatibilist sense. Perhaps the most sophisticated version of this challenge is due to W. Matthews Grant. By offering a detailed account of divine causation, Grant argues that divine universal causation does not preclude humans from being ultimately responsible for their actions, nor free according to typical libertarian accounts. Here, we argue (...) that the kind of divine universal causation that Grant proposes is incompatible with a plausible interpretation of Robert Kane’s influential conception of ultimate responsibility. This conclusion is significant since Grant seeks to harmonize his divine causal account with Kane’s articulation of ultimate responsibility. (shrink)

Based on a framework that integrates job demands-resources theory, social cognitive theory Handbook of personality, Guilford Press, New York, pp 154–196, 1999) and regulatory focus theory, the purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and subsequent moral disengagement and unethical behavior. We conducted a laboratory study and also collected data in two separate surveys 6 weeks apart from 206 individuals working full time to investigate the relationships presented in our model. In both studies, (...) we examined the direct relationship of politics perceptions on unethical behavior in organizations as well as the indirect relationship through the influence of moral disengagement. We investigated the moderating effect of regulatory focus on the relationship between moral disengagement and unethical behavior using the survey data. Results indicated that perceptions of politics were significantly related to our mediator, moral disengagement, which was significantly related to our dependent variable, unethical behavior. However, only prevention-focus moderated the relationships examined. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed. (shrink)

Is truth a substantial feature of truth-bearers? Correspondence theorists answer in the affirmative, deflationists in the negative. Correspondence theorists cite in their defense the dependence of truth on meaning or representational content. Deflationists in turn cite the conceptual centrality of simple equivalences such as ''Snow is white' is true iff snow is white'' and 'It is true that snow is white iff snow is white'. The apparent facts to which these theorists appeal correspond to some of our firmest and most (...) basic convictions about truth. An account of truth that fails to accommodate either sort of apparent fact is inadequate. The account presented in this essay attempts to avoid this inadequacy by 'deflating' truth for propositions but 'inflating' truth for entities that express propositions, thus drawing from the insights of both deflationists and correspondence theorists. (shrink)

I respond here to an argument in David Shoemaker’s recent essay, “Attributability, Answerability, and Accountability: Toward a Wider Theory of Moral Responsibility.” Shoemaker finds that “Scanlonian” approaches to moral blame err insofar as they do not include a capacity to respond to moral considerations among the conditions on blameworthiness. Shoemaker argues that wrongdoers must be able to respond to moral reasons for their behavior to express the disrespect to which blaming attitudes like resentment respond. I offer reasons for rejecting this (...) argument. (shrink)

While it is often supposed that Spinoza understood a life of virtue as one of pure activity, with as few passions as possible, this paper aims to make explicit how the passions for Spinoza contribute positively to our virtue. This requires, first, explaining how a passion can increase our power, given Spinoza’s view on the passions generally, which, in turn, requires coming to terms with the problem of passive pleasure, that is, the problem of explaining how being passive can cause (...) an increase in our power. In brief, this paper will argue that, for Spinoza, even when we are passive, we are somewhat active or, in Spinoza’s language, “adequate” to varying degrees. The passions represent activity because they exercise our understanding by providing us with intelligence about external bodies and our own bodies, in particular, the degree of our bodies’ perfection. It follows that a passion can be sufficiently adequate to bring about an increase in one’s power; in this sense, they can be virtuous. Moreover, this paper will show that the passions can also be virtuous in a moral sense. The view goes roughly as follows: according to Spinoza, the passions serve as a measure of our perfection. Consequently, they play a necessary role in moral reasoning, by indicating which activities increase or hinder our virtue. On this view, a truly virtuous person would require the passions in order to engage consistently in the sorts of activities which increase her power, in particular, following reason. Since this sort of consistency in behavior is necessary for a virtuous character, the passions can be virtuous in the sense that they are necessary aspects of the sort of character which disposes us to act according to reason. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers of religion have sought to defend the rationality of religious belief by shifting the burden of proof onto the critic of religious belief. Some have appealed to extraordinary religious experience in making their case. Religious Experience, Justification, and History restores neglected explanatory and historical considerations to the debate. Through a study of William James, it contests the accounts of religious experience offered in recent works. Through reflection on the history of philosophy, it also unravels the philosophical use (...) of the term justification. Matthew Bagger argues that the commitment to supernatural explanations implicit in the religious experiences employed to justify religious belief contradicts the modern ideal of human flourishing. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider ways of responding to critiques of natural kinds monism recently suggested from the pluralist camp. Even if monism is determined to be untenable in certain domains (say, about species), it might well be tenable in others. Chemistry is suggested to be such a monist‐friendly domain. Suggestions of trouble for chemical kinds can be defused by attending to the difference between monism as a metaphysical thesis and as a claim about classification systems. Finally, I consider enantiomers (...) as a test case for the monism/pluralism debate. The question of whether enantiomers differ in kind does not appear easily answerable. I suggest that this legislates for pluralism in chemistry. (shrink)

Several features of this compact passage have puzzled scholars ever since the discovery of the Aristotelian Constitution of the Athenians a century ago. First, did the Athenian Assembly really deliberate on all these disparate matters in the chief meeting of the sixth prytany, and if so, why? Second, why did it limit complaints against sycophants to a total of six divided equally between citizens and metics? Since the answers we give to these questions are fundamental to our understanding of basic (...) Athenian institutions, they deserve careful consideration. This paper will argue that the Assembly did deliberate on these matters at the same meeting and indeed that this was natural, since they are all symbolic, as well as practical, instruments for controlling behaviour inimical to the demos' interests. It will also suggest that the limitation on probolai against citizen and metic sycophants was introduced to safeguard against the sort of abuse of the label ‘sycophant’ that took place under the regime of the Thirty, and that the measures described in Ath. Pol. 43.5 were, therefore, most likely linked together in the early years of the restored democracy. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the phenomenology of mental agency by addressing the question of the ontological category of the conscious mental acts an agent is aware of when engaged in such directed mental activities as conscious calculation and deliberation. An argument is offered for the claim that the mental acts in question must involve phenomenally conscious mental events that have temporal extension. The problem the chapter goes on to address is how to reconcile this line of thought with Geach's arguments (...) for the claim that mental acts like judging lack temporal extension. (shrink)

Focusing on Prussia from the Napoleonic era to the Revolution of 1848, this book boldly reinterprets the origins of German nationalism by tracing its links to eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought. It also presents a new perspective on the role of discourse in historical change, emphasizing how the concept 'nation' transformed the horizon of Prussian political debate.

The topic of this dissertation is one that has been in the forefront of contemporary metaphysics in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, namely, the problem of personal identity through time. Although we generally believe that we remain the same persons throughout our lives, the answers to questions concerning just what it is that remains the same about us prove to be elusive. Contemporary debate on the subject has its roots in the challenges posed by Locke and Hume to theories which assert (...) that persisting and substantial selves, or souls, constitute the ground for personal identity, and their efforts to suggest alternative theories based on such concepts as memory and causality. It is remarkable that a similar debate, aroused by the "non-self" doctrine of the Buddha, occupied a central position in Indian philosophical discourse during the last centuries B.C.E. and the first millennium C.E. While much historical and philological research has been devoted to Buddhist approaches to this problem, the task of interpreting these materials in the light of recent refinements of philosophical method has not yet been undertaken. It is this task to which the present thesis is devoted, drawing on the works of such Buddhist philosophers as Vasubandhu and Santaraksita, and their Brahmanical opponents such as Uddyotakara, as well as recent contributions to the debate on personal identity by Chisholm, Parfit and others. The dissertation is divided into three main sections: Part One, in six chapters, traces out the history of the problem of personal identity in Indian philosophy, and is especially concerned with the role played by refinements of Indian philosophical method in the developments discussed; Part Two presents a selection of the most important Buddhist and Brahmanical contributions to the problem, newly translated from the Sanskrit for the present dissertation; and Part Three includes three supplementary essays on personal identity in the work of Derek Parfit and Steven Colline, Buddhist idealism, and Buddhist hermeneutics. (shrink)

I consider the well-known criticism of Quine's characterization of first-order logical truth that it expands the class of logical truths beyond what is sanctioned by the model-theoretic account. Briefly, I argue that at best the criticism is shallow and can be answered with slight alterations in Quine's account. At worse the criticism is defective because, in part, it is based on a misrepresentation of Quine. This serves not only to clarify Quine's position, but also to crystallize what is and what (...) is not at issue in choosing the model-theoretic account of first-order logical truth over one in terms of substitutions. I conclude by highlighting the need for justifying the belief that the definition of first-order logical truth in terms of models is superior to its definition in terms of substitutions. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a special section based on papers from Australasian Conference for Information Systems 2014. Design/methodology/approach This paper comments on key contextualisation moments in relevant history. Findings This paper describes the initiative in Australia to widen Information and Communication Technology ethics awareness. Originality/value This is a new attempt to bring Ethics and Information Systems academics closer together.

Training on the Law of armed conflict employs different rationales to motivate soldiers and to induce their compliance with LOAC rules. Of these, none is as controversial, or as potentially...

The authors' proposal for the evolutionary origins of historical myths does not hold up to scrutiny, as illustrated by a simple mathematical model. Group-level explanations, such as defining the conditions for in-group membership, are dismissed by the authors but are far more plausible, as illustrated by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

We support the goal to integrate models of culture and cognition. However, we are not convinced that the free energy principle and Thinking Through Other Minds will be useful in achieving it. There are long traditions of modeling both cultural evolution and cognition. Demonstrating that FEP or TTOM can integrate these models will require a bit more math.