The value of any kind of data is greatly enhanced when it exists in a form that allows it to be integrated with other data. One approach to integration is through the annotation of multiple bodies of data using common controlled vocabularies or ‘ontologies’. Unfortunately, the very success of this approach has led to a proliferation of ontologies which itself creates obstacles to integration. The Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) consortium has set in train a strategy to overcome this problem. Existing (...) OBO ontologies, including the Gene Ontology, are undergoing a process of coordinated reform and new ontologies being created on the basis of an evolving set of shared principles governing ontology development. The result is an expanding family of ontologies designed to be interoperable, logically well-formed, and to incorporate accurate representations of biological reality. We describe the OBO Foundry initiative, and provide guidelines for those who might wish to become involved. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Genomic research and biobanking present several ethical, social and cultural challenges, particularly when conducted in settings with limited scientific research capacity. One of these challenges is determining the model of consent that should support the sharing of human biological samples and data in the context of international collaborative research. In this paper, we report on the views of key research stakeholders in Ghana on what should count as good ethical practice when seeking consent for genomic research and biobanking in (...) Africa. This study was part of a multi-country qualitative case study conducted in three African countries: Ghana, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa initiative (H3Africa). Our study suggests that while participants are willing to give consent for their samples and associated data to be used for future research purposes, they expect to receive feedback about the progress of the research and about the kinds of research being undertaken on their samples and data. These expectations need to be anticipated and discussed during the consent process which should be seen as part of an ongoing communication process throughout the research process. (shrink)

Genomic research and biobanking present several ethical, social and cultural challenges, particularly when conducted in settings with limited scientific research capacity. One of these challenges is determining the model of consent that should support the sharing of human biological samples and data in the context of international collaborative research. In this paper, we report on the views of key research stakeholders in Ghana on what should count as good ethical practice when seeking consent for genomic research and biobanking in Africa. (...) This study was part of a multi-country qualitative case study conducted in three African countries: Ghana, Uganda and Zambia under the auspices of the Human Heredity and Health in Africa initiative. Our study suggests that while participants are willing to give consent for their samples and associated data to be used for future research purposes, they expect to receive feedback about the progress of the research and about the kinds of research being undertaken on their samples and data. These expectations need to be anticipated and discussed during the consent process which should be seen as part of an ongoing communication process throughout the research process. (shrink)

This dissertation consists in three essays, one in ethics, one in action theory and one at the intersection of these fields. The first essay concerns romantic love, and makes explicit both the psychological needs people commonly expect it to service and the robust yet conditional commitment it demands. The basic ideas are the following: people regularly want to form an intimate union with another, to be loved for properties of certain sorts, and to have this love generate and sustain a (...) distinctive sort of commitment to them. In particular I argue that the third idea has been underarticulated and underappreciated, and its underappreciation has given rise to seeming inconsistencies amongst peoples' wishes for lasting loving relationships. I close with a detailed account of what I term a "loving commitment." ;The second essay is devoted to a detailed examination and assessment of the Doctrine of Double Effect . I argue that in order to employ the DDE to obtain intuitively satisfying moral evaluations it needs to be supplemented by an additional principle or set of principles that specify how various aspects of the relevant action are to be classified as intended or merely foreseen. After discrediting various plausible candidates I offer a puzzle case that seems peculiarly prone to mischaracterization by the DDE. I close with some tentative suggestions as to how the DDE should be considered against the backdrop of our moral practices. ;The third essay is a detailed examination of intention, belief, intentional action, and planning, and the relations obtaining between them. I contend that plans are nothing more than clusters of intentions of greater and lesser range and immediacy and that practical rationality essentially consists in forming and acting on intentions. I then argue that while intentionally acting does not require an intention to perform that very act, Michael Bratman's powerful argument to that effect is ultimately unsatisfying. I propose that the two phenomena diverge because there is a justified belief requirement on intention that does not apply to acting intentionally, and that this justified belief requirement is tied to the intimate relation between intention and rationality. I go on to consider other features of intention, most notably its relations to skillful and habitual activity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Review of Stephen Phillips' Jewel of Reflection on the Truth about Epistemology:A Complete and Annotated Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇiMichael Williams (bio)Stephen Phillips presents a translation and commentary on Gaṅgeśa Upādhyāya's Tattvacintāmaṇi, which is widely regarded as the foundational text of the Navya-Nyāya tradition. The importance of Gaṅgeśa's work to subsequent philosophy in India can hardly be overstated. In the centuries after his death, countless commentaries and dissertations were written (...) on the Tattvacintāmaṇi by Nyāya scholars in Mithila and Bengal. Recent [End Page 510] scholarship (David and Duquette 2021) has highlighted how the work of the Navya-Naiyāyikas came to influence intellectuals from all over the Indian subcontinent. The theories of Gaṅgeśa and his followers shaped discussions in diverse scientific fields, including Vedānta, Mīmāṃsā, grammatical science, and literary theory.Despite its pervasive impact on Indian thought, Navya-Nyāya has frequently been portrayed in a negative light by scholars. The Indologist Arthur Berriedale Keith (1921, p. 35) described the commentaries on Gaṅgeśa's work as "a vast mass of perverted ingenuity worthy of the most flourishing days of mediaeval scholasticism." Meanwhile, Swami Vivekananda bemoaned the "never ending Avacchinnas and Avacchedakas" of Navya-Nyāya prose.1Jonardon Ganeri (2011) has discussed how these negative stereotypes reach back to the political agenda of the British colonial government in India during the nineteenth century, and his work highlights the vitality and diversity of the discussion of metaphysics in the Bengali tradition of Navya-Nyāya. Nevertheless, there is no denying that much Navya-Nyāya work is extremely difficult to discuss and translate comprehensibly. Many scholars still think of Navya-Nyāya works as untranslatable, at least in the sense that their meaning could not be effectively communicated to a modern audience who are not already deeply familiar with the tradition. This would be tragic, given the potential of Navya-Nyāya philosophy to contribute to the growing cross-cultural conversation in philosophy.Phillips is the first scholar to translate the entire Tattvacintāmaṇi into another language. His work attempts to communicate the foundational text of the Navya-Nyāya tradition to a broad audience. In his introduction, Phillips says that his work aims to speak to analytic philosophers, Sanskritists, and "specialists whose interests span issues in contemporary philosophy and Gaṅgeśa's achievements" (2020, vol. 1, p. 1). Phillips worked with the late Ramanuja Tatacharya to read the Tattvacintāmaṇi's chapters on perception and inference. Tatacharya was recognized as one of the leading experts on Navya-Nyāya philosophy in the world during his lifetime, and Phillips' translation distils many of his insights into the text.Phillips' goal is to translate the Tattvacintāmaṇi into lucid English. He eschews what he terms the "error of literalism" (2020, 1:xvi), instead using idiomatic translations that draw on concepts from contemporary analytic philosophy. Unlike Daniel Ingalls (1951) and Cornelius Goekoop (1967), Phillips uses formalization in Property Predicate Logic comparatively rarely, deploying it selectively in contexts such as the discussion of the nature of pervasion (the Vyāptivāda) and the discussion of the "inferential undercutter" (the Upādhivāda), for instance. The introduction to the work is extremely clear and explains the translation using terms of modern analytic philosophy. Phillips presents a perspicuous introduction to the theory of inference, [End Page 511] which is necessary to understanding Gaṅgeśa's work, which constantly employs inferential arguments.Phillips' introductions to the individual chapters of the text are also very illuminating, and often contain original insights into the philosophy of the Tattvacintāmaṇi. For instance, his introduction to the Īśvaravāda argues, contra John Vattanky ([1989] 2011), that Gaṅgeśa himself was not entirely persuaded of the strength of the proofs for the existence of god (īśvara) that he puts forward in that chapter. Phillips argues that Gaṅgeśa may actually have sympathized to some extent with the Mīmāṃsā views he ultimately critiques there, detecting on Gaṅgeśa's part a "sympathy for certain atheistic... (shrink)

This is the first German volume for more than one century, dealing with the two main subjects that have dominated the present reception of the Spanish philosopher and theologian Francisco Suárez (1548-1617): metaphysics and law theory. The contributors discuss both Suárez as an influential thinker of modern European school metaphysics and as a representant of a global law philosophy and ethics. They also debate on the combination of theory and praxis in the light of the question which commitment a universal (...) First Philosophy could have today. The volume is complimented by an introduction to Suárez's works and vita, an overview and guide to recent primary and secondary literature, as well as a name register.--publlisher's desciption. (shrink)

This book collects 12 previously untranslated lectures by Castoriadis from 1982 to 1983. Castoriadis focuses on the interconnection between philosophy and democracy and the way both emerge within a self-critical imaginary already in development in the work of early Greek poets and Presocratic philosophers. Displaying both mastery of the relevant scholarship and original interpretation, he reveals the birth of a society that would place its highest value in calling itself and its institutions into question. He argues that this spirit would (...) develop directly into the twin signatures of the Greek world, namely radical philosophy, on the one hand, and radical democratic practices, on the other. Like no previous interpreter, Castoriadis allows us to feel the existential need, already present in the earliest Greek thinkers, to question the significance of human existence and to share in shaping its meaning. The Greeks not only did this, he argues, they also began the equally important work of establishing the institutions to support such a project"-- Back cover. (shrink)

This book defends a form of ethical intuitionism, according to which (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know some of these truths through a kind of immediate, intellectual awareness, or "intuition"; and (iii) our knowledge of moral truths gives us reasons for action independent of our desires. The author rebuts all the major objections to this theory and shows that the alternative theories about the nature of ethics all face grave difficulties.

As a work of social theory, I would argue that it belongs in a class with the writings of Habermas and Arendt". -- Jay Bernstein, University of Essex This is one of the most original and important works of contemporary European thought.

The first edition of The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy took the dialogue of science and philosophy from Aristotle through to Newton. This second edition adds eight chapters, taking the dialogue through the Enlightenment and up to Darwin. This anthology is an attempt to help bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of philosophy.

Part I: The representation of life -- Can life be given a real definition? -- The representation of the living individual -- The representation of the life-form itself -- Part II: Naive action theory -- Types of practical explanation -- Naive explanation of action -- Action and time -- Part III: Practical generality -- Two tendencies in practical philosophy -- Practices and dispositions as sources of the goodness of individual actions -- Practice and disposition as sources of individual action.

T. 1. Beim jungen Augustinus.--T. 2. Die antimanichäische Epoche.

This article examines the construction of image recognition algorithms for the classification of plant pathology problems. Rooted in science and technology studies research on the effects of agricultural big data and agricultural algorithms, the study ethnographically examines how algorithms for the recognition of plant pathology are made. To do this, the article looks at the case of a German agtech startup developing image recognition algorithms for an app that aims to help small-scale farmers diagnose plant damages based on digital images (...) of their symptoms. The study posits that the construction of these algorithms can be grasped as a succession of layers, at each of which the startup’s employees carry out different selection practices. It is argued that these practices gradually inscribe a selective recognition of the phenomenon of plant pathology into the algorithms of the app. This selective recognition is reflected in the fact that the emerging algorithms are effective in identifying isolated plant damages on isolated crops, while ignoring most agroecosystem-related actors and relations through which plant damages arise. The article concludes that the app’s selective recognition of plant pathology is likely to perpetuate or even exacerbate the pesticide use of its users. This is because the app’s view of plant pathology as a phenomenon comprised of isolated plant damages on isolated crops is more compatible with the use of chemical pesticides than with approaches to crop protection that strive for a more moderate use of these substances (e.g., integrated pest management, agroecology, organic agriculture). (shrink)

Virtually all philosophers agree that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it must satisfy certain conditions. Perhaps it must be supported by evidence. Or perhaps it must be reliably formed. Or perhaps there are some other "good-making" features it must have. But does a belief's justification also require some sort of awareness of its good-making features? The answer to this question has been hotly contested in contemporary epistemology, creating a deep divide among its practitioners. Internalists, who tend to focus (...) on scientific or theoretical beliefs as the ideal, insist that such awareness is required for justification. Externalists, who think children's ordinary beliefs in obvious facts are paradigm cases of justified belief, say it isn't required. Michael Bergmann's book offers a decisive refutation of internalism and a sustained defense of externalism. (shrink)

Improvements in the health capital of citizens are central to the development of countries. By exploiting steep decreases in antiretroviral drug prices and the subsequent increases in antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage, we test whether the resulting improvements in the health of the population are associated with the prevalence of entrepreneurial activity and whether entrepreneurial activity strengthens the relationship between ART coverage and a country’s development. Drawing on a sample of 87 low- and middle-income countries (2006–2019), we find that a 1% (...) increase in ART coverage is associated with a 1.5% increase in the number of newly registered limited liability firms; however, there is no significant relationship with (male or female) self-employment. Higher ART coverage is particularly associated with development—as proxied by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the Human Development Index—in countries with low levels of new business formation and high proportions of self-employment. (shrink)

The integration of biomedical terminologies is indispensable to the process of information integration. When terminologies are linked merely through the alignment of their leaf terms, however, differences in context and ontological structure are ignored. Making use of the SNAP and SPAN ontologies, we show how three reference domain ontologies can be integrated at a higher level, through what we shall call the OBR framework (for: Ontology of Biomedical Reality). OBR is designed to facilitate inference across the boundaries of domain ontologies (...) in anatomy, physiology and pathology. (shrink)

Externalist theories of justification create the possibility of cases in which everything appears to one relevantly similar with respect to two propositions, yet one proposition is justified while the other is not. Internalists find this difficult to accept, because it seems irrational in such a case to affirm one proposition and not the other. The underlying internalist intuition supports a specific internalist theory, Phenomenal Conservatism, on which epistemic justification is conferred by appearances.

This collection presents a broad and compelling overview of the most recent work by a world-renowned figure in contemporary thought. The book is in four parts: Koinonia, Polis, Psyche, Logos. The opening section begins with a general introduction to the author's views on being, time, creation, and the imaginary institution of society and continues with reflections on the role of the individual psyche in racist thinking and acting. The second part is a critique of those who now belittle and distort (...) the meaning of May 1968 and other movements of the sixties as well as the French Revolution. In part three, Castoriadis shows how psychoanalysis, like politics, can contribute to the project of individual and collective autonomy and challenges Lacan, Foucault, and Derrida, and others in his report on 'The State and Subject Today'. Finally he examines how Aristotle's original aporetic discovery and cover-up of the imagination were repeated by Kant, Freud, Heidegger, and even Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

At the University of Sheffield during 2011 and 2012, a leading group of philosophers, psychologists, and others gathered to explore the nature and significance of implicit bias. The two volumes of Implicit Bias and Philosophy emerge from these workshops. Each volume philosophically examines core areas of psychological research on implicit bias as well as the ramifications of implicit bias for core areas of philosophy. Volume I: Metaphysics and Epistemology is comprised of two parts: “The Nature of Implicit Attitudes, Implicit Bias, (...) and Stereotype Threat,” and “Skepticism, Social Knowledge, and Rationality.” The first part contains chapters examining the relationship between implicit attitudes and “dual process” models of the mind; the role of affect in the formation and change of implicit associations; the unity (or disunity) of implicit attitudes; whether implicit biases are mental states at all; and whether performances on stereotype-relevant tasks are automatic and unconscious or intentional and strategic. The second part contains chapters examining implicit bias and skepticism; the effects of implicit bias on scientific research; the accessibility of social stereotypes in epistemic environments; the effects of implicit bias on the self-perception of members of stigmatized social groups as rational agents; the role of gender stereotypes in philosophy; and the role of heuristics in biased reasoning. (shrink)

In this engaging and spirited text, Michael Lynch argues that truth does matter, in both our personal and political lives. He explains that the growing cynicism over truth stems in large part from our confusion over what truth is.

This study adopts a heuristic technique to argue the thesis that a set of norms rooted in the African philosophy of Ubuntu can usefully supplement current research guidelines for dealing with incidental findings discovered in genomic research. The consensus regarding incidental findings is that there is an ethical obligation to return individual genetic incidental findings that meet the threshold of analytic and clinical validity, have clinical utility, and are actionable, provided that research contributors have not opted out from receiving such (...) information. This study outlines the hurdles that may hinder the integration of this consensus in mainstream clinical practice, and shows how an ethical theory from the global south may be used to address the same. This will advance the field of ethical, legal and social issues of personalized medicine by providing exposure to the under-represented African perspective on the ethical, legal, and social issues of genomics. (shrink)