A wider than just a biological approach to the human embryo provides a relational perception of it, which may open a dialogue between those who plead for the protection of the embryo and those who seek to help their patients with therapies developed through embryo research. According to all german speaking protestant churches and theologians riskful research on human embryos shall be prohibited, some theologians however concede, that for high ranking therapeutical goals the law should provide an exception. The author (...) shows that it is impossible to define any therapeutical goals unless one allows non-therapeutical research in advance. This dilemma so far is unsolved. (shrink)

Evolutionary or biocultural theorizing about horror films has been slow to gain traction in film studies, but the field has seen two recent book publications, Mastering Fear by Rikke Schubart and Primal Roots of Horror Cinema by Carrol L. Fry. Unfortunately, neither book is poised to make a substantial impact on evolutionary horror film theory. Mastering Fear ultimately undermines its own engagement with evolutionary social science, and Primal Roots of Horror Cinema stops short of contributing substantially to the field (...) beyond its compelling argument for the relevance of evolutionary social science to film studies. Plenty of work remains to be done at the fertile junction between evolutionary psychology and horror film. (shrink)

This important and extensive fragment of the Catalogues is preserved on a papyrus of the third century A.D., no. 10560 in the Berlin collection. First published in 1907 by Schubart and Wilamowitz, Berliner Klassikertexte, v. 1. 31 ff. , it was also collated by Crönert, who published his readings in Hermes xlii , 610 ff. The most recent edition is that of Merkelbach, Die Hesiod-fragmente auf Papyrus , pp. 24 ff. The photograph mentioned above is the only one published. (...) It covers only a small portion of the text; most of the rest is too faint to be suitable for photography. (shrink)

This essay analyses Hegel’s use of the metaphor of «the cross and the rose», not only in the Preface to the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, which all major interpretations refer to, but also in two other texts: Wer denkt abstrakt? of 1807 and the 1829 review of Schubart's and Garganico’s Über Philosophie überhaupt... In Wer denkt abstrakt? Hegel criticizes a sentimental, as equivalent to a «non concrete», interpretation of the figure; in the Preface he claims that «reason is (...) the rose in the cross of the present», assimilating the image to a platonic idea of State; in the review of 1829 he criticizes a naïve interpretation of the figure. In the light of these observations, it is possible to conclude that Hegel sees the figure as the specific image of the relation of the platonic and the critical element, typical of dialectical rationality. The Hegelian use of the figure thus results, in this perspective, by far more subtle than the one envisaged by its “political” interpretations. (shrink)

This essay analyses Hegel’s use of the metaphor of «the cross and the rose», not only in the Preface to the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, which all major interpretations refer to, but also in two other texts: Wer denkt abstrakt? of 1807 and the 1829 review of Schubart's and Garganico’s Über Philosophie überhaupt... In Wer denkt abstrakt? Hegel criticizes a sentimental, as equivalent to a «non concrete», interpretation of the figure; in the Preface he claims that «reason is (...) the rose in the cross of the present», assimilating the image to a platonic idea of State; in the review of 1829 he criticizes a naïve interpretation of the figure. In the light of these observations, it is possible to conclude that Hegel sees the figure as the specific image of the relation of the platonic and the critical element, typical of dialectical rationality. The Hegelian use of the figure thus results, in this perspective, by far more subtle than the one envisaged by its “political” interpretations. (shrink)

Online social networks are highly dynamic and sparse. One of the main problems in analyzing these networks is the problem of predicting the existence of links between users on these networks: the link prediction problem. Many studies have been conducted to predict links using a variety of techniques like the decision tree and the logistic regression approaches. In this work, we will illustrate the use of the rough set theory in predicting links over the Facebook social network based on homophilic (...) features. Other supervised learning algorithms are also employed in our experiments and compared with the rough set classifier, such as naive Bayes, J48 decision tree, support vector machine, logistic regression, and multilayer perceptron neural network. Moreover, we studied the influence of the “common groups” and “common page likes” homophilic features on predicting friendship between users of Facebook, and also studied the effect of using the Jaccard coefficient in measuring the similarity between users’ homophilic attributes compared with using the overlap coefficient. We conducted our experiments on two different datasets obtained from the Facebook online social network, where users in each dataset live within the same geographical region. The results showed that the rough set classifier significantly outperformed the other classifiers in all experiments. The results also demonstrated that the common groups and the common page likes features have a significant influence on predicting the friendship between users of Facebook. Finally, the results revealed that using the overlap coefficient homophilic features provided better results than that of the Jaccard coefficient features. (shrink)

One debate that occupied Pratyabhijñā philosophers and their Buddhist interlocutors was the question of the reality of _sambandha_, or relation. A central treatise on the topic is Utpaladeva’s (∼10th c.) _Sambandhasiddhi_ [SS] (‘_Proof of Relation_’), a response to Dharmakīrti’s (∼7th c.) _Sambandhaparīkṣā_ [SP] (‘_Analysis of Relation_’). As the contrasting titles suggest, Dharmakīrti held that relations are merely conceptual constructions (_kalpanā_), inferred _post hoc_ from discrete perceptual cognitions (_pratyakṣa_)—and thus ultimately _unreal_. Utpaladeva, on the other hand, attempted to ‘prove’ (_siddhi_) the (...) truth (_satya_) of relation as a genuine ‘division-non-division,’ or ‘unity-in-diversity’ (_bhedābheda_). In this article, I reconstruct Utpala’s ‘proof’ as a pragmatic argument to the effect that Dharmakīrti, in virtue of his nominalist metaphysics, mistakenly treats the general form of relation as an inferential _concept_, rather than the mode of ‘intentional’ _action_ (_śakti_) manifest in reflexive judgment (_vimarśa_). In doing so, Utpala suggests that Dharmakīrti inadvertently renders the relational conditions for the recognition of determinate intentional content unintelligible. (shrink)

‘Rights and Territories: A Reply to Nine, Miller, and Stilz’ defends the Lockean theory of states’ territorial rights (as this theory was presented in Boundaries of Authority) against the critiques of Nine, Miller, and Stilz. In response to Nine’s concern that such a Lockean theory cannot justify the right of legitimate states to exclude aliens, it is argued that a consent-based theory like the Lockean one is flexible enough to justify a wide range of possible incidents of territorial rights – (...) importantly including, though not necessarily including, the sort of right to exclude aliens that is familiar from actual political practice. Miller’s criticisms are more wide-ranging. In response, the article argues that Lockean labor-based property rights are both stronger and more enduring than Miller suggests and that nationalism’s resources for dealing with concerns about rights-supersession and trapped minorities are importantly overstated by Miller. Against Stilz’s Kantian, ‘presentist’ account of states’ authority over persons and territories, it is argued that the rectification of past (historical) wrongs remains morally crucial even in the context of otherwise-just societies and that Stilz’s Kantian/rawlsian position unconvincingly privileges the rights to autonomy of territorially concentrated groups over those of dissenting individuals or wrongfully dispersed groups. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis symposium brings together normative and empirical scholars in dialogue on Brooke Ackerly’s innovative and compelling recent monograph, Just Responsibility. Contributors discuss the book’s distinctive grounded normative theory methodology, its arguments for how individuals can take appropriate responsibility for global structural injustices, and its potential for practical impact.

Diogenes has set itself the task to present to its readers the most recent developments in all important branches of the Humanities. Among the most burning questions in the sphere of contemporary political sciences is the one raised by the almost universal demand for the ‘Welfare State’.The twentieth-century state owes to man not only order, peace, and justice, it owes him also material well-being. The search for and the study of the means by which public power can provide for such (...) well-being have added an important chapter to the history of political theory and the art of government.Professor A. C. Pigou has had a decisive part in the genesis of this great intellectual and moral mutation. He is the uncontested master of the new technique. Diogenes is proud and happy indeed to have the privilege of presenting his original and deep thoughts on the idea of the State as the producer of well-being, on the origins of this concept and the methods of its development. These ideas throw new light on the evolution of the great modern states and put a new and efficient tool into the hands of those who strive to understand and explain this evolution. (shrink)

Obstetrics and gynaecology always has reputation for being a highly litigious. The field of obstetrics and gynaecology is surrounded by different circumstances that stimulate the doctors to practice defensive..

The author discusses the claim that owing to the lack of reference to ordinary experience by which religious assertions could be tested, there is nothing in the mind of the person who makes such religious assertions which could conceivably be objectively true. the author maintains that such a view of religious assertions is groundless, and that, if true, it would leave little of value in religion. (staff).

Following a previous article published in Biological Theory, in this study we present a mathematical theory for a science of qualities as directly perceived by living organisms, and based on morphological patterns. We address a range of qualitative phenomena as observables of a psychological system seen as an impredicative system. The starting point of our study is the notion that perceptual phenomena are projections of underlying invariants, objects that remain unchanged when transformations of a certain class under consideration are applied. (...) The study develops with the observables, the entailed total order and metric, whence the algebra and the geometry of such a science, presenting a formal phenomenological model for phenomena that are not rigidly Euclidean. We show how non-Euclidean perception can have many useful Euclidean formalizations, as well as locally-homeomorphic-to-Euclidean-space models. The mathematical models we provide are tested on the basis of results from experimental psychology, in particular from the field of color, time, and space perception. (shrink)

BackgroundOrgan donation and transplantation in China are ethically complex due to questionable informed consent and the use of prisoners as donors. Publishing works from China can be problematic. The objective of this study was to perform a 10-year follow up on Chinese journals active in donation and transplant publishing regarding the evolution of their publishing guidelines.MethodsEleven Chinese journals were analyzed for 7 properties: (1) ethics committee approval; (2) procedure consent; (3) publishing consent; (4) authorship criteria; (5) conflict of interest; (6) (...) duplicate publication; and (7) data integrity. Results were compared with our 2008 study data. Additionally, open access status, impact factor, and MEDLINE-indexing were explored.ResultsMost journals heightened the ethical requirements for publishing, compared to the results of 2008. All 11 now require their published manuscripts to have data integrity. Ten of 11 require ethics committee approval and informed consent for the publication of research studies, whereas in the original study only 2 journals evidenced these requirements. Nine of 11 have criteria for authorship, require conflict of interest disclosure, and forbid duplicate publishing. None of the journals have a policy to exclude data that was obtained from unethical organ donation practices. Nine of 11 journals are MEDLINE-indexed but only 2 are open-access.ConclusionsMost journals have improved their general ethical publishing requirements but none address unethical organ donation practices. (shrink)

This analysis of Foucault's ‘What is an Author?’ produces three main findings. First, Foucault was arguing—subtly yet powerfully—against Barthes's ‘The Death of the Author’. Second, ‘What is an author?’ systematically mystified the figure of the text, even as it clarified the figure of the author by revealing that figure to be an interpretative construct. Third, Foucault's achievement was vitiated by the terms in which it was cast, for his concept of the ‘author-function’ obliterated the personal quality of the author-figure. It (...) is suggested in conclusion that all such interpretative figures—‘text’ as well as ‘author’, and many others besides—merit critical analysis, since these embody the fore-having which precedes interpretation. (shrink)