The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in the Open (...) Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

Dixon, Robert; Reid, Stephen; Connolly, Noel Since the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference established a pastoral research capability in 1996, a great deal of research has been carried out on various aspects of the Catholic community in Australia. This research has been carried out either directly by the Bishops Conference's research staff, or in association with other bodies such as NCLS Research, the Christian Research Association, Australian Catholic University and, most recently, Catholic Religious Australia.

Reproduced from Robert J.C. Young, Torn Halves. Pages: 256. ISBN: 0-7190-477-3 ; 0-7190-4776-5. Price: 14.99 ; 40.00.

In Notes For Friends, world-renowned photographer Robert Adams explores the possibility of discovering beauty in the compromised landscape of the new American West. His photographs, rendering the landscape in rich black-and-white images, clearly demonstrate that beauty can be found, suggesting a new kind of exploration that could yield a transforming discovery-the basis for a love of home. Pictures in the book reacquaint us with places that we may have lost to habit or prejudice. Robert Adams encourages us to (...) walk minor roads that at first appear inconsequential, but that in fact lead to wonder. Light rains its miracle on fields next to suburban developments, across the slopes of nameless foothills, and onto trees next to expressways. (shrink)

This essay explores the trope of sleep in Peter Sloterdijk’s philosophy of anthropotechnics. Sleep is shown to be important for our understanding of Sloterdijk’s project as an index of his subject’s larger, hidden complex of inertias, habits, and corporeal requirements and processes that dominate subjective life and that exist outside the mastery of ego and consciousness. The essay explores this thesis by considering a series of figures that appear in Sloterdijk’s writings and interviews: the philosopher Heraclitus with his dismissive remarks (...) on sleep, the insomniac Emil Cioran, the sleepwalker in Romantic thought. As the essay develops, it shows how, given such a subject formation, anthropotechnics is properly conceived as a management of the subject’s automatic processes to trick or repurpose or redirect them to work in concert or coincidence with the anthropotechnical project, rather than against it. (shrink)

Richard Boyd’s “Finite Beings, Finite Goods” is exactly the sort of response a philosopher hopes to evoke. It is perceptive and fair-minded in its reading and criticism of my work, illuminating the agreements and disagreements and the motivations on both sides, and showing points at which my position stands in need of more adequate development. At the same time it is much more than a response, offering a fuller and richer development, on several points, of what was already, in my (...) opinion, the most plausible and promising version of naturalist moral realism. Here I will try to respond in a similar spirit, though on a smaller scale, taking up first issues about consequentialism, and helplessness, and then more metaethical issues, involving what I have called “the critical stance.”. (shrink)

L'auteur propose un parcours a la fois modeste et ambitieux. Apres avoir dessine, dans plusieurs ouvrages (Lumiere, commencement, liberte, Construction d'un chateau, Les Actes de la joie, La Jouissance d'etre, La Nacre et le Rocher) une doctrine du sujet qui fonde une ethique du bonheur, l'auteur se retourne sur la culture qui l'a precede et presente quelques textes qui font echo a ses propres recherches. Les specificites de chaque auteur sont si patentes qu'elles permettent d'ecarter l'idee de redondances. Mais la (...) similitude des preoccupations, evidente en chaque etape existentielle, permet de souligner la parente profonde de tous les humains. L'auteur nous devoile ainsi un universel concret et un nouvel humanisme. A cette modestie philosophique s'ajoute une ambition, elle aussi philosophique. Car il s'agit, pour Robert Misrahi, d'organiser son regard retrospectif (la suite et l'enchainement des textes cites) selon un itineraire precis, a la fois existentiel et logique, un cheminement qui conduit des affirmations de l'angoisse aux constructions de la joie. A travers la nuit des souffrances, la quete du Desir, les denegations du renoncement, la decouverte des deux libertes, le courage de la conversion, les approches de l'accomplissement et l'instauration du bonheur d'etre, l'auteur trace un itineraire ascendant. Cet itineraire, maladroitement suivi par l'humanite au travers d'experiences discontinues, solitaires et mal pensees, est cependant revelateur d'un souci commun et d'un pouvoir partage. Il se pourrait donc que l'experience multiple de la litterature et de la philosophie, a defaut de cautionner entierement une doctrine reflexive de la jouissance de vivre, justifie au moins son mouvement et en confirme la pertinence. (shrink)

Subjective experience suggests that we continuously observe, perceive, and evaluate the environment as we make decisions and intentional actions. The percept of continuity of our cognition, however, is an illusion. In the past decades, ample experimental evidence has been accumulated indicating that cognition evolves through a sequence of discontinuities and transients, and there are discernable neural processes correlating with the cognitive sequences. These discontinuities are crucial in the intentional action-perception cycle, as they mark the cognitive 'aha' moment of deep understanding (...) and conscious insight. Walter Freeman developed a hierarchical model to describe these physiological findings, culminating in the cinematic theory of cognition. Following the traditions of metastability, transient neurodynamics, and brain chaos, discontinuities are described as phase transitions in the cortical neuropil. This approach not only leads to deep theoretical insights of neural correlates of cognition and consciousness, but it also helps to form a conceptual framework to create artificially intelligent devices that are in harmony with humans and serve peaceful development of humanity. (shrink)

Leibniz' Bedeutung für die Entwicklung der amerikanischen Philosophie ist bisher wenig erforscht worden. In diesem Aufsatz untersuche ich den Beitrag zweier amerikanischer Idealisten der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts zur Leibniz-Forschung. Der erstere, Frederic Henry Hedge, ein enger Mitarbeiter Emersons und eine zentrale Figur der transcendentalist movement, legte die erste Übersetzung der Monadologie ins Englische vor und schrieb die erste wichtige wissenschaftliche Abhandlung über Leibniz in einer amerikanischen Zeitschrift. Der zweite, H. A. P. Torrey, von prägendem Einfluß auf die Gedanken John (...) Deweys, schrieb eine Reihe kritischer Essays zur Théodicée, die Auswirkungen auf Deweys Buch über Leibniz hatten. In diesem Aufsatz gebe ich eine Überblick der Arbeiten von Hedge und Torrey, bewerte ihre Arbeiten zu Leibniz und untersuche einige Aspekte ihres Einflusses auf das amerikanische Denken. Ich folgere, daß Leibniz' Einfluß auf die amerikanische Philosophie größer ist als allgemein angenommen und schlage weitere Forschungsmöglichkeiten vor. (shrink)

The rise and spectacular fall of the friendship between the two great philosophers of the eighteenth century, barely six months after they first met, reverberated on both sides of the Channel. As the relationship between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume unraveled, a volley of rancorous letters was fired off, then quickly published and devoured by aristocrats, intellectuals, and common readers alike. Everyone took sides in this momentous dispute between the greatest of Enlightenment thinkers. In this lively and revealing book, (...) class='Hi'>Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott explore the unfolding rift between Rousseau and Hume. The authors are particularly fascinated by the connection between the thinkers’ lives and thought, especially the way that the failure of each to understand the other—and himself—illuminates the limits of human understanding. In addition, they situate the philosophers’ quarrel in the social, political, and intellectual milieu that informed their actions, as well as the actions of the other participants in the dispute, such as James Boswell, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. By examining the conflict through the prism of each philosopher’s contribution to Western thought, Zaretsky and Scott reveal the implications for the two men as individuals and philosophers as well as for the contemporary world. (shrink)

Uno de los principales filosofos de nuestro tiempo, Robert Nozick, continua en este libro la tradicion socratica de investigacion. Este volumen ilustra la originalidad, fuerza y alcance de su obra, a la vez que demuestra su sello personal al combinar un extraordinario rigor analitico con un inteligente juego intelectual. A traves de ensayos y ficciones filosoficas, el libro abarca desde Socrates hasta Quine. Algunos ensayos ofrecen metodos clasicos para apoyar nuevas preguntas en torno a la eleccion. Otros, nuevas aproximaciones (...) a conocidos puzzles intelectuales. Estos escritos dan testimonio tanto de la oportunidad como de la inoportunidad del pensamiento del autor; pero sobre todo demuestran como la filosofia puede ser una forma de vida. (shrink)

Social Values and Research in Human Embryology ROBERT G. EDWARDS and DAVID J. SHARP E 125 Babies by Means of In Vitro Fertilization: Unethical Experiments ...

When Dr. van Fleteren writes of the articles I criticized as dating from some twenty years ago, the unwary reader might infer that my criticism of those articles was, for its part, relatively recent. The fact is, however, that when the two connected articles I eventually criticized appeared in the volumes of Augustinian Studies, I wrote this reply while Fr. Robert Russell, of happy memory, was still at the helm, and was promised publication in the near future. Meanwhile, however, (...) Fr. Russell had the discourtesy to move on to a more intimate acquaintance with Augustine than any of us on this confused planet can boast of, and someone sowed cockle into field he had tended: in unaccountable fashion my article seems to have disappeared. Only a recent letter of inquiry on my part, and Fr. Allan Fitzgerald’s understanding reply, resulted in this renewal of dialogue between Dr. van Fleteren and me. Let me assure both Dr. van Fleteren and Fr. Fitzgerald that I am grateful for giving it exactly that form, a courteous dialogue. (shrink)

We have noted some fundamental distinctions between types of goodness or value. There is usefulness, or merely instrumental goodness, the value that something may have as a means to something else that is good or that is valued. Usefulness has an obvious importance, and connects with significant philosophical issues about instrumentality and probability; but more fundamental issues for ethical theory are posed by the goods or ends that the useful is to serve. Within the realm of what is good for (...) its own sake, and not just instrumentally good, most contemporary ethical thought focuses mainly on well-being or welfare-that is, on the nature of human flourishing or what is good for a person. The theory developed here, however, gives a primary place to excellence-the type of goodness exemplified by the beauty of a sunset, a painting, or a mathematical proof, or by the greatness of a novel, the nobility of an unselfish deed, or the quality of an athletic or a philosophical performance. It is the goodness of that which is worthy of love or admiration, honor or worship, rather than the good (for herself) that is possessed by one who is fortunate or happy, as such (though happiness may also be excellent, and worthy of admiration). (shrink)

John Carriero, Massimo Mugnai, and Daniel Garber have all contributed significantly to our understanding of Leibniz. I am honored to have my book discussed by such distinguished Leibniz interpreters, and their present reviews all push me in ways that I find instructive. I will first discuss issues pertaining to contingency, responding to Carriero’s review and most of Mugnai’s; then issues about bodies, responding to Garber’s review and the last part of Mugnai’s.

The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet, we hear, is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky, however, argues that this gloomy diagnosis is as wrongheaded as it is familiar. Pinsky, whose remarkable career as a poet itself undermines the view, writes that to portray poetry and democracy as enemies is to (...) radically misconstrue both. The voice of poetry, he shows, resonates with profound themes at the very heart of democratic culture.There is no one in America better to write on this topic. One of the country's most accomplished poets, Robert Pinsky served an unprecedented two terms as America's Poet Laureate and led the immensely popular multimedia Favorite Poem Project, which invited Americans to submit and read aloud their favorite poems. Pinsky draws on his experiences and on characteristically sharp and elegant observations of individual poems to argue that expecting poetry to compete with show business is to mistake its greatest democratic strength--its intimate, human scale--as a weakness.As an expression of individual voice, a poem implicitly allies itself with ideas about individual dignity that are democracy's bedrock, far more than is mass participation. Yet poems also summon up communal life.. Even the most inward-looking work imagines a reader. And in their rhythms and cadences poems carry in their very bones the illusion and dynamic of call and response. Poetry, Pinsky writes, cannot help but mediate between the inner consciousness of the individual reader and the outer world of other people. As part of the entertainment industry, he concludes, poetry will always be small and overlooked. As an art--and one that is inescapably democratic--it is massive and fundamental. (shrink)

Spatio-temporal neuro-dynamics is a quickly developing field of brain research and Tsuda's work is a significant contribution toward establishing theoretical foundations in this area. It is conceivable that the fragmented attractor landscapes and dynamical memory patterns identified earlier in various K-sets are biologically plausible manifestations of attractor ruins, chaotic itinerancy, and Cantor encoding as applied to sensory information processing.

The goal of this paper is to present a way of reading Alfred Tarski\'s T-scheme as a definitional - and not material - equivalence. Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap in their book The Revision Theory of Truth (MIT 1993), develop a theory of truth and a theory of definition, which are called Revision Theories - of Truth (RTT) and of Definition (RTD). They accept Tarski\'s T-sentences (such as: \"snow is white\" is true iff snow is white) and their central role (...) for the signification of truth. According to RTT and RTD the centrality of Tarski\'s T-sentences can be maintained only by accepting interdependent definitions. Gupta and Belnap claim that it is worthy to read the T-scheme as a definitional equivalence rather than as a material equivalence, for the former understanding allows us to solve the Liar paradox. To obtain this result, it is important to notice a structural similarity between the T-scheme and the general scheme of definition. Gupta and Belnap reject Tarski\'s demand for formal correctness of definitions and claim that it is logically justified to accept circular definitions. This is why they modify a general scheme of definition by adding a predicate which is being defined (definiendum) - e.g. an arbitrary predicate G — to the definiens, i.e. to the defining formula which occurs on the right side of the definitional scheme. A circular definition, which is constructed in such a way, is helpful in showing that different patterns of behaviour of the predicate G are similar to respective patterns of behaviour of the predicate \"true\". Such a result suggests that the concept of truth is itself circular. (shrink)