As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

As a result of recent legislative developments and greater ease of accessibility, the Human Resources Manager (HRM) faces the challenge of not only maintaining records but also that of protecting employees from misuse of personal information contained in their individual personnel files. The widespread use of computers for maintaining employee records has resulted in new ethical dimensions and/or challenges for the HRM. Serious questions regarding accessibility to and dissemination of such personal information now confront the HRM. Unless policies are developed (...) by organizations for dealing with such questions, eventually government will mandate such policies in order to protect employee rights. (shrink)

A comprehensive look at how John Dewey's ethics can inform environmental issues.

Uncoupling proteins (UCPs) regulate mitochondrial function, and thus cellular metabolism. Angiotensin‐converting enzyme (ACE) is the central component of endocrine and local tissue renin–angiotensin systems (RAS), which also regulate diverse aspects of whole‐body metabolism and mitochondrial function (partly through altering mitochondrial UCP expression). We show that ACE expression also appears to be regulated by mitochondrial UCPs. In genetic analysis of two unrelated populations (healthy young UK men and Scandinavian diabetic patients) serum ACE (sACE) activity was significantly higher amongst UCP3‐55C (rather than (...) T) and UCP2 I (rather than D) allele carriers. RNA interference against UCP2 in human umbilical vein endothelial cells reduced UCP2 mRNA sixfold (P < 0·01) whilst increasing ACE expression within a physiological range (<1·8‐fold at 48 h; P < 0·01). Our findings suggest novel hypotheses. Firstly, cellular feedback regulation may occur between UCPs and ACE. Secondly, cellular UCP regulation of sACE suggests a novel means of crosstalk between (and mutual regulation of) cellular and endocrine metabolism. This might partly explain the reduced risk of developing diabetes and metabolic syndrome with RAS antagonists and offer insight into the origins of cardiovascular disease in which UCPs and ACE both play a role. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response and Rejoinder DOES PHILOSOPHY NEED LITERATURE? a critical response by Hugh Mercer Curtler In the second issue of this journal,1 Jesse Kalin argues most provocatively that "philosophy needs literature" because the latter is capable of "rehearsing and exhibiting," as philosophy is not, "the moral construction of one's own life, namely that part of it in which concern and value" are involved (p. 182). Two of John Barth's (...) novels— The Floating Opera and The End of The Road—are used as examples and, according to Kalin, provide evidence for his thesis that philosophical novels present a certain kind of philosophical material in the only way it can be presented. More specifically, Kalin claims that these two novels (1) are both about nihilism, (2) advance the philosophical argument that nihilism is false, and (3) present this argument in a way it could not otherwise be presented. In Kalin's words, "the philosophical argument of these two novels cannot be presented in the normal non-literary mode exemplified by the essay and journal article" (p. 178). I shall examine each of these claims in turn. To say that Barth's novels are "about" moral nihilism is either trivially true or wrong-headed. If Kalin means that the novels "have to do with" moral nihilism, this is^ certainly true but not very significant. We might also say The End of The Road is about illegal abortion, the delights of teaching in a community college, or the trials and tribulations of a bachelor in a small town in Maryland. It appears, then, that Kalin has something more in mind; namely, that the point of the novel is an examination of moral nihilism. That this is indeed Kalin's intention would seem apparent from the second claim listed above: that Barth's novels argue that moral nihilism is "false." I shall examine the question ofwhether these novels "argue" the falsity of moral nihilism in a moment, but first I must raise an objection to the prior claim that such is the point of the novel. A novel does not make a point; it makes a great many points, it 110 Hugh Mercer Curtler111 provokes thought and raises questions, it suggests possibilities, it states truths (plural), and above all else it presents dramatically. That is to say, insofar as the novel is a work of art it does these things, and it is primarily a work of art. In terms of the contents of the novel, what we find is a host of images, thought fragments, figures, suggestions, hints, bits and pieces, and —if the novelist is a good one, like Barth—some valuable insights. If the novelist is a great one, then the insights are profound and worthy of repeated examination and reflection, although we may not always be able to make out precisely what the novelist has said; the novelist is a master of disguises and sleight of hand. The way of saying things is for him quite often more important than what is said. It is clear I share with Kalin very few assumptions about the nature of literature, or poetry, and its relationship to philosophy. With regard to his central claim that the "argument" of Barth's novels is (1) philosophical and (2) incapable of being presented in another form, I shall argue that because (2) is true (1) must be false. To prepare the way, I shall begin with a brief examination of the nature of "argument" as it applies in our present context. Kalin states that the argument presented by Barth in the novels is a "literarily advanced exhibitionary argument" (p. 180). What does it mean, though, to say the novel "argues" at all? Kalin surely does not contend that Barth is arguing philosophically in the manner of, say, Gilbert RyIe or even Kalin himself, hence his characterization of the argument as "exhibitionary." Barth's "argument," we must assume, seeks to persuade rather than to prove in any narrow logical sense of that term. Persuasion, in turn, is intuitive rather than reasoned, as suggested by Kalin's insistance that the argument cannot be separated from its literary form. As Kalin would have it, the novelist creates a... (shrink)

Keith Thomas: Gerald Edward Aylmer, 1926-2000 Adrian Hollis: William Spencer Barrett, 1914-2001 Bruce Williams: Charles Frederick Carter, 1919-2002 Malcolm Mackintosh: John Erickson, 1929-2002 J. H .R. Davis: Raymond William Firth, 1901-2002 F. M. L. Thompson: Hrothgar John Habakkuk, 1915-2002 A. W. Price: Richard Mervyn Hare, 1919-2002 Hugh Lloyd-Jones: Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, 1921-2003 Michael Lapidge and Peter Matthews: Vivien Anne Law, 1954-2002 Ann Moss: John Lough, 1913-2000 Terence Cave: Ian Dalrymple McFarlane, 1915-2002 Ludwig Paul: David Neil MacKenzie, 1926-2001 (...) Peter Birks: John Kieran Barry Moylan Nicholas, 1919-2002 Jonathan Shepard: Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky, 1918-2001 David Cannadine: John Harold Plumb, 1911-2001 Daniel Waley: Nicolai Rubinstein, 1911-2002 Ian Wood: John Michael Wallace-Hadrill, 1916-1985 R. G. M. Nisbet: William Smith Watt, 1913-2002 G. W. Bernard: Richard Bruce Wernham, 1906-1999. (shrink)

Peter Brian Herrenden Birks 1941-2004Hugh Redwald Dacre 1914-2003William Hugh Clifford Frend 1916-2005John Andrew Gallagher 1919-1980Philip Grierson 1910-2006Stuart Newton Hampshire 1914-2004William McKane 1921-2004John Malcolm Sabine Pasley 1926-2004Benjamin John Pimlott 1945-2004Robert Duguid Forrest Pring-Mill 1925-2005John Edgar Stevens 1921-2002Peter Strawson 1919-2006Henry William Rawson Wade 1918-2004Alan Harold Williams 1927-2005Bernard Arthur Owen Williams 1929-2003John James Wymer 1928-2006.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AND THE LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S NEW CHRISTENDOM I. RADITIONALLY CHRISTIANS have understood hat God's Kingdom is not of this world. It is not surprising, then, that history evinces some Christian difficulty in relating to thi's world. One aittitude takes ·a merely indirect interest in the world. Temporal activity is directed to the Church and its mission of saving souls. In this attitude the world has only an (...) instrumental value.1 Another attitude consists in a naive and innocent forgetfulness of temporal exigencies.2 A final one encompaisses 1 a disdain for temporal involvement.8 With its need for economic and political reform, the present century calls for a radical temporal engagement. For example, an indirect engagement by Catholics in the interest of the Church will not suffice. The Church shows an ability, even a resiliency, to exist in quite deficient temporal regimes. If the deficiencies of the present are to be remedied, it will be through the efforts of persons ·acknowledging more than an instrumental value to the temporal. Jacques Maritain, a Catholic layman, labored to establish the intellectual underpinnings for a radical Catholic engagement in the temporal. The masterpiece of this work is his In1 See Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), pp. 53-54. Jacques Maritain understands this "Political Augustinianism" as an unfortunate false inference from a medieval non-interest in the material order; see Integral Humanism, trans. by Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973), p. 12. As will be seen, Maritain wishes to transcend a merely instrumental valuation of the world; for example, see, ibid., pp. 176-7. 2 Maritain, op. oit., pp. 14-15, so characterizes the Middle Ages. 8 Ibid., pp. 102-3. 247 248 JOHN F. X.!{NASAS tegral HumaniMn. The text understands" humanism" in terms of a this-worldly perfection. Maritian says, Humanism tends essentially to render man more truly human, and to manifest his original greatness by having him participate in all that which can enrich him in nature and in history...; it at once demands that man develop the virtualities contained within him, his creative forces and the life of reason, and work to make the forces of the physical world instruments of his freedom.4 That human nature contains such temporal capacities, Maritain later calls the "ontosophic truth." In his Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain speaks of the natural end of the world. By " world " Maritain especially understands " our human universe, the universe of man, of culture and history in their development here below." 5 The end of this world is three-fold.6 First is the mastery of nature by man and also the securement of freedom from servitude to other men. Second is the development of the spiritual activities of man, especially knowledge in the forms of wisdom and natural Finally, of " the manifestation of all the potentialities of human nature." How does a Christian come to make a radical commitment to the realization of these temporal capacities? It is not through any forsaking of his eternal destiny. Rather, for Maritain the temporal engagement follows in and through a deeper appreciation of that eternal destiny. The focus of this deeper appreciation is Christian sanctity. For Maritain only the saint is the true humanist. Why? Maritain concedes that sanctity is first and foremost a love of God. But because God has made 4 Ibid., p. 2. 5.Jacques Maritain, The Peasamt of the Garonne, trans. by Michael O'uddih(Y and Elizabeth Hughes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968), p. 39. 6 Ibid., pp. 40-1. See also Maritain's, On the Philosophy of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957), pp. 125-7. Another apparent reference to the ontosophic truth is Maritain's discussion of "felicite en mouvement," or "l'imparfaite felicite," in N euf Legons sur les Notions Premieres de la Philosophie Morale (Paris: Chez Pierre Tequi, 1949), pp. 99-102. For a diagrammatic rendering of the temporal and eternal planes, see Maritain, On Philosophy of History, p. 129. LIBERATIONIST CRITIQUE OF MARITAIN'S CHRISTENDOM 249 all in his likeness, the saint's... (shrink)

Thomas Henry Huxley and Charles Darwin discovered in 1857 that they had a fundamental disagreement about biological classification. Darwin believed that the natural system should express genealogy while Huxley insisted that classification must stand on its own basis, independent of evolution. Darwin used human races as a model for his view. This private and long-forgotten dispute exposes important divisions within Victorian biology. Huxley, trained in physiology and anatomy, was a professional biologist while Darwin was a gentleman naturalist. Huxley agreed with (...) John Stuart Mill's rejection of William Whewell's sympathy for Linnaeus. The naturalists William Sharp Macleay, Hugh Strickland, and George Waterhouse worked to distinguish two kinds of relationship, affinity and analogy. Darwin believed that his theory could explain the difference. Richard Owen introduced the distinction between homology and analogy to anatomists, but the word homology did not enter Darwin's vocabulary until 1848, when he used the morphological concept of archetype in his work on Cirripedia. Huxley dropped the word archetype when Richard Owen linked it to Plato's ideal forms, replacing it with common plan. When Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species that the word plan gives no explanation, he may have had Huxley in mind. Darwin's preposterous story in the Origin about a bear giving birth to a kangaroo, which he dropped in the second edition, was in fact aimed at Huxley. (shrink)

Educators studied are: Francis Parker, John Dewey, Rudolf Steiner, Hugh Mearns, and Laura Zirbes.

Background Forward-looking, democratically oriented governance is needed to ensure that human genome editing serves rather than undercuts public values. Scientific, policy, and ethics communities have recognized this necessity but have demonstrated limited understanding of how to fulfill it. The field of bioethics has long attempted to grapple with the unintended consequences of emerging technologies, but too often such foresight has lacked adequate scientific grounding, overemphasized regulation to the exclusion of examining underlying values, and failed to adequately engage the public. Methods (...) This research investigates the application of scenario planning, a tool developed in the high-stakes, uncertainty-ridden world of corporate strategy, for the equally high-stakes and uncertain world of the governance of emerging technologies. The scenario planning methodology is non-predictive, looking instead at a spread of plausible futures which diverge in their implications for different communities’ needs, cares, and desires. Results In this article we share how the scenario development process can further understandings of the complex and dynamic systems which generate and shape new biomedical technologies and provide opportunities to re-examine and re-think questions of governance, ethics and values. We detail the results of a year-long scenario planning study that engaged experts from the biological sciences, bioethics, social sciences, law, policy, private industry, and civic organizations to articulate alternative futures of human genome editing. Conclusions Through sharing and critiquing our methodological approach and results of this study, we advance understandings of anticipatory methods deployed in bioethics, demonstrating how this approach provides unique insights and helps to derive better research questions and policy strategies. (shrink)

The linguistic foundations of science and technology include many terms that have been borrowed from ancient languages. In the case of terms with origins in the Greek language, the modern meaning can often differ significantly from the original one. Here we use the PubMed database to demonstrate the prevalence of words of Greek origin in the language of modern science, and call for scientists to exercise care when coining new terms.

John Finnis is a pre-eminent legal, moral and political philosopher. This volume contains over 25 essays by leading international scholars of philosophy and law who critically engage with issues at the heart of Finnis's work.

(2013). Animal Thinking: Contemporary Issues in Comparative Cognition. Philosophical Psychology. ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2012.732339.

Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would he balanced by those of the future. Persons might then straddle the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering this or that object. It might be fun. But the future has no such reality (as the pictured past and the perceived present possess); the future is but a figure of speech, a specter (...) of thought. (shrink)

Dummett's case against platonism rests on arguments concerning the acquisition and manifestation of knowledge of meaning. Dummett's arguments are here criticized from a viewpoint less Davidsonian than Chomskian. Dummett's case against formalism is obscure because in its prescriptive considerations are not clearly separated from descriptive. Dummett's implicit value judgments are here made explicit and questioned. ?Combat Revisionism!? Chairman Mao.

While we are commonly told that the distinctive method of mathematics is rigorous proof, and that the special topic of mathematics is abstract structure, there has been no agreement among mathematicians, logicians, or philosophers as to just what either of these assertions means. John P. Burgess clarifies the nature of mathematical rigor and of mathematical structure, and above all of the relation between the two, taking into account some of the latest developments in mathematics, including the rise of experimental (...) mathematics on the one hand and computerized formal proofs on the other hand. Along the way, a great many historical developments in mathematics, philosophy, and logic are surveyed. Yet very little in the way of background knowledge on the part of the reader is presupposed. (shrink)

Introduction A brief look at the competing present-day interpretations of Hume's philosophy will leave the uninitiated reader completely baffled. On the one hand , Hume is seen as a philosopher who attempted to analyse concepts with ...

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

This paper presents a longue durée account of the discursive emergence of ‘the market'. It seeks to develop understanding of the ‘crisis system' by showing that the crises of the present have their origins earlier than some critical realist scholars have suggested and can be better understood by the theorization of the generative mechanisms that emerged from the economic and political chaos of the early 1600s. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed to show that in the context of the emergence (...) of capitalism in England, these generative mechanisms resulted in the meaning of the word ‘market’ slipping loose of the geo-spatial semiotic bounds by which it had commonly been delineated – i.e. as a physical space in a town or city where goods were bartered or sold – and being re-semioticised to refer to abstract space where all acts of capitalist economic exchange, including those impacting upon the natural world, take place. (shrink)

A student of Étienne Gilson and Joseph Owens, John P. Doyle taught medieval and Scholastic philosophy at Saint Louis University for forty years. Of continuing interest to Doyle has been the thought of Francisco Suárez, S.J. On this topic Doyle has published over a dozen articles and four English translations of portions of Suárez's key works. This volume celebrates the life and career of one of those rare kinds of scholars who has mastered an entire field of inquiry and (...) thought. (shrink)

This book surveys and examines the most famous philosophical arguments against building a machine with human-level intelligence. From claims and counter-claims about the ability to implement consciousness, rationality, and meaning, to arguments about cognitive architecture, the book presents a vivid history of the clash between the philosophy and AI. Tellingly, the AI Wars are mostly quiet now. Explaining this crucial fact opens new paths to understanding the current resurgence AI (especially, deep learning AI and robotics), what happens when philosophy meets (...) science, and the role of philosophy in the culture in which it is embedded. -/- Organising the arguments into four core topics - 'Is AI possible', 'Architectures of the Mind', 'Mental Semantics and Mental Symbols' and 'Rationality and Creativity' - this book shows the debate that played out between the philosophers on both sides of the question, and, as well, the debate between philosophers and AI scientists and engineers building AI systems. Up-to-date and forward-looking, the book is packed with fresh insights and supporting material, including: -/- - Accessible introductions to each war, explaining the background behind the main arguments against AI - Each chapter details what happened in the AI wars, the legacy of the attacks, and what new controversies are on the horizon. - Extensive bibliography of key readings. (shrink)

Al-Maʾmūn, the Inquisition, and the Quest for Caliphal Authority. By John Abdallah Nawas. Resources in Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 4. Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 2015. Pp. xvi + 340. $45.

David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature presents the most important account of skepticism in the history of modern philosophy. In this lucid and thorough introduction to the work, John P. Wright examines the development of Hume's ideas in the Treatise, their relation to eighteenth-century theories of the imagination and passions, and the reception they received when Hume published the Treatise. He explains Hume's arguments concerning the inability of reason to establish the basic beliefs which underlie science and morals, (...) as well as his arguments showing why we are nevertheless psychologically compelled to accept such beliefs. The book will be a valuable guide for those seeking to understand the nature of modern skepticism and its connection with the founding of the human sciences during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

In this first full-length study of male homosexuality in Cather's short stories and novels, John P. Anders examines patterns of male friendship ranging on a continuum from the social to the sexual. He reveals how Cather's work assumes an unexpected depth and complexity by drawing on both the familiar tradition of friendship literature inspired by classical and Christian texts and a homosexual legacy that is part of, yet distinct from, established literary traditions. Anders argues that Cather's artistic achievement is (...) distinguished by her sexual aesthetics, an elusive literary style inextricably associated with homosexuality. His analysis demonstrates how a homosexual ethos and eros helped Cather develop a sensitivity to human variation and a style to accommodate it and thus became the objective correlative of her art, dramatizing the diversity of human nature as it deepens the mystery of her work. (shrink)

In his classic, The Idea of a University, John Henry Cardinal Newman advanced three arguments for the inclusion of theology in the liberal arts curriculum. These include the very nature of a university in its profession to teach all subjects, the interdisciplinary value of theology, and the danger of academic quackery and usurpation, when a subject matter is not given its due place in the curriculum. The arguments for theology are intimately connected to Newman's high ideal of education, rightly (...) celebrated by educators today. The crisis in contemporary liberal education is reflected in a dispute between Edward O. Wilson and Richard Rorty over the concept of "consilience." Yet there are promising signs of a renewal of liberal education through a deeper appreciation of theology in the course of studies in higher education. (shrink)