Next‐generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have revolutionised the analysis of genomic structural variants (SVs), providing significant insights into SV de novo formation based on analyses of rearrangement breakpoint junctions. The short DNA reads generated by NGS, however, have also created novel obstacles by biasing the ascertainment of SVs, an aspect that we refer to as the ‘short‐read dilemma’. For example, recent studies have found that SVs are often complex, with SV formation generating large numbers of breakpoints in a single event (multi‐breakpoint (...) SVs) or structurally polymorphic loci having multiple allelic states (multi‐allelic SVs). This complexity may be obscured in short reads, unless the data is analysed and interpreted within its wider genomic context. We discuss how novel approaches will help to overcome the short‐read dilemma, and how integration of other sources of information, including the structure of chromatin, may help in the future to deepen the understanding of SV formation processes. (shrink)

How parents talk about social events shapes their children’s understanding of the social world and themselves. In this study, we show that parents in a society that more strongly values individualism and one that more strongly values collectivism differ in how they talk about negative social events, but not positive ones. An animal puppet show presented positive social events and negative social events. All shows contained two puppets, an actor and a recipient of the event. We asked parents to talk (...) to their 3- and 4-years old children about these events. A total of 26 parent–child dyads from the United States and Japan participated. The principal dependent measure was how much parent talk referred to the actor of each type of social event. There were no cultural differences observed in positive events – both the United States and Japanese parents discussed actors more than recipients. However, there were cultural differences observed in negative events – the United States parents talked mostly about the actor but Japanese parents talked equally about the actor and the recipient of the event. The potential influences of these differences on early cognitive and social development are discussed. (shrink)

This book connects recent developments in speculative realism, new materialism, and eco-phenomenology to articulate an approach to wonder that escapes the connected traps of anthropocentrism and correlationism. Brian Onishi argues that wonder has explanatory power for the constitution of the world and the organization of meaning. To do this, he appeals to both fiction (speculative and Weird fiction in particular) and quantum physics. More specifically, he argues that the focus of Weird fiction on impossible experiences and a feeling of (...) something just beyond the limits of one’s grasp dramatizes the speculative reach beyond the limits of our understanding. But more than a tool for knowledge acquisition, wonder is an organizing property of objects. Like the collapse of superposition in quantum physics, reality is constituted when objects reveal themselves to other objects and thereby organize themselves into complex objects. Since no relation is exhaustive, the capacity to wonder remains at a material level, and the possibility of reorganization is ever present. Ultimately, Onishi argues for a speculative eco-phenomenology with wonder as an engine for a Weird environmental ethics. (shrink)

Este ensayo está dedicado a la serie grey paintings del artista norteamericano Cy Twombly. A partir de un análisis de Panorama y Cold Stream, planteo que la serie se vincula a formas de inscripción asociadas, simultáneamente, a lo verbal y lo pictórico. Si bien no es posible identificar letras ni palabras, estas obras manifiestan un estrecho vínculo con una dimensión gestual y corporal de la escritura. En mi análisis establezco relaciones con inscripciones arcaicas, con la criptografía, y con procesos de (...) alfabetización escolar. (shrink)

The homeostatic property cluster theory is widely influential for its ability to account for many natural-kind terms in the life sciences. However, the notion of homeostatic mechanism has never been fully explicated. In 2009, Carl Craver interpreted the notion in the sense articulated in discussions on mechanistic explanation and pointed out that the HPC account equipped with such notion invites interest-relativity. In this paper, we analyze two recent refinements on HPC: one that avoids any reference to the causes of the (...) clustering of properties and one that replaces homeostatic mechanisms with causal networks represented by causal graphs. We argue that the former is too slender to account for some inductive inference in science and the latter, thicker account invites interest-relativity, as the original HPC does. This suggests that human interest will be an un-eliminative part of a satisfactory account of natural kindness. We conclude by discussing the implication of interest-relativity to the naturalness, reality, or objectivity of kinds and indicating an overlooked aspect of natural kinds that requires further studies. (shrink)

Discussion of the posthuman has emerged in a wide set of fields through a diverse set of thinkers including Donna Haraway, Ray Kurzweil, Nick Bostrom, N. Katherine Hayles, and Francis Fukuyama, just to name a few. Despite his extensive critique of technology, commentators have not explored the fruitfulness of Heidegger's work for deciphering the various strands of posthumanism recently formulated in response to contemporary technological developments. Here, I employ Heidegger's critique of technology to trace opposing visions of the posthuman, visions (...) that are both tied intimately to new information technologies. For those seeking to extend humanist ideals, information technologies are employed to extend the vision of an ultra-humanist view of a ‘scientific posthuman’ that dangerously understands the body to be a forfeitable nuisance, rather than an inherent aspect of being human. Along Heideggerian lines, thinkers such as N. Katherine Hayles and Thomas Carlson have developed an alternative trajectory related to Dasein's Being-in-the-world. This trajectory posits the self as constituted by a lack or abyss, enabling the formulation of a ‘mystical posthuman,’ celebrating, rather than forfeiting, humanity's embodied existence. (shrink)

We present substructural negations, a family of negations classified in terms of structural rules of an extended kind of sequent calculus, display calculus. In considering the whole picture, we emphasize the duality of negation. Two types of negative modality, impossibility and unnecessity, are discussed and "self-dual" negations like Classical, De Morgan, or Ockham negation are redefined as the fusions of two negative modalities. We also consider how to identify, using intuitionistic and dual intuitionistic negations, two accessibility relations associated with impossibility (...) and unnecessity. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that an encounter with a tick can produce both fear and wonder. I make a distinction between the legitimate danger of tick borne-diseases and the non-danger of our entanglement with the nature revealed by the tick’s bite in order to highlight the goodness of the tick and the possibilities for post-human existences beyond narratives of conquest and control. Ultimately, I argue that wonder is a helpful mechanism for thinking through the goodness of the tick by (...) allowing an ungrounding of our assumptions about climate change, hospitality, and the danger of non-human agencies. (shrink)

A star-free relational semantics for relevant logic is presented together with a sound and complete sequent proof theory. It is an extension of the dualist approach to negation regarded as modality, according to which de Morgan negation in relevant logic is better understood as the confusion of two negative modalities. The present work shows a way to define them in terms of implication and a new connective, co-implication, which is modeled by respective ternary relations. The defined negations are confused by (...) a special constraint on ternary relation, called the generalized star postulate, which implies definability of the Routley star in the frame. The resultant logic is shown to be equivalent to the well-known relevant logic R. Thus it can be seen as a reconstruction of R in the dualist framework. (shrink)

In the present paper, we evaluate the grounds on which therapeutic approaches are determined in elderly demented patients as a typical group of patients who are conscious but lack the ability to make competent judgments. It is argued that none of the factors that the patient as an individual being has at present and that are complete in that individual - the age of the patient, dementia, personhood, and the ability to feel pain - is likely to be a genuine (...) reason for care-providers including health care workers and patient’s family to discontinue the treatment for severely demented patients. It is also claimed that reasons for discontinuation of the treatment for severely demented patients arise from the relationship between the patient and the care-providers, especially the patient’s family. The human relationships between the patient and the family may be maintained as long as the latter find some significance in the presence of the severely demented patient and recognize him/her as “one of them”. When the patient ceases to be “one of them” for the family and is excluded from “their company”, the reason for supporting the demented member of the family is lost. The benefit to the patient and the value of his/her presence lose the individuality or specificity and are subjected to interpretation by the family. Therefore, the reason for discontinuation of the treatment for a severely demented patient is termination of the relationship between the patient and his/her family. The significance of our conclusion is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Recent discussions of “eco-anxiety” have brought attention to feelings of hopelessness and despair associated with climate change and ecological disaster. When we accept the claims made by science about climate change and realize that our near future is full of unprecedented ecological crisis it is difficult to avoid feelings of anxiety about the future of human life on our planet. While these discussions have largely taken place in the context of psychology and psychoanalysis, there is a need to engage in (...) ethical deliberation about both “eco-anxiety” and “eco-trauma.” In this paper, I argue that an environmental virtue of wonder can help to articulate the intersection of environmental ethics and “eco-anxiety” by offering a mean between the excess of anxiety and the deficiency of boredom. I situate this discussion within trauma studies and make connections between the pre-trauma of climate change, wonder, and eco-cinema. More specifically, I argue for a weird environmental ethic that embraces fuzzy boundaries of entangled environments and show that the virtue of wonder allows for flourishing within this context. I use cinema, and specifically Eco-Weird cinema, to argue for a shift in narratives about our present and our future as it relates to climate change. (shrink)

The debate over scientific realism is one of the traditional topics in philosophy of science. Today there are various types of realism and anti-realism, including entity realism, (epistemic/ontic/moderate) structural realism, semirealism, eclectic realism, and constructive empiricism. However, the main point of the dispute, which is the validity of inference from observable evidence to unobservable events, seems to have been set aside in the recent debate. To improve this situation, I propose a new approach to the scientific realism issue that utilizes (...) the epistemological positions. As an example, I also demonstrate an analysis of the debate based on contextualism in epistemology. (shrink)

In 2013, the first reader of Jean-Luc Marion’s works appeared, Jean-Luc Marion: The Essential Writings, meticulously edited by his friend and colleague Kevin Hart. Yet, if the appearance of volume marked Marion’s status as France’s most influential living philosopher, Hart’s Kingdoms of God marks the beginning of a systematic theology long in the making. In addition to serving as the prologemenon to his planned systematics, the work also serves to differentiate Hart’s phenomenological theology from Marion’s phenomenology of revelation and doctrine (...) of revelation through the rendering of what Hart calls the basilaic reduction, on the basis of which Hart builds a twofold theological criticism of Marion. He first criticizes Marion’s claim that revelation can gain phenomenological status like ordinary phenomena, and second contests the notion that revelation is always characterized by a saturation that bedazzles its receiver. I explore each thinker’s approach to the relationship between philosophy and theology, using their engagements with the works of Jacques Derrida and Karl Barth as points of comparison in order to contextualize Hart’s theological criticisms of Marion. I conclude by arguing that Hart’s, rather than Marion’s, approach to the relationship between philosophy and theology corresponds to the core concerns of the second generation of the “theological turn” of French phenomenology. (shrink)

What sort of evidence can confer the strongest support to a hypothesis? A natural answer is that the evidence entails the hypothesis. Roush (Tracking Truth: Knowledge, Evidence, and Science, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2005) claims that the likelihood ratio measure of degree of incremental support can deliver this intuitively natural result, and regards it as unifying “[the] account of induction and deduction in the only way that makes sense” (p. 163). In this paper, we highlight a difficulty in the treatment of (...) this case, and question the great significance that is attached to this measure and its alleged capacity to accommodate the logicality requirement. We contrast the likelihood ratio measure with other measures (such as the Kemeny–Oppenheim measure and the difference measure), and argue that problems still emerge in light of tensions with plausible requirements for confirmation measures more generally. (shrink)

As philosophers in the continental tradition have taken an interest in the return of religion, anthropologists and sociologists have rejected the once-dominant secularization thesis. Bradley B. Onishi connects these lines of thought to reveal how philosophy's religious investigations have enabled critical reflections on the category of the secular.

What sort of evidence can confer the strongest support to a hypothesis? A natural answer is that the evidence entails the hypothesis. Roush claims that the likelihood ratio measure of degree of incremental support can deliver this intuitively natural result, and regards it as unifying “[the] account of induction and deduction in the only way that makes sense”. In this paper, we highlight a difficulty in the treatment of this case, and question the great significance that is attached to this (...) measure and its alleged capacity to accommodate the logicality requirement. We contrast the likelihood ratio measure with other measures, and argue that problems still emerge in light of tensions with plausible requirements for confirmation measures more generally. (shrink)