The concept of precision medicine aims to tailor treatment based on data unique to the patient. An example is the use of genetic data from malignant tumours to select the most appropriate oncological treatment. The competing interests of utilitarianism and egoism create dilemmas for decisions regarding investment in precision medicine. The need to balance the perceived rights and needs of individuals against those of society as a whole is an on-going challenge in the distribution of limited health service resources. There (...) is need for proper planning, organisation and investment into precision medicine to cope with the consequences of both direct-to-consumer and healthcare-directed genetic testing for genetic counselling, therapeutics and diagnostic networks. Consideration needs to be given to providing adequate time and training to allow for meaningful shared decision-making with patients and there is a strong case in support of a hub-and-spoke model to provide rapid, solid tumour genetic mutational analysis to prevent patients missing out on beneficial treatments. (shrink)

“To this day, partiality approaches to the paradox have been dogged by the so-called ‘Strengthened Liar’. .... The Strengthened Liar observes that if we follow a partiality theorist and declare the Liar sentence* neither true nor false (or failing to express a proposition,. or suffering from some sort of grave semantic defect), then the paradox is only pushed back. For we can go on to conclude that whatever this status may be, it implies that the Liar sentence is not true. (...) This claim is true, but it is just the Liar sentence again.* We are back in paradox.” (Glanzberg 2002, p. 468, bold emphasis added.) Cf.: “We are back in our contradiction,”(Glanzberg 2001, p. 222). *The Liar sentence intended is evidently the sentence ‘the Liar sentence is not true’, and, the Liar sentence = ‘the Liar sentence is not true’. Cf.: “Consider a Liar sentence: ...let us take a sentence l which says l is not true. We can, informally, reason as.. (shrink)

‘The Final “Thank You”’ uses the work of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche to think the occasion of the 1995 rugby World Cup, hosted by the newly democratic South Africa. This paper deploys Nietzsche's Zarathustra to critique how a figure such as Nelson Mandela is understood as a ‘Superman’ or an ‘Overhuman’ in the moment of political transition. The philosophical focus of the paper, however, turns on the ‘thank yous’ exchanged by the white South African rugby captain, François Pienaar, and (...) the black president at the event of the Springbok victory. It is the value, and the proximity and negation, of the ‘thank yous’ – the relation of one to the other – that constitutes the core of the article.1. (shrink)

(2013). The Final Volley in the Strauss Wars? The European Legacy: Vol. 18, Reflections on the Future University, pp. 78-82. doi: 10.1080/10848770.2012.722526.

As we know, the whole system of Hegel 's thought is based totally on the self-development process of the Geist. In other words, according to dialectical scheme of neoplatonism which Proclus systematized as a triad, μονή-πρόοδος-ἐπιστροφή, Hegel says that the Geist remains in himself, comes out from himself, and then returns to himself. With this process of self-development of the Geist, Hegel tries to explain the realities in general such as nature, history, art, religion, and philosophy. This process of the (...) development of the Geist makes a circle mode with the triadic way of an sich - für sich - an und für sich, but itself as the final destination of the Geist after finishing the whole process, is not a mere itself at the beginning, but the completed itself filled with the self-consciousness and freedom in full bloom. The last moment when the Geist returns to itself, Hegel says it is ‘Ruhe in Gott’. This is the final moment which the Geist as reality of the world and the history arrives and also the conclusion of his philosophy. Then, what happens to this final stage of the return of the Geist to itself, and what does it mean? Most of all, Hegel saw that, as the goal of world history is the achievement of self-consciousness of the Geist on its freedom and the realization of the freedom, this goal was achieved in the self-return of the Geist. And he has seen that the finite and the infinite, which showed constant opposition in the history of Western thought, are united here. According to Hegel, the infinite and finite in the bad concept that came out of the intellect(Verstand) are confronted with each other, and existence and non-existence are substantially separated. However, in the true concept of the infinite derived from reason(Vernunft), is formed the unified moment, in which the confrontations of both parties has been resolved and everything had been included in itself. The transcendence that he advocates is not a transmundane transcendence that is separated absolutely from the finite sensory world in existence and then unreachable absolutely, but a ‘right transcendence’ in which the finite and the infinite are really inseparable and remain as moments of the process of the Geist. In his view, the former which Platonism represents in Western philosophy, is an 'empty transcendence,' but the transcendence that he speaks is a 'full transcendence' that encompasses all moments of the finite in itself. The return of the absolute idea to itself means not only the sublation (Aufhebung) of the finite but also the the sublation of the reality, of the other, of the outwardness, of the abandonment of history, and secures the opposites to those such as ideality, self-identity, inwardness, and trans-historicity. Hegel's Geist as returning to itself has self-consciousness recognizing that it negates and rules the world and the history at the same time. In other words, it is honored and then the glorifying of God has been achieved in the consciousness of itself as the Absolute that it has been the only subject and the sole ruler of world history. According to Hegel, this glorifying of God is the most valuable object of the Geist and history. The Geist that has completed the process of self-development in the return to the itself enjoys the serenity, which is not a 'vacant serenity' but a ‘full serenity’ integrating the finite and the infinite into its inner simplicity. Hegel regarded the transition from the other to being self-internal as a transition from necessity to freedom, and in this serenity the Geist enjoys the freedom that it has in its own nature, as possible as it can. That is to say, in this serenity, the Geist becomes absolutely free and became itself, negating and sublating all other-being(Anderssein). In his view, the "Serenity in God," where the Geist becomes itself and its absolute freedom is obtained, is the ultimate goal of the Geist, and the omega point of the history. (shrink)

Proponents of physical intentionality argue that the classic hallmarks of intentionality highlighted by Brentano are also found in purely physical powers. Critics worry that this idea is metaphysically obscure at best, and at worst leads to panpsychism or animism. I examine the debate in detail, finding both confusion and illumination in the physical intentionalist thesis. Analysing a number of the canonical features of intentionality, I show that they all point to one overarching phenomenon of which both the mental and the (...) physical are kinds, namely finality. This is the finality of ‘final causes’, the long-discarded idea of universal action for an end to which recent proponents of physical intentionality are in fact pointing whether or not they realise it. I explain finality in terms of the concept of specific indifference, arguing that in the case of the mental, specific indifference is realised by the process of abstraction, which has no correlate in the case of physical powers. This analysis, I conclude, reveals both the strength and weakness of rational creatures such as us, as well as demystifying the way in which powers work. (shrink)

Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity presents the character of the liberal ironist. An ironist is a person that has pressing and continuing doubts about her “final vocabulary.” A final vocabulary is a set of words that one uses to justify and narrate oneself. An interesting question is why words, and not beliefs, are used by Rorty to characterize someone’s identity. In this paper I take a step back from liberal ironism and focus on the notion of “final vocabulary” (...) and its role on a Rortian picture of moral identity. In order to do this, I explore it alongside concepts from the field of sociolinguistics and from other pragmatist theories of selfhood. I claim that Rorty presents important insights for a pragmatic naturalist conception of our moral identities. (shrink)

The existence of a final coalgebra is equivalent to the existence of a formal logic with a set of formulas that has the Hennessy–Milner property of distinguishing coalgebraic states up to bisimilarity. This applies to coalgebras of any functor on the category of sets for which the bisimilarity relation is transitive. There are cases of functors that do have logics with the Hennessy–Milner property, but the only such logics have a proper class of formulas. The main theorem gives a representation (...) of states of the final coalgebra as certain satisfiable sets of formulas. The key technical fact used is that any function between coalgebras that is truth-preserving and has a simple codomain must be a coalgebraic morphism. (shrink)

Este trabajo, quiere considerar retórica y narrativamente el relato de Pablo acerca del conflicto de Antioquía, para proponer como tesis, que el final abierto de Pablo en su descripción del conflicto de Antioquía es una estrategia retórica consciente y deseada, que genera tensión en su auditorio gálata, en orden a presentar la afirmación teológica central de la carta: “somos salvados en Cristo por la fe y no por las obras de la ley”, una tesis que quiere sostener su mensaje principal (...) a la comunidad gálata «no os circuncidéis», si lo hacéis, “Cristo no os servirá de nada”. (shrink)

Are we now in a position to give a "final accounting" of Freud's work? Before answering, I should say what this means, or rather what I mean. If we mean a verdict that is certain, in the sense that it could not possibly be overturned by new  ...

The Common Rule originally issued in 1991 and last amended in 2005 is scheduled to be replaced on January 19, 2018 by a revised Common Rule. The goal of the revisions is to modernize and improve applicability of the rule to a research landscape that has dramatically changed since 1991. Translating these changes into action will require comprehensive understanding of the final rule and detailed implementation planning by Human Research Protection Programs. This paper presents select changes that require substantial attention; (...) including for example: expansion of the exempt category, changes to continuing review requirements, changes to the informed consent form and the use of single IRBs for domestic multi-site research. In addition, myriad policies, procedures and workflows will have to be developed, drastically rewritten, or just mildly tweaked. (shrink)

Finality suggests an unchangeable conclusion. It also raises the idea of a goal towards which a reality is directed. This is the sense in which one finds the final cause in Aristotle and other philosophers. Nearly everyone feels helpless before finality. This is because it evokes the spectrum of finitude as it appears to occur in the dead. No one in the prime of life and at the peak of health, wealth, pleasure and hopeful optimism actively desires death. (...) Yet like a shadow, the awareness of a possible sudden end stalks at everyone. It is not the most comfortable feeling. This raises a situation where both the idea and the reality of death must be confronted in order to make sense of life. Has it meaning? Is it destined or free floating? How and when will life end or does it even have an absolute termination at all? Is death life’s last unassailable barrier or just a simple demarcation from other forms of conscious existence in some way? Though often never put into words, failure to engage these questions raises conundrum. Attempts to answer them form and inform cultures, nourish customs, create traditions, inspire inventions, and generally stimulate the human spirit. They keep religions alive, engage thinkers, inspire fidelity to cultural roots and symbols and fire up the spirit of research. It is the position of this paper that confronting human finality is at the service of valorizing human life further. It is like an unseen engine that keeps the vehicle alive. Thus, life approaches death while death serves life. It (death) forbids anyone at the level of the intellect, experience and knowledge from making any absolute positive claims regarding the termination of life. Confronting death psychologically, physically and spiritually requires specific perspectives since each man must face it inevitably in his person and each culture and religion must make sense of it in its own way. That is what this study examines. (shrink)

An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages. This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a (...) strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Michael Zimmerman’s account of basic final value in The Nature of Intrinsic Value. Zimmerman’s account has several positive features. Unfortunately, as I argue, given one plausible assumption about value his account derives a contradiction. I argue that rejecting that assumption has several implausible results and that we should instead reject Zimmerman’s account. I then sketch an alternative account of basic final value, showing how it retains some of the positive features of Zimmerman’s account while avoiding its (...) pitfalls. (shrink)

Gerdessen, H. Die einwirkung der willensbetätigung auf die eigenschaften der bezugsvorstellungen.--Ach, N., und Margaritzky, S. Über die sensorische einstellung beim heben von gewichten.--Kohlhagen, F. Über die gefügigkeitsqualität und ihre bedeutung für die kategorie.--Ach, N. Finale qualität (gefügigkeitsqualität) und objektion.

How does valuing something for its own sake differ from valuing an entity for the sake of other things? Although numerous answers come to mind, many of them rule out substantive views about what is valuable for its own sake. I therefore seek to provide a more neutral way to distinguish the two valuing attitudes. Drawing from existing accounts of valuing, I argue that the two can be distinguished in terms of a conative-volitional feature. Focusing first on “non-final valuing”—i.e. valuing_ (...) x_ for the sake of something else—I argue that it involves adopting certain reasons on account of a desire for _x_ to contribute to other things. I then show how this contrasts final valuing. The result, I argue, is a plausible account of how the two modes of valuing differ that leaves open substantive views about what all can be valued for its own sake. This is helpful because it develops a popular methodology used to explore the value of a wide range of things, including natural entities, family heirlooms, and artworks, as well as, more broadly, entities that might have “extrinsic final value.”. (shrink)

Henry Richardson argues that we can determine our ends rationally. He constructs a rich and original theory of how we can reason about our final goals. Richardson defuses the counter-arguments for the limits of rational deliberation, and develops interesting ideas about how his model might be extended to interpersonal deliberation of ends, taking him to the borders of political theory. Along the way Richardson offers illuminating discussions of, inter alia, Aristotle, Aquinas, Sidgwick, and Dewey, as well as the work of (...) several contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

Kant's final conception of the relation of God and morality, and the fullest development of the metaphysical context of morality is to be found in the large collection of notes and jottings written down by Kant between about 1790‐1803, which have been collected as the Opus Postumum. There is a development in the Opus Postumum from the Critical doctrine that ‘God’ is a postulate which can have no direct influence on the moral life, an unknown, unexperiencable somewhat which makes the (...) summum bonum possible. The basic problem is that Kant has left a deeply religious ethics expressed in a radically humanistic terminology. He propounds a view of man as involved in an impersonal but purposive nature. In trying to replace speculative rationalism by a voluntaristic rationalism, Kant attempts to find a via media between the rationalism of Wolff and the stress on individual moral freedom of Pietism. (shrink)

His final set of lectures at the College de France, described here by Thomas Flynn, focused on the concept of truth-telling as a moral virtue in the ancient ...

The article examines the role of the Last Judgment in Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy. It argues that the central ontological structure of Agamben’s early thought is that of the perpetually occurring origin. The figure of the perpetual final judgment captures precisely this ontological structure. In order to explicate this figure, the article examines Agamben’s relation to the Heideggerian project of the “destruction of judgment” in two steps. First, it examines the way Agamben turns the methodology of “destruction” into the project of (...) “decreation.” Second, it examines the Agambenian critique of judgment in terms of the perpetually occurring Last Judgment. The essay concludes with a brief examination of the Homo Sacer project and argues that “bare life” should be understood as life lived under this perpetual final judgment. (shrink)

Malformations concerning the ventral body wall constitute one of the leading categories of human birth defects and are present in about one out of every 2000 live births. Although the occurrence of these defects is relatively common, few detailed experimental studies exist on the development and closure of the ventral body wall in mouse and human. This field is further complicated by the array of theories on the pathogenesis of body wall defects and the likelihood that there is no single (...) cause for these abnormalities. In this review, we summarize what is known concerning the mechanisms of normal ventral body wall closure in humans and mice. We then outline the theories that have been proposed concerning human body wall closure abnormalities and examine the growing number of mouse mutations that impact normal ventral body wall closure. Finally, we speculate how studies in animal models such as mouse and Drosophila are beginning to provide a much‐needed mechanistic framework with which to identify and characterize the genes and tissues required for this vital aspect of human embryogenesis. BioEssays 26:1307–1321, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Com base na crítica que Hume faz ao argumento do desígnio, especialmente nas partes 10 e 11 dos Diálogos sobre a Religião Natural, meu objetivo neste artigo é, a partir de uma análise da relação entre a existência do mal no mundo e a suposta existência de uma divindade possuidora dos atributos tradicionais do teísmo, defender a tese segundo a qual o tratamento que Hume dá ao problema do mal corresponde, digamos assim, à cartada final – o último e decisivo (...) recurso que Philo personagem que articula essa crítica) aciona para mostrar que o argumento do desígnio não fornece bases suficientemente sólidas e consistentes para dar suporte à crença na existência de um Deus maximamente poderoso, justo e benevolente; e que, portanto, a existência do mal no mundo tem uma força argumentativa tal que a improbabilidade da existência de Deus é maior do que com base nos argumentos apresentados nas partes 2 a 8 dos Diálogos. Isso significa que eu tomo aqui o problema do mal como o maior problema para o teísta experimental – cuja argumentação pretende provar a existência de Deus a partir da observação dos fenômenos do mundo. (shrink)

From the perspective of an African ethic, analytically interpreted as a philosophical principle of right action, what are the proper final ends of a publicly funded university and how should they be ranked? To answer this question, I first provide a brief but inclusive review of the literature on Africanising higher education from the past 50 years, and contend that the prominent final ends suggested in it can be reduced to five major categories. Then, I spell out an intuitively attractive (...) African moral theory and apply it to these five final ends, arguing that three of them are appropriate but that two of them are not. After that, I maintain that the African moral theory prescribes two additional final ends for a public university that are not salient in the literature. Next, I argue that employing the African moral theory as I do enables one to rebut several criticisms of Africanising higher education that have recently been made from a liberal perspective. I conclude by posing questions suitable for future research. (shrink)

Summary According to the so-called Starnberger Group1, the amenability of a science to science policy measures, conceptualised by the Group in terms of finalization , depends crucially on conditions intrinsic to the science not invariably present at every stage of its development. Finalization is possible only at junctures where the science in question faces methodologically divergent alternative lines of development. The most significant kind of case depends on the presence of completed , or classical , theories.

O objetivo desse artigo é tentar compreender como se processa a percepção visual, segundo Aristóteles. Para alcançar tal propósito, avançarei a hipótese interpretativa segundo a qual a ocorrência da visão é o resultado de uma ‘duplicidade causal’, na qual estão necessariamente envolvidos tanto fatores materiais, correspondentes à causa material-eficiente, quanto fatores ‘não-materiais’, referentes à causa formal-final. A escolha por privilegiar essa ‘duplicidade causal’ se deve ao fato que a mesma parece estar em perfeita consonância com o hilemorfismo aristotélico, algo que (...) parece ser escamoteado tanto na interpretação ‘literalista’, quanto na ‘espiritualista’. (shrink)

At the beginning of the series, a dozen young women are introduced as potential mates for the eligible young bachelor. The audience accompanies the couples on their limo-escorted dates, meets the bachelor's family and friends, listens to their evaluation of the bride, and watches expectantly as the smiling Prince Charming singles out a few finalists for his attention. As the weeks pass by, one by one, tearful young women are dismissed from the show as the presentation of the final rose (...) that signifies singular devotion draws near. In the end, only two young women remain, and only one can receive…. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that sports at their best qualify as final ends, that is, as ends whose value is such that they ground not only the practices whose ends they are, but everything else we do as human agents. The argument I provide to support my thesis is derived from Harry Frankfurt's provocative work on the importance of the things we care about, more specifically, on his claim that it is by virtue of caring about things and practices, (...) really caring about them ? even loving them ? we are able to regard and treat them as final ends. Sports, I claim, are paradigmatic examples of practices cared about and loved in these deep ways, and as such deserve to be considered, rather than dismissed because of their supposed triviality, as one of those ends around which a life most worth living can be legitimately forged. (shrink)

I remember being intrigued by the title of this book years ago, as it is a revised and updated version of an earlier work of Michael Grosso. The title seems to imply that we all have a choice as we are leaving the physical body, the option of expiring into nothingness or moving to a realm beyond the material world. I wondered why one would choose the former, and exactly who is making that choice? By the time one finishes the (...) logical sequence of evidence, history, and theory that unfolds in the book, it becomes clear that the title’s inference is not what some might expect. Grosso believes that there are no final choices. Accepting finality is not logical when one comes to believe that our consciousness survives bodily death, and he believes that physical death is not permanent extinction, but a gateway to more living. The underlying and not so subtle message in the book has not only stood the test of time, but has become more relevant in view of today’s state of affairs. Considering the increasing threat of nuclear obliteration, climatic shifts, world divisiveness and conflict, natural disasters, pollution, famine, mass shootings, drug epidemics, and refugees roaming the planet, are these potential calamities something that could jolt the collective mind into a greater spiritual reality? The author has an interesting theory based upon near death experience research. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Cybernetics, Reflexivity and Second-Order Science” by Louis H. Kauffman. Upshot: One of cybernetics most confusing and least understood concepts is that of the eigenform. With this article Kauffman has enabled a clear understanding of the concept as “the coherence of a situation that allows a distinction to be made.”.

Writing the Final Degree Project is a difficult task for most undergraduate students. This is the case of Computer Engineering, a discipline in which the proper presentation of results is a complex written production activity. The RESULTS section is more complicated than others due to its structure, its communicative purposes and the way to achieve them. While there have been some descriptions of its rhetorical-discursive organization, most have focused on the prototypical organization of only one of the types of TFGs (...) produced in this discipline. Therefore, in this mixed research of descriptive scope, we rhetorically-discursively analyze the RESULTS section of Computer Engineering TFG’s, considering the particularities of the different types of TFG’s existing within the discipline. To this end, using genre analysis, we analyzed 117 RESULTS sections of Computer Engineering Final Degree Project. Among our findings, it is observed that in the section the moves ‘Present preparatory information’, ‘Report results’ and ‘Interpret results’ are prototypically employed. In turn, variations in the rhetorical-discursive organization are established, which are related to the 4 types of TFG that occur in the discipline. We conclude that there are 4 types of TFG in Computer Engineering, which affect the rhetorical-discursive organization of the RESULTS section. At the same time, we argue that attention should be paid to the particularities of the genre and of each section, since due to the different purposes pursued in each of them, the discursive functional units used differ from each other. (shrink)

The range of this volume, and thus the task especially of its editor, is enormous: to confront the question of teleology from Plato through Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas’s commentaries on the Physics, Copernicus, Machiavelli, Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, and Newton, to Kant, Hegel, and then to Einstein, and to recent theories of anthropic-principle cosmology or else versions of the many-worlds cosmology of chance and necessity, and then to Niels Bohr and quantum mechanics, and finally to the problem of current molecular-biological theories (...) of evolution. (shrink)