Islamic civilization; philosophical thought; schools of Arab philosophy; a historical critical treatise.

In this new study of Rousseau, Levine presents a Kantian reading of the Social Contract. By attempting to reveal Rousseau’s anticipation of such Kantian themes as moral right and obligation the author’s purpose has been "to produce a Kantian reading of The Social Contract, a reading that emphasizes the many respects in which Rousseau anticipates Kant and motivates his investigations in moral philosophy". This purported similarity has been noted previously by thinkers such as Hegel and Cassirer. The book also develops (...) the theme that the solution to the conflict between moral autonomy and political authority is the main issue in The Social Contract. Because Rousseau apparently "grasped his conflict better than either Hobbes or Locke" he was able to anticipate Marx’s critique of the contractarian tradition. Consequently, Rousseau’s political philosophy underlies the "deep structure" of contemporary mentality, and continues to dominate our own sense of self, society, and being-in-the-world. While the main issues in Kant’s moral philosophy—autonomy/heteronomy, person/thing, rule of reason/heteronomous irrationalism—are present in ovo in Rousseau, the author warns us of crucial differences between the two thinkers, for example, in Kant the notion of our being forced to our own freedom is absent. But both thinkers share the belief that any conception of the state’s function as merely external coercion or coordination is sub-rational. Also, Kant’s conception of moral autonomy located in the de jure kingdom of political ends is anticipated in Rousseau’s attempt to direct society to the norm of the general will as its legitimate political end. In sum, Levine’s book, while drawing from the previous work of Althusser, avoids the usual Marxist concept manipulation, and gives us an interesting addition to Rousseau scholarship.—H.N.T. (shrink)

At last an English edition of Georg Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes has appeared. Simmel first published this work in Germany in 1900. A second and enlarged edition was published in 1907. The Philosophy of Money is the first complete English translation of the second edition.

Max Weber's dominant scholarly concern was the development of rationalism in the West. He exemplified his interest in this theme in his two great works, Economy and Society and The Economic Ethics of the World Religions. In Wolfgang Schluchter's new book, The Rise of Western Rationalism: Max Weber's Developmental History, the author presents an analysis and re-evaluation of Weber's sociology of Western rationalism. He also wants to show Weber's relation to the sociological school of neo-evolutionism. By an examination of Weber's (...) relation to the neo-evolutionary thought of such men as Habermas and Parsons, Schluchter attempts to show that Weber's developmental historical sociology, if properly understood and formulated, is still the best explanatory model of Western rationalism in contemporary sociology. (shrink)

In this new study of Dilthey, Professor Makkreel attempts to counteract the common tendency among Dilthey scholars to divorce his early psychological work from his later hermeneutical-historical position by showing their essential continuity. Makkreel also attempts to show the centrality of Dilthey’s aesthetic writings, and to reveal their implications for his theory of historical understanding. A disregard of these themes, the author claims, has encouraged a fragmentary interpretation of Dilthey’s philosophy. The thrust of the book is to provide a historical (...) and theoretical background for the development of hitherto disregarded aspects of Dilthey’s mature philosophy. In Part II, for example, Professor Makkreel examines Dilthey’s aesthetics as a model human science and explores the role of the poetic imagination by exposing its apparently unnoticed epistemological implications. One such implication is that Dilthey’s theory of the imagination involves a concept of articulation which relates it to poetry and history. It is not clear in the text, however, why this implication is "epistemological," or how Makkreel’s treatment of it exhibits any epistemic analysis. The book also discusses Dilthey’s later hermeneutics and philosophy of history which some commentators believe to have replaced Dilthey’s earlier psychology as the means of understanding human existence in time. Makkreel denies this interpretation, and he reinstates the importance of psychology at all stages of Dilthey’s thought. One chapter examines the interesting question of Husserl’s relation to Dilthey. It attempts to show to what extent Dilthey reformulated his previous psychological descriptions of the lived experience in the light of Husserl’s work. (shrink)

In Hegel’s Dialectic the English speaking world is presented with a collection of five newly translated essays from the pen of Hans-Georg Gadamer. These essays on various topics in Hegel will all be of interest to Hegel scholars.

The Salistamba Sutra, Sanskrit Reconstruction, English Translation, Critical Notes. N Ross Reat. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1993. xiii, 74 pp. Rs 150. ISBN 81-208-1135-6.

BackgroundIn the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort, participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain, heart, and abdomen, that generated incidental findings (IFs). The approach to managing these unexpected results remain a complex issue. Our objectives were to describe the CAHHM policy for the management of IFs, to understand the impact of disclosing IFs to healthy research participants, and to reflect on the ethical obligations of researchers in future MRI studies.MethodsBetween 2013 and 2019, 8252 participants (...) (mean age 58 ± 9 years, 54% women) were recruited with a follow-up questionnaire administered to 909 participants (40% response rate) at 1-year. The CAHHM policy followed a restricted approach, whereby routine feedback on IFs was not provided. Only IFs of severe structural abnormalities were reported.ResultsSevere structural abnormalities occurred in 8.3% (95% confidence interval 7.7–8.9%) of participants, with the highest proportions found in the brain (4.2%) and abdomen (3.1%). The majority of participants (97%) informed of an IF reported no change in quality of life, with 3% of participants reporting that the knowledge of an IF negatively impacted their quality of life. Furthermore, 50% reported increased stress in learning about an IF, and in 95%, the discovery of an IF did not adversely impact his/her life insurance policy. Most participants (90%) would enrol in the study again and perceived the MRI scan to be beneficial, regardless of whether they were informed of IFs. While the implications of a restricted approach to IF management was perceived to be mostly positive, a degree of diagnostic misconception was present amongst participants, indicating the importance of a more thorough consent process to support participant autonomy.ConclusionThe management of IFs from research MRI scans remain a challenging issue, as participants may experience stress and a reduced quality of life when IFs are disclosed. The restricted approach to IF management in CAHHM demonstrated a fair fulfillment of the overarching ethical principles of respect for autonomy, concern for wellbeing, and justice. The approach outlined in the CAHHM policy may serve as a framework for future research studies.Clinical trial registrationhttps://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/nct02220582. (shrink)

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Al- though these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence (...) moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment. (shrink)

Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of Tsung-mi's Yuan-jen lun with a Modern Commentary. Peter N. Gregory. A Kuroda Institute Book. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu 1995, xv, 264 pp. Cloth $46.00, pbk $17.95.

Analytical study of the social theories of Muslim philosophers belonged to 9th to 18th centuries.

This unique volume will appeal to those interested in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence as well as students of Castaneda and Latin American philosophy.

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Dewey's 1896 paper, "The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," was acclaimed 50 years later as the most important paper published in The Psychological Review in its first half-century of history. Today, Dewey's paper appears to be headed toward oblivion. Considering it worthy of resurrection, we use it as a starting point for tracing out the gradual evolution of Dewey and Bentley's formulation of their transactional viewpoint to its culmination in their book, Knowing and the Known. An exposition of the transactional (...) paradigm is developed via competing, contemporary self-actional and interactional theoretical systems. Then, the space-time postulates of self-actional, interactional, and transactional approaches are spelled out as they enter into philosophical, biological and psychological inquiry. Among prevailing theories, most of which fall into the self-actional/interactional categories, Kantor's interbehavioral viewpoint stands apart from the rest. And while it shares a certain similarity with the transactional approach, the historical record should document it as an independent and parallel development, dating back to Kantor's first publications almost seven decades ago. Furthermore, Kantor's system goes far beyond Dewey and Bentley's "unfractured observation," by providing highly refined analytic procedures in his theoretical constructs. (shrink)

To localize wheat ESTs on chromosomes, 882 homoeologous group 6-specific ESTs were identified by physically mapping 7965 singletons from 37 cDNA libraries on 146 chromosome, arm, and sub-arm aneuploid and deletion stocks. The 882 ESTs were physically mapped to 25 regions flanked by 23 deletion breakpoints. Of the 5154 restriction fragments detected by 882 ESTs, 2043 were localized to group 6 chromosomes and 806 were mapped on other chromosome groups. The number of loci mapped was greatest on chromosome 6B and (...) least on 6D. The 264 ESTs that detected orthologous loci on all three homoeologs using one restriction enzyme were used to construct a consensus physical map. The physical distribution of ESTs was uneven on chromosomes with a tendency toward higher densities in the distal halves of chromosome arms. About 43% of the wheat group 6 ESTs identified rice homologs upon comparisons of genome sequences. Fifty-eight percent of these ESTs were present on rice chromosome 2 and the remaining were on other rice chromosomes. Even within the group 6 bins, rice chromosomal blocks identified by 1-6 wheat ESTs were homologous to up to 11 rice chromosomes. These rice-block contigs were used to resolve the order of wheat ESTs within each bin. (shrink)

Nationalism; Arab countries; Islamic philosophy.