Ontologies are being developed throughout the biomedical sciences to address standardization, integration, classification and reasoning needs against the background of an increasingly data-driven research paradigm. In particular, ontologies facilitate the translation of basic research into benefits for the patient by making research results more discoverable and by facilitating knowledge transfer across disciplinary boundaries. Addressing and adequately treating mental illness is one of our most pressing public health challenges. Primary research across multiple disciplines such as psychology, psychiatry, biology, neuroscience and pharmacology (...) needs to be integrated in order to promote a more comprehensive understanding of underlying processes and mechanisms, and this need for integration only becomes more pressing with our increase in understanding of differences among individuals and populations at the molecular level concerning susceptibility to specific illnesses. Substance addiction is a particularly relevant public health challenge in the developed world, affecting a substantial percentage of the population, often co-morbid with other illnesses such as mood disorders. Currently, however, there is no straightforward automated method to combine data of relevance to the study of substance addiction across multiple disciplines and populations. In this contribution, we describe a framework of interlinked, interoperable bio-ontologies for the annotation of primary research data relating to substance addiction, and discuss how this framework enables easy integration of results across disciplinary boundaries. We describe entities and relationships relevant for the description of addiction within the Mental Functioning Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest Ontology, Protein Ontology, Gene Ontology and the Neuroscience Information Framework ontologies. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que les Lumières ? Comment les mêmes exigences de la raison peuvent-elles inspirer à la fois Voltaire et Robespierre ? Comment a-t-on pu si véhémentement critiquer la religion au nom de la raison, et instituer trente ans après une religion de la raison ? Comment la raison a-t-elle pu en 1763 inspirer à Voltaire son Traité de la tolérance et justifier en 1793 l'intolérance de la loi des suspects ? S'agit-il de circonstances malheureuses, de déviations ? Ou n'avons-nous pas (...) plutôt affaire à une aussi inévitable qu'insurmontable amphibolie de la raison ? Tantôt l'humble raison implore de l'erreur le droit pour la vérité de prendre place dans le cortège public des autres opinions : elle revendique la tolérance. Tantôt la raison triomphante interdit tout droit à l'injustice et à l'erreur : c'est l'intolérance de la vérité. S'il en était ainsi, on comprendrait que l'histoire n'eût fait depuis que se répéter. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une invitation à penser avec plutôt que sur Miguel Abensour, parce que le meilleur hommage que l'on puisse rendre à un maître n'est pas d'arpenter en long et en large le chemin qu'il a déjà parcouru, mais de reprendre le flambeau pour l'amener plus loin. La pensée de Miguel Abensour n'est pas un objet d'étude. Elle est une force vive, une source d'interrogations continûment renouvelées, une puissance intempestive inquiète de l'ordre des choses et qui pourtant ne s'en (...) accommode jamais. Composer avec elle, c'est recomposer notre façon d'envisager le monde. Parce qu'il a été leur professeur, leur éditeur, leur directeur de thèse ou simplement un inspirateur, tous les contributeurs et toutes les contributrices de cet ouvrage ont une dette envers Miguel Abensour. La meilleure façon d'honorer cette dette n'est pas de rendre au créancier - et que lui rendrait-on, d'ailleurs? - mais de préserver le souffle de ce qu'il a transmis. Le souffle insurgeant de la démocratie, le souffle imaginatif de l'utopie, le souffle révolutionnaire de l'émancipation, le souffle vivant de la philosophie. Des souffles qui se mêlent, s'emmêlent et se démêlent. Des souffles désordonnés qui ont la vertu de nous désarçonner. Nous n'avons ni voulu domestiquer ces souffles, ni les mettre à l'unisson, mais avons, chacun et chacune à notre manière, choisi de nous laisser porter, et emporter, tout simplement, par le souffle d'une pensée."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

An elaborate epitomization of the thought of all the main philosophers, grouped according to the conventional "schools of thought." The scope of the undertaking in this introductory text is ambitious, though some may feel that its manner of categorizing philosophers tends to blur the line between epitome and caricature.—C. T. W.

In spite of its title, this volume sheds no new light on the debated problem of whether Peirce's ideas form, or can be reconstructed to form, an integrated and internally consistent system. The book, instead, avoids the problem entirely, the pith of its thesis about the unity of Peirce's philosophy being that, in various guises, the notion of Thirdness permeates his thought. Apparently, Haas thinks it evident that to point up the central role of this notion in each of Peirce's (...) subdivisions of philosophy—Phenomenology, Logic, and Metaphysics—is to show the unity of the philosophy as a whole. But he does not counter any specific charges brought against this claim of unity—though he mentions some of them—or even outline how the conception of law is to vindicate this claim. What he does do, following Peirce's three-fold division of philosophy, is to conduct a survey built around the Firstness-Secondness-Thirdness theme; and this exposition, though uncritical, is not lacking in care and subtlety, so that those looking for an overview of Peirce's thought can profit from the book.—C. T. W. (shrink)

This collection contains 34 essays, 23 of them previously published, written between 1939 and 1960. They are of varying lengths, generality, and polish; and they cover the wide range of Hall's philosophical interests from metaphilosophy and value theory—the subjects of his best known books—to the theory of perception and the inadequacies of the Oxford philosophy of a decade ago. For Hall the study of language was not a way of repudiating or avoiding the traditional translingual issues, but rather a method (...) for attacking them. One might say that like Leibniz, Kant, and the early Wittgenstein, in their different ways, Hall took "the general form of propositions" as a philosopher's key to the basic categories of reality. Because his idiom was unfashionable among metaphysicians and because his doctrines were alien to the so-called "analysts," his work has not been widely influential. But the many insights and suggestions in this book may yet be taken up. These essays illuminate Hall's books, What Is Value?, Our Knowledge of Fact and Value, and Philosophical Systems; and they also make up an important work on their own account.—C. T. W. (shrink)

There is little danger of praising this book too highly: not because it is the last word on the subject but hopefully because it is, in a very real sense, the first. For as convincingly as seems possible in a work of this scope, and in the face of a long and monolithic tradition to the contrary, Danto shows Nietzsche to have produced a profound philosophical system which is highly pertinent to current work in philosophy and in many respects in (...) clear anticipation of it. The exposition of this system so consistently and brilliantly illuminates its formerly obscure recesses that one can scarcely question whether Danto is on the right track. He argues cogently that Nietzsche's theory of truth is fictionalistic, perspectivistic, and pragmatic ; and upon this interpretation of the theory Danto constructs analytical accounts of Nietzsche's doctrines on psychology, morality, values, and religion, and on the widely misunderstood principle of the Will-to-Power. In the light of the volumes of commentary written on these topics, and in their own right, these accounts are superlatively clear and penetrating. Of whatever persuasion or purpose, future work on Nietzsche must take account of this book.—C. T. W. (shrink)

Five essays, each on a different contemporary philosopher. Those on Franco Lombardi, Sartre, and Leszek Kolakowski and other present-day revisionist Marxists were presented at an American Philosophical Association symposium in 1961; the studies of Xavier Zubiri and Heidegger were added specially for this volume. In each case the authors endeavor to say something fresh and substantial; yet each piece is written in a clear and non-technical style. The anthology is therefore to be recommended to those new to the various "continental" (...) ways of doing philosophy, as well as to initiates.—C. T. W. (shrink)

A paperback anthology in the Macmillan "Sources in Philosophy" series, this small volume should serve nicely to give beginning students such selected matter for their thought that, if diligent, they might after working through it tackle almost anything written on the subject. What's more, it promises to do this for a topic for which a spate of comparable texts do not already exist, namely, the metaphysics of the "Anglo-american" philosophical tradition. There are five essays on basic metaphysical "schools"—materialism, idealism, absolutism, (...) etc; six on basic metaphysical concepts—substance, universals, identity; and three on metaphysical meaning, judgments, and arguments. All but four of the essays were written after 1910. Baylis contributes a fine introduction.—C. T. W. (shrink)