The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

Philosophers and geographers have converged on the topic of public space, fascinated and in many ways alarmed by fundamental changes in the way post-industrial societies produce space for public use, and in the way citizens of these same societies perceive and constitute themselves as a public. This volume advances this inquiry, making extensive use of political and social theory, while drawing intimate connections between political principles, social processes, and the commonplaces of our everyday environments.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 67-70 [Access article in PDF] Response to Mary J. Reichling, "Intersections: Form, Feeling, and Isomorphism" David Stevenson Vassalboro, Maine Mary J. Reichling's essay regarding the three concepts, form, feeling, and isomorphism, is lucid, well structured, and aptly supported by research of other music education philosophers. She states her purpose in the opening paragraph: "to examine and to elucidate various (...) aspects of these three concepts in her [Susanne Langer's] writing, as they are fundamental to an understanding of her aesthetic theory and to the construction of a philosophy of music and music education."A philosophy of music education must be the focus in all ensuing debate, and must remain of paramount importance. Arguments, especially dialectic arguments, are not won or lost; they merely strip away the outer garments until more and more of the truth is exposed. My thoughts regarding Reichling's essay are offered in this vein.Reichling amply makes the point that music is a dynamic moving form. She asserts that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content," clarifying further by saying that "By content Langer is designating the form's import or meaning." And she offers other examples of dynamic, moving forms, among them, "forms created by movements of clouds or fog through the mist and early light." [End Page 67]At this point, perhaps interjecting the notion of perception is in order. I would suggest that the cloud formations offer no content or meaning outside of the viewer's perceptions or imagination. Music (art), being the nebulous subject that it is, ensconced in subjectivity and steeped in perception, both interpersonal and intrapersonal at the same time, exists to be taken by individuals, each at his or her own level of accomplishment, understanding, and interest. Therefore, does the meaning inhere in the form, as Langer and Reichling assert, or is it assigned by the listener (in the case of music) or by the viewer (in the case of the cloud formation)? "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite."1 William Blake's observation notwithstanding, the truth is that perception is the only thing that we have with which to view our existence. I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that reality does exist. However, we mere mortals lack the ability to view the world through anything other than our own perceptions. The knowledge or meaning gained through contemplation of the form is, in all likelihood, quite different for each observer.Likewise, imagination and conceptual ability play a role in interpreting what the senses have perceived. Langer, and by quotation, Reichling, offers the notion of a red dot placed on the rim of a spinning wheel that appears to the viewer as a red circle. "When the spinning stops, the form, the red circle, evaporates. Did it really exist? Does it have ontological status? Is it merely an illusion?" I asked my students to close their eyes and imagine a spinning wheel with a red dot placed on the rim. I asked them, "As the wheel spins, do you see the dot?" The answer was that they saw a red circle. Did they really see a red circle, or even a spinning wheel? Of course not, we were in a music classroom. Yet they were able to conceptualize or imagine the image, and I would suggest that that carries more weight in the realm of art than does actual ontological status.The problem with the experiment of the preceding paragraph is that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content, writing that it is not possible 'to divorce the logical form from its one embodiment or expression.'" In the subsequent paragraph Reichling states, When the music stops, when the ballet is concluded, when the play ends, when the wheel stops spinning, memory may remain but the content (content as meaning-my parenthetical interjection), the feeling, the red circle, the image the dancer created is gone. Is this illogical or has knowledge... (shrink)

"The purpose of Mary Warnock's well-informed and discriminating book is to provide a brief account of the main ethical problems which have been discussed in the present century in England, France, and the United States. A certain number of the writing which deal with these problems, among them those of Bradley, Moore, Prichard, Ayer, Stevenson, and Sartre, have been considered and analysed in detail. They have been taken in chronological order and have been selected from the many books (...) and articles on the moral philosophy as those most likely to be of lasting importance for the subject."-Publisher. (shrink)

¿Qué pasaría si, en el momento fundacional de la modernidad, el personaje principal no fuera el yo cartesiano, sino ese otro personaje que Descartes llamó genio maligno? Esa es la hipótesis que plantea el presente ensayo: ¿qué ocurriría si en lugar de la agotada certeza del yo, el mundo moderno se hubiera asentado más bien sobre la confusión y sobre la trampa que se condensan en la metáfora del genio maligno? Desde esa hipótesis, la mayor parte de las configuraciones filosóficas (...) de eso que llamamos modernidad aparecen transfiguradas, se convierten en meras repeticiones de aquel fraude básico que ocultan. Pero donde tales configuraciones velan ese gesto al repetirlo, el género de terror y los discursos sobre la angustia y la locura parecen haberlo denunciado como grietas de un edificio sin fondo. Este es el viaje apasionante que se propone en este libro, un viaje en el que autores como Poe, Stevenson o Conrad se atreven a proponernos lecturas de Nietzsche, Heidegger o Deleuze y Foucault, en el que personajes como Frankenstein o el doctor Jekyll nos enseñan aspectos inéditos de la filosofía de los siglos modernos, un viaje en el que la posmodernidad se revela como el penúltimo recurso retórico de un personaje ficticio y casi olvidado. (shrink)

My study of Mary Shelley and father includes her husband because Percy Shelley’s obsessions with patriarchy, with “ ‘GOD, AND KIND, AND LAW,’ ” influenced profoundly Mary’s* art and life. Percy’s idealizations of father in The Revolt of Islam and Prince Athanase indicated ways or resolving familial antagonisms which Mary adopted and developed her later fiction. Percy’s relationship with Frankenstein is still more intricate. Recognizing that her husband’s obsessions with father and self-creation were contributing to the deterioration (...) of their marriage, Mary represents these obsessions in Victor Frankenstein—partly to vent in art the anger which would have further damaged the marriage, and party to show Percy before it was too late the errors of his ways. It was too late. Percy responded to Frankenstein in Prometheus Unbound and The Cenci with a reaffirmation of sonship which has been largely unrecognized by scholars.Father looms so large for both Mary and Percy Shelley that no one critical approach can account for him fully. At their most idealistic—and thus most traditional—the Shelleys encourage a critical methodology which integrates the traditional disciplines of biographical and close textual analyses. By taking this approach to Mary’s later fiction and to Percy’s The Revolt of Islam, I can not only confirm the prominence of father for the Shelleys but also establish the ideal against which their most subversive and important art was created. Reading this indirect, overdetermined art in light of the negative Oedipus will help answer important questions about Frankenstein, Prometheus Unbound, and The Cenci and will, I hop, add to our understanding of the vexed role of father in the Romantic period and in subsequent generations whose children we are. William Veeder, professor of English at the University of Chicago, has published books on Yeats, Henry James, and Victorian feminism. His Mary Shelley and “Frankenstein”: The Fate of Androgyny will appear in December 1985. The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction, coedited with Susan M. Griffin, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Centenary, a collection of new essays on Stevenson’s novel, are also forthcoming . He is currently at work on The Serpent’s Tale: Anglo-American Gothic Fiction, 1885-1914. (shrink)

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois, houses a trove of invaluable historical resources concerning all aspects of the Prairie State’s past. Treasures of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library commemorates the institution’s 125-year history, as well as its contributions to scholarship and education by highlighting a selection of eighty-five treasures from among more than twelve million items in the library’s collections. After opening with a historical overview and extensive chronology of the Library, the volume organizes the treasures by various (...) topics, including items that illustrate various locations and materials relating to business, the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the oldest items, unusual treasures, ethnicity, and art. From the Gettysburg Address, Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s letters, and Governor Dan Walker’s boots to a Deering Harvester Company catalog, WPA publications, and an Adlai Stevenson I campaign hat, each entry includes a thorough description of the item, one or more images, and a discussion of its history and how the library acquired it, if known. Other treasures include the Thomas Yates General Store daybook, Dubin Pullman car materials, Civil War newspapers, a Lincoln coffin photograph, the Mary Lincoln insanity verdict, the Directory of Sangamon County’s Colored Citizens, andLincoln’s stovepipe hat. To highlight the academic importance of the Library, nineteen researchers share how study in the Library’s collections proved essential to their projects. Although these treasures only scrape the surface of the vast holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, together they epitomize the rich, varied, and sometimes quirky resources available to both serious scholars and curious tourists alike at this valuable cultural institution. 2015 ISHS Superior Achievement Award. (shrink)

In recent years a number of books have been published that offer short autobiographical essays of academics, focusing on their research and how their life history affected their scholarly development. These could be labeled as "intellectual journey narratives." Some volumes focus on philosophers and their religious faith or lack thereof (e.g., Clark, 1997, Antony, 2007). Psychology has its own version of the intellectual journey narrative, in T. S. Krawiec's (1972, 1974, 1978) multivolume set of autobiographical essays by contemporary psychologists. In (...) 1987, Rosemary Pilkington edited her first volume of essays entitled Men and Women of Parapsychology: Personal Reflections, Esprit Volume 1. It contains autobiographical essays by Jule Eisenbud, Montague Ullman, Jan Ehrenwald, Eileen Coly, Joseph H. Rush, Gertrude R. Schmeidler, Emilio Servadio, Renée Haynes, Hans Bender, Karlis Osis, George Zorab and Bernard Grad. The second (2013) volume contains autobiographical essays by Mary Rose Barrington, Eberhard Bauer, William Braud (now deceased), Stephen Braude, Richard S. Broughton, Larry Dossey, Sally Rhine Feather, Erlendur Haraldsson, Arthur Hastings, Stanley Krippner, Lawrence LeShan, Roger Nelson, John Palmer, Guy Leon Playfair, William G. Roll (now deceased), Serena Roney-Dougal, Stephan A. Schwartz, Rex G. Stanford, Russell Targ, Charles T. Tart, and Walter von Lucadou. Between the two volumes almost every significant contemporary parapsychologist is represented, with the major exceptions being the late John Beloff and the late Ian Stevenson. (shrink)

The ethical debate about neurotechnologies—including both drugs and implanted devices—has been largely framed around the questions of whether and when these technologies could damage or promote authenticity. Patients can experience changes in mood, behavior, emotion, or preferences—seemingly, changes in character or personality. Some describe such changes by saying they feel like different people; that they have become either more or less themselves; or that they feel as though some of their moods, behaviors, emotions or preferences are not their own. These (...) kinds of statements are used to describe both changes that a drug or device is... (shrink)

How can we critique political theory when all we have to use are its own conceptual tools? As Hannah Arendt observed, it can only be done through leaps, inversions, and the turning of concepts upside-down. But this twisting operation must be done in order to turn those who philosophize back to the hard work of real life change. In Turning Operations, renowned theorist Mary G. Dietz challenges specific contemporary modes of theorizing politics-from feminist theory to Habermasian discourse- -while appropriating (...) some of political theory's own approaches and some of its most striking figures, including Aristotle, Nietzsche, Weber, Beauvoir, and Arendt in order to foment some leaps, inversions, reversals and turns on politics along the way. Dietz confronts a number of current debates, arguing that most are filled with artificial division and empty terms. She argues that we must abandon commonly supported dichotomies-masculine versus feminine, speech versus action, liberty versus community -to create abetter discourse, and a better world. Turning Operations is an essential new contribution to democratic and feminist political thought. (shrink)

A phenomenological approach to mathematical practice is sketched out, and some problems with this sort of approach are considered. The approach outlined takes mathematical practices as its data, and seeks to provide an empirically adequate philosophy of mathematics based on observation of these practices. Some observations are presented, based on two case studies of some research into the classification of C*-algebras. It is suggested that an anti-realist account of mathematics could be developed on the basis of these and other studies, (...) locating the substance of mathematics in the various informal argument methods used by mathematicians. (shrink)

Many health care systems include programs that allow patients in exceptional circumstances to access medical interventions of as yet unproven benefit. In this article we consider the ethical justifications for—and demands on—these special access programs (SAPs). SAPs have a compassionate basis: They give patients with limited options the opportunity to try interventions that are not yet approved by standard regulatory processes. But while they signal that health care systems can and will respond to individual suffering, SAPs have several disadvantages, including (...) the potential to undermine regulatory and knowledge-generation structures that constitute significant public goods. The “balance” between these considerations depends in part on how broadly SAPs are used, but also on whether SAPs can be made to contribute to the generation of knowledge about the effects of health interventions. We argue that patients should usually be required to contribute outcome data while using SAPs. (shrink)

Explores the teaching and learning of issues relating to the impact of science in society. This title offers practical guidance in devising learning goals and suitable learning and assessment strategies. It helps teachers to provide students with the skills and understanding needed to address these multi-faceted issues.

Defends an account of mathematical knowledge in which mathematical knowledge is a kind of modal knowledge. Leng argues that nominalists should take mathematical knowledge to consist in knowledge of the consistency of mathematical axiomatic systems, and knowledge of what necessarily follows from those axioms. She defends this view against objections that modal knowledge requires knowledge of abstract objects, and argues that we should understand possibility and necessity in a primative way.

This study explores the impact of mood on individuals’ ethical decision-making processes through the Graham [Graham, J. W.: 1986, Research in Organizational Behavior 8, 1–52] model of Principled Organizational Dissent. In particular, the research addresses how an individual’s mood influences his or her willingness to report the unethical actions of a colleague. Participants’ experienced an affectively charged, unrelated event and were then asked to make a decision regarding whistle-blowing intentions in a public accounting context. As expected, negative mood was associated (...) with lower intentions to report the unethical actions of others to a superior within the organization. The Graham model, which proposes that reporting intentions are impacted by the three determinants of seriousness, personal responsibility and cost, was employed to more clearly understand the nature of the affect–reporting intention relationship. The role of affect was explained by demonstrating that two determinants mediate the relationship between mood and whistle-blowing intentions. Specifically, as seriousness and responsibility have a positive impact on reporting intentions, the reduction of these perceptions by negative mood reduces the intent to report. The negative impact of personal cost on reporting intentions was significant, although not as a mediator of mood. (shrink)

Children show increasing control of emotions and behavior during their early years. Our studies suggest a shift in control from the brain’s orienting network in infancy to the executive network by the age of 3—4 years. Our longitudinal study indicates that orienting influences both positive and negative affect, as measured by parent report in infancy. At 3—4 years of age, the dominant control of affect rests in a frontal brain network that involves the anterior cingulate gyrus. Connectivity of brain structures (...) also changes from infancy to toddlerhood. Early connectivity of parietal and frontal areas is important in orienting; later connectivity involves midfrontal and anterior cingulate areas related to executive attention and self-regulation. (shrink)

Background: Clinical investigation is a growing field employing increasing numbers of nurses. This has created a new specialty practice defined by aspects unique to nursing in a clinical research context: the objectives (to implement research protocols and advance science), setting (research facilities), and nature of the nurse–participant relationship. The clinical research nurse role may give rise to feelings of ethical conflict between aspects of protocol implementation and the duty of patient advocacy, a primary nursing responsibility. Little is known about whether (...) research nurses experience unique ethical challenges distinct from those experienced by nurses in traditional patient-care settings. Research objectives: The purpose of the study was to describe the nature of ethical challenges experienced by clinical research nurses within the context of their practice. Research design: The study utilized a qualitative descriptive design with individual interviews. Participants and research context: Participating nurses (N = 12) self-identified as having experienced ethical challenges during screening. The majority were Caucasian (90%), female (83%), and worked in outpatient settings (67%). Approximately 50% had > 10 years of research experience. Ethical considerations: The human subjects review board approved the study. Written informed consent was obtained. Findings: Predominant themes were revealed: (1) the inability to provide a probable good, or/do no harm, and (2) dual obligations (identity as a nurse vs a research nurse). The following patterns and subthemes emerged: conflicted allegiances between protocol implementation, needs of the participant, desire to advance science, and tension between the nurse–patient therapeutic relationship versus the research relationship. Discussion: Participants described ethical challenges specific to the research role. The issues are central to the nurse–participant relationship, patient advocacy, the nurse’s role in implementing protocols, and/or advancing science. Conclusion: Ethical challenges related to the specialized role of clinical research nurses were identified. More research is warranted to fully understand their nature and frequency and to identify support systems for resolution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT‘expressionist’ accounts of applied mathematics seek to avoid the apparent Platonistic commitments of our scientific theories by holding that we ought only to believe their mathematics-free nominalistic content. The notion of ‘nominalistic content’ is, however, notoriously slippery. Yablo's account of non-catastrophic presupposition failure offers a way of pinning down this notion. However, I argue, its reliance on possible worlds machinery begs key questions against Platonism. I propose instead that abstract expressionists follow Geoffrey Hellman's lead in taking the assertoric content of (...) empirical science to be irreducibly modal, using the ‘non-interference’ of mathematical objects as justification for detaching nominalistic consequences. (shrink)

Recently, concerns have been raised about the phenomenon of ‘overdiagnosis’, the diagnosis of a condition that is not causing harm, and will not come to cause harm. Along with practical, ethical, and scientific questions, overdiagnosis raises questions about our concept of disease. In this paper, we analyse overdiagnosis as an epistemic problem and show how it challenges many existing accounts of disease. In particular, it raises ques- tions about conceptual links drawn between disease and dysfunction, harm, and risk. We argue (...) that ‘disease’ should be considered a vague concept with a non-classical structure. On this view, overdiagnosed cases are ‘borderline’ cases of disease, falling in the zone between cases that are clearly disease, and cases that are clearly not disease. We then develop a pre ́cising definition of disease designed to provide practical help in preventing and limiting overdiagnosis. We argue that for this purpose, we can define disease as dysfunction that has a significant risk of causing severe harm to the patient. (shrink)

Business and society scholars have analyzed the citizenship activities of private firms, but what of their own institutions? This article introduces the concept of business school citizenship (BSC), examining it as a response to the legitimacy pressures created by competing corporate and university interests in the U.S. management-education context. Theories of corporate and of university social responsibility are used to explain BSC, and these theories form the basis of the argument that such activities can be justified and should be increased.

By addressing specific global problems and placing them within an ethical context, "The Environment in Question" provides the reader with both a theoretical and practical understanding of environmental issues. The contributors are internationally known figures drawn from the various disciplines which bear upon these issues, such as geography, psychology, social policy, and philosophy. The contributions range from those tackling individual concrete issues (such as nuclear waste and the threat to the rain forest) to those addressing matters of policy, principle and (...) attitude (such as our obligations to future generations and the nature of technological risk). "The Environment in Question" is designed as a text for students of philosophy, environmental science, environmental education, ecology, and teacher education. It can be used as an inter-disciplinary, self-contained course book or in conjunction with relevant material. In addition, as the essays directly and controversially address current environmental debates in a non-technical manner, it is of great interest both to professionals in those areas and to readers who care about the planet's future. The substantial cross-section of concerns and approaches will enable all readers to develop the necessary level of understanding required to initiate and sustain debate on environmental issues. Contributors: Robert Allsion, David E. Cooper, Barry S. Gower, F. G. T. Holliday, C. A. Hooker, Mary Midgley, Philip Neal, Joy A. Palmer, Robert Prosser, Holmes Rolston III, Mark Sagoff, Vandana Shiva, Stephen Sterling, Rosemary J. Stevenson, Jennifer Trusted. (shrink)

This article explains how li 禮 or ‘ritual propriety’ is the ‘body language’ of ren 仁 or the authentic expression of our humanity. Li and ren are interdependent aspects of a larger creative human way (rendao 仁道) that can be conceptually distinguished as follows: li refers to the ritualized social form of appropriate conduct and ren to the more general, authentically human spirit this expresses. Li is the social instrument for self-cultivation and the vehicle of harmonious human interaction. More, li (...) must mean something that is effectively communicated to others for an authentic, human (ren) interaction to occur. Li is the body language of ren in being the ritual vehicle for its’ expression; however, li is underdetermined by ren and so must be distinguished from it in on further grounds: authentic human activity must not just be equivocated with social convention because conclusively establishing whether a particular action is li (or is a truly ren action) is impossible. As a result, li is often confused with social power and privilege that is easier to empirically identify than ren conduct is, but this is a mistake since li has to express ren or it is not li at all. The inescapable ambiguity of li – an ambiguity that attaches to any language – can be critiqued by the Western view that sees something ‘essential’ to the ‘self,’ and that makes one a ‘self’ in and of oneself and not in a way that depends on others. I show that such Western individualism – while resting on a fundamentally different way of thinking of being a person and living a good life – does not reduce Confucian ritual to being an instrument for social discrimination and subordination. My argument is indebted to twentieth-century philosophy of language in the West that offered the idea that some words are actions. (shrink)

Confucianism conceives of persons as being necessarily interdependent, defining personhood in terms of the various roles one embodies and that are established by the relationships basic to one's life. By way of contrast, the Western philosophical tradition has predominantly defined persons in terms of intrinsic characteristics not thought to depend on others. This more strictly and explicitly individualistic concept of personhood contrasts with the Confucian idea that one becomes a person because of others; where one is never a person independently (...) or in and of oneself but develops into one only in community. This article surveys some differences between Confucian and Western ideas of self and their connection to ethics mainly in light of the relational self of the Confucian Analects and Mencius . A Philosophy Compass article called Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition II: A Comparative Analysis of Personhood will follow, that examines how the more individualistic way of conceiving of personhood in the West has had moral and political implications that differ, and even conflict, with those of Confucianism. (shrink)

This book is the first detailed study of the plays of Sophocles through examination of a single ethical principle--the traditional Greek popular moral code of "helping friends and harming enemies." Five of the extant plays are discussed in detail from both a dramatic and an ethical standpoint, and the author concludes that ethical themes are not only integral to each drama, but are subjected to an implicit critique through the tragic consequences to which they give rise. Greek scholars and students (...) of Greek drama and Greek thought will welcome this book, which is presented in such a way as to be accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike. No knowledge of Greek is required. (shrink)

While Wallace disagreed with Darwin that domesticates provided a great deal of useful information on wild populations,71 Darwin continued to draw on his domesticated animals and plants to inform him on the workings of his theory. Unlike Wallace, his exposure to natural populations was extremely limited after his return from the Beagle voyage. By the 1850s, he had settled into a life at Down House and was becoming more and more withdrawn from London scientific circles. He turned to his network (...) of informants, visits from colleagues such as Hooker and T. H. Huxley, subscriptions to various journals, and his own experimental studies at Down.This work on domesticates was clearly related to other natural history studies conducted by Darwin and others during the same period. For example, during the 1850s when Darwin worked on domesticates, he was also engaged in questions of geographic distribution. To study the dispersal and subsequent viability of introduced seeds, he soaked various seeds in a tub filled with seawater and counted which of the seeds floated after a given period; later he planted the seeds in the yard at Down to look for potential viability. There was no attempt at controlled, replicated experiments in these studies, or in his work with domesticates, nor should there have been. To Darwin the results of one experiment represented a potential truth of nature, and he was quick to seize upon these results as supporting evidence for his theory.I have suggested in this paper that his work on domesticates was not simply meant to provide an analogy for natural selection but rather became a research program to investigate other aspects of his natural selection theory, especially inheritance and variability; these subjects were integral parts of his theory of natural selection, but by 1859 he had not found a mechanism to account for them. The experiments brought home the difficult problems of inheritance, and Darwin specifically formulated pangenesis to account for these problems. Pangenesis was not an afterthought but an integration of several decades of thinking on inheritance. It was a unified theory to explain the complicated results he witnessed in his own experiments.Much of the Darwin scholarship has focused on Darwin's path toward the discovery of natural selection. Natural selection per se was a major interest, but not the only area of interest to Darwin. Inheritance was an area of serious concern for him both before and after he had formulated natural selection. His experimentation with domesticates was an attempt to look beyond natural selection and to concentrate on the difficult subject of inheritance. He found inheritance especially troublesome, requiring a “provisional hypothesis” to account for it. To see domesticates, as they are described in the Origin, as merely an analogy for natural selection, does not account for the importance Darwin placed on them. For him they were not man's monstrous productions, but worthy experimental subjects providing him with crucial information on inheritance. (shrink)

Personalised medicine has been discussed as a medical paradigm shift that will improve health while reducing inefficiency and waste. At the same time, it raises new practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges. In this paper, we examine PM strategies epistemologically in order to develop capacities to address these challenges, focusing on a recently proposed strategy for developing patient-specific models from induced pluripotent stem cells so as to make individualised treatment predictions. We compare this strategy to two main PM strategies—stratified medicine and (...) computational models. Drawing on epistemological work in the philosophy of medicine, we explain why these two methods, while powerful, are neither truly personalised nor, epistemologically speaking, novel strategies. Both are forms of correlational black box. We then argue that the iPSC models would count as a new kind of black box. They would not rely entirely on mechanistic knowledge, and they would utilise correlational evidence in a different way from other strategies—a way that would enable personalised predictions. In arguing that the iPSC models would present a novel method of gaining evidence for clinical practice, we provide an epistemic analysis that can help to inform the practical, regulatory, and ethical challenges of developing an iPSC system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Critical Piety: Our Urgent Need to Recover an Ancient VirtueMary Nickel (bio)But, you see, if you eats these dinners and don’t cook ’em, if you wears these clothes and don’t buy or iron them, then you might start thinking that the good fairy or some spirit did all that. They asked a little white girl in this family I used to work for who made her cake at one (...) of her little tea parties. She said she made it and then she hid her face and said the good fairies made it. Well, you are looking at that good fairy. Black folks don’t have no time to be thinking like that. If I thought like that, I’d burn cakes and scorch skirts. But when you don’t have anything else to do, you can think like that. It’s bad for your mind, though.—Rosa Wakefield1There has been a lamentable trend, in the age since the Great Awakenings, to use the word “piety” as a synonym for “devoutness.” Piety, to the contemporary ear, conjures a sense of personal religious feeling and practice. For example, Saba Mahmood’s distinguished text, Politics of Piety, has as its theme the individual agency of women in Islamic societies. Meanwhile, untold books in the field of religious studies simply use “piety” as a stand-in for “religion.”2 This use of the term is not limited to the academic study of religion; recently, one liberation theologian has even demanded that we move, in the words of the title of his book, Beyond Piety.3 The thesis of that book rests on the premise that piety is altogether private, and insufficiently materially productive.4 [End Page 5]According to the ancients, though, piety is neither of these things. Piety, for Cicero, motivates the pious to “render kind offices and loving service to one’s kin and country.”5 As such, the ancient virtue of piety is fundamentally public, insofar as it pertains to one’s public tribute to her kin and fellow citizens. Furthermore, piety is productive, insofar as it motivates the pious to accomplish good things on behalf of her kin and fellow citizens. The ancient virtue therefore involves the near inverse of what the modern term suggests today.6 Where contemporary uses of the word “piety” are often preceded by the word “personal,” the ancients would have been bewildered by such a formulation.This essay does not dare try to account for how the ancient virtue of piety disintegrated to the point of becoming a matter of private religious practice. For those who are interested in that topic, many historians (and non-historians) offer various narratives to explain that trajectory.7 However, I will refrain from so doing. Instead, in what follows, I seek to illuminate the ancient virtue of piety, and show why we need so urgently to recover it. Piety, the ancients believed, is the virtuous act of acknowledging those things that make our lives possible.Furthermore, I will also update the ancient virtue, so to speak, to situate it in our modern context. That requires three substantial interventions. First, I show that piety must be comprehensive and even prospective. That is: not only ought we to be grateful for those who have made our lives possible up to and including the present moment, but we ought also to be grateful for those whose future work will sustain our continued wellbeing. Second, I show that piety must not only be symbolic or expressive, but also material. However, I do [End Page 6] not intend to neglect the importance of expressive piety. Third, I concentrate on the appropriate means for acknowledging those sources of our being that are not altogether (or at all) commendable. Finally, I offer some reflections on what this meditation on piety might tell us about contemporary American society, including two policy proposals regarding public education and paid family leave.I. Piety, Ancient and ModernPremodern Piety. It can take some effort to comprehend what pietas meant to the ancients, especially given the modern connotations associated with its contemporary English cognate. It takes even more to grasp how central this virtue... (shrink)

This essay argues that the depiction of two female characters’ situations, friendship, and self-understandings in The Mandarins (Les mandarins, 1954) develops Beauvoir's theorization of feminine complicity in The Second Sex (Le deuxième sexe, 1949). Through its prolonged focus on the concrete situations of two female characters, the novel enables Beauvoir to explore the (hetero)sexual and metaphysical sources of feminine complicity in depth. The result is that The Mandarins illustrates why women who are, to greater or lesser degrees, complicit with the (...) structures of their own oppression can be understood neither as agents of gender-based oppression nor as passive victims of it, but only as human beings forced to invent means to survive the mutilation of their transcendence. (shrink)

Herbert Fingarett's achievements range from his assault upon the misconceived 'disease theory' of alchoholism, through social philosophy, philosophy of law, and philosophical psychology, to Chinese studies and Confucian thought. Fingarette's major works include 'The Self in Transformation' (1963), 'Self-Deception' (1969), 'Confucius---The Secular as Sacred' (1972), and 'The Meaning of Criminal Insanity' (1972). His Book, 'Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alchoholism as a Disease' (1988), transformed the public debate on alchohol treatment and made Fingarette the target of an intense barrage of (...) abuse and vituperation from entrepreneurs in the alchohol-treatment industry. 'Rules, Rituals, and Responsibilities' contains Fingarette's intellectual autobiography, nine papers by leading scholars on different aspects of Fingarette's thought, and Fingarette's response to each of these papers. (shrink)

Aristotle’s Meteorology 4.12 is puzzling, in part because the chapter appears to extend teleological explanation to include certain inorganic materials without natural biological functions, such as metals and stone. This paper examines two attempts to explain why such materials can have functions, and shows that they are problematic. As an alternative, I argue that raw inorganic materials—as well as separated parts of organisms—can have extrinsic functions. Extrinsic functions can explain why natural inorganic materials can be sorted into natural kinds, even (...) if their functions are ultimately related to their uses in the productive arts. (shrink)

This Philosophy Compass article continues the comparison between Confucian and mainstream Western views of personhood and their connection with ethics begun in Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition I: Fundamental Concepts , by focusing on the Western self conceived as an independent agent with moral and political rights. More specifically, the present article briefly accounts for how the more strictly and explicitly individualistic notion of self dominating Western philosophy has developed, leading up to a recent debate in modern (...) Western rights theory between Herbert Fingarette and Henry Rosemont, Jr., two contemporary Western philosophers who are both steeped in Confucian thought as well as moral and political philosophy. This discussion elucidates how Confucianism can be compared to, and even contrasted with some basic principles of modern Western rights theory and the more individualistic view of self they entail. In the end, a new view of personhood and "free will"? is offered that synthesizes insights from the Confucian treatment of persons as being essentially interdependent with the Western treatment of persons as being essentially independent. (shrink)

Technological advances are making devices that functionally replace body parts—artificial organs and limbs—more widely used, and more capable of providing patients with lives that are close to “normal.” Some of the ethical issues this is likely to raise relate to how such prostheses are conceptualized. Prostheses are ambiguous between being inanimate objects and sharing in the status of human bodies—which already have an ambiguous status, as both objects and subjects. At the same time, the possibility of replacing body parts with (...) artificial objects puts pressure on the normative status typically accorded to human bodies, seemingly confirming that body parts are replaceable objects. The paper argues that bodies’ normative status relies on the relation of a body to a person and shows that persons could have similar relations to prostheses. This suggests that in approaching ethical issues surrounding prostheses, it is appropriate to regard them as more like body parts than like objects. (shrink)

Forms of African relational ethics that prioritise the value of harmony struggle to accommodate arguably valuable disharmony, such as disruptive emotions like anger. A wider literature on political emotions has defended the value of such emotions and even proposed that a particular form of injustice, affective injustice, can arise if we fail to create space for them. While it has recently been proposed that Thaddeus Metz's African-inspired relational moral theory can accommodate disruptive emotions and address affective injustice, in this philosophical (...) article I argue that any success that Metz's account has in this regard is superficial. This critique has important implications: either we need to engage further with disruptive emotions and affective injustice within an African relational ethics, or it may be the case that we instead need to return to how we conceptualise affective injustice to ensure that it does the justice-promoting work that we want it to do. (shrink)

Providers are essential to the delivery of abortion care. Yet, they often occupy an ambiguous space in political discourse around abortion. The introduction of a new abortion service in Ireland invites us to look afresh at providers. Since the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 came into force, by far the most common form of abortion care has been early medical abortion (EMA). This is typically provided by General Practitioners (GPs), with approximately 10% of GPs having chosen to (...) provide EMA. This article draws on an empirical study of providers to investigate their motivations for, and experiences of, provision and their views on colleagues who have not chosen to provide. The study shows that for many providers, the choice to provide was grounded in a moral commitment to protecting women’s rights to autonomy and health and ensuring that the harms of the past were not repeated. The article argues that notwithstanding increased normalisation of EMA in Ireland, conscience still has a role to play in abortion care provision and it is important to reflect on the various aspects of this role. (shrink)