Neural tube defects are one of the commonest human birth defects, with more than 0.5% of some populations affected. Mouse models are being used in an attempt to identify genes that could be involved in these malformations. Only two mouse mutations are known to lead to craniorachischisis, failure of closure of almost the entire neural tube. Two recent papers report that the gene for one of these, Loop‐tail, has now been identified and sequenced.1, 2 It has been given the designation (...) Ltap/Lpp1 and appears to function in floor plate formation. It will be of great interest to investigate the role of this gene in human neural tube defects. BioEssays 24:580–583, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Conscience in Reproductive Health Care responds to the growing worldwide trend of health care professionals conscientiously refusing to provide abortions and similar reproductive health services in countries where these services are legal and professionally accepted. Carolyn McLeod argues that conscientious objectors in health care should prioritize the interests of patients in receiving care over their own interest in acting on their conscience. She defends this "prioritizing approach" to conscientious objection over the more popular "compromise approach" without downplaying the importance (...) of health care professionals having a conscience or the moral complexity of their conscientious refusals. McLeod's central argument is that health care professionals who are gatekeepers of services such as abortions are fiduciaries for their patients and for the public they are licensed to serve. As such, they owe a duty of loyalty to these beneficiaries and should give primacy to their beneficiaries' interests in accessing care. This conclusion is informed by what McLeod believes is morally at stake for the main parties to the conflicts generated by conscientious refusals: the objector and the patient. What is at stake, according to McLeod, depends on the relevant socio-political context, but typically includes the objector's integrity and the patient's interest in avoiding harm. (shrink)

Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western culture from Columbus' voyages to today's tropical island retreats. Few narratives are so powerful - and, as Carolyn Merchant shows, so misguided and destructive - as the dream of recapturing a lost paradise. A sweeping account of these quixotic endeavors by one of America's leading environmentalists, Reinventing Eden traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations in shopping malls, theme parks (...) and gated communities. With eloquence and insight, Merchant shows how the drive to conquer nature and to explore and settle the globe, springs from this utopian pastoral impulse throughout Western history. Time and again, human manipulation of the environment is our downfall: Eden is achieved by fencing off pristine beauty in national parks and wildlife preserves, while leaving the majority of the earth in ruins. Challenging both narratives, Merchant argues that the green veneer of city-park conservation has become a cover for the corruption of the earth and the neglect of its environment. Reinventing Eden is a bold new way to think about the earth that includes green political parties, sustainable development and a partnership between humans and earth that is nothing short of an ecological revolution. (shrink)

Attention is the basis of our free will, allowing us to direct our minds as we choose. Technology poses a threat to this individual agency, writes Carolyn Dicey Jennings, but may also yield new rewards. Social media harnesses our attention for incentives that aren’t our own, sublimating it into the interests of the group. We are trading our individual power for collective power, and we need to understand the risks and benefits of doing this.

Let Carolyn Jane Bohler inspire you to consider a wide range of images of God in order to refine how you imagine God to have and use power, and how God wills ...

The Unnaturalness Objection to De-Extinction: A Critical Evaluation Carolyn Mason, University of Canterbury, New Zealand Abstract De-extinction of species has been criticised for being unnatural, as have the techniques that might be used to accomplish de-extinction. This objection of unnaturalness will be dismissed by those who claim that everything that humans do is natural, by those who claim that naturalness is a social construct, and by those who argue that ethical concerns arising from considerations of unnaturalness rest on a (...) failure properly to distinguish facts from values. However, none of these criticisms of the objection of unnaturalness is convincing, for reasons I will explain in this paper. The objection of unnaturalness might be motivated by concerns about either: (i) the attitude to nature that underpins de-extinction practices; or (ii) the consequences of interfering with nature. I show that objections of type (i) are rare in the literature, while objections of type (ii) can generally be ameliorated by working with cultures that have ties to the flora and fauna at issue, careful research into the value and nature of ecological systems, limiting risky activities, and limiting the use of de-extinction processes whenever their consequences are unclear. I conclude that the unnaturalness objection to de-extinction is of real but limited force. It gives reasons for caution rather than prohibition. (shrink)

Things: In Touch with the Past explores the value of artifacts that have survived from the past and that can be said to "embody" their histories. Such genuine or "real" things afford a particular kind of aesthetic experience-an encounter with the past-despite the fact that genuineness is not a perceptually detectable property.

The authors of these essays--including Judith Butler, Elizabeth Weed, and Rosi Braidotti--shed new light on the relationship of Irigaray to many of the philosophers she has "romanced," from Aristotle to Deleuze.

The reproductive rights of women have been a central topic in feminist bioethics. The focus has been predominantly on the right not to reproduce, and so not to be subject to pronatalist social forces that make motherhood compulsory for women. That is the case despite many women and other members of marginalized groups experiencing anti-natalism, or in other words, social pressure to avoid biological reproduction. For these groups, the right to reproduce is as important, if not more important, than the (...) right not to reproduce. This chapter concentrates on the right to reproduce and considers what form it should take in feminist bioethics. The main claim of the chapter is that feminists should ground the right in the need to protect marginalized groups from anti-natalism. (shrink)

With the arrival of European explorers and settlers during the seventeenth century, Native American ways of life and the environment itself underwent radical alterations as human relationships to the land and ways of thinking about nature all changed. This colonial ecological revolution held sway until the nineteenth century, when New England's industrial production brought on a capitalist revolution that again remade the ecology, economy, and conceptions of nature in the region. In Ecological Revolutions, Carolyn Merchant analyzes these two major (...) transformations in the New England environment between 1600 and 1860. In a preface to the second edition, Merchant introduces new ideas about narrating environmental change based on gender and the dialectics of transformation, while the revised epilogue situates New England in the context of twenty-first-century globalization and climate change. Merchant argues that past ways of relating to the land could become an inspiration for renewing resources and achieving sustainability in the future. (shrink)

Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities is a collection of original essays proposing a fresh examination of epistemological questions relevant to scholars in any discipline of the humanities. Is objective knowledge still a viable ideal? Can art produce or express knowledge of any kind? Is the body a promising medium for a knowledge less abstract or logocentric than the kind Western culture has favoured so far? How are epistemological regimes maintained with the use of established linguistic tropes? (...) Is knowledge to be resisted or employed as a tool of resistance? Distinguished as well as young, emerging scholars from disciplines such as philosophy, comparative literature, musicology and art theory discuss concrete case studies in which these questions arise. The essays share a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches and the close analysis of cultural objects, and refuse to take for granted the conventional methodologies that often guide research projects in their respective fields. The Inside Knowledge volume stages encounters between different ways of knowing, which contribute to an interdiciplinary understanding of the concept of knowledge and of epistemological questions in the humanities. (shrink)

No detailed description available for "Studies in the Scientific and Mathematical Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce".

The language of propositional modal logic is extended by the introduction of sequents. Validity of a modal sequent on a frame is defined, and modal sequent-axiomatic classes of frames are introduced. Through the use of modal algebras and general frames, a study of the properties of such classes is begun.

In this adventurous contribution to the project of combining philosophy and biology to understand the mind, Carolyn Price investigates what it means to say that mental states--like thoughts, wishes, and perceptual experiences--are about things in the natural world. Her insight into this deep philosophical problem offers a novel teleological account of intentional content, grounded in and shaped by a carefully constructed theory of functions. Along the way she defends her view from recent objections to teleological theories and indicates how (...) it might be applied to notable problems in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The power of new medical technologies, the cultural authority of physicians, and the gendered power dynamics of many patient-physician relationships can all inhibit women's reproductive freedom. Often these factors interfere with women's ability to trust themselves to choose and act in ways that are consistent with their own goals and values. In this book Carolyn McLeod introduces to the reproductive ethics literature the idea that in reproductive health care women's self-trust can be undermined in ways that threaten their autonomy. (...) Understanding the importance of self-trust for autonomy, McLeod argues, is crucial to understanding the limits on women's reproductive freedom. -/- McLeod brings feminist insights in philosophical moral psychology to reproductive ethics, and to health-care ethics more broadly. She identifies the social environments in which self-trust is formed and encouraged. She also shows how women's experiences of reproductive health care can enrich our understanding of self-trust and autonomy as philosophical concepts. The book's theoretical components are grounded in women's concrete experiences. The cases discussed, which involve miscarriage, infertility treatment, and prenatal diagnosis, show that what many women feel toward themselves in reproductive contexts is analogous to what we feel toward others when we trust or distrust them. -/- McLeod also discusses what health-care providers can do to minimize the barriers to women's self-trust in reproductive health care, and why they have a duty to do so as part of their larger duty to respect patient autonomy. (shrink)

One understanding of conscience dominates bioethical discussion about conscience. On this view, to have a conscience is to be compelled to act in accordance with one’s own moral values for the sake of one’s “integrity,” where integrity is understood as inner or psychological unity. Conscience is deemed valuable because it promotes this quality. In this paper, I describe the dominant view, attempt to show that it is flawed, and sketch a positive alternative to it. In my opinion, conscience often fails (...) to promote inner unity (regardless of the degree of inner unity we have in mind); acting with a conscience leaves many people broken rather than unified. A better view about the value of conscience is that having a conscience encourages morally responsible agency. My goal is to prove that this alternative explains better what it means to value conscience in health care and the extent to which we ought to value it. (shrink)

A collection of essays, comments and replies on some of the contentious issues in feminist theory. Specific conversations centre on topics of debate such as feminist standpoint theory; gender as an analytic category; problems with sexual difference; and privacy and representations of the personal. Each exchange covers issues central to feminist scholarship and includes discussions from a cross-section of disciplines: political/social theory, philosophy, sociology, cultural studies and critical theory.

Harms and risks to groups and third-parties can be significant in the context of research, particularly in data-centric studies involving genomic, artificial intelligence, and/or machine learning technologies. This article explores whether and how United States federal regulations should be adapted to better align with current ethical thinking and protect group interests. Three aspects of the Common Rule deserve attention and reconsideration with respect to group interests: institutional review board (IRB) assessment of the risks/benefits of research; disclosure requirements in the informed (...) consent process; and criteria for waivers of informed consent. In accordance with respect for persons and communities, investigators and IRBs should systematically consider potential group harm when designing and reviewing protocols, respectively. Research participants should be informed about any potential group harm in the consent process. We call for additional public discussion, empirical research, and normative analysis on these issues to determine the right regulatory and policy path forward. (shrink)

Harms and risks to groups and third-parties can be significant in the context of research, particularly in data-centric studies involving genomic, artificial intelligence, and/or machine learning technologies. This article explores whether and how United States federal regulations should be adapted to better align with current ethical thinking and protect group interests. Three aspects of the Common Rule deserve attention and reconsideration with respect to group interests: institutional review board (IRB) assessment of the risks/benefits of research; disclosure requirements in the informed (...) consent process; and criteria for waivers of informed consent. In accordance with respect for persons and communities, investigators and IRBs should systematically consider potential group harm when designing and reviewing protocols, respectively. Research participants should be informed about any potential group harm in the consent process. We call for additional public discussion, empirical research, and normative analysis on these issues to determine the right regulatory and policy path forward. (shrink)

Some of the oldest and deepest questions in philosophy fall under the umbrella of consciousness and mind: What is the mind and how is it related to the body? What provides our thoughts with content? How is consciousness related to the natural world? Do we have distinctive causal powers? Analytic philosophers have made significant progress on these and related problems in the last century. Given the high volume of work on such topics, this chapter is necessarily selective. It offers major (...) touchstones but is slanted in favor of work that touches base with the sciences. The chapter starts by describing the progression of thought on the mind-body problem, from dualism and behaviorism to non-reductive materialism. It then describes the problem of intentionality, with a focus on partial solutions from Dretske and Millikan, ending with a brief discussion of 4E theories of mental content. The section on the problem of consciousness starts with the well-known knowledge and modal arguments before describing some attempted initial solutions, such as eliminative materialism and panpsychism. Finally, there is a brief section on agency and free will, which focuses on the link between free will and consciousness. (shrink)

The Normal and the Pathological is one of the crucial contributions to the history of science in the last half century. It takes as its starting point the sudden appearance of biology as a science in the 19th-century and examines the conditions determining its particular makeup.Canguilhem analyzes the radically new way in which health and disease were defined in the early 19th-century, showing that the emerging categories of the normal and the pathological were far from being objective scientific concepts. He (...) demonstrates how the epistemological foundations of modern biology and medicine were intertwined with political, economic, and technological imperatives.Canguilhem was an important influence on the thought of Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, in particular for the way in which he poses the problem of how new domains of knowledge come into being and how they are part of a discontinuous history of human thought. (shrink)

Should moods be regarded as intentional states, and, if so, what kind of intentional content do they have? I focus on irritability and apprehension, which I examine from the perspective of a teleosemantic theory of content. Eric Lormand has argued that moods are non-intentional states, distinct from emotions; Robert Solomon and Peter Goldie argue that moods are generalised emotions and that they have intentional content of a correspondingly general kind. I present a third model, on which moods are regarded, not (...) as generalised emotions, but as states of vigilance; and I argue that, on this model, moods should be regarded as intentional states of a kind quite distinct from emotions. An advantage of this account is that it allows us to distinguish between a mood of apprehension and an episode of objectless fear. (shrink)

In philosophy, the textbook case for the discussion of human motivation is the examination (and almost always, the refutation) of psychological egoism. The arguments have become part of the folklore of our tribe, from their inclusion in countless introductory texts. [...] One of my central aims has been to define the issues empirically, so we do not just settle them by definition. Although I am inclined at present to put my bets on the reward-event theory, with its internalism, monism, and (...) causal primacy of satisfaction, I think we are very far from knowing enough to settle these questions concerning motivation, human or otherwise. The winds of science will blow where they may. In the meantime, we can be a bit more circumspect about what we put in our tribal folklore. (shrink)

Academic Placement Data and Analysis (APDA) has released its complete 2017 Final Report, an 81-page document that collects data on PhD-granting philosophy programs (including ratings by former students, placement rates, and diversity) and the discipline as a whole (including hiring networks, placement maps, cluster analyses of programs, job descriptions, non-academic hiring). The report was created by Carolyn Dicey Jennings, Patrice Cobb, Pablo Contreras Kallens, and Angelo Kyrilov, all of University of California, Merced. (from Daily Nous).

Exploring a fifty-mile territory, Linda and Carolyn Dufurrena vividly depict the heart of the West and its fabled ranch culture in a beautiful collaboration of essays and full color images.

Exploring the intricacy and complexity of Walter Pater's prose, Transfigured World challenges traditional approaches to Pater and shows precise ways in which the form of his prose expresses its content. Carolyn Williams asserts that Pater's aestheticism and his historicism should be understood as dialectically interrelated critical strategies, inextricable from each other in practice. Williams discusses the explicit and embedded narratives that play a crucial role in Pater's aesthetic criticism and examines the figures that compose these narratives, including rhetorical tropes, (...) structures of argument such as genealogy, and historical or fictional personae. (shrink)

Donald Gustafson has argued that grief centres on a combination of belief and desire:The belief that the subject has suffered an irreparable loss.The desire that this should not be the case.And yet, as Gustafson points out, if the belief is true, the desire cannot be satisfied. Gustafson takes this to show that grief inevitably implies an irrational conflict between belief and desire.I offer a partial defence of grief against Gustafson's charge of irrationality. My defence rests on two elements. First, I (...) offer an alternative model of emotion, which presents emotions as complex episodes, initiated by emotional appraisals. Secondly, I appeal to John Bowlby's account of grief to argue that grief involves two forms of sadness (anguish and desolation) which Gustafson's analysis runs together. I concede that anguish does characteristically involve an element of irrationality. But the irrationality of anguish does not arise from an apparently gratuitous clash between belief and desire, but from a conflict between emotion and belief—a form of irrationality that is both familiar and easily explained. Moreover, desolation need not involve any irrationality. (shrink)

Fundamental terms in the field of ecology are ambiguous, with multiple meanings associated with them. While this could lead to confusion, discord, or even tests that violate core assumptions of a given theory or model, this ambiguity could also be a feature that allows for new knowledge creation through the interconnected nature of concepts. We approached this debate from a quantitative perspective, and investigated the cost of ambiguity related to definitions of ecological units in ecology related to the general term (...) “community.” We did a meta-analysis of tests associated with two bodies of literature, Hubbell’s unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography and Diamond’s assembly rules, that rely on a specific ecological unit that assumes that species are existing within a local area and that they have overlapping resource needs. We predicted that if ambiguous terminology is widespread, then researchers will have tested them with many different ecological units, that in addition some of these ecological units will violate the core assumptions of the theory, and finally that the overall level of support for a theory will be stronger if appropriate ecological units were used. We found that indeed multiple different ecological units were used in the literature to test both theories, with 65 percent appropriate ecological units for neutral theory tests, and only 6 percent for assembly rule tests. Finally, there was some evidence that the support for a theory depended on whether appropriate ecological units were used for neutral tests, but there was not enough data for the assembly rule tests. These results thus show that ambiguous terminology in ecology is having measurable effects on research and is not of solely philosophical concern. We advocate that authors be explicit in their writing and outline core assumptions of theories, that researchers apply these consistently in their tests, and that readers be attentive to what is written and cognizant of their potential biases. (shrink)

Taste, perhaps the most intimate of the five senses, has traditionally been considered beneath the concern of philosophy, too bound to the body, too personal and idiosyncratic. Yet, in addition to providing physical pleasure, eating and drinking bear symbolic and aesthetic value in human experience, and they continually inspire writers and artists. In Making Sense of Taste, Carolyn Korsmeyer explains how taste came to occupy so low a place in the hierarchy of senses and why it is deserving of (...) greater philosophical respect and attention. Korsmeyer begins with the Greek thinkers who classified taste as an inferior, bodily sense; she then traces the parallels between notions of aesthetic and gustatory taste that were explored in the formation of modern aesthetic theories. She presents scientific views of how taste actually works and identifies multiple components of taste experiences. Turning to taste's objects—food and drink—she looks at the different meanings they convey in art and literature as well as in ordinary human life and proposes an approach to the aesthetic value of taste that recognizes the representational and expressive roles of food. Korsmeyer's consideration of art encompasses works that employ food in contexts sacred and profane, that seek to whet the appetite and to keep it at bay; her selection of literary vignettes ranges from narratives of macabre devouring to stories of communities forged by shared eating. (shrink)