The rationale for pursuing the development and use of Germ-Line selection and modification techniques is examined in this essay. The argument is put forth that it is the moral obligation of the medical profession to make available to the public any technology that can cure or prevent pathology leading to death and disability, in both the present and future generations. Society should pursue the development of strategies for preventing or correcting, at the Germ-Line level, genetic features that will lead to, (...) or enhance, pathological conditions. Because prenatal screening and even early embryo screening and selection can prevent only a subset of known genetic disorders, direct genetic intervention is the only way in which certain couples can exercise their rights to reproductive health. Finally, the arguments most often raised against the pursuit of and use of methods for Germ-Line intervention shall be discussed. Keywords: Germ-Line therapy, pre-implantation embryo screening gamete modification, risk and uncertainty CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

TheCulexis now widely recognized as a piece of post-Ovidian, possibly Tiberian, pseudo-juvenilia written by an author impersonating the young Virgil, although it was attached to Virgil's name already in the first centuryc.e., being identified as Virgilian by Statius, Suetonius and Martial. Dedicated to the young Octavian (Octauiin line 1), the poem seems to fill a biographical gap in Virgil's career before his composition of theEclogues. It is introduced as aludus, which Irene Peirano suggests may openly refer to ‘the act of (...) impersonating Virgil’, and, like many of the poems in theAppendix Vergiliana, it seems to have a parodic intent. TheCulexhas been interpreted as a parody of neoteric style and the epyllion, as mock-epic, as Virgil parody (John Henderson called it a ‘spoofAeneidin bucolic drag’), as pointed Augustan satire, as mock Ovidian ‘Weltgedicht’ and as just very bad poetry (Housman's ‘stutterer’). Glenn Most has observed that the poem's three ‘acts’ structurally recapitulate Virgil's three major works in chronological succession. Little attention, however, has been paid to theCulex's final lines, which contain a catalogue of flowers thepastorplaces on the gnat's tomb. Recent scholarship has reintroduced an older interpretation of the gnat's tomb as a political allegory of Augustus’ Mausoleum; in this paper I suggest instead that the tomb and its flowers serve a closural and metapoetic function at the end of the poem. (shrink)

A series of letters between a professor of philosophy and an eleven-year-old girl.

Grush's emulation theory comprises both modality-specific and amodal emulators. I suggest that the amodal variety be replaced by multisensory emulators. The key distinction is that multisensory processing retains the characteristics of individual sensory modalities, in contrast to amodal processing. The latter term is better reserved for conceptual and linguistic systems, rather than perception or emulation.

I wish to discuss symbols concerned with the way we feel about the world and the way we conduct our lives in consequence of those feelings. Our conduct is guided by commands and instructions which for some reason we have to obey. We are guided by our knowledge of the world. The symbols I wish to discuss express and excite desires and preferences and that is how they affect our conduct.

The effects of the vacuum electromagnetic fluctuations and the radiation reaction fields on the time development of a simple microscopic system are identified using a new mathematical method. This is done by studying a charged mechanical oscillator (frequency Ω 0)within the realm of stochastic electrodynamics, where the vacuum plays the role of an energy reservoir. According to our approach, which may be regarded as a simple mathematical exercise, we show how the oscillator Liouville equation is transformed into a Schrödinger-like stochastic (...) equation with a free parameter h′ with dimensions of action. The role of the physical Planck's constant h is introduced only through the zero-point vacuum electromagnetic fields. The perturbative and the exact solutions of the stochastic Schrödinger-like equation are presented for h′>0. The exact solutions for which h′<h are called sub-Heisenberg states. These nonperturbative solutions appear in the form of Gaussian, non-Heisenberg states for which the initial classical uncertainty relation takes the form 〈(δx 2)〉〈(δp) 2 〉=(h′/2) 2,which includes the limit of zero indeterminacy (h → 0). We show how the radiation reaction and the vacuum fields govern the evolution of these non-Heisenberg states in phase space, guaranteeing their decay to the stationary state with average energy hΩ 0 /2 and 〈(δx) 2 〉〈(δp) 2 〉=h 2 /4 at zero temperature. Environmental and thermal effects-are briefly discussed and the connection with similar works within the realm of quantum electrodynamics is also presented. We suggest some other applications of the classical non-Heisenberg states introduced in this paper and we also indicate experiments which might give concrete evidence of these states. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Radical Constructivism and Radical Constructedness: Luhmann’s Sociology of Semantics, Organizations, and Self-Organization” by Loet Leydesdorff. > Upshot: Leydesdorff emphasises the uncertainties involved in the communication of meaning. Luhmann posited three types of media, each of which reduces one type of communicative improbability. The theory of cultural evolution supports Leydesdorff’s emphasis on the uncertainty of communication, and agrees that different media are needed for communication within and across social boundaries. But it highlights the distinction between (...) media and the symbolic codes that give them structure; and it raises the question whether Luhmann’s symbolically generalized communication media are really media at all. (shrink)

The author refers to his book “Die Selbstgestaltung des Lebendigen, synoptische Theorie des Lebens als ein Beitrag zu den philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft” and comments some basic theses of it, namely the body-soul-relation, the gestalt and the problem of the “soul” of the plant and the significance of these conceptions for the description and the understanding of the realizing itself of the living being. The Author prefers not to call a soul the transcendent order which is propre to a plant, (...) as to all what lives, and which is the consequence of their quality as a gestalt. He designs with J.Reinke the transcending order of the plant with the name “diaphysis”. He names his theory of life autotelism and has some hope that it can reconcile mecanism and vitalism in the idea of identity of the so called parallel processes in different ontological dimensions. The duality of body or organism and soul or “innen” is a result only of human thinking, really they are a whole together and do not work upon another, but what happens in the one of them, happens at the same moment in the other one like in a mirror. The unity of both has been stated so often, that it sounds rather trivial, but in the book cited above it is described and argued exactly in that sense that phenomene and gignomene in one and the same life process are correspondent structures in different ontological dimensions, coordinated to one another, as it were, like two mathematical co-ordinates.The author replies to a critic who has doubts about the possibility of our thinking to approximate to the problems in question. He designs that kind of thinking which is adequate to that purpose.L'auteur se réfère à son livre „Die Selbstgestaltung des Lebendigen, synoptiscne Theorie des Lebens als ein Beitrag zu den philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaft” et commente quelques de ses thèses basales, à dire la relation du corps et de l'âme, la gestalt et le problème de l'âme de la plante et l'importance de ces notions pour la description et l'entendement de la réalisation de l'être vivant par lui-même. Il préfère de ne pas nommer un âme l'ordre transcendant qui est propre à la plante comme à tout être vivant et qui est la conséquence de leur qualité comme une gestalt. Il désigne avec J.Reinke l'ordre transcendant de la plante comme „diaphysis”. Il nomme sa théorie autotelisme et il a un peu d'espoir qu'elle peut reconcilier mécanisme et vitalisme par l'idée de l'identité des si-nommés „evénements parallèles” en dimensions ontologiques diverses. La dualité corps ou organisme et âme ou „innen” n'est qu'un résultat de la raison humaine, en réalité ils sont une unité ensemble et n'agissent pas l'un sur l'autre, mais qui arrive dans l'un d'eux, arrive dans l'autre au même instant comme dans un miroir. L'unité des deux est affirmée si souvent, que cela semble presque trivialement, mais dans le livre cité cela est décrit et argumenté exactement dans le sens, que phénomène et gignomène dans le même procès de vie sont structures correspondantes dans diverses dimensions ontologiques, qui sont coordonnées l'une à l'autre, pour ainsi dire, comme deux coordinates mathematiques.L'auteur replique à un critique qui doute qu'il y ait moyen pour notre méthode de penser de s'approcher aux problèmes en question. Il désigne la méthode de penser, qui est adéquate à ce propos. (shrink)