A Life Decoded is an exhilarating document, to begin with, reading like a novel or even a science epic. In the author’s own words, it is “a tale of seemingly impossible quests and grand objectives”, of “great rivalries and bitter disputes”, of “battles of ideologies, morals and ethics” and of “clashes of egos” (p. 2), an adventure that swept the author “from peaks of incredible exhilaration as I marshaled a relatively small but dedicated army of scientists, computers and robots to (...) achieve what seemed almost impossible, and then plunged me into black pits of depression as I faced opposition from Nobel laureates and senior government officials, my colleagues, and even my wife” (p. 2). Moreover, besides being an autobiography proper, the book also contains a series of reflections on the genes present in the author’s own genome, one of the first individual genomes that was sequenced and made publicly available on the web – the “recipe” that made Craig Venter, as he himself describes it. In separate boxes dedicated to his sequenced genome, he especially focuses on genes that are associated with behavioural characteristics such as thrill-seeking behaviour, ADHD and the ability to cope with almost superhuman amounts of stress. Thus, in Venter’s case, autobiography and the genome are connected in more than one way with one another. (shrink)

Paul Weiss is one of the two or three most original and creative philosophers and metaphysicians in America today. Creativity and Common Sense reveals why. It contains fourteen recent articles on the thought of Paul Weiss by authors who are most familiar with his writings, including an essay by Charles Hartshorne that provides a unique perspective on Weiss by one who has known him for his entire career. Weiss is shown to be one of the very few contemporary philosophers who (...) examines every area of concern to philosophy and does so on the basis of ontological insights regarding the ultimate elements of reality. He begins his philosophical consideration with the evidences offered by the world of common sense and seeks to provide an adequate and comprehensive account of what he finds there. The contributors to this collection present and examine many of Weiss’ strategic insights. They help clarify key elements in his thought and thereby contribute to an appreciation and understanding of his work. They also make evident the importance of Weiss’ insights for resolving vexing questions in such diverse areas as the philosophy of science, philosophical methodology, ethics, aesthetics, the philosophy of the human person, and the philosophy of language. This collection makes a significant contribution to the development of Weissian scholarship and to the growing appreciation of the significance of his thought for the discussions of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Orders for removal under Section 47 of the 1948 National Assistance Act are little discussed. However, they involve severe infringements of the civil liberties of those affected. It is argued that all previously presented justifications for the use of these orders fail. Repeal of the act is called for. The Law Commission has drafted alternative legislation, but this has not been enacted. Until this occurs local authorities, the Faculty of Public Health Medicine and individual public health physicians should refuse to (...) be involved in its use. (shrink)

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension (...) of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a ‘data mirror’ that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided. (shrink)

In the academic year 1920-1921 at the University of Freiburg, Martin Heidegger gave a series of extraordinary lectures on the phenomenological significance of the religious thought of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The publication of these lectures in 1995 settled a long disputed question, the decisive role played by Christian theology in the development of Heidegger’s philosophy. The lectures present a special challenge to readers of Heidegger and theology alike. Experimenting with language and drawing upon a wide range of now (...) obscure authors, Heidegger is finding his way to Being and Time through the labyrinth of his Catholic past and his increasing fascination with Protestant theology. A Companion to Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religious Life is written by an international team of Heidegger specialists. (shrink)

Against the Titans examines Alfred Delp’s rejection of the perversion of heroism and sacrifice. Peter Nguyen, S.J., argues that Delp embodied a Christian theology of martyrdom that offered an alternative to Ernst Jünger’s belief that violent heroism, merged with technology, could resolve the discontentment with modernity.

This paper asks whether a ‘minimal correspondence theory of truth’ implicitly installs bi-valence as the necessary condition of every meaningful proposition.

There is, in the Ramsey Archive at the Hillman Library of the University of Pittsburgh, a note, written in 1929, in Ramsey's hand and mostly in German, consisting of twenty paragraphs the contents...

This study of three central themes in the logic of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the greatest of the ancient Aristotelian commentators, provides insight not only into Aristotle's logical writings but also into the tradition of scholarship which they spawned.

The changing world of health care finance has led to a paradigm shift in health care with health care being viewed more and more as a commodity. Many have argued that such a paradigm shift is incompatible with the very nature of medicine and health care. But such arguments raise more questions than they answer. There are important assumptions about basic concepts of health care and markets that frame such arguments.

Purpose: The paper provides an overview of Ernst von Glasersfeld's life and theory, concentrating on subjects such as the acquisition of knowledge, language and communication, ethical questions, and aspects of teaching and learning. Conclusion: Ernst von Glasersfeld interests cover a wide range of disciplines. Therefore his work is genuinely rooted in interdisciplinarity.

In this paper, we respond to Andrew Avins's recent review of methods whose use he advocates in clinical trials, to make them more ethical. He recommends in particular, “unbalanced randomisation”. However, we argue that, before such a recommendation can be made, it is important to establish why unequal randomisation might offer ethical advantages over equal randomisation, other things being equal. It is important to make a pragmatic distinction between trials of treatments that are already routinely available and trials of restricted (...) treatments. We conclude that unequal randomisation could, indeed, be an ethical compromise between protecting the interests of participants and those of society. (shrink)