Democratic theorists often place deliberative innovations such as citizen's panels, consensus conferences, planning cells, and deliberative polls at the center of their hopes for deliberative democratization. In light of experience to date, the authors chart the ways in which such mini-publics may have an impact in the “macro” world of politics. Impact may come in the form of actually making policy, being taken up in the policy process, informing public debates, market-testing of proposals, legitimation of public policies, building confidence and (...) constituencies for policies, popular oversight, and resisting co-option. Exposing problems and failures is all too easy. The authors highlight cases of success on each of these dimensions. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn described the progress of science as comprising occasional paradigm shifts separated by interludes of ‘normal science’. The paradigm that has held sway since the inception of molecular biology is that genes (mainly) encode proteins. In parallel, theoreticians posited that mutation is random, inferred that most of the genome in complex organisms is non‐functional, and asserted that somatic information is not communicated to the germline. However, many anomalies appeared, particularly in plants and animals: the strange genetic phenomena of paramutation (...) and transvection; introns; repetitive sequences; a complex epigenome; lack of scaling of (protein‐coding) genes and increase in ‘noncoding’ sequences with developmental complexity; genetic loci termed ‘enhancers’ that control spatiotemporal gene expression patterns during development; and a plethora of ‘intergenic’, overlapping, antisense and intronic transcripts. These observations suggest that the original conception of genetic information was deficient and that most genes in complex organisms specify regulatory RNAs, some of which convey intergenerational information. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/qxeGwahBANw. (shrink)

"--Joel Cracraft, American Museum of Natural History "This is not the potted history that one usually finds in texts and review articles.

The Buddha’s final illness, brought on by his last meal prior to his death, was traditionally seen as one of a set of ailments suffered by him at various points during his lifetime. This paper looks at different Buddhist explications of the causes of these ailments and applies them to the episode of the Buddha’s final illness. In both instances, three explanatory strategies are detected: the first stresses the causative importance of the Buddha’s own negative karmic deeds in past lives; (...) the second looks to the negative deeds and karma of others than the Buddha; the third offers non-karmic explanations. The first two engendered two rather different kinds of j?taka stories; the last did not involve any j?takas but highlighted various kinds of ‘natural’ explanations. (shrink)

Swedenborg's Principles of Usefulness presents a possibly unsuspected historical undercurrent that further evidences Emanuel Swedenborg's pervasive influence on a whole host of historical figures-from poets and artists to philosophers and statesmen-whose contributions to the evolution of self and society have resonated throughout time and into the present. Besides having an impact on individual thinkers, Swedenborg's ideas worked their way into the various social reform traditions that vitalized the American landscape during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. His concept of usefulness, best (...) demonstrated in the competing worldviews of the nation's liberal and conservative traditions, involved a commitment made by Swedenborgians, New Church members, and others to energize the nation and its people by envisaging the possibility of a much-desired Universal Human. (shrink)

Intelligent design theorist William Dembski hasproposed an ``explanatory filter'' fordistinguishing between events due to chance,lawful regularity or design. We show that ifDembski's filter were adopted as a scientificheuristic, some classical developments inscience would not be rational, and thatDembski's assertion that the filter reliablyidentifies rarefied design requires ignoringthe state of background knowledge. Ifbackground information changes even slightly,the filter's conclusion will vary wildly.Dembski fails to overcome Hume's objections toarguments from design.

PART VII: PUBLICS AND MOVEMENTS. - PART VIII: GOVERNMENT RESPONSES. - PART IX: POLICY INSTRUMENTS. - PART X: PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS. - PART XI: GLOBAL GOVERNANCE. - PART XII: RECONSTRUCTION.

Tanner uses Kierkegaard's thought, in particular his theory of anxiety, to enrich a bold new reading of Milton's Paradise Lost. He argues that for Milton and Kierkegaard, the path to sin and to salvation lies through anxiety, and that both writers include anxiety within the compass of paradise. The first half of the book explores anxiety in Eden before the Fall, original sin, the aetiology of evil, and prelapsarian knowledge. The second half examines anxiety after the Fall, offering original insights (...) into such issues as the demonic personality, remorse, despair, and faith. (shrink)

This paper relates to Lyotard's philosophy of a différend. The paper has a dual purpose. The first is to explain what is meant by a différend and also a petit différend. The intention here is to preserve both the intrinsic validity and ethico-political value of the concept in cases where its legitimacy might easily be denied. This feeds into the second and main purpose of the paper, which is to testify to a petit différend in quality of care, so that (...) care may be taken in how the term ‘quality of care’ is actually used. It is here that the implications of a petit différend in quality of care are opened up from the perspective of cared-for and professional carers, respectively. It will be shown that the idea of quality of care is open to multiple interpretations, and therefore to disputes that judgement cannot resolve to the satisfaction of all parties. (shrink)

NATURES AND FUTURES FOR POLITICAL THEORY John S. Nelson What are the problematics, histories, forms, aims, conditions, methods, and topics proper to political theory? Plainly, these change from one context to another; and yet they may ...

Ideas about the presence, absence, and growth of democracy in global politics take different forms. After surveying the basic justifications for global democracy, three frames for making sense of the significance of particular developments and proposals are canvassed. “Soup” involves the proliferation of democratic practices, though the consequences of this proliferation for the overall shape of international politics remain open. “Society” stresses the democratization of processes that affect constitutive norms and discourses. “System” identifies differentiated yet ordered parts, geared to the (...) production of collective outcomes. The soup framing is undemanding yet limited. System provides a way to pinpoint democratic deficiencies and possibilities, but its requirements can be highly demanding, and it leaves open the question of normative integration. Understanding global democratization requires both society and system framings. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe historical process underlying Darwin’s Origin of Species did not play a significant role in the early editions of the book, in spite of the particular inductivist scientific methodology it espoused. Darwin’s masterpiece did not adequately provide his sources or the historical perspective many contemporary critics expected. Later editions yielded the ‘Historical Sketch’ lacking in the earlier editions, but only under critical pressure. Notwithstanding the sources he provided, Darwin presented the Origin as an ‘abstract’ in order to avoid giving sources; (...) a compromise he acknowledged and undertook to set right in later editions, yet failed to provide throughout the six editions under his supervision. Darwin’s reluctance to publish the historical context of his theory and his sources, particularly sources which were also ‘precursors’, may be attributed as much to the matter of intellectual ownership as science, or even good literary practice. Of special concern to Darwin were issues of priority or originality over ‘descent with modification’ and especially over Natural Selection. Many later historians have argued that Darwin was unaware of the work of his precursors on Natural Selection. Darwin’s theory was an example of independent discovery, albeit along with such obscure precursors as Matthew or Wells, who were unknown to Darwin until after the publication of the Origin. Both Matthew and Wells had a medical education, like James Hutton or Erasmus Darwin earlier in the eighteenth century, or even Charles Darwin. Evolutionary theory, at least in Britain was a product largely of the medical evolutionists rather than the natural historians which ‘history’ has chosen to select for the focus of attention; and among the medical evolutionists the figure of John Hunter stands out as theorist, experimentalist and teacher: the medical evolutionists were predominantly the product of Hunter’s legacy or of the medical profession and particularly the Scottish Universities. Much recent Darwin scholarship has focused on the private Notebooks, to establish Darwin’s discovery of Natural Selection around 1837–1838 and demonstrate Darwin’s ignorance of his precursors; requiring an explicit acknowledgement by Darwin as the legitimate substantiation of any claim to prior influence. The precursors have been categorized as uniformly obscure or irrelevant to the science of evolution which may be defined exclusively as ‘Darwinian’. The inclination to acknowledge influences, however was not something Darwin was gratuitously given to doing, especially on matters of priority. The Notebooks are not Darwin’s private thoughts; from an early stage he considered them incipient public documents and later sought to protect them as proof of his originality. William C. Wells was not an obscure thinker, but a celebrated scientist whom Herschel, Darwin’s guide to scientific methodology, had recommended as providing a model of scientific method. Darwin discovered Wells through Herschel, and quickly acquired a copy of Wells’ recommended work, no later than 1831, and held it thereafter in his library at Down House. This book, the 1818 edition of Wells’ Two Essays contains a third essay, Wells’ account of Natural Selection. Later, in the Descent of Man Darwin acknowledged his separate discovery of the correlation of colour and disease immunity in man, also earlier recounted by Wells. (shrink)

In this paper, I set out two ethical complications for Rid and Wendler’s proposal that a “Patient Preference Predictor” (PPP) should be used to aid decision making about incapacitated patients’ care. Both of these worries concern how a PPP might categorize patients. In the first section of the paper, I set out some general considerations about the “ethics of apt categorization” within stratified medicine and show how these challenge certain PPPs. In the second section, I argue for a more specific—but (...) more contentious—claim that proper respect for the autonomy of incapacitated patients might require us to act on reasons which they could endorse and show how this claim places important limits on the categories employed by an ethically acceptable PPP. The conclusion shows how these concerns about apt categorization relate to more familiar worries about Rid and Wendler’s proposals. (shrink)

Species concepts for bacteria and other microbes are contentious, because they are often asexual. There is a Problem of Homogeneity: every mutation in an asexual lineage forms a new strain, of which all descendents are clones until a new mutation occurs. We should expect that asexual organisms would form a smear or continuum. What causes the internal homogeneity of asexual lineages, if they are in fact homogeneous? Is there a natural “species concept” for “microbes”? Two main concepts devised for metazoans (...) and metaphytes have been applied to bacteria. One is the Recombination Concept, a revised form of the Biological Species Concept in which the homogenizing mechanism is the sharing of genome fragments, somewhat akin to sexual recombination. The other is the Ecological Species Concept, in which the ecological niche is that which maintains lineages as cohesive. In this paper I will discuss these two concepts, and offer an underlying model that conjoins them, and consider the implications for species concepts in general. In short, my argument is that asexual species are instances of the most primitive and underived notion of species, which I will call “quasispecies”, following Eigen, and that sexual species are merely one derived kind of species. Moreover, I will argue that there is a continuum of recombination from simple viral models in which each strain is a clone, through to obligate recombination of 50% of the parents’ genome, and that consequently there is no sharp division between “microbial” and more familiar species. (shrink)

Internal rewards are the psychological benefits one receives by performing certain other-regarding actions. Internal rewards include such benefits as the avoidance of guilt, the avoidance of painful memories, and the attainment of warm, fuzzy feelings. Despite the limitations of social psychology, Sober and Wilson believe that evolutionary theory can show that it is more likely for benevolent other-regarding motivational mechanisms to have evolved, thereby supporting the altruist’s claim. Here, I will argue for two related theses. First, if internal reward explanations (...) pose a problem for social psychology, then they also pose a problem for evolutionary theory. Second, there is no need to think that internal reward explanations pose a problem for altruists because these explanations either do not inform us about what our ultimate motives really are or they unreasonably define out of existence the possibility of altruism. (shrink)

It is shown that there is a formula σ(g) in the first-order language of group theory with the following property: for every finite group G, the largest soluble normal subgroup of G consists precisely of the elements g of G such that σ(g) holds.

In this book, John Dryzek criticizes the dominance of instrumental rationality and objectivism in political institutions and public policy and in the practice of political science. He argues that the reliance on these kinds of politics and to technocracies of expert cultures that are not only repressive, but surprisingly ill-equipped for dealing with complex social problems. Drawing on critical theory, he outlines an alternative program for the organization of political institutions advocating a form of communicatively rational democracy, which he (...) terms discursive democracy, that stresses the importance of active citizenship and public discourse. He draws out the limitations of instrumental rationality and investigates how policy analysis and political science may be reformed to help constitute and comprehend democracy. Discursive Democracy examines how the political process can be made more vital and meaningful. At the same time it shows how such an invigorated process will serve as a more effective agent for social problem solving. (shrink)

I sin udmærkede kommentar til vores artikel «En etisk diskussion af screening for kræftsygdomme» beskriver Geir Hoff den udtalte mangel på evidens vedrørende nytteværdien af screeningsprogrammer for kræftsygdomme baseret på randomiserede studier. Ydermere fremhæver Geir Hoff misforholdet mellem den manglende evidens ved screening og de strenge krav, der er til evidensen i den farmaceutiske industri. Dette er en velkommen kritik, pga. en udtalt ukritisk og uvidenskabelig tilgang til anvendelse af screening for denne eller hin sygdom eller risikofaktor.

This book contains some rare combinations: first, an author who is as concerned with conceptual clarification as he is with the absolute truthfulness of the biblical text; second, an argument that avoids the common "either-ors" and contends for the importance of both divine sovereignty and divine solicitude in equal measure; third, an approach that espouses divine determinism and divine temporality. No One Like Him takes on the most intractable intellectual challenges of contemporary evangelical theology. Kevin Vanhoozer , Research Professor of (...) Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School John Feinberg judicially reconstructs aspects of the classical view of God in a way that proves more faithful than process and openness of God theisms. Arguably, this is the best study of theology proper in print. Bruce Demarest , Professor of Theology and Spiritual Formation, Denver Seminary Feinberg reads theology with a philosopher's eye and writes it with a philosopher's sensitivity to illogic and incoherence. J. I. Packer , Professor of Theology, Regent College A magisterial work, one that truly deserves to be called a magnum opus....It reveals its author as...perhaps the only modern scholar whose work, like that of Carl. F. H. Henry, can compare in size, detail, comprehensiveness, and intellectual acuity with the accomplishments of the late Karl Barth.... It is not risky to predict that Feinberg's No One Like Him will come to be a milestone in evangelical theology. Harold O. J. Brown , Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary. (shrink)

In Politics, Money, and Persuasion, distinguished philosopher John Russon offers a new framework for interpreting Plato's The Republic. For Russon, Plato's work is about the distinctive nature of what it is to be a human being and, correspondingly, what is distinctive about the nature of human society. Russon focuses on the realities of our everyday experience to come to profoundly insightful assessments of our human realities: the nature of the city, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of human (...) psychology. Russon's argument concentrates on the ambivalence of logos, which includes reflections on politics and philosophy and their place in human life, how humans have shaped the environment, our interactions with money, the economy, and taking account, and the pursuit of the good in social and political systems. Politics, Money, and Persuasion offers a deeply personal but also practical kind of philosophical reading of Plato's classic text. It emphasizes the tight connection between the life of city and the life of the soul, demonstrating both the crucial role that human cognitive excellence and psychological health play in political and social life. (shrink)

This is a book about how politics, government - and much else - needs to change in response to the transition from the Holocene to the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch of human-induced instability in the Earth system and its life-support capacities.

The Byzantine rite of ordination to the presbyterate culminates in the conferral of a portion of the Eucharist upon the newly-ordained by the bishop. After reviewing the historical roots of this rite, this article examines the philological and biblical background of the term. Parakatathêkê coincides with the notion of paradosis but goes beyond it in personal and eschatological senses. Three simultaneous but distinct acts of personal transmission are highlighted: the personal participation of the newly-ordained in the apostolic ministry of the (...) bishop; the handing over of Christ personally present in the Eucharist to the newly-ordained; and the corresponding personal surrender of the new priest to Christ, to whom he will render an account of his own realization of Christ's priesthood in the service of His Mystical Body, the Church. (shrink)

Translation previously published in: The Huainanzi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

For contemporary democratic theorists, democracy is largely a matter of deliberation. But the recent rise of deliberative democracy (in practice as well as theory) coincided with ever more prominent identity politics, sometimes in murderous form in deeply divided societies. This essay considers how deliberative democracy can process the toughest issues concerning mutually contradictory assertions of identity. After considering the alternative answers provided by agonists and consociational democrats, the author makes the case for a power-sharing state with attenuated sovereignty and a (...) more engaged deliberative politics in a public sphere that is semidetached from the state and situated transnationally. (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)

Arguments against essentialism in biology rely strongly on a claim that modern biology abandoned Aristotle's notion of a species as a class of necessary and sufficient properties. However, neither his theory of essentialism, nor his logical definition of species and genus (eidos and genos) play much of a role in biological research and taxonomy, including his own. The objections to natural kinds thinking by early twentieth century biologists wrestling with the new genetics overlooked the fact that species have typical developmental (...) cycles and most have a large shared genetic component. These are the "what-it-is-to-be" members of that species. An intrinsic biological essentialism does not commit us to Aristotelian notions, nor even modern notions, of essence. There is a long-standing definition of "species" and its precursor notions that goes back to the Greeks, and which Darwin and pretty well all biologists since him share, that I call the Generative Conception of Species. It relies on there being a shared generative power that makes progeny resemble parents. The "what-it-is-to-be" a member of that species is that developmental type, mistakes in development notwithstanding. Moreover, such "essences" have always been understood to include deviations from the type. Finally, I shall examine some implications of the collapse of the narrative about essences in biology. (shrink)

A major resource expanding the study of early Chinese philosophy, religion, literature, and politics, this book features the first complete English-language translation of the_ Luxuriant Gems of the "Spring and Autumn"_,_ _one of the key texts of early Confucianism. The work is often ascribed to the Han scholar and court official Dong Zhongshu, but, as this study reveals, the text is in fact a compendium of writings by a variety of authors working within an interpretive tradition that spanned several generations, (...) depicting a utopian vision of a flourishing humanity that they believed to be Confucius's legacy to the world. The Spring and Autumn is a chronicle kept by the dukes of the state of Lu from 722 to 481 B.C.E. _The Luxuriant Gems_ follows the interpretations of the _Gongyang Commentary_, whose transmitters belonged to a tradition that sought to explicate the special language of the _Spring and Autumn_. The Gongyang masters believed that the_ Spring and Autumn_ had been written by Confucius himself, employing subtle and esoteric phrasing to indicate approval or disapproval of important events and personages. The _Luxuriant Gems_ augments Confucian ethical and philosophical teachings with chapters on cosmology, statecraft, and other topics drawn from contemporary non-Confucian traditions, reflecting the brilliance of intellectual life in the Han dynasty during the formative decades of the Chinese imperial state. To elucidate the text, Sarah A. Queen and John S. Major divide their translation into eight thematic sections with extensive introductions that address dating, authorship, authenticity, and the relationship between the original text and the evolving _Gongyang_ approach. (shrink)

The construct of locus of control of reinforcement has generated thousands of studies since its introduction as a psychological concept by Julian Rotter. Although evidence indicates its importance for a wide range of outcomes, comparatively little research has been directed toward identification of potential developmental antecedents of internal/external expectancies. A previous review of antecedent findings called for more research to be completed, particularly using observational and/or longitudinal methodologies. The current paper summarizes and evaluates antecedent research published in the intervening years (...) since Carton and Nowicki’s review. Results largely were consistent with expectations based on Rotter’s social learning theory, although there is still a need for researchers to use observational, rather than self-report methodologies, and to include data from non-western cultures. (shrink)