Modern life sciences research is increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) approaches to model biological systems, primarily centered around the use of machine learning (ML) models. Although ML is undeniably useful for identifying patterns in large, complex data sets, its widespread application in biological sciences represents a significant deviation from traditional methods of scientific inquiry. As such, the interplay between these models and scientific understanding in biology is a topic with important implications for the future of scientific research, yet it (...) is a subject that has received little attention. Here, we draw from an epistemological toolkit to contextualize recent applications of ML in biological sciences under modern philosophical theories of understanding, identifying general principles that can guide the design and application of ML systems to model biological phenomena and advance scientific knowledge. We propose that conceptions of scientific understanding as information compression, qualitative intelligibility, and dependency relation modelling provide a useful framework for interpreting ML-mediated understanding of biological systems. Through a detailed analysis of two key application areas of ML in modern biological research – protein structure prediction and single cell RNA-sequencing – we explore how these features have thus far enabled ML systems to advance scientific understanding of their target phenomena, how they may guide the development of future ML models, and the key obstacles that remain in preventing ML from achieving its potential as a tool for biological discovery. Consideration of the epistemological features of ML applications in biology will improve the prospects of these methods to solve important problems and advance scientific understanding of living systems. (shrink)

Rapid advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology are profoundly influencing the ways in which we conceptualize the world of the future, and human ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels offers previously unimagined possibilities for scientific discovery and technological applications. The convergence of nanotechnology with biotechnology, information technology, cognitive science, and engineering may hold promise for the improvement of human performance at a number of levels. Based on a National Science Foundation-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program in nanoscience (...) and nanotechnology at the University of Central Florida (summer 2002), a variety of social and ethical issues associated with these advances is discussed. Implications for the future of science-technology-society studies and K-16 science education also are presented. (shrink)

It is indeed a challenge for corporations to insulate themselves from the adverse conditions around and foster an organizational culture that ensures ethical behaviour. In their effort to foster and maintain such an organizational culture, corporations through various endeavours try to institutionalize ethics. A successful strategy that aims to institutionalize ethics starts with developing/adopting and implementing codes of conduct and duly complements with ethics education and management. This paper captures the enlightening endeavours of Tata Steel relating to institutionalizing ethics and (...) its impact on transformation within the corporation and its transcendence beyond. (shrink)

Democracy, tolerance, fairness, trust, respect, conversation, self, society, individualism, collectivism, autonomy - these are the things that youth workers talk about. But, do they agree with each other on what these all mean? Or, should it matter? It is in the conversations that youth workers have with each other, and the meanings used to help young people in their lives that define these practitioners. But, if they are not precise in their arguments and do not begin questioning the assumptions behind (...) their ideas and language, youth workers risk leaving young people unable to reason, and - as a result - in danger of being taken in by rhetoric, slogans, false promises, and propaganda. This book shows how youth workers can explore the assumptions behind their work. It raises questions about the values they should hold in relating to each other, the nature of these relationships, and what it is to be a person in society. The book will help workers at all levels, encouraging a diversity of philosophical outlook and helping to understand the tensions that do arise in youth work. (shrink)

Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Atticus shows its author as living a life of deliberate withdrawal from politics. This paper compares that life to other models of political withdrawal in Greco-Roman thought and finds that it does not cohere very closely with any of them. Nepos, the paper proposes, deviates from these existing models in showing Atticus as avoiding politics not out of a desire to transcend human life, to reorder politics, or to create a substitute politics of his own, but (...) rather to live what the paper calls ‘social life.’ Atticus embraces human interdependence while rejecting the civic forms in which that interdependence was traditionally expressed in Greece and Rome. (shrink)

The negative impact of adverse experiences in childhood on neurodevelopment is well documented. Less attention however has been given to the impact of variations in “normative” parenting behaviors. The influence of these parenting behaviors is likely to be marked during periods of rapid brain reorganization, such as late childhood. The aim of the current study was to investigate associations between normative parenting behaviors and the development of structural brain networks across late childhood. Data were collected from a longitudinal sample of (...) 114 mother-child dyads (54% female children,Mage 8.41 years, SD = 0.32 years), recruited from low socioeconomic areas of Melbourne, Australia. At the first assessment parenting behaviors were coded from two lab-based interaction tasks and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of the children were performed. At the second assessment, approximately 18 months later (Mage 9.97 years, SD = 0.37 years) MRI scans were repeated. Cortical thickness (CT) was extracted from T1-weighted images using FreeSurfer. Structural covariance (SC) networks were constructed from partial correlations of CT estimates between brain regions and estimates of network efficiency and modularity were obtained for each time point. The change in these network measures, from Time 1 to Time 2, was also calculated. At Time 2, less positive maternal affective behavior was associated with higher modularity (more segregated networks), while negative maternal affective behavior was not related. No support was found for an association between local or global efficacy and maternal affective behaviors at Time 2. Similarly, no support was demonstrated for associations between maternal affective behaviors and change in network efficiency and modularity, from Time 1 to Time 2. These results indicate that normative variations in parenting may influence the development of structural brain networks in late childhood and extend current knowledge about environmental influences on structural connectivity in a developmental context. (shrink)

This paper traces Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of the development of the Greek polis as presented in A Short History of Ethics, After Virtue, and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?. The paper argues for the centrality of Aristotle’s conception of politics as an architectonic art to this account. It explores the foundations of MacIntyre’s presentation of moral rationality in Homer and offers the poems of Hesiod as an aid to understanding MacIntyre’s view of the post-Homeric crisis in Greek ethics. Aristotle is then (...) invoked to show how MacIntyre represents the polis as a classical response to that crisis. (shrink)