In the Snell-Maehler edition of Bacchylides there is a very comprehensive bibliography, listing almost 300 items concerned with Bacchylides poems. It is significant that 80 per cent of these were written in the first twenty years following Kenyon's publication of the Bacchylides papyri in 1897. Of the articles which have appeared since the First World War, many are concerned with more recent papyrus discoveries and a few are stylistic discussions. For most of the poems dealt with in the pioneering days (...) of Bacchylidean scholarship certain readings of the text and interpretations of it have become canonical. This article aims to show in just one poem, XVII, a few instances in which the accepted interpretations should be re-examined. In some cases new interpretations are offered, but in others older views have been resurrected and bolstered by further argument. (shrink)

This article introduces the Normative Representativeness Requirement (NRR) on any moral objection to a decentralized, profit-oriented system of political economy. I develop and defend the NRR and then show why the most important recent critique of the profit system—which I call The Moderate Critique (developed by, for instance, Elizabeth Anderson)—fails to meet the NRR. This article also defends the radical claim that no objection to the profit system itself, rather than just key aspects or salient instances of it, succeeds in (...) meeting the NRR. Critics of the profit system should not seek an alternative to the profit system, but, at most, an alternative within it. (shrink)

"The author tells a history of the study of cancer-causing viruses from the early twentieth century to the development of an HPV vaccine for cervical cancer in 2006. He profiles the "cancer virus hunters" who made breakthroughs in tumor virology"--.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The focus of this book is to explore teachers' evolving personal epistemologies, or the beliefs we hold about the origin and development of knowledge in the context of teaching. The chapters focus on a range of conceptual frameworks about how university and field-based experiences influence the connections between teachers' personal epistemologies and teaching practice. In an earlier volume we investigated ways in which we might change preservice teachers' beliefs and teaching practice (Brownlee, Schraw and Berthelsen, 2011). While we addressed the (...) nature of teachers' personal epistemology, learning and teaching practices, and approaches for changing beliefs throughout teacher education programs, the volume did not address conceptual frameworks for the development of teacher's personal epistemologies. The book is focused on teacher educators, teachers and teacher education programmers in universities with an overall aim of highlighting how we might support students to engage in learning that is challenging and to engage in professional experiences that promote changes in teaching practice. We argue that students need to be encouraged to question their beliefs and develop increasingly sophisticated beliefs about their knowledge and their students' knowledge that facilitate learning and intellectual growth. (shrink)

College of Medicine, University of South Alabama Mobile, AL 36688-0002, USA wbp501{at}jaguar1.usouthal.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract Recent work in viral genomics has shown that bacteriophages exhibit a high degree of mosaicism, which is most likely due to a long history of prolific horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Given these findings, we argue that each of the most plausible attempts to properly classify bacteriophages into distinct species fail. Mayr's biological species concept fails because there is (...) no useful viral analog to sexual reproduction. Phenetic species concepts fail because they obscure the mosaicism and the rich reticulated viral histories. Phylogenetic species concepts, even when extended to take into account reticulation, fail because there is no non-arbitrary distinction between recombination events that create a new viral species and those that do not. There is good reason to think that bacteriophages, arguably the Earth's most abundant biological agent, evolve without forming species. Introduction The Biology of Viruses 2.1 Bacteriophage life cycles 2.2 Mechanisms of HGT The Species Problem and Species Concepts 3.1 Phenetic species concepts 3.2 The biological species concept 3.3 Phylogenetic species concepts 3.4 The ecological species concept 3.5 Homeostatic property cluster species Viruses and Species Taxonomy Reticular Phylogenies Conclusion CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The recent conception of biodiversity proposed by James Maclaurin and Sterelny was developed mostly with macrobiological life in mind. They suggest that we measure biodiversity by dividing life into natural units (typically species) and quantifying the differences among units using phenetic rather than phylogenetic measures of distance. They identify problems in implementing quantitative phylogenetic notions of difference for non-prokaryotic species. I suggest that if we focus on microbiological life forms that engage in frequent, promiscuous lateral gene transfer (LGT), and their (...) associated reticulated phylogenies, we need to rethink the notion of species as the natural unit, and we discover additional problems with phylogenetic notions of distance. These problems suggest that a phenetic approach based on morphospaces has just as much appeal, if not more, for microbes as they do for multi-cellular life. Facts about LGT, however, offer no new insight into the additional challenge of reconciling units and differences into a single measure of biodiversity. (shrink)

This accessible book gives a new, detailed and elementary explanation of the Gödel incompleteness theorems and presents the Chaitin results and their relation to the da Costa-Doria results, which are given in full, but with no ...

The concept of population is central to ecology, yet it has received little attention from philosophers of ecology. Furthermore, the work that has been done often recycles ideas that have been developed for evolutionary biology. We argue that ecological populations and evolutionary populations, though intimately related, are distinct, and that the distinction matters to practicing ecologists. We offer a definition of ecological population in terms of demographic independence, where changes in abundance are a function of birth and death processes alone. (...) However, demographic independence is insufficient on its own so we supplement it with the idea of shared habitat. An ecological population is a group of organisms of the same species in a habitat that manifests DI. Given the importance of metapopulation dynamics to modern ecology, an account of ecological population must apply to this domain as well. Thus, we extend our definition of ecological population to the metapopulation. To facilitate the extension, we introduce the metahabitat—a collection of spatially segregated habitat patches shared by a single DI population. This enables us to diagnose some unhelpful trends in the metapopulation literature and emphasize the importance of habitat dynamics in pursuit of the goals of theoretical ecology and conservation biology. (shrink)

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) may have been the most influential and insightful American thinker of the twentieth century. In dealing with the intricacies of human nature, society, politics, ethics, theology, racism and international relations, Niebuhr the teacher, preacher, philosopher, social critic and ethicist, was highly influential and difficult to ignore during the Second World War and Cold War eras because of his intellectual heft and the novel manner in which he addressed the economic, spiritual, social and political problems of his time. (...) This book distils Niebuhr's disparate and now difficult to access work into one volume, making it more easily accessible than ever before, at the same time bringing his work into the twenty first century. It argues that if he were alive today Niebuhr would be a champion of the U.N, a supporter of globalization, a fierce opponent of America's 2003 Iraq War (for all the reasons he opposed the Vietnam War), an advocate of the Responsibility to Protect, and a pragmatic hawk on China as it rises today. It also highlights his many contributions to international relations theory, from Realism to Liberalism to existentialism to the English School to constructivism. This is the first book that focuses exclusively on the international relations thought of Reinhold Niebuhr, one of Classical Realism's most important figures, one whom diplomat and Realist George Kennan called, "the father of us all.". (shrink)

In a pioneering book, Philosophy of Microbiology, Maureen O’Malley argues for the philosophical importance of microbes through an examination of their impact on ecosystems, evolution, biological classification, collaborative behavior, and multicellular organisms. She identifies many understudied conceptual issues in the study of microbes. If philosophers follow her lead, the philosophy of biology will be expanded and enriched.

Commentaries surrounding Skinner were re-examined and applied to Hull et al. Hull et al. were found to address many of these concerns by paying attention to neuroscience, by providing some discussion of the origins of behavior, and by forwarding a deterministic account that may prove as revolutionary as that of Copernicus and Darwin.

In 1962, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug published their classic theory of virus structure. They developed their theory with an explicit analogy between spherical viruses and Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. In this paper, I use the spherical virus-geodesic dome case to develop an account of analogy and deductive analogical inference based on the notion of an isomorphism. I also consider under what conditions there is a good reason to claim an experimentally untested analogy is plausible.

Reagan mixes the genres of biographical essay, memoir, philosophical essay, and interview to provide the reader with a fascinating and highly readable account. The biographical essay narrates Ricoeur’s early life, his experience as a POW during the Second World War, professorships at the Sorbonne, Nanterre, and Chicago, and his “rediscovery” in and return to France after the publication of Time and Narrative. Reagan’s analysis betrays Ricoeur’s comment that “no one is interested in my life... [since] my life is my work... (...) my books and my articles.” Ricoeur’s captivity as a prisoner of war, the problems he encountered at Nanterre University as doyen of the Faculty of Letters during the 1960s, and the pain and love he and Simone felt for Olivier, their fourth child who committed suicide, are some of the intriguing and touching elements of the narrative. After Olivier’s tragic death in 1986, Ricoeur added “suffering” to the phrase “human action” whenever he wrote about the problem of human action and suffering. (shrink)

Few ethics committees were in place when the New Jersey Supreme Court announced its ruling on the Quinlan case in 1976. Today, the vast majority of hospitals have formed ethics committees and their use in nursing homes and other healthcare facilities is growing. Given the increasing commitment to the use of ethics committees and their increasing influence on healthcare decision making, the careful evaluation of committee performance should be a high priority. Yet to date ethics committees appear to have undergone (...) relatively little scrutiny. While professional articles on ethics committees do appear and at least one journal sets aside a regular section for the discussion of “Ethics Committees at Work” articles to date have primarily been limited to essays, philosophical inquiries, reports, case studies, and, occasionally, surveys. The use of more structured research methodologies has been lacking. As a result, it is not yet clear, for example, what characteristics describe the best functioning ethics committee. Indeed, what constitutes best functioning lacks careful definition as well. Committee impact on medical decision making and patient outcomes, while discussed, has not been systematically measured and analyzed. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 51, Issue 6, Page 555-573, December 2021. John Searle’s social ontology distinguishes between linguistic and non-linguistic institutional facts. He argues that every instance of the latter is created by declarative speech acts, while the former are exceptions to this far-reaching claim: linguistic phenomena are autonomous, their meaning is “built in,” and this is necessary, Searle argues, to avoid “infinite regress.” In this essay I analyze Searle’s arguments for this linguistic exceptionalism and reveal its flaws. (...) My method is to follow Searle’s argument closely and comprehensively so as to avoid, insofar as is possible, a selective reading of his argument in my favor. Against Searle’s position, I argue that linguistic phenomena are not exceptions to his general theory of institutional facts, for they too always require supplementary representations in order to exist. Language itself is analogous to all other institutions and infinite regress turns out to be unavoidable. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Neurology of Culture, or How We Move From Rage to Ritual in the Process of HominizationGregory J. Lobo (bio)The most (or rather the only) effective form of reconciliation—that would stop this crisis, and save the community from total self-destruction—is the convergence of all collective anger and rage towards a random victim, a scapegoat, designated by mimetism itself, and unanimously adopted as such.—René Girard, Evolution and Conversion, 64.INTRODUCTIONHow do (...) we move from rage to ritual? How do we become human? The work of René Girard would seem to offer an answer to this question. In this brief essay I want to simply add some evolutionary and neuroscientific details to Girard's theory, which flesh out while also corroborating the basic components of it. [End Page 255]To do this I need to draw a distinction between religion and culture. I mention this from the outset because the main source upon which I draw to represent Girard's thinking is the book Evolution and Conversion. Dialogues on the Origins of Culture, with Pierpaolo Antonello and João Cezar de Castro Rocha, published in 2008. I use this particular source because, as Girard's interlocutors say in their foreword to it, this book "is intended as a reassessment of Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, 30 years on,"1 and it evidences the "ways in which, over 30 years, mimetic theory has matured, and its fruitfulness become more apparent, even since the initial excitement of Girard's groundbreaking works in the 1970s."2 I highlight my need to distinguish between culture and religion due to the fact that in Evolution and Conversion Antonello and Castro Rocha state forthrightly that for Girard (and, one might presume, for Girardians), culture and religion "amount to the same thing."3 But it is not totally clear that this holds. For as Girard, in the same book, says, "religion, as an institution, comes into being through the scapegoat mechanism."4 Thus, the question arises as to what it is that allows humans to have institutions in the first place. Surely the answer is the capacity for culture as such, understood as the very capacity for symbolic thought, for the manipulation of mental images and their combination into new ones. Hopefully, in the discussion that follows, my insistence on the need to analytically distinguish between culture and religion will be born out. For now, I simply ask the reader to play along. If the reader is game, I can restate my purpose: What is the neurology of culture, such that we can become human, or move from blind rage to deliberate ritual?THE MIMETIC MECHANISMGirard, we should recall, insists that we start "from a purely naturalistic standpoint."5 With this injunction in mind, I will give an account of the "mimetic mechanism," an expression that "describes the whole process, beginning with mimetic desire, which then becomes mimetic rivalry, eventually escalating to the stage of a mimetic crisis and finally ending with the scapegoat resolution"6 that strives for naturalistic representation. Therefore, I will avoid terms like "community" or even "group," which already suggest the existence of something like cultural realities. A naturalistic standpoint, which I take to be a scientific standpoint, must strive to circumvent begging the question by using terms like these, for they refer exactly to the phenomena we are trying to explain: a self-conscious sense of belonging and community. [End Page 256]For those familiar enough with its presuppositions about the human nature that underlies, or is the foundation of, human culture, the mimetic mechanism can be presented in a somewhat straightforward fashion. This presentation relies on Chapter 2 of Evolution and Conversion.The desire of Homo sapiens is in essence mimetic. That is, an individual member of the species desires what its proximal conspecifics—its models—desire. That two conspecifics should desire the same thing leads, inevitably, to two intermediate outcomes. First, the desire for what the other desires intensifies, due to the effects of mimesis; second, this drives the two now mutual models almost inevitably into conflict, as they become doubles. This is conflictual mimesis. The conflict can turn violent and... (shrink)

Findlay & Walker give voice to several common lines of thought regarding oculomotor control but do not provide sufficient detail for a critical evaluation of their theory. I argue that arbitrary spatial and temporal saccade metrics can be produced simply by manipulating the initial activation values in their model – values that the authors never specify. This lack of detail makes it difficult to anticipate the model's specific oculomotor behavior, or to compare this behavior to models opting for a more (...) quantitative framework. (shrink)

Walters analyses Canadian and global information highway policy and practices from a philosophical, human rights framework that views freedom and well-being as the necessary conditions of human action.

The Dialectics of Liberty: Exploring the Context of Human Freedom. Edited by Bissell Roger E., Chris Matthew Sciabarra, & Edward W. Younkins.. Pp. 376. Hardback/Paperback/eBook: Price $120.00/42.99/40.50. ISBN: 9781498592116.).