Destination therapy is the permanent implantation of a left ventricular assist device in patients with end-stage, severe heart failure who are ineligible for heart transplantation. DT improves both the quality of life and prognosis of patients with end-stage heart failure. However, there are also downsides to DT such as life-threatening complications and the potential for the patient to live beyond their desired length of life following such major complications. Because of deeply ingrained cultural and religious beliefs regarding (...) death and the sanctity of life, Japanese society may not be ready to make changes needed to enable patients to have LVADs deactivated under certain circumstances to avoid needless suffering. Western ethical views that permit LVAD deactivation based mainly on respect for autonomy and dignity have not been accepted thus far in Japan and are unlikely to be accepted, given the current Japanese culture and traditional values. Some healthcare professionals might regard patients as ineligible for DT unless they have prepared advance directives. If this were to happen, the right to prepare an advance directive would instead become an obligation to do so. Furthermore, patient selection for DT poses another ethical issue. Given the predominant sanctity of life principle and lack of cost-consciousness regarding medical expenses, medically appropriate exclusion criteria would be ignored and DT could be applied to various patients, including very old patients, the demented, or even patients in persistent vegetative states, through on-site judgment. There is an urgent need for Japan to establish and enact a basic act for patient rights. The act should include: respect for a patient’s right to self-determination; the right to refuse unwanted treatment; the right to prepare legally binding advance directives; the right to decline to prepare such directives; and access to nationally insured healthcare. It should enable those concerned with patient care involving DT to seek ethical advice from ethics committees. Furthermore, it should state that healthcare professionals involved in the discontinuation of life support in a proper manner are immune to any legal action and that they have the right to conscientiously object to LVAD deactivation. (shrink)

This paper considers questions about continuity and discontinuity between life and mind. It begins by examining such questions from the perspective of the free energy principle (FEP). The FEP is becoming increasingly influential in neuroscience and cognitive science. It says that organisms act to maintain themselves in their expected biological and cognitive states, and that they can do so only by minimizing their free energy given that the long-term average of free energy is entropy. The paper then argues that (...) there is no singular interpretation of the FEP for thinking about the relation between life and mind. Some FEP formulations express what we call an independence view of life and mind. One independence view is a cognitivist view of the FEP. It turns on information processing with semantic content, thus restricting the range of systems capable of exhibiting mentality. Other independence views exemplify what we call an overly generous non-cognitivist view of the FEP, and these appear to go in the opposite direction. That is, they imply that mentality is nearly everywhere. The paper proceeds to argue that non-cognitivist FEP, and its implications for thinking about the relation between life and mind, can be usefully constrained by key ideas in recent enactive approaches to cognitive science. We conclude that the most compelling account of the relationship between life and mind treats them as strongly continuous, and that this continuity is based on particular concepts of life (autopoiesis and adaptivity) and mind (basic and non-semantic). (shrink)

The cost of basic income is typically estimated for a particular year. However, to assess the financial feasibility of basic income, it is also important to consider how much basic income will cost in the future. This is especially important in countries experiencing an ageing population, where the proportion of workers is expected to shrink. This article considers basic income as a universal life annuity and develops two models based on actuarial concepts to estimate the (...) flat tax rate required to finance basic income. The first model considers the cost of basic income over the lifetime of the current population and the second model additionally considers changing population dynamics. The proposed models are conceptually simple, providing a straightforward way to assess the financial feasibility of basic income. Using Singapore data, the models show that the monthly cut-off income separating net contributors and net recipients is around $2710 and benefits around 39 % of adult residents. A tax rate of around 22 % is required to support a basic income of $600. (shrink)

In this paper I critically examine the key normative claim of the so-called ‘new Natural Law ethics’, namely, the claim that being alive, in the biological sense of the word, has an intrinsically valuable standing. This claim is at the basis of the absolute condemnation of all acts aiming at destroying such a good. After explaining the meaning of this fundamental normative claim, I engage in a dialectical argument between the suicidal person and the new Natural Law ethicists in order (...) to show that, despite the reluctance of new Natural Law ethicists to argue in favour of the intrinsically valuable standing of life, such argument is absolutely necessary. Finally, I critically examine the arguments that have been adduced to support it and reject them. (shrink)

Prevention and control of chronic conditions are global healthcare challenges. Patient self-management has been deemed essential for treating chronic conditions and improving the quality of patient life. However, the current Japanese system for supporting patient self-management of chronic conditions has received little ethical assessment. The first aim of this article is to provide an ethical analysis of current Japanese support for self-management of chronic conditions with reference to international discussions concerning self-management, developed mainly in western societies such as (...) Europe, the United States. The second aim is to clarify the challenges faced by Japanese biomedical ethics concerning selfmanagement support by focusing on the ethical concepts of quality of life and autonomy. This article identifies the following two challenges: [1] dispelling conceptual confusion concerning basic ethical concepts such as quality of life and autonomy, and [2] exploring the conceptual relationship between these ethical concepts, as they relate to providing support for chronically ill patients. By addressing these challenges and constructing a theoretical basis for radical change in support mechanisms, bioethics in Japan could contribute to efforts to construct a comprehensive support system for patients with chronic conditions, which organize variety kinds of supports, such as medical professional supports, supports from patient’s groups, local community supports, familial supports, support in patients’ workplace, and supports for patients’ family members as well. (shrink)

Using the Self-Determination Theory as a framework, this study tests the predictive capacity of the teacher’s interpersonal style of autonomy support at a higher education institution, and the grit on the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, intrinsic motivation, group cohesion, and life satisfaction in university students. A sample composed of 489 Colombian university students, aged between 18 and 41 years, was used; they filled in the questionnaires that measured the variables of interest. After the analysis of structural (...) equations, the results showed that the perception of teaching style of autonomy support and the grit positively predicted the basic psychological needs and these predicted the intrinsic motivation, which in turn predicted group cohesion and satisfaction with life. The model describes the possible importance of promoting the teacher’s interpersonal style of autonomy support within the university setting in the search for satisfaction with life along with the active role of the student through the mediation of the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, increased quality motivation, and high group cohesion. (shrink)

"Daimon Life is life-enchancing. To read it is to become richer in word." –John Llewelyn Disclosure of Martin Heidegger’s complicity with the National Socialist regime in 1933-34 has provoked virulent debate about the relationship between his politics and his philosophy. Did Heidegger’s philosophy exhibit a kind of organicism readily transformed into ideological "blood and soil"? Or, rather, did his support of the Nazis betray a fundamental lack of loyalty to living things? David Farrell Krell traces Heidegger’s political (...) authoritarianism to his failure to develop a constructive "life-philosophy"—his phobic reactions to other forms of being. Krell details Heidegger’s opposition to Lebensphilosophie as expressed in Being and Time, in an important but little-known lecture course on theoretical biology given in 1929–30 called "The Basic Concepts of Metaphysics," and in a recently published key text, Contributions to Philosophy, written in 1936–38. Although Heidegger’s attempt to think through the problems of life, sexual reproduction, behavior, environment, and the ecosystem ultimately failed, Krell contends that his methods of thinking nonetheless pose important tasks for our own thought. Drawing on and away from Heidegger, Krell expands on the topics of life, death, sexuality, and spirit as these are treated by Freud, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Irigaray. Daimon Life addresses issues central to contemporary philosophies of politics, gender, ecology, and theoretical biology. (shrink)

Past life regression therapy is used by some physicians in cases with some mental diseases. Anxiety disorders, mood disorders, and gender dysphoria have all been treated using life regression therapy by some doctors on the assumption that they reflect problems in past lives. Although it is not supported by psychiatric associations, few medical associations have actually condemned it as unethical. In this article, I argue that past life regression therapy is unethical for two basic reasons. First, (...) it is not evidence-based. Past life regression is based on the reincarnation hypothesis, but this hypothesis is not supported by evidence, and in fact, it faces some insurmountable conceptual problems. If patients are not fully informed about these problems, they cannot provide an informed consent, and hence, the principle of autonomy is violated. Second, past life regression therapy has the great risk of implanting false memories in patients, and thus, causing significant harm. This is a violation of the principle of non-malfeasance, which is surely the most important principle in medical ethics. (shrink)

Although several studies propose that the integrity of neuronal assemblies may underlie a phenomenon referred to as awareness, none of the known studies have explicitly investigated dynamics and functional interactions among neuronal assemblies as a function of consciousness expression. In order to address this question EEG operational architectonics analysis (Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, 2001, 2008) was conducted in patients in minimally conscious (MCS) and vegetative states (VS) to study the dynamics of neuronal assemblies and operational synchrony among them as a function (...) of consciousness expression. We found that in minimally conscious patients and especially in vegetative patients neuronal assemblies got smaller, their life-span shortened and they became highly unstable. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the extent/volume and strength of operational synchrony among neuronal assemblies was smallest or even absent in VS patients, intermediate in MCS patients and highest in healthy fully-conscious subjects. All findings were similarly observed in EEG alpha as well as beta1 and beta2 frequency oscillations. The presented results support the basic tenets of Operational Architectonics theory of brain-mind functioning and suggest that EEG operational architectonics analysis may provide an objective and accurate means of assessing signs of (un)consciousness in patients with severe brain injuries. Therefore this methodological approach may complement the existing “gold standard” of behavioral assessment of this population of challenging patients and inform the diagnostic and treatment decision-making processes. (shrink)

This book presents not only the mathematical concept of probability, but also its philosophical aspects, the relativity of probability and its applications and even the psychology of probability. All explanations are made in a comprehensible manner and are supported with suggestive examples from nature and daily life, and even with challenging math paradoxes.

The work of Dan Brock and Helga Kuhse is typical of the current stream of thought rejecting the validity of sanctity of life appeals to instill objective inviolable worth in human life regardless of the quality of life of the patient. The context of a person's life is supremely important. In their systems life can have high value, yet the value of life can be outweighed by the force of other disvalues. The notion of (...) quality of life has increasingly come to signify the measurement of the worth of a person's life itself. Having a life equals personal life. Any objectivity to life resides in 'personal', 'biographical', or 'creative' life, not mere biological life. Personal life represents the minimal threshold for any objective worth. In responding to this challenge, John Finnis has argued extensively that life is an intrinsic good – a basic human good. Following from our grasp of human life as a basic incommensurable good, it cannot be practically reasonable both to affirm that (a) 'human life is a basic human good', and (b) that 'human life qua human life can be intentionally acted against to its destruction'. Yet, if the good of human life can be considered self-evident, the self-evidence of the basic human good qua good does not mean that dialectical reasoning cannot be engaged in to indirectly support the practical reasonableness of respecting the good of human life in the deliberative choices that persons make concerning their actions. It is to the use of such dialectical reasoning, supportive of the status of human life as such a basic human good, that the article is primarily concerned to draw out and articulate. (shrink)

A weak version of the life-mind continuity thesis entails that every living system also has a basic mind (with a non-representational form of intentionality). The strong version entails that the same concepts that are sufficient to explain basic minds (with non-representational states) are also central to understanding non-basic minds (with representational states). We argue that recent work on the free energy principle supports the following claims with respect to the life-mind continuity thesis: (i) there is (...) a strong continuity between life and mind; (ii) all living systems can be described as if they had representational states; (iii) the ’as-if representationality’ entailed by the free energy principle is central to understanding both basic forms of intentionality and intentionality in non-basic minds. In addition to this, we argue that the free energy principle also renders realism about computation and representation compatible with a strong life-mind continuity thesis (although the free energy principle does not entail computational and representational realism). In particular, we show how representationality proper can be grounded in ’as-if representationality’. (shrink)

Where is the line between successful popular science writing informed by scientists' own recollections and truly reliable history? This is a book of the first kind that dallies with history but clearly remains a problematic source. As popular science writing about work since 1953 The Spark of Life is very successful and conveys a great deal of information about origin of life research and exobiology in highly readable form. Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada are, respectively, an evolutionary biologist (...) and an organic chemist/biochemist oriented toward origin of life studies. Their strength lies in clear, simple writing about sometimes complex research. Their chief weakness as historians is that they have strong opinions about the field of research they are describing. They are friends and admirers of Stanley Miller , and they fundamentally share his research orientation. They thus also share his enemies. Approached with this in view, the book can be a very useful source about the Miller “school” and its point of view in origin of life debates since 1953. But it certainly should not be mistaken for a neutral source just because it appears to be an introductory text.Let us choose a single example to see how this plays out: the case of Sidney Fox, the protein chemist and longstanding Miller antagonist. While the development of Miller's ideas is laid out in much fascinating detail and sympathetically given many pages of text, Fox's equally long career is summed up in less than five pages as a “false start” in understanding evolution of the first organic molecules into more complex proto–living systems. Fox's career did indeed take some odd turns, and his publicity seeking became something quite out of the norm after he was marginalized in the research community. But the initial differences in approach between Fox and Miller are here passed over quickly, leaving the impression that Fox never really had any answers to Miller's criticisms of his work on proteinoid microspheres . And Fox's ability to carry on research at all is attributed to his character as “an excellent self‐promoter,” with the veiled implication that he was thus able to dupe early NASA Life Sciences administrators into giving him funding. Whether one thinks that Fox's research program actually brought out any useful, important insights or not , this is surely an oversimplification of a complex story of the institutional environment that exobiology operated in during its early years. NASA administrators saw genuinely promising things in Fox's work, and even if most of those have not panned out, there is surely a story here worth telling about changing ideas within the research community and within the NASA patronage system. The competition from the mid 1950s until at least the late 1970s between Fox's “school” and the opponents, including Miller and Norman Horowitz, is a story full of historical interest, both in research journals and behind the scenes.Regarding historical material before 1953, the first forty pages of the book, this work is whiggish to the point of being completely unreliable. Again, a single example will have to suffice. John Tyndall is credited with coining the term “panspermia.” Then William Thomson is touted as a proponent in 1871 of the altered meaning, that life could be present throughout space—for example, carried on meteors yet still remaining viable. We are left with a sense that both Tyndall and Thomson, being “scientific giants” of the time , both basically agreed on this subject and that only the popular press ridiculed Thomson for this idea. But Tyndall and the Darwinians all ridiculed Thomson's idea at the time. And Thomson himself proposed the idea as part of a unified campaign against Darwinian evolution and against modern ideas on the origin of life supported by Tyndall and Huxley, a covert way of holding out against the banishing of a divine Creator by abiogenesis. But we learn none of this: the ideas are bereft of their historical context, and even their scientific context, in the same old way that the simplistic “historical sections” of science textbooks have long distorted the stories they tell. Wills and Bada's treatment of Pasteur, Pouchet, and Bastian similarly repeat many misstatements from past internalist histories. This is the case despite the fact that the authors show in their footnotes that they are aware of much of the recent work of professional historians on these subjects.This book, then, is a source to be handled with some caution but useful on the period from 1953 to the present. On the period before 1953 it should not be considered useful history. (shrink)

Farming computer games enable the ‘desk chair countryside’—millions of people actively engaged in performing farming and rural activities on-line—to co-produce their desired representations of rural life, in line with the parameters set by game creators. In this paper, I critique the narratives and images of farming life expressed in the popular computer game ‘Stardew Valley’. Stardew is based on a scenario whereby players leave a [meaningless] urban desk job to revitalize the family farm. Player are given a choice (...) to invest in the Community Center or to support ‘JojaMart’, a ‘big-box’ development. The farming narrative demonstrates the hallmarks of classical American agrarianism: farming as the basic profession on which other occupations depend, the virtue of hard work, the ‘natural’ and moral nature of agricultural life, and the economic independence of the farmer. More recent discourses of critical agrarianism are noticeably absent, particularly in relation to environmental protection. Conflict is centred on urban-based big business, whereas the farm is represented as a ‘bolt-hole’ or sanctuary from urban life. I argue that embedding issues of big-box development in gameplay enrols players in active reflection and debate on desirable responses, whereas the emphasis on reproducing classical agrarian tropes risks desensitizing game players to contemporary agrarian social and environmental justice issues. However, Stardew Valley gameplay implicitly reinforces the ideal that low input farming is the way that agriculture should be practiced. The success of the game in eliciting on-line debates, and the requirement for active performance and decision-making, demonstrates the specific potential of computer games as mediums for influencing and intervening in ongoing reworking of farming imaginaries, and enabling more critically engagement of the ‘desk chair countryside’ in important global debates. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Basic Theatrical Understanding: Considerations for James HamiltonNoël Carroll (bio)The publication of The Art of Theater by James Hamilton is a seminal event in the philosophy of theater.1 As the first book-length study of theater in the analytic tradition of philosophy, it will be a touchstone for many years of future discussion and debate. Anyone interested in the philosophy of theater will need to address Professor Hamilton’s accomplishment.The leading (...) idea in The Art of Theater is that theatrical performance is an independent art form. That is, theatrical performance, as such, is not, as Aristotle suggested by his demotion of spectacle, a mere adjunct to literature, or essentially a medium for illustrating dramatic and comedic texts. Theatrical performance itself is an art in its own right. This view of theater art has been increasingly apparent in the practices of modern theater in the West, but these practices—as exemplified by Gordon Craig, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Jacques Copeau, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, and, more recently, Robert Wilson—merely revealed what has always been the case: that theater is at root a performing art.Although for centuries theater in the West had been conceptualized as a text-based art, Hamilton maintains that this tradition is local. Theatrical performances in other cultures need not be the enactment of antecedently written-out texts. Furthermore, even within Western culture, most of us see and discuss plays without ever reading the texts upon which they are based. Hamilton takes these facts to support his view that theatrical performance is an autonomous art form. Among other things, this means that the critical model that presumes that the success of a theatrical performance must be assessed against the effectiveness of its implementation of the pertinent preexisting literary text is a misguided one. Although a preexisting literary text may be an ingredient in the production of a theatrical performance, fidelity to the aforesaid text is not mandated by the art of theater. [End Page 15]Insofar as theatrical performance is an art in its own right, it may—and quite clearly, as in the cases of the Performance Group, Kraken, Mabou Mines, etc., often does—adapt written texts for its own purposes. Moreover, refashioning the text, where there is one, is not simply an avant-garde practice; most productions edit the text for their own purposes. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, which omitted no word from the accepted version of the text, was the exception to the rule. Thus, what Hamilton calls the ingredients model of the relation of texts to theatrical performances has the advantage on its side of better corresponding to actual practices, as compared to the notion that a theatrical performance is to be understood as a matter of bringing a literary text to life.Of course, one apparent advantage that the text-implementation model of theatrical performance might seem to possess is that it appears to have a way ready-to-hand for identifying theatrical performances. Gielgud’s performance, Olivier’s performance, and Burton’s performance are, ex hypothesi, all performances of Hamlet because they are all performances of Shakespeare’s text to which they all roughly comply. If, following Hamilton, we sever the relationship to the play-text, how can we account for the way in which we identify theatrical performances?2 That is, independently of reference to texts, how do we identify a theatrical performance as another instance of Hamlet?In order to solve this problem, Hamilton introduces the idea of “a basic understanding” of a theatrical performance. The basic understanding of a theatrical performance is, on Hamilton’s account, said to involve no more than comprehending on a moment-to-moment basis the ongoing bits of dialogue and stage action as they evolve, as well as understanding the transitions from one scene to another while also responding physically in a suitable manner to the evolving story (for example, laughing where laughter is appropriate) or emoting responsively to what is happening onstage. So, one has a basic understanding of a scene if, when the Musketeer says “On guard,” the spectator takes this to be an invitation to a duel; and when a rival character draws his sword, the... (shrink)

When considering the social valuation of a life-year, there is a conflict between two basic intuitions: on the one hand, the intuition of universality, according to which the value of an additional life-year should be universal, and, as such, should be invariant to the context considered; on the other hand, the intuition of complementarity, according to which the value of a life-year should depend on what this extra-life-year allows for, and, hence, on the quality of (...) that life-year, because the quantity of life and the quality of life are complement to each other. This paper proposes three distinct accounts of the intuition of universality, and shows that those accounts either conflict with a basic monotonicity property, or lead to indifference with respect to how life-years are distributed within the population. Those results support the abandon of the intuition of universality. But abandoning the intuition of universality does not prevent a social evaluator from giving priority, when allocating life-years, to individuals with the lowest quality of life. (shrink)

A basic income might be able to correct for the income related losses of unemployment, but what about the meaning/purpose related losses? For better or worse, many people derive meaning and fulfillment from the jobs they do; if their jobs are taken away, they lose this source of meaning. If we are about the enter an era of rampant job loss as a result of advances in technology, is there a danger that it will also be an era of (...) rampant meaninglessness? In this chapter, I offer counsel against any such despair. I argue that we should encourage the withdrawal from the world of work into a more personal world of games.We should do this because (a) work is structurally bad and getting worse as a result of technology; and (b) a more ludic, game-like life would help us to attain a valuable form of human flourishing. I offer three arguments in support of this view, and respond to critics who argue that withdrawing from the demands of work would result in a more selfish and impoverished form of existence. (shrink)

The basic work for this book was carried out during the spring of 1989 in Edinburgh, where I had been granted a research position at The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. I should like to express here my indebtedness to the Institute for the opportunity thus afforded me. I should also like to say how very grateful I am for the stimulating conversations I had there with Professor Timothy Sprigge and Dr. Elizabeth Telfer. Dr. Telfers’s own treatise (...) Happiness has been a major influence on my view of the questions involved. The basic view of health and illness presented in this book is more fully set out in my On the Nature of Health. As in the case of my previous larger projects, I have received a great amount of support and may wise comments from Professor Ingmar Pörn, Helsinki. Three Danish experts – Anton Aggernaes, Erik Ostenfeld and Peter Sandøe – have made valuable comments. Professor Heng ten Have, Nijmegen, has improved my reading of the philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. I should also like to thank my colleagues at the Department of Health and Society, University of Linköping, for helping me to avoid a number of the pitfalls that can so easily stumble into when it comes to a treatise like this. Especially I should like to mentioned Per-Erik Liss, Ingemar Nordin and Bo Petersson, all three of whom have read and commented on the entire manuscript. A Swedish version of this book, Livskvalitet och hälsa, came out in 1991. I have been made quite a number of corrections and additions, one type of addition being replies to critical points made in reviews of the Swedish version. I should like to thank Malcolm Forbes for valuable help putting my English into publishable condition. Linköping, May 1993 Lennart Noredenfelt. (shrink)

Li Zhen priest has repeatedly tried to clarify there are two basic problems of philosophy, there is one problem with the nothingness, there is one root of the problem. For the first problem, he believes there is the meaning of life is based on earnings instead of the full emptiness. For the second question, he thinks there is a God of the root. Li Zhen priest in one deeply experienced man's limited nature, on the other hand they found (...) that the driving force towards infinity. Although the constitution were limited, however, its intention to infinity. The meaning of human life are the cornerstone upon which to build, is built up from within, however, can not be limited to their own self-sealing inner nature, on the contrary, the primordial human tendency is inherent and can go beyond that, that is limited and can be infinite . Li Zhen is that there exists a final basis the full surplus. This will be for the Christian religion in the "no" to explore the concept of active surface, as well as Buddhist talks about "empty" comparisons, as Li Zhen of the basic study with and without supplement. "Beyond" and "there" are supported by ethics, the ethics of generosity and love. Go beyond him in person, he is certainly not only those, but also those who are not asking for anything good for his efforts. Li Zhen advocate and practice is an ethics of love and generosity. (shrink)

Many scholars have argued that unity of humankind can be established on the basis of some basic or core human values. Instead of engaging in a comparative empirical research, compiling lists of core values derived from different cultures, discuss their relevance for human fellowship, I examine the simple values of life that during the 1980s united people in Poland and made them to form the powerful civic movement, which was Solidarity.Poland’s Solidarity of the 1980s has not yet entered (...) a canon of routinely studied great social movements. However, it has initiated a profound world transformation. We are no longer divided by a global confrontation between communism and liberal democracy. The main today’s issue is globalization. Although altered in many respects, the world has still been affected by many serious problems. They necessitate another positive world transformation and a new Global Solidarity that can undertake it.A Global Solidarity movement can learn from Poland’s Solidarity. My contention is that it should not be grounded in any ideological thinking, but in inclusive values—values that do not divide but can potentially unite all human beings—and these values can be derived from basic human needs. In short, Global Solidarity should be based on what I call the “righteousness of life”. It can be achieved if there is a growing recognition of what is right for life and a growing interest in protecting and enhancing life.Building a Global Solidarity is not an attempt to replace governments, but rather to exert pressure on them, so that they support international organizations and consider the welfare of all humanity. While wielding power that at present none of the NGOs represent, Global Solidarity can be a life promoting and enhancing instrument of global society through which a more humane world will be achieved. (shrink)

One of the environments where values education takes place is school. The education system implemented in Turkey aims to raise individuals who embrace basic values as well as being academically successful. To achieve this goal, a systematic values education carried out together with academic education is needed. The educational programs currently implemented in our country have been created to fulfill this function, and ten root values have been determined to be taught to students at school. These values are justice, (...) friendship, honesty, self-control, patience, respect, love, responsibility, patriotism and helpfulness. These values, determined in line with the basic objectives of Turkish National Education, are reflected in the curriculum and textbooks of all courses at the school. In this study, textbooks prepared for the Life of Our Prophet course, which is an elective course in secondary schools and a compulsory course in Imam Hatip secondary schools, were examined in terms of root values. The main purpose of the study is to determine to what extent root values are included in the Life of Our Prophet (5-8) textbooks. Within the framework of this purpose, the following questions were tried to be answered in the study: 1. What root values are included in secondary school Life of Our Prophet textbooks? 2. What are the frequency and rates of inclusion of root values in secondary school Life of Our Prophet textbooks? 3. What is the distribution of the root values in the Secondary School Life of Our Prophet textbooks according to grade levels? The study is of a qualitative type and is in the survey model most commonly used in research in the field of education. The data of the study was obtained by document review technique. The data of the study was obtained from the Life of Our Prophet textbooks taught in secondary and imam hatip secondary schools in the 2022-2023 academic year. While examining the textbooks, the root values specified in the course curriculum and the attitudes and behaviors associated with these values were taken into account. The analysis of the collected data was done with the descriptive analysis approach used in qualitative research. The distribution of root values in the textbooks according to grade level was tabulated by specifying page numbers and frequency values. In order to support the findings, quotations reflecting the relevant value are included from the textbook in which each root value is included at least and most. According to the research results, the root values specified in the program are included in the textbooks of each grade level. The most frequently mentioned root value in textbooks is love, and the least frequently mentioned root value is self-control. The inclusion of root values in the textbooks of each grade level is compatible with the understanding of values education envisaged in the program. In textbooks, root values are generally touched upon in subject texts, reading texts, activities and visual explanations. It can be said that the Life of Our Prophet (5-8) textbooks have a rich content in terms of root values. (shrink)

La parada cardiorrespiratoria (PCR) es una de las principales causas de muerte en los países industrializados. La reanimación cardiopulmonar (RCP) por testigos aumenta la supervivencia pero no hay formación en RCP en España en el sistema educativo.Este trabajo analiza la implementación de un programa de formación para profesores de Educación Secundaria por parte de sanitarios y, posteriormente, la adquisición de competencias por parte del alumnado comparando según el docente que los ha formado (profesor/a o sanitario), en un instituto de Granada (...) (España), objetivando una adquisición de competencias adecuada a todos los niveles y mejor cuando el docente es profesor/a. (shrink)

Reproduction, a basic property of biological life, entails costs for an organism, ultimately detectable as reduction in survival prospects. Telomeres are an excellent candidate biomarker for explaining these reproductive costs, because their shortening correlates with increased mortality risk. For similar reasons, telomeres are perceived as biomarkers of individual “quality.” The relationship between reproduction and telomere dynamics is reviewed, emphasizing that cost and quality perspectives, commonly presented in isolation, should be integrated. While a majority of correlative studies have confirmed (...) the relationship between telomere dynamics and various reproductive outputs, only limited experimental support exists showing that reproduction causes telomeres to shorten. A shift of focus to experimental manipulations of reproductive effort/telomere dynamics is crucial. However, the observation of survival reduction in response to these manipulations is essential for establishing telomeres as genuine biomarkers, allowing to unravel trade‐offs related to reproduction. (shrink)

Birch, Ginsburg, and Jablonka, in an article in this issue of Biology and Philosophy, provided a much-needed condensation of their well-reasoned theory of Unlimited Associative Learning. This theory compellingly identifies the conscious animals and the time when the evolutionary transition to consciousness was completed. The authors convincingly explained their use of UAL as a “transition marker,” identified two more features by which UAL can be recognized, showed how UAL’s learning features relate to consciousness, and how investigating consciousness is analogous to (...) investigating life. My constructive criticisms are that I wish they had taken a stand on which organisms and entities are not conscious, and I feel they made too many predictions by which to test the UAL theory. That is, some of the proposed tests are unnecessary because parts of UAL are already supported by enough evidence, and other proposed tests are so ambitious as to be nearly impossible to complete. Finally, UAL has a major, detailed, sub-hypothesis that says such learning led to stress and to the evolution of mechanisms to cope with this stress; but this idea is speculative and requires the most basic testing to judge whether it could be valid. (shrink)

One challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life claims that any such right would require us to intervene in the wild to prevent animals from being killed by predators. I argue that belief in an animal right to life does not commit us to supporting a program of predator-prey intervention. One common retort to the predator challenge contends that we are not required to save animals from predators because predators are not moral agents. (...) I suggest that this retort fails to overcome the predator challenge. I seek to articulate a more satisfactory argument explaining why we are not required to save wild prey from predators and how this position is perfectly consistent with the idea that animals have a basic right to life. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to examine the value of the sacred, which is one of the two basic psychologicalpillars of religion along with meaning, in the process of the religious individual's search for meaning. As it isknown, religion is located at the intersection of sacred and meaning. Some researchers have even stated thatreligion is nothing more than a process of searching for this sacred. According to some, the nature that existsin man in the existential sense, which leads (...) him to become religious, is the same thing as the sense of holiness and sanctity. For this reason, it is possible to say that the sacred is quite functional in the religiousdevelopment of man. However, it can be said that this sense of holiness is largely the source of the psychological energy needed by the religious person in the process of searching for meaning when faced with negative life events. While this is the case, it is seen that people who encounter negative life events often miss thevalue of this sense of holiness mentioned in the process of religious coping and searching for meaning. It hasbeen determined that a small part of the relevant studies are carried out in the context of spirituality and anoverwhelming part in the context of religiosity. However, considering the field of study of the science ofPsychology of Religion, it can be said that it is a necessity to examine the function of the sense of holiness inman's search for meaning. In the study, one of the aims of which is to draw attention to this deficiency, thepsychological value of the sense of holiness in the search for meaning of the religious individual is examinedwithin the framework of primary and secondary sources. The results have been shown to support ideas that asense of holiness can have positive effects on man's search for meaning. (shrink)

In our country, mildly mentally disabled students are being educated in general education classes by means of integration. An individualized education program (IEP) is being prepared for these students when needed. However, the impact of BEP on students with intellectual disabilities in religious education has not yet been sufficiently discussed. The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of the IEP on the achievement of religious education of mentally disabled students and the level of religious learning of these (...) students. For this purpose, in addition to the education given in the general education class for the 6 mildly mentally disabled integration students studying in the 4th grade of primary school, 2 hours of education were carried out in the support education room per week during the education and training year. Semi-experimental study was designed according to the single-tasked multiple-start model. Education process was evaluated by Achievement Test, the Teacher Observation Form, the pre-test based on the Self-Assessment Form, post-test and retention tests. As a result, it has been seen that BEP has a positive effect on the achievement of religious education of mentally disabled students (ZEKÖ). In this framework, it has been found that students are influenced by the society, especially by their peers, when they are given time they constitute religious knowledge, they understand normal individuals religious behaviours, they are more emotional, they forget religious information that is not used in everyday life and when they accomplish they increase self-confidence and self-esteem and internalize values.SummaryPeople differ in their creation. This difference is greater in people disabled. In terms of individual traits and educational qualifications, individuals with disabilities who are severely different from their peers and who have difficulty in playing the roles they should play are evaluated in several groups. One of these groups is mentally disabled. Mentally handicapped people have various rights as normal individuals. One of these rights is the right to education. National and international laws guarantee the educational rights of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Similarly, Islam and his best practitioner, the prophet Muhammad, did not consent to the transformation of the mentally disabled into begging masses or to their isolation, but rather to integrate them into society. According to Islam, individuals with intellectual disabilities have the “capacity to acquire rights“, even if they do not have "capacity to act". This right requires them to receive an education that takes into account their differences, just like normal individuals. Because of their learning characteristics, mentally retarded students differ from their peers, therefore they cannot benefit from the educational activities organized for normal students. So, these students need a special education to ensure that the mentally disabled are successful and live in society without being dependent.Inrecent years, in our country as well as in the world, the principle of "least restricted education environment" is taken into consideration for mentally handicapped people who need special education, which approaches to co-education with their peers. This approach is tried to-be applied at all educational levels. Due to the diagnosis and evaluation in the Guidance and Research Center, a large number of mentally retarded students are placed in normal schools. These students, like other courses, take the Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge Course together with the normal students. However, depending on their learning, they have the right to receive separate training as 1-3 people at-the support training room. The instructional adaptations necessary for the education of these students made by the Guidance and Research Centers are carried out by the teacher who plays the basic role in the education of the students. One of the important elements in the education of these mentally retarded students who need special education is the individualized education program. This program is prepared by the cooperation and joint decision of all stakeholders who may contribute to student’s education. The status of the student to participate in the learning and teaching activities, the amount and the quality of the education to be received in the support education room are made within the framework of this program.One of the most important courses in the education of mentally retarded students who are educated by inclusion is the Religion Culture and Moral Knowledge course. Because this course has the potential to make serious contributions to the socialization of students and to maintain their lives independently. However, there are a limited number of studies investigating the quality of religious education at-the scientific level. Furthermore, it has not been observed that these studies have been quasi-experimental. This study aims to reveal the quality of education for the mentally handicapped students. For this purpose, it aims to determine the contribution of religious education in the support education room to the success of the student depending on the individualized education program. It also makes it possible to make conclusions about how mentally handicapped people use their mental skills to learn religion. Depending on the aim of the study, during the 2015-2016 academic year, primary school 4th grade students and 6 mentally disabled inclusion students were educated. The quasi-experimental study was designed according to the single-subject multiple-start model. The process of the education, in other words, the development of mentally retarded students towards religious learning; were evaluated by Success Test, Teacher Observation Form and Self-Assessment Form based on pre-test, post-test and retention tests.Findings of the study; Faith, worship, the prophet Muhammad, Qur’an and its commentary, are classified according to the fields of morality, religion, and culture. The post-test achievement scores of the students in all learning areas were higher than the pre-test achievement scores. This shows that religious education in the support training room based on individualized education plan contributes positively to the success of the student. The results of the retention test are close to the results of the final test. In addition, it was determined that the students were affected by the society, especially by their peers, structured the religious knowledge when given time, they understood the religious behaviors of the normal individuals, became more emotional, forgot the religious information that is not used in daily life, increased their self-confidence and self-esteem as they succeeded and internalized the values. Based on these results, the following recommendations have been developed.Support Education Rooms should be functionalized and special attention should be given to individual or group-based religious education based on the nature and objectives of the subject in these rooms.In religious education, by taking into account the performances of mentally retarded inclusion students (MHIS), the relevant dimension of religion should be given importance according to their contribution to their normal lives and they should be consistent and patient in this process.Since MHIS has different levels of learning and perception and different developmental characteristics at every stage of life, it should prioritize their proper use of their existing capacities based on their religious education, interests and curiosities.Since MHIS is influenced by the emotion dimension rather than the information dimension of religion, religious education for them should be oriented towards life, which is not academic, literal or doctrinal, but rather their life and feelings.Similar studies with different study group students must be done and the results of the study should be interpreted comparatively. 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Population aging is becoming an inevitable phenomenon in Albanian post-socialist society, posing multi-faceted challenges to its individuals, families and society as a whole. Since 1991, the Albanian population has been exposed to intensive demographic changes caused by unintended aspects of socio-economic transition from a planned socialist economy to a market-oriented capitalist one. Ongoing processes of re-organization of social institutions increased its socio-economic insecurity leading to the application of various coping mechanisms. While adjusting themselves to other aspects of life, people (...) changed their decisions of having children and leaving the country. On the other hand, replacement of former traditional extended family forms with diverse living arrangements and family structures has been the outcome of the combination of three factors: falling fertility, increasing life expectancy and increasing migration. However, family remains the basic social unit that provides support, care and protection for its old members even though its capacities are diminishing. Family Life Cycle Theory views family development as a series of stages where family members deal with various developmental tasks and play different roles as they move from one stage to another. This paper examines population aging in Albanian post-socialist society. Based on Family Life Cycle Theory and Family Development Theory, it reviews literature and uses secondary data to discuss its implications for elderly care and family life. It concludes that population aging requires better understanding of this process in order to facilitate a series of family adaptations to respond to the changing needs of its elderly members. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an increasing focus on a crucial aspect of the ‘meeting of minds’ problem :160–165, 2013), namely the ability that human beings have for sharing different types of mental states such as emotions, intentions, and perceptual experiences. In this paper I examine what counts as basic forms of ‘shared experiences’ and focus on a relatively overlooked aspect of human embodiment, namely the fact that we start our journey into our experiential life within the (...) experiencing body of a second person, i.e. our mothers. For example, Zahavi and Rochat recently draw on phenomenological insights and developmental studies in order to support the idea that empathy must be considered a central precondition for experiential sharing. Here I suggest that the defence of the primacy of empathy over experiential sharing might reveal how we are often mislead in our understanding of more basic forms of shared experiences. I argue that while previous approaches mainly defined experiential sharing by using the case of visual experience as a paradigmatic example of ‘togetherness’, it is fruitful to consider the case of pregnancy and intersubjective touch in early infancy as a more basic model of experiential sharing in general. I conclude that shared experiences are phenomena emerging first and foremost from a ‘meeting of bodies’ rather than of minds and as such they precede rather than presuppose empathetic abilities. (shrink)

Triage protocols can exclude older patients for the sake of effectiveness and this may be defended as the older have already had their fair share of life, which can mean fair amounts or complete lives. Nevertheless, if life is considered as a narrative, mentioning amounts might be nonsensical. Narratives have a quality of unity; so, life events are fragments whose meanings are dependent on the meaning of the whole. Thus, time units do not represent a reliable measure (...) of the content of life. In addition, people's experience is different from the external flow of time, making its significance relative. Moreover, to compare the completeness of lives qualitatively, it is necessary to have a common cultural understanding, which is improbable to agree on in a modern society. Therefore, basic assumptions of the accounts that refer to fair shares of lives are mistaken, and these accounts do not support age-based rationing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Martha Nussbaum and the Moral Life of MiddlemarchRohan MaitzenWe are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.George Eliot, MiddlemarchIAs is well known to readers of this journal, Martha Nussbaum emphasizes in her essays on fiction as moral philosophy that the philosophical significance of novels is found, not in whatever theories or principles they might overtly discuss or (...) dramatize, but in their literary form and their prose style. In particular, she finds in the late novels of Henry James an alternative to the reductive, pseudoscientific prose of contemporary analytic philosophy, which she argues inhibits the range of possible answers to the basic ethical question "How should one live?"1 James's prose shows "attention to particulars, a respect for the emotions, and a tentative and non-dogmatic attitude to the bewildering multiplicities of life" (LK, p. 27), and thus it exemplifies the Aristotelian ethical conception she advocates.In this essay I want to disentangle Nussbaum's theory of the ethical significance of fictional form—which I endorse—from her preoccupation [End Page 190] with James—which I do not. Far from being, as she believes, egalitarian, humane, and morally responsible, the Jamesian consciousness Nussbaum would have us emulate is elitist, exclusionary, and morally inert; further, in its commitment to indeterminacy, mystery, and obscurity, the Jamesian model is in fact profoundly anti-philosophical.2 I propose instead George Eliot's Middlemarch as exemplary of fiction's potential contribution to "the job of moral philosophy" (LK, p. 138). Nussbaum may admire the subtlety and density of The Golden Bowl, but I will argue that in its narrative strategies and its integration of novelistic perception and philosophic reflection, Middlemarch proves a better ethical guide and a better example of literature that is also philosophy.In making this argument, I will rely on the terms set by Nussbaum herself for the ethical evaluation of fiction. Unlike other philosophers who invoke literature only as a "rich source of examples awaiting illumination by philosophy," Nussbaum insists that analysis of a text's literary properties is the essential methodology of ethical criticism.3 Every aspect of form and style "expresses a sense of life and of value, a sense of what matters and what does not" (LK, p.5). We discover this "sense of life" through close reading; "our engaged experience line by line," as Wayne Booth says, reveals the character of the implied author, the would-be friend urging on us a particular "pattern of desires."4On Nussbaum's reading, James's prose is ethically exemplary because it is "the prose of Aristotelian perception":It depicts in its cadences the moral effort of straining to see correctly and to come up with the appropriate picture or description; its tensions, obliquities, and circumnavigations express the sheer difficulty of finding the right description or picture for what is there before one. If, as James says, to "put" is to "do," showing this is showing moral activity of a valuable kind.(LK, p. 88)But Nussbaum ends up at James because her alternative moral theory begins there, not because moral philosophy that is literary inevitably sounds like James or supports Aristotle.5 As Nussbaum's gestures towards a more general theory of the role of "the novel" in philosophy indicate, novels may share generic features which complement or correct conventional philosophical discourse, but investigating other novels in this way may also lead us to other, non-Aristotelian, non-Jamesian ethical conceptions. My commentary on Middlemarch presents one such alternative. First, however, I will consider our "engaged experience" of The [End Page 191] Golden Bowl, a key example for Nussbaum, to show more particularly why we ought to be cautious about accepting James's late style as exemplary for moral philosophy, despite Nussbaum's passionate advocacy. What kind of friend do we meet there, in that world full of indeterminacy, obliquity, and circumnavigation? What kind of guidance in practical reasoning do we get from this implied author—what "ought" emerges from the Jamesian "is"?Perhaps because, as Nussbaum admits, her work on fiction as moral philosophy emerged "out of a longstanding love" for The... (shrink)

Introduction. The inadequacy of the support measures provided to children with orphan diseases is exacerbated by the trend towards an increase in the number of children with such a diagnosis. Orphan diseases also include diseases caused by primary immunodeficiency or congenital errors of immunity, which are life-threatening. However, these people are part of society and require attention from it, and social and economic measures from the state. Most of them, with proper treatment, socialization and appropriate government support, (...) can lead a normal life and live a full life. Scientific novelty of the research. On the basis of the study results, the authors contribute to clarifying the principles used in the implementation of the security function of the social state. The targeting of social support measures must be supplemented with the principles of social justice and freedom to choose ways to meet the needs of specific categories of citizens, understood as follows. The welfare state supports those citizens who need it most of all, namely, the poor. Specific categories of citizens can satisfy their needs, while having the opportunity to choose. This opportunity arises thanks to the receipt of targeted assistance in the form of monthly or annual subsidies. Families with children with orphan diseases should also be included in these categories. If they have the right to receive annual government subsidies, they will be able to spend these funds depending on the current needs due to the state of health of their children with orphan diseases (for the purchase of socially important food products; medicines, medical nutrition, and various services). The aim of the work is to study the problems of providing support measures to children with orphan diseases in the context of the current model of the welfare state. The article analyzes the satisfaction of patients with congenital immunity errors with various types of state support, identifies problems that reduce their satisfaction. Methods. The authors use methods such as comparative analysis, study of regulatory legal acts, sociological analysis. Results. On the basis of the study results the effectiveness of measures of state support for children with orphan diseases, studying the best experience of foreign countries, proposals were made to clarify the principles used to implement the security function by the social state, to expand the composition of the subjects involved in providing support measures analyzed in the article. Conclusions. The results obtained make it possible to assert that the targeted approach, which is basic in the model of the welfare state, does not cover most of the problems of children with innate immunity errors and, accordingly, the families that represent their interests. (shrink)

Competence based education (CBE) and Bildung oriented education (BOE) fare differently when faced with problems that afflict our societies. CBE intends learning as the acquisition of separate competences thought of as objective measurable dispositions and goals to achieve, characterised by motivational states and intellectual and technical skills. By contrast, BOE is holistic and transmission oriented. BOE is understood as a process of interaction between the self and the world in the most general and widest possible way. BOE conceptualises learning as (...) a kind of construction of a meaningful picture of the world in learners’ minds. In this paper, I make a general case in support of BOE and against CBE that draws on Rahel Jaeggi’s conception of a form of life as an organised cluster of practices with a normative character. Forms of life are basic constituents of the social world. I first dissect the notion of form of life and that of immanent critique, which is, according to Jaeggi, the type of critique used by participants in a form of life to overcome problems and crises and make the form of life flourish (Jaeggi, 2022). I then contend––following Jaeggi––that forms of life can be conceptualised as collective problem-solving and learning activities with normative structure and historical character. This is so, because emancipatory forms of life are those that progressively resolve their own problems by learning about social reality through the exercise of immanent critique. Next, I argue that CBE and BOE represent two distinct types of critical attitude which ground respectively to diverse ways to conceive the norm underlying a certain form of life. I contend that CBE is a deviant form of life because its capacity for critical transformation is structurally limited due to a normative failure. This type of failure happens when the norm – and the critique -- is external to the form of life and applies to it from outside. Here the norm aims to be universally applicable because it is conceived as neutral, in line with the so-called “ideal of impartiality” -- that is the idea that there are neutral and impartial criteria by which it is possible to assess forms of life -- or alternatively when the norm assumes the form of an ideal perceived as never perfectly obtained in practice. One mode of the ideal of impartiality is represented by instrumental rationality which is exclusively concerned with the search for efficient means, and which consequently is not concerned with assessing the goals or ends pursued, differently from forms of life’s attitude. Furthermore, instrumental rationality is considered a dominant view because due to its alleged neutrality, it shapes not only the economic field but also those social practices that involve people and institutions (cf. Cruickshank, 2014, Mattei, 2023, Popp Berman 2022). However, the feeling is that neutral (instrumental) rationality allows to evade the question of meaning that social practices and forms of life have for people involved in them, and which have a distinct normative nature. By contrast, the type of rationality that BOE endows learners with is a form of immanent rationality, i.e. a form of rationality which considers contingencies and different contexts and situations which pose different problems to solve. BOE asks for reflection and this, in turn requires the use of historically, culturally and socially situated notions. In immanent critique trade-off procedures are used to strike a balance between the need to preserve the characteristics of a temporally situated form of life to safeguard its identity and the need to change some of them to cope with new problems. I conclude that while CBE does not stimulate the abilities required to heal the pathologies of forms of life and might even hinder their development, BOE is well suited to equip students with these abilities. In this work I will refer to ‘continental’ as well as to ‘analytical’ philosophers, while the style is more analytical as what pertains argument presentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life by Fabrizio AmeriniPatrick LeeAquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life. By Fabrizio Amerini. Translated by Mark Henninger. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. Pp. xxii + 260. $29.95 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-674-07247-3.This book provides a comprehensive and textually grounded presentation of Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on embryology and an assessment of its bioethical implications. Despite (what I (...) regard as) some mistakes on the application of that teaching to contemporary embryological data, it is an invaluable sourcebook for Aquinas on this issue. At times, Amerini’s “aporetic” style makes for convoluted arguments, but it raises challenging questions and thus will assist anyone working through these issues. (As the title indicates, it also treats the end of life—but only very briefly, in a couple of pages near the end of the book.)The first two chapters examine Aquinas’s general principles regarding matter, form, and substantial generation (the coming to be of a substance), and his positon on the human soul as both subsistent and the substantial form of the human body. Amerini’s treatment is thorough and provides an extensive bibliographical guide to this issue. However, it seems to me that Amerini is less than clear on the distinctiveness of substantial change. Since there are (according to Aquinas and Aristotle) no degrees in the category of substance, generation is not a process but an instantaneous change. Amerini’s frequent use of the term “process of generation,” as well as the position he later proposes on the identity of the embryo, seems to conflict with that point. [End Page 489]Chapters 3 and 4 contain detailed exposition of Aquinas’s basic embryological position, and chapter 4 raises various questions about this position (including doubts that Amerini evidently has about the unicity of the human being’s substantial form). Applying his basic metaphysical principles to what he at the time believed were the embryological facts, Aquinas concluded that the human being with a rational soul is not present until forty days after fertilization for males or ninety days for females. The father and the mother generate the offspring, but the mother provides only the material cause in the form of menstrual blood; the father is the efficient and formal cause, acting through the semen as an instrumental cause. With the power (virtus) of the principal cause in it, the semen gradually organizes the menstrual blood provided by the mother to form, first, a being with a vegetative soul, then an animal, and finally an animal with a body suited to be formed by a rational soul, which God then infuses into it. Aquinas holds that, unlike a sensitive or vegetative soul, a rational soul must be directly created by God, since the rational soul is the source of operations that are independent of matter, that is, performed by the human being but without a bodily organ. Only matter that is suited to a form can receive it. Therefore the matter must be suitably disposed. Just as one can make a knife only with matter capable of supporting its function—and so the matter must be hard and capable of being sharp—so only a body with sense organs, and thus capable of supporting those actions prerequisite to rational operations, can receive a rational soul.Chapter 5 sets out in detail Amerini’s exposition and interpretation of Aquinas on the identity of the embryo. Amerini recognizes, of course, Aquinas’s mistakes and ignorance regarding basic embryological facts—inevitable given the time in which he wrote. Still, Amerini holds that Aquinas’s main conclusion regarding delayed hominization is still valid. He agrees with Aquinas that the general proportionality requirement implies that the embryo/fetus must first possess sensory organs to have a body apt for the reception of a rational soul.On the other hand, Amerini also advances what he believes is a via media between proponents of delayed hominization and proponents of immediate hominization. He argues that although the embryo is not numerically identical with the human being (which comes to be only with the infusion of the rational soul), nevertheless, the embryo from... (shrink)

Prokaryotic genomes of endosymbionts and parasites are examples of naturally evolved minimal cells, the study of which can shed light on life in its minimum form. Their diverse biology, their lack of a large set of orthologous genes and the existence of essential linage (and environmentally) specific genes all illustrate the diversity of genes building up naturally evolved minimal cells. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that sometimes the same essential function is performed by genes from different evolutionary (...) origins. Nevertheless, all cells perform a set of life‐essential functions however different their cell machinery and environment in which they thrive. An upcoming challenge for biologists will be to discern, by studying differences and similarities in current biodiversity, how cells with reduced genomes have adapted while retaining all basic life‐supporting functions. (shrink)

Over the past few years we have seen an increasing number of legal proceedings related to inappropriately implemented technology. At the same time career paths have diverged from the foundation of statistics out to Data Scientist, Machine Learning and AI. All of these new branches being fundamentally branches of statistics and mathematics. This has meant that formal training has struggled to keep up with what is required in the plethora of new roles. Mathematics as a taught subject is still based (...) in decades old teaching specifications and has not been updated centrally as a curriculum to include new technologies, coding or ethics. This subject area is firmly split between ICT and Mathematics in secondary school, continuing on to be split between Computer Science and Mathematics at University. As we move forwards with technology we see these once seperate fields becoming increasingly intertwined. We propose that existing provision for concepts such as ethics and societal responsibility in analysis currently exist but have not been incorporated into the mainstream curriculum of School or University. This is partially due to the split between fields in an educational setting but also the speed with which education is able to keep up with Industry and its requirements. Principles and frameworks of socially responsible modelling beginning at school level means that ethics and real-life modelling are introduced much earlier than normal. Integrating these concepts with philosophical principles of society and politics ensures a suitable background for future modellers and users of technology to draw on. Modelling is currently undertaken in technical sciences at University but the Subject Benchmark Statements are not current (Subject Benchmark Statements describe the nature of study and the academic standards expected of graduates in specific subject areas. They show what graduates might reasonably be expected to know, do and understand at the end of their studies). Even in 2019 the UK did not yet have Benchmark Statements that discuss the learning to be done in Higher Education around AI and advanced Machine Learning. Where there is provision for AI and Data Science within degree courses ethics is not generally highlighted as a key concept. As such there can be a lack of focus on the teaching of modelling or ethics as specific skills. The skills required to use a basic statistical model, for example would not be sufficient to start from scratch and build an ethical model reflecting real-world scenarios with which to inform policy or organisational decision making. This is a skill in itself and includes such aspects as awareness of data quality, ethics, user implementation problems, context and an understanding of the environment that the model is being created in. As the field of analytics has progressed so quickly in the last decade modules such as those covering AI have simply been bolted on to Maths or Computing degrees rather than being fully detailed as key areas of study or driving new, more integrated courses of study. This paper posits that gaps at primary, secondary and tertiary educational levels need to be addressed. Implementing and integrating key concepts from school level is essential so that areas such as assumptions, caveats, quality assurance and answering the right questions with constructive challenge become a cultural fixture. This not only helps developers of technology but users of rapidly developing technology also. In addition, leadership and soft skills as part of this education will ensure that a cultural shift can take place and promote continuous improvement in analysis within organisations. The addition of key concepts throughout the educational system and the updating of potentially outdated curriculums is key to ensuring a functional society. A society where every citizen is a user of tech and those that develop it can be ethical and socially responsible in its development. (shrink)

Medical decision making relies heavily on the notion of the quality of a person's life in providing a reason to utilize one therapy over another or to withhold certain therapies altogether. The concept of quality of life, however, lacks clear definition as well as consensus on its constitutive elements. ;Chapter one engages a basic controversy in the literature: whether 'quality of life' should be understood as a subjective concept, or whether objective "lists" can help us assess (...) a person's quality of life. Chapter two examines whether anthropological data might provide guidance. While it is often argued that anthropological data supports relativism, John Finnis argues that anthropological data supports universalism which, in turn, bolsters objectivist claims. I argue that anthropological data may plausibly be interpreted to support either subjective or objective accounts, and thus, does not settle our approach to quality of life. ;Chapter Three examines objective list theories, in particular those of Bernard Gert and John Finnis. I find Gert's account to be problematic because it seems incomplete. Finnis's criteria, too, seems ultimately indefensible. Thus, I conclude that while objectivist claims may offer insight into human values and motivations, existing accounts are flawed. Chapter Four examines subjective accounts of quality of life. I focus on "preference satisfaction" accounts. While these accounts provide intuitively plausible descriptions, they fall victim to a host of difficulties. Perhaps the best example of this is the "fleeting preferences" problem, which undermines our confidence in making life-and-death decisions on the basis of quality of life considerations. ;The concluding chapter offers that much progress can be made by understanding quality of life in terms of finding meaning in life. Thus, the quality of one's life is determined by how much purpose and meaning is found in that life. While this notion is not without its problems, it does capture the complex elements of the kinds of cases in which we are particularly interested, and combines some of the best features of both the objective and subjective accounts. (shrink)

The assumption that all life on Earth today shares the same basic molecular architecture and biochemistry is part of the paradigm of modern biology. This paper argues that there is little theoretical or empirical support for this widely held assumption. Scientists know that life could have been at least modestly different at the molecular level and it is clear that alternative molecular building blocks for life were available on the early Earth. If the emergence of (...) life is, like other natural phenomena, highly probable given the right chemical and physical conditions then it seems likely that the early Earth hosted multiple origins of life, some of which produced chemical variations on life as we know it. While these points are often conceded, it is nevertheless maintained that any primitive alternatives to familiar life would have been eliminated long ago, either amalgamated into a single form of life through lateral gene transfer (LGT) or alternatively out-competed by our putatively more evolutionarily robust form of life. Besides, the argument continues, if such life forms still existed, we surely would have encountered telling signs of them by now. These arguments do not hold up well under close scrutiny. They reflect a host of assumptions that are grounded in our experience with large multicellular organisms and, most importantly, do not apply to microbial forms of life, which cannot be easily studied without the aid of sophisticated technologies. Significantly, the most powerful molecular biology techniques available—polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of rRNA genes augmented by metagenomic analysis—could not detect such microbes if they existed. Given the profound philosophical and scientific importance that such a discovery would represent, a dedicated search for ‘shadow microbes’ (heretofore unrecognized ‘alien’ forms of terran microbial life) seems in order. The best place to start such a search is with puzzling (anomalous) phenomena, such as desert varnish, that resist classification as ‘biological’ or ‘nonbiological’. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd.. (shrink)

Recent research has provided converging evidence, using multiple tasks, of sensitivity to fairness in the second year of life. In contrast, findings in the first year have been mixed, leaving it unclear whether young infants possess an expectation of fairness. The present research examined the possibility that young infants might expect windfall resources to be divided equally between similar recipients, but might demonstrate this expectation only under very simple conditions. In three violation-of-expectation experiments, 9-month-olds (N = 120) expected an (...) experimenter to divide two cookies equally between two animated puppets (1:1), and they detected a violation when she divided them unfairly instead (2:0). The same positive result was obtained whether the experimenter gave the cookies one by one to the puppets (Experiments 1–2) or first separated them onto placemats and then gave each puppet a placemat (Experiment 3). However, a negative result was obtained when four (as opposed to two) cookies were allocated: Infants looked about equally whether they saw a fair (2:2) or an unfair (3:1) distribution (Experiment 3). A final experiment revealed that 4-month-olds (N = 40) also expected an experimenter to distribute two cookies equally between two animated puppets (Experiment 4). Together, these and various control results support two broad conclusions. First, sensitivity to fairness emerges very early in life, consistent with claims that an abstract expectation of fairness is part of the basic structure of human moral cognition. Second, this expectation can at first be observed only under simple conditions, and speculations are offered as to why this might be the case. (shrink)

The article reveals some approaches to the notion of the balance between “life and work”. There are given constituents of the notion “work and life”, also we offered basic orientations of policy in achievement the correspondent balance, analyzed possible consequences of establishment/violation for a person or business, in particular for enterprises in the tourism and hospitality sphere. There are given and analyses survey results of the specialists in tourist enterprises concerning the balance between working and free time. (...) Several kinds of organizational culture are outlined and given monitoring results on these kinds in tourist agencies of Dnipropetrovs’k and Dnipropetrovs’k region. We determined that adherence of the employees of recreational enterprises to their working places depends on their awareness of the possibility in achievement in the working place the balance between working and free time. Secondly, we found out that employer’s help was more important than family support as to reducing stress and leveling industrial conflicts. Thirdly, there exist significant dependence between employee turnover in tourist and some other enterprises and unbalancing between «public» and «individual». There is emphasized the role of organizational culture in finding the compromise between public and private, and given recommendations as to its reinforcement. (shrink)

Quality of work life is generally associated with a series of objective organizational conditions and practices that enables employees of an organization to perceive that they are virtually safe, satisfied and have better chances of growth and development as individual human beings. QWL is nowadays drawing more attention globally as in modern society people spend about more than one-third of their lives at their workplace. Hence, the eminence and importance of QWL is unparalleled and unquestionable. This article first focuses (...) on the definitions of QWL, followed by various paradigms of QWL, which form the basic element of QWL in any organization: health and safety, employment security, job satisfaction, occupational stress, work environment, work–life balance and human relations. Finally, the article proposes some strategies to improve QWL in organizations that focus on different areas of organizational functions: employee participation, job design and work organization, workforce awareness and career guidance, inter-group relationships, role of HR managers, self-managing work teams, rewards, alternative work schedules and supportive organizational culture. It is argued that one needs to pay attention to improve all these functions and strike a balance among them to make QWL effective. (shrink)

Background Over the last years, there has been a growth in care solutions aiming to support home-dwelling persons with dementia. Assistive technology and voluntarism have emerged as supplements to traditional homecare and daycare centers. However, patient participation is often lacking in decision-making processes, undermining ethical principles and basic human rights. Research objective This study explores the perceptions of persons with dementia toward assistive technology, volunteer support, homecare services, and daycare centers. Research design A hermeneutical approach was chosen (...) for this study, using a semi-structured interview guide to allow for interviews in the form of open conversations. Participants and research context Twelve home-dwelling persons with dementia participated in the study. The participants were recruited through municipal daycare centers. Ethical considerations Interviews were facilitated within a safe environment, carefully conducted to safeguard the participants’ integrity. The Regional Committee for Medical and Health Research Ethics, Western Norway (Project number 2016/1630) approved the study. Findings The participants shared a well of reflections on experience and attitudes toward the aspects explored. They described assistive technology as possibly beneficial, but pointed to several non-beneficial side effects. Likewise, they were hesitant toward volunteer support, depending on how this might fit their individual preferences. Homecare services were perceived as a necessary means of care, its benefits ascribed to a variety of aspects. Similarly, the participants’ assessments of daycare centers relied on specific aspects, with high individual variety. Discussion and conclusion The study indicates that the margins between whether these specific care interventions were perceived as supportive or infringing may be small and details may have great effect on the persons’ everyday life. This indicates that patient participation in decision-making processes for this group is—in addition to be a judicial and ethical requirement—crucial to ensure adequate care and support. (shrink)

Although the knowledge about biological systems has advanced exponentially in recent decades, it is surprising to realize that the very definition of Life keeps presenting theoretical challenges. Even if several lines of reasoning seek to identify the essence of life phenomenon, most of these thoughts contain fundamental problem in their basic conceptual structure. Most concepts fail to identify either necessary or sufficient features to define life. Here, we analyzed the main conceptual frameworks regarding theoretical aspects that (...) have been supporting the most accepted concepts of life, such as (i) the physical, (ii) the cellular and (iii) the molecular approaches. Based on an ontological analysis, we propose that Life should not be positioned under the ontological category of Matter. Yet, life should be better understood under the top-level ontology of “Process”. Exercising an epistemological approach, we propose that the essential characteristic that pervades each and every living being is the presence of organic codes. Therefore, we explore theories in biosemiotics and code biology in order to propose a clear concept of life as a macrocode composed by multiple inter-related coding layers. This way, as life is a sort of metaphysical process of encoding, the living beings became the molecular materialization of that process. From the proposed concept, we show that the evolutionary process is a fundamental characteristic for life’s maintenance but it is not necessary to define life, as many organisms are clearly alive but they do not participate in the evolutionary process (such as infertile hybrids). The current proposition opens a fertile field of debate in astrobiology, epistemology, biosemiotics, code biology and robotics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Holy Communion: Altar Sacrament for Making a Sacrificial Sin Offering, or Table Sacrament for Nourishing a Life of Service? Paul J. Nuechterlein Emmaus Lutheran Church, Racine, WI The title spells out the alternative I would like the reader to consider: Is Holy Communion more appropriately considered the "table sacrament" or, as is more commonly accepted, the "altar sacrament "? I will make my preference clear. In Holy Communion, (...) I believe Jesus Christ to be offering nourishment for a different way to live —namely, the way offreely chosen service to others, as opposed to violent domination over others. "Table sacrament" more appropriately conveys the sense of nourishment toward a new life. I will support this positive reasoning in favor of "table sacrament" through an appeal to Christian scripture. I will also suggest a negative reasoning against "altar sacrament," by questioning whether the very reference to "altar" betrays a link to violence, with its base in the blood ofsacrifice. For this negative argument, the support will come primarily from the brilliant and far-reaching theories ofRené Girard regarding the relation between religion and violence. I would like us to consider whether the most obvious point of the relation between religion and violence—namely, rituals ofsacrifice—has been precariously intermingled with the church's practices and experiences of the "altar sacrament." Girard's theories force us to ask: Is not the altar ofsacrifice essentially the site for a ritualized form of collective violence? 202Paul J. Nuechterlein Girard contends that there are overwhelming cultural and anthropological forces that make it difficult for religions to free themselves from such violent underpinnings. He considers that all religions, in fact, are cultural manifestations ofa generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism, a natural human/social mechanism which contains an all-against-all, communitywide violence by means ofan all-against-one act of violence, i.e., a scapegoating. Religion is, according to this theory, the primary cultural institution that forms in the aftermath ofwhat Robert Hamerton-Kelly summarily calls the "Generative Mimetic Scapegoating Mechanism, or "GMSM" event (1994). Institutionalized religion fortifies the relative peace that the event has accomplished through a three-fold structure: (1) laws and prohibitions, established to prevent further outbreaks ofmimetic violence; (2) mythical stories of the GMSM event, told from the perspective of the perpetrators as a means to justify their violence and disguise it behind the veil of the sacred; and (3) ritual reenactments ofthe GMSM event, most commonly in the form of blood sacrifice, that channel any continuing violent impulses into structured, contained releases. We must be bold to ask of each religion, then, the ways in which it manifests and perpetuates the GMSM. This includes Christianity. To the extent that Christians practice religion, we can expect to find effects ofthe GMSM in essential aspects of the church, such as its practice ofthe "altar sacrament." Girardian support for my argument, however, does not end with this negative thesis regarding the "altar sacrament." Nor does Girardian criticism leave us with a wholly negative assessment of the Christian tradition. In fact, Girard himself experienced a conversion of sorts (see Golsan 129-30), as he began to see his basic premises and theories already revealed in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, especially the gospel narratives of Jesus Christ. He came to view the Christian faith—in spite of its susceptibility to the violent forces of religion—as unique in its core message ofrevealing the one true God. Contrary to the gods ofmythology, the Christian message, through Jesus Christ, reveals the true God to be on the side ofthe GMSM's victims. As such, the Gospel ofJesus Christ stands in opposition to the three-fold structure of religion: (1) it frees people from the oppressive systems oflaws and prohibitions;1 (2) it demythologizes the mythical stories told from the perspective of the perpetrators;2 and (3) it 1 A theme of St. Paul and his criticism of the Law? (see Hamerton-Kelly 1992). 2 A theme of St. John's emphasis on Jesus, the Lamb of God, as bearing witness to the Truth? Holy Communion203 makes obsolete the need for rituals of sacrificial violence.3 The Gospel opens up the way for new life, and for rituals that nourish the new... (shrink)

Everyday Utopias explores a topic that is vital but is too often overlooked by utopian scholars. It is best read in tandem with its 2013 predecessor, Weak Messianism: Essays in Everyday Utopianism, by Michael Gardiner. In a nutshell, Cooper, like Gardiner, argues that although utopian visions may be born in the brains of utopian thinkers, progress toward utopia is what counts, and it must be rooted in present patterns and possibilities. Lest my qualms with the book’s execution overwhelm its value (...) for readers, let me emphasize my enthusiastic support of its basic purpose and its promotion of the growing field of practical utopianism, using a strikingly diverse array of cases to stake... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm, “Learning Music: Embodied Experience in the Life-World”Christine A. BrownI was recently asked to settle a friendly debate between two college graduates. The first, my daughter's boyfriend, argued that someone with talent and motivation could become as creative a composer without formal musical training as with it. The other, my daughter, vigorously countered that while someone might compose well on one's own, (...) the result would not be as versatile or thoughtfully developed as it could be with good formal instruction. I saw the musical educations of the debaters reflected in their arguments. My daughter had accumulated fourteen years of formal instruction in violin, cello, voice, and dance and took part in high school choral, theatrical, and orchestral performances. Her studies continued into college and from time to time she performs in community theater. Her boyfriend was the only musically trained member of his family. At his own request he studied piano for five years, later channeling his musical energies into a rock group. Though he did not study music in college, he continues to play keyboard and guitar. Both agree that the ongoing debate between them illustrates the strong connection between musical training and musical valuing. The life-world of their experiences shaped their judgments of musical quality and left imprints on their views of what matters more, talent or training. I will return to this scenario later.I find solid points of agreement with Eva Alerby and Cecilia Ferm starting with their premise that music learning is most effective when taught within a context. While some students prefer learning in a linear, rule-oriented setting, more often than not a musical concept will be comprehended best if it is first experienced within a variety of works. Regarding extra-musical contexts, furthermore, recent evidence supporting the integration of subject areas at the elementary level appears to extend the boundaries of musical learning in a positive direction. Additionally, the authors' description of embodied musical learning holds great interest. Their argument that musical learning must be appropriated within the body resonates strongly within me as I reflect upon performing and teaching piano. Experience with beginning level adult pianists suggests to me that once the awkwardness of newly-learned movements fades with time and effort, students often discover a close interaction between their physical and conceptual knowledge of music. Of related interest is the authors' definition of musicality as taking embodied musical knowledge and making it one's own. This surpasses physical mastery of an instrument and describes a personal [End Page 208] and emotional investment in music. It is at this point in the essay that the recognizable link between mind, body, and emotion in music is most clear.Alongside these engaging ideas, however, are statements throughout the essay that invite further questions or comments. First among these is the statement that the knowledge resulting from learning is not always what was intended or planned. While this is often the case, elaboration upon modes of knowledge in question would help clarify the authors' ideas. Since knowledge takes a variety of forms, as the authors imply, these forms should be explored, defined, and applied to the process of teaching and learning music.Related to that suggestion is my response to the statement that the aim of music education is to produce musical knowledge. I am assuming that musical knowledge includes an age-appropriate blend of performance skill, reading ability, ear training, historical and cultural connections, basic theoretical and stylistic understanding, and acquaintance with creative processes. In many regions of our country, public arts education has been de-valued to the extent that we must convince administrators, parents, and sometimes students, of its importance. Until this situation improves, I must personally consider the aim of music education as producing, alongside musical knowledge, the desire for music as a lifelong pursuit, be it active or passive. Without this desire, musical knowledge gained often goes unused. Referring to my opening anecdote, my daughter is not participating in music while her less extensively trained boyfriend is. I know of several students like her who gained expertise on an instrument and who have now stopped playing for... (shrink)

The INBIOSA project brings together a group of experts across many disciplines who believe that science requires a revolutionary transformative step in order to address many of the vexing challenges presented by the world. It is INBIOSA’s purpose to enable the focused collaboration of an interdisciplinary community of original thinkers. This paper sets out the case for support for this effort. The focus of the transformative research program proposal is biology-centric. We admit that biology to date has been more (...) fact-oriented and less theoretical than physics. However, the key leverageable idea is that careful extension of the science of living systems can be more effectively applied to some of our most vexing modern problems than the prevailing scheme, derived from abstractions in physics. While these have some universal application and demonstrate computational advantages, they are not theoretically mandated for the living. A new set of mathematical abstractions derived from biology can now be similarly extended. This is made possible by leveraging new formal tools to understand abstraction and enable computability. [The latter has a much expanded meaning in our context from the one known and used in computer science and biology today, that is "by rote algorithmic means", since it is not known if a living system is computable in this sense (Mossio et al., 2009).] Two major challenges constitute the effort. The first challenge is to design an original general system of abstractions within the biological domain. The initial issue is descriptive leading to the explanatory. There has not yet been a serious formal examination of the abstractions of the biological domain. What is used today is an amalgam; much is inherited from physics (via the bridging abstractions of chemistry) and there are many new abstractions from advances in mathematics (incentivized by the need for more capable computational analyses). Interspersed are abstractions, concepts and underlying assumptions “native” to biology and distinct from the mechanical language of physics and computation as we know them. A pressing agenda should be to single out the most concrete and at the same time the most fundamental process-units in biology and to recruit them into the descriptive domain. Therefore, the first challenge is to build a coherent formal system of abstractions and operations that is truly native to living systems. Nothing will be thrown away, but many common methods will be philosophically recast, just as in physics relativity subsumed and reinterpreted Newtonian mechanics. -/- This step is required because we need a comprehensible, formal system to apply in many domains. Emphasis should be placed on the distinction between multi-perspective analysis and synthesis and on what could be the basic terms or tools needed. The second challenge is relatively simple: the actual application of this set of biology-centric ways and means to cross-disciplinary problems. In its early stages, this will seem to be a “new science”. This White Paper sets out the case of continuing support of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for transformative research in biology and information processing centered on paradigm changes in the epistemological, ontological, mathematical and computational bases of the science of living systems. Today, curiously, living systems cannot be said to be anything more than dissipative structures organized internally by genetic information. There is not anything substantially different from abiotic systems other than the empirical nature of their robustness. We believe that there are other new and unique properties and patterns comprehensible at this bio-logical level. The report lays out a fundamental set of approaches to articulate these properties and patterns, and is composed as follows. -/- Sections 1 through 4 (preamble, introduction, motivation and major biomathematical problems) are incipient. Section 5 describes the issues affecting Integral Biomathics and Section 6 -- the aspects of the Grand Challenge we face with this project. Section 7 contemplates the effort to formalize a General Theory of Living Systems (GTLS) from what we have today. The goal is to have a formal system, equivalent to that which exists in the physics community. Here we define how to perceive the role of time in biology. Section 8 describes the initial efforts to apply this general theory of living systems in many domains, with special emphasis on crossdisciplinary problems and multiple domains spanning both “hard” and “soft” sciences. The expected result is a coherent collection of integrated mathematical techniques. Section 9 discusses the first two test cases, project proposals, of our approach. They are designed to demonstrate the ability of our approach to address “wicked problems” which span across physics, chemistry, biology, societies and societal dynamics. The solutions require integrated measurable results at multiple levels known as “grand challenges” to existing methods. Finally, Section 10 adheres to an appeal for action, advocating the necessity for further long-term support of the INBIOSA program. -/- The report is concluded with preliminary non-exclusive list of challenging research themes to address, as well as required administrative actions. The efforts described in the ten sections of this White Paper will proceed concurrently. Collectively, they describe a program that can be managed and measured as it progresses. (shrink)

This paper’s main contention is that some basically methodological developments in science which are apparently distant and unrelated can be seen as part of a sequential story. Focusing on general inferential and epistemological matters, the paper links occurrences separated by both in time and space, by formal and representational issues rather than social or disciplinary links. It focuses on a few limited aspects of several cognitive practices in medical and biological contexts separated by geography, disciplines and decades, but connected by (...) long term transdisciplinary representational and inferential structures and constraints. The paper intends to show a given set of knowledge claims based on organizing statistically empirical data can be seen to have been underpinned by a previous, more familiar, and probably more natural, narrative handling of similar evidence. To achieve that this paper moves from medicine in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century in England among gentleman naturalists, following its subject: the shift from narrative depiction of hereditary transmission of physical peculiarities to posterior statistical articulations of the same phenomena. Some early defenders of heredity as an important causal presence in the understanding of life adopted singular narratives, in the form of case stories from medical and natural history traditions, to flesh out a special kind of causality peculiar to heredity. This work tries to reconstruct historically the rationale that drove the use of such narratives. It then shows that when this rationale was methodologically challenged, its basic narrative and probabilistic underpinings were transferred to the statistical quantificational tools that took their place. (shrink)