New genes have frequently formed and spread to fixation in a wide variety of organisms, constituting abundant sets of lineage‐specific genes. It was recently reported that an excess of primate‐specific and human‐specific genes were upregulated in the brains of fetuses and infants, and especially in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in cognition. These findings reveal the prevalent addition of new genetic components to the transcriptome of the human brain. More generally, these findings suggest that genomes are continually evolving in (...) both sequence and content, eroding the conservation endowed by common ancestry. Despite increasing recognition of the importance of new genes, we highlight here that these genes are still seriously under‐characterized in functional studies and that new gene annotation is inconsistent in current practice. We propose an integrative approach to annotate new genes, taking advantage of functional and evolutionary genomic methods. We finally discuss how the refinement of new gene annotation will be important for the detection of evolutionary forces governing new gene origination. (shrink)

Key ethical issues arise in association with the conduct of stem cell research by research institutions in the United States. These ethical issues, summarized in detail, receive no adequate translation into federal laws or regulations, also described in this article. U.S. Federal policy takes a passive approach to these ethical issues, translating them simply into limitations on taxpayer funding, and foregoes scientific and ethical leadership while protecting intellectual property interests through a laissez faire approach to stem cell patents and licenses. (...) Those patents and licenses, far from being scientifically and ethically neutral in effect, virtually prohibit commercially sponsored research that could otherwise be a realistic alternative to the federal funding gap. The lack of federal funding and related data-sharing principles, combined with the effect of U.S. patent policy, the lack of key agency guidance, and the proliferation of divergent state laws arising from the lack of Federal leadership, significantly impede ethical stem cell research in the United States, without coherently supporting any consensus ethical vision. Research institutions must themselves implement steps, described in the article, to integrate addressing ethical review with the many legal compliance issues U.S. federal and state laws create. (shrink)

In this contribution we examine the various amoral types of reasoning that have long predominated in the history of tolerance. In doing this we also hope to show that these amoral notions of tolerance are always far removed from, and in conflict with, the idea of freedom of religion as a moral and political right. In conclusion we show that when the liberal notion of freedom as a personal and moral right predominates, then the notion of tolerance loses some of (...) its meaning. (shrink)

In diesem Beitrag wollen wir zeigen, wieso die Fachdidaktik Philosophie und Ethik (neue) Ansätze entwickeln muss, um dem Anspruch auf (philosophische) Bildung von Menschen mit sonderpädagogischem Förderbedarf gerecht zu werden. Dafür zeigen wir anhand von Schüler_innen mit eingeschränkten Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten auf, wie Philosophieren mit ihnen dennoch möglich ist. Gleichzeitig wenden wir uns im Beitrag dem Haupteinwand zu, der darin besteht, dass Philosophieren mit dieser Schüler_innengruppe nicht möglich sei. Wir erklären unter welchen Umständen dieser Einwand nicht aufrecht erhalten werden sollte, sondern vielmehr (...) eine moralische Pflicht besteht, Menschen mit Behinderung philosophische Bildungsprozesse zu ermöglichen. (shrink)

The mechanical aspect of momentum, basically its role as a tangent vector of the trajectory of the particle, is related to properties of the momentum found in the contexts of Hamilton's optico-mechanical analogy, de Broglie's matter waves, and quantum mechanics. These properties are treated in a systematic way by considering an approximation of the particle mechanical action of the particle by a step function. A special method of discretizing partial differential equations is shown to be required. Using this method, a (...) discrete dynamics is developed. It is shown that particle dynamics can be regarded as the limit case of the discrete dynamics as the step functions tend to the continuous ones. The equation of motion of a free particle in an arbitrary reference system is deduced in two ways: (i) in continuous dynamics by making use of the invariance of action within changes of reference systems, and (ii) by taking the mentioned limit in discrete dynamics of an equation which expresses that the mechanical and wave-theoretical aspects of the momentum are interrelated in specific way. (shrink)

A wealthy eccentric bought a house in a neighborhood I know.  The house was surrounded by a beautiful display of grass, plants, and flowers, and it was shaded by a huge old avocado tree. But the grass required cutting, the flowers needed tending, and the man wanted more sun. So he cut the whole lot down and covered the yard with asphalt. After all it was his property and he was not fond of plants. (Hill 1983: 98).

Van Fraassen has maintained that acceptance of a scientific theory does not involve the belief that the theory is true. Blackburn, Mitchell and Horwich have claimed that acceptance, as understood by van Fraassen, is the same as belief; in which case, van Fraassen's position is incoherent. Van Fraassen identifies belief with subjective probability, so the question at issue is really whether acceptance of a theory involves a high subjective probability for the theory. Van Fraassen is not committed to this, and (...) hence the charge of incoherence is misplaced. Indeed, van Fraassen is correct on this point. However, he is wrong to think that acceptance requires a high subjective probability that the theory is empirically adequate; and his reason for thinking that science aims at empirical adequacy rather than truth rests on an overly crude theory of rational choice. (shrink)

Government policy aims at a 'seamless web' of learning provision. This is exemplified in a local Learning and Skills Council supported by work on widening participation to higher education (HE) in another London sub-region. The emerging system described is comprehended as a whole from 'Foundation Learning' in compulsory schooling to post-compulsory 'Lifelong Learning' in further, higher and continuing education and training thereafter.

We believe that the task goal in voluntary movements provides meaning to existing information sources in the environment and determines, in a dynamic way, the use and relative importance of these different sources. This task-centered meaning bridges the apparent controversy between what information is available in principle (i.e., specification), and what information is perceived.

Philosophy's only celebration of photography's 150th, the long-neglected philosophical job of clarification: drawing basic distinctions and defining basic conceptions, including photographic depiction, photographic detection, 'photograph of', 'documentary'. More than a lexicon, it explains why photography is important, by historically characterizing it through its uses for depiction, detection, reproduction, all of which have shaped the modern world. By consideration of it as 'mechanical', the paper explains photography's differences from practices with which it shares these functions. Happy birthday, photography.

Of silence, paradoxically, one can only speak. By virtue of the alliance that unites reason and language, the capacity to name and to address indeed obeys a certain desire to restrain excessive communication. Laughter, tears and silence are part of the expressive world: however, they attest to the impossible pitfall of words in the socializing function that we accord them. Of extreme sociality, of meaning that exceeds the bearable, the suitability and the commerce of ideas, the only thing that rises (...) to the surface of the perceptible is that emotional logic whose significations shatter every criterion of certitude and of truth on the real. Confronted with three forms of experience of the unspeakable, we ordinarily allow ourselves to lend credit to the spontaneity of the first two (laughter and tears), while the symbolic dimension of silence seems to derive from an invisible orchestration, from a rather simple calculation or from a more elaborate strategy. This difference in nature is essential, and no one would dream of equating what “can” not be said with what “should” not be said. Silence exists as a sort of constraint, interiorized at various levels of the personality, and thereby more social than psychological. Even the involuntary silence of the unknowing person can be codified: as a disciplined avowal or the politeness of the humble who neither tolerates nor imagines any escape from his embarrassment. If speech is born in the abandon of a burst of expressivity, in hilarity or in sobs, it expires in a law, no less severe than the one which endows phrases with semantic coherence. Such a rule thus manifests a universal character socially more affirmed than the multiple syntaxes that organize each linguistic patrimony. That muteness can also be subject to a particular form of apprenticeship shows how each process of socialization determines the price of the communicable and assigns a value to the unformulated. Without pretending to offer a strict typology of this phenomenon, I will distinguish five classes that are capable of comprising its collective aspects. (shrink)

If there’s one thing the Enron fiasco and other recent corporate ethical violations have proven, it’s that it’s time to reexamine how we do business. That’s why Fast Company magazine looks to the organizations and people who are rewriting the rules and reinventing business. Fast Company is the place to turn for influential voices on the future of business and innovative solutions to real problems in the post-Enron World. Now you can get the latest thinking on business ethics and corporate (...) responsibility, Fast Company style! Featuring twenty-three articles, grouped into six topic areas, this Fast Company ethics reader provides essential guidelines, tips, and insights that will help you promote ethical decision making in your organization and in your own day-to-day activities. (shrink)

Lucas Swaine?s respectful manner of engaging with theocrats is at odds with the more heavy-handed arguments he gives to those who would reject his position. Furthermore, it is not clear that Swaine?s case can reach theocrats whose self-conceptions do not fit within the liberal idiom.

This chapter analyses the views of Soren Kierkegaard about the concept of death. It examines the historical reasons why death might have featured with especial prominence in the work of a writer concerned with the parlous state of post-Hegelian Christianity and explains that Kierkegaard saw more of death before his thirtieth birthday than most people see in a lifetime. The chapter also explains the meaning of death in the mention of death in some of his works, including Either/Or, For Self-Examination, (...) and The Sickness Unto Death. (shrink)

Cette étude part du privilège accordé par Nietzsche au problème de la hiérarchie, et à l'idée de commandment, qui peuvent sembler de préjugés. Elle en interroge la significations et montre qu'ils se justifient pas ni par la condamnation de la croyance, ni par la valorisation du philosophe comme esprit libre, mais par la logiqu de la vie pulsionnelle, qui repose intégralement sur la relation de commandment et d'obéissance. Cette dernière est par conséquent reconnue pour la logique qui structure la réalité (...) tout entière.Die Studie geht vom Vorrang des Problems der Rangordnung bei Nietzsche und des Gedankens des Befehlens aus, die als bloße vorurteile seinerseits erscheinen können. Sie fragt nach ihrer bedeutung und zeigt, dass sie sich weder durch die Verurteilung des Glaubens noch durch die Hochschätzung des Philsophen als freien Geistes, sondern durch die Logik des Trieblebens rechtfertigen, die völlig auf dem Verhälnis von Befehl und Gehorsam beruht. Nietzsche erkennt in ihm die Logik, die Realität im ganzen strukturiert.This paper starts from the priority Nietzsche attaches to the problem of hierarchy and to the idea of command, which may seem to be prejudices. it analyzes tehir meanings, and shows their justifications are not based on the ruling out of belief, nor on the praise of the philosopher as a free spirit, but on the logic of drives, which rests wholly on the command/obedience relationship. The latter should therefore be recognized as the logic organizing the whole of reality. (shrink)

Most philosophers who have expressed a view about whether forgiveness is compatible with forgivers’ continuing to punish, or support the punishment of, people who have wronged them hold that forgiveness is compatible with punishing or favouring punishment of wrongdoers. I argue that whether forgiveness entails forbearing punishment depends on which of two senses of forgiveness is operative. On the first, sentiment-based sense of forgiveness as consisting essentially in a change of heart on the part of a victim, a victim can, (...) I submit, forgive while continuing to punish or to support the punishment of a person who has wronged her. On the second sense of forgiveness as consisting in debt remission whether or not accompanied by a change of heart, the state’s remission of the entirety of criminal offenders’ punishment qualifies as forgiveness and, moreover, the state could not forgive offenders in this sense while continuing to punish them. (shrink)

Hirschsprung disease and the multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 syndromes are hereditary disorders related to the abnormal migration, proliferation or survival of neural crest cells and their derivatives. Hirschsprung disease is a frequent disorder of the enteric nervous system, resulting in intestinal obstruction. The multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 syndromes predispose to cancers of neural crest derivatives. Both diseases are associated with heterozygous mutations in the RET proto‐oncogene. RET encodes a transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinase expressed in neural crest lineages and (...) whose ligand, glial‐cell‐line‐derived neurotrophic factor, has been very recently identified. In vitro expression studies demonstrate that while Hirschsprung disease mutations result in loss of function of the mutant RET tyrosine kinase, multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 mutations lead to its constitutive activation. Thus, the two ‘faces’ of RET, gain of function and loss of function, each lead to a different syndrome, respectively: multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, a cancer syndrome, or Hirschsprung disease, a developmental defect. (shrink)