In a recent publication, Wikramanayake and colleagues have implicated the canonical Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway as a mediator of axial polarity and germ-layer specification in embryos of the cnidarian Nematostella.1 In this anthozoan, β-catenin is localized in nuclei of blastomeres in one region of the 16- to 32-cell embryo whose descendants subsequently form the entoderm of the embryo. They claim that the pattern of nuclear localization is significant for two reasons: (1) when nuclear localization of β-catenin was inhibited, gastrulation does not (...) occur, and (2) when localization of β-catenin took place in all cells of the pregastrula embryo, the number of entodermal cells increases. Since the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway also plays a role in establishing axial polarity and specifying endoderm and mesoderm in a number of bilaterians,2-6 Wikramanayake et al. imply that this developmental mechanism is an evolutionary inheritance from a radially symmetrical ancestor. Some of the gaps in the current evidence, which must be filled to evaluate their interpretation, are discussed. BioEssays 26:474–478, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Axis specification is the first step in defining specific regions of the developing embryo. Embryos exploit asymmetries, either pre‐existing in the egg or triggered by external cues, to establish embryonic axes. The axial information is then used to generate regional differences within the embryo. In this review, we discuss experiments in animals which address three questions: whether the unfertilized egg is constructed with pre‐determined axes, what cues are used to specify the embryonic axes, and how these cues are interpreted to (...) generate the initial regional differences within the embryo. Based on mapping the data onto an animal phylogeny, we then propose a scenario for how this primary developmental decision occurred in ancestral metazoans. (shrink)

There is much we do not know about nanotechnology. Despite its tremendous promise, nanotechnology today is mostly forecast and fervent hope. Predictions that spending on nanotechnology will increase from current levels of $13 billion to more than $1 trillion by 2015 are no more than that – simply predictions. Hopes that nanotechnology will be an essential part of solving the globe's energy, food, and water problems should be tempered by recalling a century of revolutionary technologies that failed to live up (...) to their early promise such as nuclear energy, supersonic airplanes, or gene therapy. Many other questions continue to nip at nanotechnology's heels, not the least of which are debates about what is and is not technically feasible. Despite these uncertainties, we can have complete confidence in one aspect of nanotechnology's future – it will be subject to a host of regulations. (shrink)

Is capitalist production unjust? It is easy to think, upon first reading Marx, that he answers this question in the affirmative. And I shall argue that this naive reading is correct. This needs to be argued, however, for a more careful scrutiny of Marx's writings reveals passages in which he seems to call capitalist production just or fair. Relying upon these passages, Robert Tucker and Allen W. Wood have urged that, in Wood's words,it is simply not the case that Marx's (...) condemnation of capitalism rests on some conception of justice, and those who attempt to reconstruct a “Marxian idea of justice” from Marx's manifold charges against capitalism are at best only translating Marx's critique of capitalism, or some aspect of it, into what Marx himself would have consistently regarded as a false, ideological, or “mystified” form.What Marx regarded as false and mystified, however, is not the practice of assessing social institutions as just or unjust, but rather the picture of those institutions, and especially of capitalist production, to be found in bourgeois ideology. (shrink)

This article examines Simpson's paradox as applied to the theory of probabilites and percentages. The author discusses possible flaws in the paradox and compares it to the Sure Thing Principle, statistical inference, causal inference and probabilistic analyses of causation.

In a recent Article Carla Kary attempts to show that there should be a significant moral difference between instances of killing and letting die. I shall maintain in Section I that Kary's argument is somewhat weakened by the failure to note an important ambiguity in the notion of killing a person. I shall also argue in Section II that a similar ambiguity affects the notion of letting someone die, and that the failure to note this latter ambiguity also weakens the (...) position developed by Robert Coburn with regard to defective newborns. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The late 20th century saw a remarkable flourishing of philosophy in France. The work of French philosophers is wide ranging, historically informed, often reaching out beyond the boundaries of philosophy; they are public intellectuals, taken seriously as contributors to debates outside the academy. Gary Gutting tells the story of the development of a distinctively French philosophy in the last four decades of the 20th century. His aim is to arrive at an account of what it was to 'do philosophy' (...) in France, what this sort of philosophizing was able to achieve, and how it differs from the analytic philosophy dominant in Anglophone countries. -/- His initial focus is on the three most important philosophers who came to prominence in the 1960s: Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida. He sets out the educational and cultural context of their work, as a basis for a detailed treatment of how they formulated and began to carry out their philosophical projects in the 1960s and 1970s. He gives a fresh assessment of their responses to the key influences of Hegel and Heidegger, and the fraught relationship of the new generation to their father-figure Sartre. He concludes that Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze can all be seen as developing their fundamental philosophical stances out of distinctive readings of Nietzsche. The second part of the book considers topics and philosophers that became prominent in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the revival of ethics in Levinas, Derrida, and Foucault, the return to phenomenology and its use to revive religious experience as a philosophical topic, and Alain Badiou's new ontology of the event. Finally Gutting brings to the fore the meta-philosophical theme of the book, that French philosophy since the 1960s has been primarily concerned with thinking the impossible. (shrink)

This paper argues (a) that the concept of “potential being” is central to the theory and practice of contemporary cosmology and evolutionary science, and (b) that the reality of potential being points to the existence of an intelligent and purposive cause of the intelligible order among potential beings that existed from the first moments of the Big Bang. The paper introduces and explains the concept of “potential being” and then traces the existence of potential beings back to the beginnings of (...) the cosmos at the instant of the Big Bang. This primeval existence of potential beings is shown to possess a character and order that points to a cause external to that order. The paper concludes with a consideration of the features that must be possessed by that external cause in order to make sense of what we know. (shrink)

Davidson's paratactic account of indirect quotation preserves the apparent relational structure of indirect speech but without assuming, in the Fregean manner, that the thing said by a sayer is a proposition. I argue that this is a mistake. As has been recognised by some critics, Davidson's account suffers from analytical shortcomings which can be overcome by redeploying the paratactic strategy as a means of referring to propositions. I offer a quick and comprehensive survey of these difficulties and a concise propositional (...) solution. Further, I argue that Davidson's more general philosophical commitments provide no reason not to embrace the propositional strategy: despite appearances, to invoke propositions in the way suggested is consistent with Davidson's holism and consequent doctrine of semantic indeterminacy. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

In Chapter 4 of [2] Grünbaum sets out to refute Einstein's philosophy of physical geometry. The latter's theory is seen as lying within the tradition of "anti-empiricist conventionalism" of Duhem and Quine as opposed to the "qualified empiricism" of Poincaré, Carnap and Reichenbach. Consequently Grünbaum sets the stage for his critique of Einstein by discussing certain of the views of these other thinkers. But in these preliminary discussions the various theses are confused and misrepresented in such a way as to (...) make it almost impossible to evaluate Grünbaum's final treatment of Einstein's thesis. For this reason I will deal only with those parts of this chapter in which the roots of Grünbaum's confusion are to be found. This will involve analyses of two theories which are not clearly distinguished by Grünbaum. The first is Duhem's denial of the "crucial experiment" in physics; the second is Quine's version of "pragmatism.". (shrink)

Vertes & Eastman argue against the popular idea that dreams promote memory consolidation and suggest instead that REM provides periodic endogenous stimulation during sleep. Although we suspect that much of the debate on the function of dreams reflects a too eager acceptance of the “adaptationist program,” we nonetheless support the position of the authors and propose a specific advantage of periodic REM activity. [Vertes & Eastman].

I argue for the moral relevance of a category of individuals I characterize as far-persons. Following Gary Varner, I distinguish near-persons, animals with a " robust autonoetic consciousness " but lacking an adult human's " biographical sense of self, " from the merely sentient, those animals living "entirely in the present." I note the possibility of a third class. Far-persons lack a biographical sense of self, possess a weak autonoetic consciousness, and are able to travel mentally through time a (...) distance that exceeds the capacities of the merely sentient. Far-persons are conscious of and exercise control over short-term cognitive states, states limited by their temporal duration. The animals in question, human and nonhuman, consciously choose among various strategies available to them to achieve their ends, making them subjects of what I call "lyrical experience:" brief and potentially intense pleasures and pains. But their ends expire minute-by-minute, not stretching beyond, I say metaphorically, the present hour. I conclude by discussing the moral status of far-persons. (shrink)

The paper considers two main cases of how the creative arts can inform a greater appreciation of human dignity. The first case explores a form of theater, Commedia dell’Arte that has deep roots in Italian culture. The second recounts a set of theater exercises done with very minimal direction or self-direction in executive education and MBA courses at the Darden School, University of Virginia, in the United States. In both cases we highlight how the creative arts can be important for (...) promoting human dignity in organizations, and how they can lead to a more authentic conversation about values, ethics, and meaning. (shrink)

Hospital ethics committees have evolved as a response to complicated legal, ethical, and social dilemmas that accompany modern medicine. In the United States, their growth has been augmented by Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards and the Patient Self-Determination Act. There appears to be an implicit presumption that all clinical ethics consultation practices are relatively similar. Finally, there is heightened awareness of the needs for quality standards and assessment of the outcomes of ethics consultations.

The current study analyzes trans-cultural universalities and specificities in the recognition of status roles, dominance perception and social evaluation based on nonverbal cues. Using a novel methodology, which allowed to mask clues to ethnicity and cultural background of the agents, we compared impression of Germans, Americans and Arabs observing computer-animated interactions from the three countries. Only in the German stimulus sample the status roles could be recognized above chance level. However we found significant correlations in dominance perception across all countries. (...) Significant correlations were only found for evaluation between German observers and observers from the other two countries. Perceived dominance uniformly predicted the assignment of status-roles in all cultures. Microanalysis of movement behavior further revealed predictive value of specific nonverbal cues for dominance ratings. Results support the hypothesis of universalities in the processing of dominance cues and point to cultural specificities in evaluative responses to nonverbal behavior. (shrink)

This book advances a persuasive account of Christian belief organized around the theme of love while also employing love as a constraint on theological formulation. Throughout, Gary Chartier seeks to understand divine action in ways that make it possible to affirm divine love in the face of evil. The Analogy of Love offers a stimulating model for thinking about God and the world.

According to the naive theory of belief reports, our intuition that “Lois believes that Kent flies” is false results from our mistakenly identifying what this sentence implicates, which is false, with what it says, which is true. Whatever the merits of this proposal, it is here argued that the naive theory’s analysis of negative belief reports—sentences such as “Lois doesn't believe that Kent flies”—gives rise to equally problematic clashes with intuition, but that in this case no “pragmatic” explanation is available. (...) In particular, it is argued that there are situations at which, although “Lois believes that Superman flies” and “Lois doesn't believe that Kent flies” appear consistent, a speaker must contradict himself when he utters both. It is also argued that the hidden-indexical theory of belief reports—which otherwise respects our ordinary intuitions regarding belief reports—similarly fails to explain this intuition. (shrink)

The temporally immediate transcendence of space through the use of the telephone creates a bi-localized space of interaction. Unique structures of spatial experience are constituted through the intending of spatial sectors in telephonic conversation. In the first section of this paper, six eidetic variations are presented that establish the various ways in which environmental sectors are intended through the intersubjective space of the telephonic medium. The telos of these descriptions is to characterize changes in social praxis that have been made (...) available with the inclusion in the life-world of the telephone as a typical tool. In the second section, a constitutive analysis is undertaken in order to investigate how empty intentions are brought to fulfillment in the telephonic conversational thematizations of environmental sectors. Telephone space involves a modified we-relationship through which meaning-intentions are intersubjectively synthesized, yet from bi-local environmental standpoints. The intersubjective achievements concerning projects grounded within the immediacy of telephonic transcendence create a unique structure of meaning-fulfillment. (shrink)