How aggressively should we pursue life-sustaining treatment of the demented patient? This question becomes increasingly important as our population ages and medical technology offers ever more life-prolongation. In Life'sDominion, Ronald Dworkin addresses the issue in the context of an Alzheimer patient who had previously declared the desire to avoid life-sustaining intervention. Dworkin argues for the primacy of what he calls precedent autonomy: In 1995, the HastingsCenterReport carried thoughtful rebuttals by Daniel Callahan and Rebecca Dresser. Much of Callahan's article is devoted (...) to patients who never executed an advance directive, but he states unequivocally that such directives can be overridden, basing much of his argument on the writings of Sanford Kadish. Together, Dresser, Callahan, and Kadish define a clear position opposed to precedent autonomy. (shrink)

The phenomenon of contract cheating presents, potentially, a serious threat to the quality and standards of Higher Education around the world. There have been suggestions, cited below, to tackle the problem using legal means, but we find that current laws are not fit for this purpose. In this article we present a proposal for a specific new law to target contract cheating, which could be enacted in most jurisdictions.We test our proposed new law against a number of issues that would (...) need to be considered before any legal approach could be successful; would changing the legal status of contract cheating make it less likely to happen? Could this be achieved in a specific way? If so, who should actually be prosecuted and what offence are they committing? Would it actually address the causes of contract cheating? We suggest some answers to these questions, but then also identify a number of unintended potential consequences. We therefore additionally consider whether a legal approach is possible or even desirable.We conclude that a legal approach to contract cheating is possible, and, on balance, appropriate. Using UK law as an example, we offer a specific suggestion to lawmakers, around the world, for how this might be achieved, and conclude that the most successful approach would be to focus largely on a law targeting the providers of contract cheating, in particular commercial services. (shrink)

Newton began his optical studies believing in the modification theory, which was still universally accepted at that time, and in the perception of colour as a physiological process—a process in which the eye responds differently to the different velocities of identical globules. His discovery that white light is heterogeneous led him to switch to considering colour in purely physical terms.A century later, Goethe started out by accepting Newton's physical theory. He soon abandoned it, however, finding modification to be (...) more in keeping with his own insights. One beneficial consequence of this was that he developed an awareness of the importance of the physiological aspect of colour perception, and was therefore able to demonstrate that Newton's theory of light and colours is too simplistic; that there is more to colour than variable refrangibility. (shrink)

In his Essay concerning Human Understanding, John Locke explicitly refers to Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica in laudatory but restrained terms: “Mr. Newton, in his never enough to be admired Book, has demonstrated several Propositions, which are so many new Truths, before unknown to the World, and are farther Advances in Mathematical Knowledge” (Essay, 4.7.3). The mathematica of the Principia are thus acknowledged. But what of philosophia naturalis? Locke maintains that natural philosophy, conceived as natural science (as opposed (...) to natural history), would give us demonstrations of the necessary connection between the (ultimately, simple) ideas constitutive of our complex ideas of various natural kinds of substances (e.g., gold). Indeed Locke goes so far as to suggest that a completely adequate natural science would also realize (perhaps, per impossibile) the goal of transforming the corpuscularian hypothesis into knowledge by demonstrating the necessary connection between the ‘microstructure’ (primary qualities of insensible corpuscles) of a particular natural kind of substance (e.g., gold) and the ideas of secondary qualities constitutive of the complex idea of that kind of substance. Locke’s conclusion concerning the possibility of the development of a natural science thus conceived is pessimistic: In vain therefore shall we endeavor to discover by our Ideas, (the only true way of certain and universal knowledge,) what other Ideas are to be found constantly joined with that of our complex Idea of any Substance: since we neither know the real Constitution of the minute Parts, on which their Qualities do depend; not, did we know them could we discover any necessary connexion between them, and any of their Secondary Qualities: which is necessary to be done, before we can certainly know their necessary co-existence (Essay, 4.3.14). It is understandable that, with such a conception of the science of nature, Locke found little of it in Newton’s Principia. In this paper, I further explore what might, perhaps with some hyperbole, be termed Locke’s ‘disappointment’ with the Prinicipia as a contribution to natural science. In particular, I argue that Locke’s adherence to the idealist epistemology of the Way of Ideas entails that mathematics cannot lend its certainty as a scientia to natural philosophy. Consequently, he finds more mathematics than natural philosophy in the Principia. (shrink)

Over the last thirty years, great advances have been made in Newton scholarship, in our understanding of the scientific culture of the eighteenth century, and in the appraisal of the present significance of Hegel’s treatment of the natural sciences. Newton’s influence upon the eighteenth century was profound and pervasive. Hegel’s assessment of the Newtonianism of his day has now become a matter of some importance to philosophers of science, both east and west of the ideological divide in Europe. (...) It is essential, therefore, that some attempt should be made to bring together those historians and philosophers of science who have been transforming our conception of these three distinct but closely interrelated fields. And where better than in Newton’s own college? (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS At the Origins of Modern Atheism. By MICHAEL J. BucKLEY, S.J. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. Pp. viii+ 445. Writing ostensibly a history of the philosophical origins of 18th century atheism in 17th century theism, Michael Buckley, S.J., has contributed a learned, subtle, and provocative hook whose length is significantly increased and whose focus is considerably enlarged by a running commentary about (...) the metatheory (Richard McKeon's philosophical semantics) that structures his reading of the chosen theists and atheists. Buckley provides the best summary of his own historical conclusion: "... theology generated apologetic philosophy and philosophy generated Universal Mechanics, and these in turn co-opted theology to become the foundations of theistic assertions... [But] when the contradictions between Cartesian and Newtonian mechanics were further negated... god became a deus otiosus" [pp. 358-359]. This conclusion rests on a philosophical principle whose elements are taken from Plato's Seventh Epistle: " The name, the definition, and the instance for the atheistic negations are all set by the current theism " [p. 15]. In turn, this principle is justified by a cluster of meta-theses that are not easily summarized, although one stands above the rest: " Much more may he involved in such a process of ideas [from 17th century theism to 18th century atheism] than their· own internal necessity, hut internal necessity remains and governs inherently " [p. 334]. The latter meta-thesis asserts that there is a dialectic of ideas and it is from this point of view that Buckley reads the conceptual history of modern atheism. Dialectical necessity is a bugbear for many contemporary philosophers, hut Buckley argues, convincingly I think, that some kind of conceptual necessity links theism and atheism. Atheism is, essentially, the negation of a particular form of theism. In Hegelian terms, atheism is a determinate negation which draws all of its conceptual content from what it negates. Buckley, however, puts an even greater Hegelian spin on the same point. If the theism carries within itself a contradiction, it negates itself and, thereby, dialectically generates its contradiction-atheism [cf. p. 17]. " Modern atheism took not only its meaning hut its existence from the self-alienation of religion " [p. 359]. A theism that believes in the existence of an intelligent, personal God, Who creates and orders the universe, but that attempts a rational 144 BOOK REVIEWS 145 justification of this belief apart from the religious experience that alone can embody such a faith contains exactly the kind of inner contradiction that generates the negation of itself. Buckley focuses on the poignant contradiction of a Christian theology abandoning " the religious figure of Jesus as the principal evidence for the reality of God" [p. 41] in favor of some philosophy (whether that of Descartes, Malebranche, or Newton) which provides a different and allegedly more certain kind of evidence for God's existence. This theology, or more precisely the theistic philosophies it spawned, are the sources of modern atheism because, if Descartes and Newton are consistently combined, philosophy can do quite well without God. Laplace's famous reply to Napoleon, although it was not originally an atheistic slogan, captures what Diderot and d'Holbach thought: God is an unnecessary hypothesis in a truly universal mechanics which needs to presuppose only matter and motion. The historical story, of course, is more complicated than this skeleton dialectic can suggest. Buckley richly details the story but I shall rehearse only its opening chapter. Buckley begins with the Jesuit theologian, Leonard Lays (1554-1623), usually known under his Latin name, Lessius, whose De providentia numinis et anima immortalitate (1613) set the pattern for subsequent Catholic theology. Lessius, who was convinced that atheism by eliminating the eternal judge destroys morals and sound politics, revived Stoic arguments, numerous variations on a theme, which show that the universe is everywhere imprinted with a divine design. Lessius's intent, although he referred only to ancient philosophers, was not to replay the classical battle between the Stoics and the Epicureans but to combat the atheism, silent and disguised in contemporary Europe, that Lessius thought to be the inevitable outcome of the wars of religion and theological fights. Lessius, however, paid scant attention to his own insight... (shrink)

We address the controversy in the literature concerning the definition of holobionts and the apparent constraints on their evolution using concepts from community population genetics. The genetics of holobionts, consisting of a host and diverse microbial symbionts, has been neglected in many discussions of the topic, and, where it has been discussed, a gene-centric, species-centric view, based in genomic conflict, has been predominant. Because coevolution takes place between traits or genes in two or more species and not, strictly speaking, between (...) species, it may affect some traits but not others in either host or symbiont. Moreover, when interacting species pairs are embedded in a larger community, indirect ecological effects can alter the expected pairwise dynamics. Mode of symbiont transmission and the degree of host inbreeding both affect the extent of microbial mixing across host lineages and thereby the degree to which selection on one trait of either partner affects other aspects of a holobiont phenotype. We discuss several potential defining criteria for holobionts using community genetics and population genetics models, suggesting their application and limitations. Using community genetics models, we show how conflict between genomes can be self-limiting, while cooperation and mutualism tend to be self-accelerating. It is likely that this bias in the evolutionary dynamics of interaction between hosts and symbionts is an important feature of holobionts. This bias in the evolutionary dynamic could contribute to explaining the absence of cheaters from natural mutualisms, although cheaters are predicted by gene-centered conflict theory to cause the evolutionary instability of mutualisms. Additionally, it may help explain the more frequent origin of mutualisms from parasitic than from free-living systems, an evolutionary trajectory opposite to that predicted by genome conflict theory. (shrink)

This paper explores two related questions in late Athenian and Alexandrian Neoplatonism. First, how can a philosopher contemplate the eternal Forms while engaging in practical agency in the world? Second, do Neoplatonists provide a consistent account of the philosopher’s progress through the ‘stages of virtue’ (βαθμοί τῶν ἀρετῶν), the conceptual structure that underpins late antique philosophical curricula and hagiography? These questions interact, I suggest, because later Platonists appeal to the stages of virtue and divine maniai (βαθμοί τῶν μανίων) to explain (...) the philosopher’s ability to alternate gracefully between contemplation and embodied agency, and even to engage in both activities at the same moment. I argue that apparently contradictory evidence for the highest stages of virtue can be reconciled satisfactorily, shedding light on two models of ethical and perceptual transformation that are consistent throughout later Neoplatonism. In the first, 'painterly' model, we alternate between a vision of the paradigmatic model and its expression in the media of place and time; in the second, 'dancerly' model, we contemplate in action all at once, like a dancer moving to the music. (shrink)

The classical theory of probability has long been abandoned and is seen by most philosophers as a non-contender—a mere precursor to newer and better theories. In this paper I argue that this is a mistake. The main reasons for its rejection—all related to the notorious principle of indifference—are that it is circular, of limited applicability, inconsistent, and dependent upon unjustified empirical assumptions. I argue that none of these claims is true and that the classical theory remains to be refuted.

Adherents of the Abrahamic religions have traditionally held that God is morally perfect and unconditionally deserving of devotion, obedience, love, and worship. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic scriptures tell us that God is compassionate, merciful, and just. As is well-known, however, these same scriptures contain passages that portray God as wrathful, severely punitive, and jealous. Critics furthermore argue that the God of these scriptures commends bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia, condones slavery, and demands the adoption of unjust laws-for example, laws that (...) mandate the death penalty for adultery and rebellion against parents, and laws institutionalizing in various ways the diverse kinds of bigotry and oppression just mentioned. In recent days, these sorts of criticisms of the Hebrew Bible have been raised in new and forceful ways by philosophers, scientists, social commentators, and others. This volume brings together eleven original essays representing the views of both critics and defenders of the character of God as portrayed in these texts. Authors represent the disciplines of philosophy, religion, and Biblical studies. Each essay is accompanied by comments from another author who takes a critical approach to the thesis defended in that essay, along with replies by the essay's author. (shrink)

The Millennials, people born between 1980 and 2000, are poised to have a profound impact on our society but are often treated as a homogenous generation. While some prior research on generations posits that there are a number of consistencies across a generation, others argue that differences may emerge and distinguish individuals within a generation. Based on prior business ethics literature, this research dissects the Millennial's personal value orientations to explore if demographic differences, such as gender, amount of work experience, (...) business discipline specialization, and academic performance reveal variations in the ethical profile manifested by Millennials. The results from this research show that there are indeed numerous and significant statistical differences within the Millennials' PVO dataset. Variations are found when exploring nearly every demographic variable considered. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the Council (i.e., embryos (...) have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements. (shrink)

Gene drives are selfish genetic elements that use a variety of mechanisms to ensure they are transmitted to subsequent generations at greater than expected frequencies. Synthetic gene drives based on the clustered regularly interspersed palindromic repeats genome editing system have been proposed as a way to alter the genetic characteristics of natural populations of organisms relevant to the goals of public health, conservation, and agriculture. Here, we review the principles and potential applications of CRISPR drives, as well as means proposed (...) to prevent their uncontrolled spread. We also focus on recent work suggesting that factors such as natural genetic variation and inbreeding may represent substantial impediments to the propagation of CRISPR drives. CRISPR-based synthetic selfish genetic elements, or gene drives, have been proposed as a means by which to genetically alter natural populations to address issues in agriculture, conservation, and public health. We describe key concepts of CRISPR gene drives and limitations that must be addressed before their use in the wild. (shrink)

Evolutionary discussions regarding the relationship between social status and fertility in the contemporary U.S. typically claim that the relationship is either negative or absent entirely. The published data on recent generations of Americans upon which such statements rest, however, are solid with respect to women but sparse and equivocal for men. In the current study, we investigate education and income in relation to age at first child, childlessness, and number of children for men and women in two samples—one of the (...) general American population and one of graduates of an elite American university. We find that increased education is strongly associated with delayed childbearing in both sexes and is also moderately associated with decreased completed or near-completed fertility. Women in the general population with higher adult income have fewer children, but this relationship does not hold within all educational groups, including our sample with elite educations. Higher-income men, however, do not have fewer children in the general population and in fact have lower childlessness rates. Further, higher income in men is positively associated with fertility among our sample with elite educations as well as within the general population among those with college educations. Such findings undermine simple statements on the relationship between status and fertility. (shrink)

In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari critique the relationship between formal logic and philosophy. They argue that since philosophy is the creation of concepts that are intensional, and formal logic reduces concepts to their extension, formal logic then has no special providence to decide philosophical questions. This may strike the logic-inclined philosopher as outdated given that there are now formal intensional logics designed to model meaning rather than reference. However, it will be shown that these logics too fail to (...) express the concept in a way that preserves its philosophical import. Doing so requires contrasting Deleuze and Guattari's account of the concept with Frege's to show how the latter persists even in intensional logics in the form of mathematical functions that are ultimately referential. This then results in support for Deleuze and Guattari's claim that formal logic is a useful tool, but that it is incapable of adjudicating philosophical disputes. (shrink)

Any human enterprise that consumes billions of dollars, especially when those dollars are those of citizen tax payers, should be subject to at least occasional scrutiny and stock-taking. This Special Issue of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine is an attempt to do just that: to ask whether the massive investment of money, equipment and human scientific talent that has been poured into studying the human genome under the assumption that this enormous scientific endeavor will advance human health has been worth (...) it thus far, and whether it is likely to bear fruit in the futureThe expression that best encapsulates the goal of using genomic information to alter trajectories of... (shrink)

This book initiates a discussion among scholars in rhetoric and hermeneutics in many areas of the humanities. Twenty leading thinkers explore the ways these two powerful disciplines inform each other and influence a wide variety of intellectual fields. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde organize pivotal topics in rhetoric and hermeneutics with originality and coherence, dividing their book into four sections: Locating the Disciplines; Inventions and Applications; Arguments and Narratives; and Civic Discourse and Critical Theory. For readers across the (...) humanities, the book demonstrates the usefulness of rhetorical and hermeneutic approaches in literary, philosophical, legal, religious, and political thinking. (shrink)

It is the unique business of agents to act. But what does it take for an agent to act, and what unique conditions render an agent capable of acting? A remark of Wittgenstein’s proves useful in crys...

While Continental thought has no shortage of criticism and diagnosis of social, political, and ethical issues, it tends to avoid offering guidance on what to do about such issues. In Reconsidering the Life of Power, Garrison argues for a radical new alternative for the Continental tradition: it ought to stage an encounter with the Confucian tradition. This is because, he argues, both traditions have at the center of their political thought a focus on the social formation of subjects, that is, (...) the process of subjectivation. While Continental thought often takes this process to empty the subject of all but nominal forms of autonomy, the Confucian tradition sees subjectivation as the very source of real human autonomy. This paper explores one such possible encounter by synthesizing Deleuze’s account of individuation with the constructivist reading of Xunzi’s view that artifice is the source of human autonomy and virtue. Ultimately, I argue that coupling Deleuze’s defense of the possibility of the New with Xunzi’s transformational account of human nature provides an understanding of subjectivation that is optimistic about the shaping of human autonomy as well as practical guidance for how to do so. (shrink)

The question of the metaphysical status of the laws of physics has received increased attention in recent years. Perhaps most well-known among this work are David Lewis’s Humean supervenience and Nancy Cartwright’s dispositionalism, both of which reject the classical conception of the laws of physics as necessary and real independent of the objects they govern, arguing instead that what we call laws are shorthand for the regularities of local states of affairs or the dispositions of objects. The properties of necessity (...) and reality are generally taken to go hand-in-hand when physical laws are concerned; however, this leaves aside the possibility that the laws of physics are independently real yet contingent. This paper will explore this third option which is found in the work of Quentin Meillassoux. We will ask: if laws both exist independent of their objects and are contingent, what happens when laws change? Specifically, the possibility of metaphysical retro-causation becomes a live option. This raises both questions of the ontological status of the past as well as our epistemic access to the past after a change in physical laws. Meillassoux’s ontology of hyper-chaos weathers this challenge with its consistency intact; however, it is an open question of whether or not saving the reality of physical laws by sacrificing their necessity is worth the epistemic limits and metaphysical strangeness that it implies. (shrink)

How close is spirituality to psychosis? Covering the interrelation of psychosis and spirituality from a number of angles, _Insanity and Divinity_ will generate dialogue and discussion, aid critical reflection and stimulate creative approaches to clinical work for those interested in the connections between religious studies, psychoanalysis, anthropology and hagiography. Bringing together an international range of contributors and covering many different types of religious experience, this book presents its theme in three parts: Psychoanalysis, belief and mysticism Anthropology, history and hagiography Psychology, (...) psychosis and religious experience. Each section includes discussion of the hinterland between madness and religious experience from the perspective of a number of religions, autobiographical accounts of those who have experienced a psychosis in which spirituality played a key part and a comprehensive review of the position of psychology research into the meaning and function of spirituality in relation to the psychoses. Insightful, enlightening and wide-ranging, _Insanity and Divinity_ is ideal for clinicians, academics and chaplains working in clinical settings. (shrink)

In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art - and in particular literature and film - can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences. In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini (...) and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology. (shrink)

When phylogenetic trees constructed from morphological and molecular evidence disagree (i.e. are incongruent) it has been suggested that the differences are spurious or that the molecular results should be preferred a priori. Comparing trees can increase confidence (congruence), or demonstrate that at least one tree is incorrect (incongruence). Statistical analyses of 181 molecular and 49 morphological trees shows that incongruence is greater between than within the morphological and molecular partitions, and this difference is significant for the molecular partition. Because the (...) level of incongruence between a pair of trees gives a minimum bound on how much error is present in the two trees, our results indicate that the level of error may be underestimated by congruence within partitions. Thus comparisons between morphological and molecular trees are particularly useful for detecting this incongruence (spurious or otherwise). Molecular trees have higher average congruence than morphological trees, but the difference is not significant, and both within- and between-partition incongruence is much lower than expected by chance alone. Our results suggest that both molecular and morphological trees are, in general, useful approximations of a common underlying phylogeny and thus, when molecules and morphology clash, molecular phylogenies should not be considered more reliable a priori. (shrink)

Genomic medicine has the potential to contribute to the development of an array of novel technologies within the clinical armoury, making possible early detection and management of high-risk conditions such as cancer. While significant impact has already been felt in the context of rare inherited single gene disorders, much of the advancement in patient care through genomic medicine more broadly is going to be made possible by research involving large data sets that enable analyses of multiple genetic variants that contribute (...) to risk of common diseases. 1 As well as informing diagnosis and treatment of these diseases, these advances will support prediction and prevention. Considering risk prediction, combining data from multiple variants can produce a polygenic (or integrated) score (PGS/IGS). This will provide more accurate prediction than simply relying on environmental risk factors. While still in their early stages of development and implementation, it is clear that translation... (shrink)