This paper, addressed to both philosophers of science and stem cell biologists, aims to reduce the obscurity of and disagreements over the nature of stemness. The two most prominent current theories of stemness—the entity theory and the state theory—are both biologically and philosophically unsatisfactory. Improved versions of these theories are likely to converge. Philosophers of science can perform a much needed service in clarifying and formulating ways of testing entity and state theories of stemness. To do so, however, philosophers should (...) acquaint themselves with the latest techniques and approaches employed by bench scientists, such as the use of proteomics, genome-wide association studies, and ChIP-on-chip arrays. An overarching theme of this paper is the desirability of bringing closer together the philosophy of science and the practice of scientific research. (shrink)

This study aims to highlight how an existential-humanistic perspective can inform athlete support and in doing so, emphasize the importance of explicating the philosophical underpinnings of athlete lifestyle support. Drawing on applied experience with elite youth cricketers over a 12-month period, ethnographic data were collected through the observation, maintenance of case notes, and a practitioner reflective diary. Based on thematic analysis, we created three nonfictional vignettes that we use to illustrate how existential-humanistic theorizing can inform lifestyle support. We discuss the (...) implications of this professional philosophy in terms of considerations for performance and talent development programs, and how holistic support for athletes is positioned. We also discuss implications for athlete lifestyle and performance psychology practitioners, with regard to training, underpinning theoretical grounding of support and the strategic positioning of their practitioner roles. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

OBJECTIVE: This paper addresses the question of the circumstances which lead clinicians to use legal coercion in the management of patients with severe anorexia nervosa, and explores similarities and differences between such formal coercion and other forms of 'strong persuasion' in patient management. METHOD: Logistic regression and other statistical analysis was undertaken on 75 first admissions for anorexia nervosa from a sample of 117 successive admissions to an eating disorder facility in New South Wales, Australia, where an eating disorder was (...) the primary diagnosis. Admissions with other primary diagnoses, such as bulimia nervosa (25 episodes), and entries with a co morbid diagnosis (e.g. depression or opiate overdose), were discarded, leaving 96 admissions by 75 individuals. RESULTS: Resort to measures of legal coercion into treatment was found to be associated with three main indicators: the patient's past history (number of previous admissions); the complexity of their condition (the number of other psychiatric co morbidities); and their current health risk (measured either by Body Mass Index or the risk of re-feeding syndrome). CONCLUSIONS: Our study is consistent with the few earlier studies about indicators for legal coercion in anorexia nervosa management, and suggests that clinicians use legal coercion very sparingly, distinguishing legal coercion from other forms of close clinical management of patients. (shrink)

The field of neuroimaging has reached a watershed. Brain imaging research has been the source of many advances in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive science over the last decade, but recent critiques and emerging trends are raising foundational issues of methodology, measurement, and theory. Indeed, concerns over interpretation of brain maps have created serious controversies in social neuroscience, and, more important, point to a larger set of issues that lie at the heart of the entire brain mapping enterprise. In this volume, (...) leading scholars -- neuroimagers and philosophers of mind -- reexamine these central issues and explore current controversies that have arisen in cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, computer science, and signal processing. The contributors address both statistical and dynamical analysis and modeling of neuroimaging data and interpretation, discussing localization, modularity, and neuroimagers' tacit assumptions about how these two phenomena are related; controversies over correlation of fMRI data and social attributions ; and the standard inferential design approach in neuroimaging. Finally, the contributors take a more philosophical perspective, considering the nature of measurement in brain imaging, and offer a framework for novel neuroimaging data structures. Contributors: William Bechtel, Bharat Biswal, Matthew Brett, Martin Bunzl, Max Coltheart, Karl J. Friston, Joy J. Geng, Clark Glymour, Kalanit Grill-Spector, Stephen José Hanson, Trevor Harley, Gilbert Harman, James V. Haxby, Rik N. Henson, Nancy Kanwisher, Colin Klein, Richard Loosemore, Sébastien Meriaux, Chris Mole, Jeanette A. Mumford, Russell A. Poldrack, Jean-Baptiste Poline, Richard C. Richardson, Alexis Roche, Adina L. Roskies, Pia Rotshtein, Rebecca Saxe, Philipp Sterzer, Bertrand Thirion, Edward Vul The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

In Aaron and Bachalo's work, Doctor Stephen Strange exemplifies the characteristics and methods of the natural philosophers in clashes with his mystical enemies, Lord Imperator and the Empirikul. It's easy to be distracted by Doctor Strange's fancy spells, unique job title, or flashy cape, but we should also recognize that he is a Sorcerer Supreme, who demonstrates both discipline and intellect. Like the historical philosopher‐scientists, Doctor Strange studies metaphysics and its relationship to the physical world. When intellectuals began to (...) challenge Aristotle's teleological world‐view, they faced opposition from both the Catholic Church, who found Aristotle's views consistent with scripture, and the scientific community. Historian Peter Dear's book Revolutionizing the Sciences helps situate the work of ancient philosophers, like Aristotle, in the context of the history of the scientific revolution. (shrink)

Berkeley's doctrines about mind, the language of nature, substance, minima sensibilia, notions, abstract ideas, inference, and freedom appropriate principles developed by the 16th-century logician Peter Ramus and his 17th-century followers (e.g., Alexander Richardson, William Ames, John Milton). Even though Berkeley expresses himself in Cartesian or Lockean terms, he relies on a Ramist way of thinking that is not a form of mere rhetoric or pedagogy but a logic and ontology grounded in Stoicism. This article summarizes the central features of (...) Ramism, indicates how Berkeley adapts Ramist concepts and strategies, and chronicles Ramism's pervasiveness in Berkeley's education, especially at Trinity College Dublin. (shrink)

This article considers the ‘creative education’ of influential Aotearoa/new Zealand art educator Elwyn Richardson, which is based on what he calls the ‘discovery method’: the ‘concentrated study of material from [students’] own surroundings’. Through a game that his students play with tyres, we explore the role that tools play in Richardson’s classroom and in the imaginary ‘worlding’ of his students’ play. By taking the ‘early world’ of the children’s development to be a product of the tools through which (...) they describe it, we reveal Richardson’s educative process to be essentially technological. His idea of the whole child who emerges through a process of experience and observation—of ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’, in the well-known phrase of Wordsworth cited by Richardson—conflates the nature of the child and nature of the ‘natural’ world. By this act of ‘natural settlement’ not untypical of settler narratives in Aotearoa/new Zealand, the child’s—and, by implication, other settlers’—relation to the world of nature is naturalized. Instead, we would argue that the child’s relation to nature is altogether unnatural: it is imprinted by the technological means through which she explores the world and makes it her own—and by which she is made over. The ‘tyre-child’ is no child of nature, but a child of technology, for whom creative errors—acts of ‘mis-taking’ like the ones Richardson’s children make in playing with tyres—reveal an imaginary capacity at once theoretical and unsettling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deception in Psychological ResearchJohn P. Gluck and Stephen Hahn-SmithMadam: In the March 1995 issue of the KIEJ, Sissela Bok adds meaningfully to her consistent and important analysis of the harms associated with deception in biomedical and behavioral research. She reminds us that investigator and review committee domination of the analysis of costs and benefits deprives the prospective research subjects of the opportunity to apply their unique sense of (...) values and preferences, an obligation that flows from an authentic respect for persons and a recognition of the importance of autonomy.She also correctly points out that the American Psychological Association (APA) is unique in that it acknowledges the harms of deception by requiring scientific [End Page 386] justification, limiting the scope of what factors can be part of the deception, and supporting minimal duration of deception, at the same time as it maintains a very permissive stance toward its use. For example, the APA code of conduct requires that alternatives to deception be implemented only when they are deemed to be "equally effective."What Bok omits in her critique is that a common justification for the use of deception by psychologists is the belief that many research subjects actually benefit from being deceived. This impression is based on studies that interview subjects at some point in time after their experimental experience. For example, Smith and Richardson (1983, p. 1080) concluded that: "In general, respondents who have been deceived while participating in psychological research did not report negative effects of their experience. In fact, they perceived their experiences more positively that did respondents who had not participated in studies employing deception." Christensen (1988, p. 668), after reviewing the literature on subject reaction to deception, states that the evidence supports the notion that deception experiments are perceived as "more enjoyable and beneficial than nondeception experiments." He goes on to say that in the face of these data it may be that deception has gotten its bad name from philosophers!Basing the acceptability of deception on direct sampling of subjects' highly personal reactions assumes that the procedure yields responses that are valid on their face. If this is true, it would seem to undermine the typical justification for deception in the first place, which is that subjects when asked for personal information are likely to respond in misleading ways. It is important to note that evidence suggests that if subjects are queried about the acceptability of deception prior to actual participation, substantial proportions of subjects judge deception to be unacceptable (Korn 1987). These results are consistent with our own recently completed research, which shows that subjects asked about their reactions following participation in a deception experiment did indeed tend to indicate its acceptability. However, when asked to make a judgment about what reactions other students had to the same experiment, they expressed concern that others may have been harmed by the deception.For psychologists to selectively disregard the distinct possibility of dynamically motivated minimization of harm in order to justify deceptive research practices further supports Bok's characterization of today's competitive research environment and the standards of personal integrity that it challenges.Stephen Hahn-SmithDepartment of Psychology The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NMReferencesChristensen, Larry. 1988. Deception in Psychological Research: When is it Justified? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 14: 664-75. Google ScholarKorn, James H. 1987. Judgements of Acceptability of Deception in Psychological Research. Journal of General Psychology 114: 205-6. [End Page 387]Google ScholarSmith, Steven S., and Richardson, Deborah. 1983 Amelioration of Deception and Harm in Psychological Research: The Important Role of Debriefing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44: 1075-82. [End Page 388]Google ScholarCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

What could someone represent that would enable her to track, at least within limits, others' perceptions, knowledge states and beliefs including false beliefs? An obvious possibility is that she might represent these very attitudes as such. It is sometimes tacitly or explicitly assumed that this is the only possible answer. However, we argue that several recent discoveries in developmental, cognitive, and comparative psychology indicate the need for other, less obvious possibilities. Our aim is to meet this need by describing the (...) construction of a minimal theory of mind. Minimal theory of mind is rich enough to explain systematic success on tasks held to be acid tests for theory of mind cognition including many false belief tasks. Yet minimal theory of mind does not require representing propositional attitudes, or any other kind of representation, as such. Minimal theory of mind may be what enables those with limited cognitive resources or little conceptual sophistication, such as infants, chimpanzees, scrub-jays and human adults under load, to track others' perceptions, knowledge states and beliefs. (shrink)

In Silence et langage Stephen A. Noble offers a new interpretation of the development of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology which analyses the central position of language within a philosophy of perception predicated upon the interdependence of seeing and speaking.

Scientific peer reviewers play an integral role in the grant selection process, yet very little has been reported on the levels of participation or the motivations of scientists to take part in peer review. The American Institute of Biological Sciences developed a comprehensive peer review survey that examined the motivations and levels of participation of grant reviewers. The survey was disseminated to 13,091 scientists in AIBS’s proprietary database. Of the 874 respondents, 76% indicated they had reviewed grant applications in the (...) last 3 years; however, the number of reviews was unevenly distributed across this sample. Higher review loads were associated with respondents who had submitted more grant proposals over this time period, some of whom were likely to be study section members for large funding agencies. The most prevalent reason to participate in a review was to give back to the scientific community and the most common reason to decline an invitation to review was lack of time. Interestingly, few suggested that expectation from the funding agency was a motivation to review. Most felt that review participation positively influenced their careers through improving grantsmanship and exposure to new scientific ideas. Of those who reviewed, respondents reported dedicating 2–5% of their total annual work time to grant review and, based on their self-reported maximum review loads, it is estimated they are participating at 56–87% of their capacity, which may have important implications regarding the sustainability of the system. Overall, it is clear that participation in peer review is uneven and in some cases near capacity, and more needs to be done to create new motivations and incentives to increase the future pool of reviewers. (shrink)

The unique discourse of Confucian ritual practice encompasses a powerful and sophisticated way of talking about individual fulfillment within the context of more substantive or universal conceptions of the good life. To make this case, I will consider both the text of the "Analects" and the influential readings of the "Analects" offered by Fingarette in "Confucius: The Secular as Sacred" and by Hall and Ames in "Thinking through Confucius". Though the two interpretive works are helpful in articulating the classical Confucian (...) contribution to the problem of balancing conformity and individuality, I will argue that an alternative reading is required to appreciate fully how values thought to embody and express the fullest humanity might be inculcated in ethical agents without undoing their individuality. Such an alternative is developed here. (shrink)

In Human Presence Erickson offers a thoughtful study of some fundamental features of human nature central to a theoretical and therapeutic understanding of human existence. Though the language employed is largely philosophical, interfaces with psychoanalysis and religion are made in order to stimulate dialogue that reaches beyond the traditional boundaries of discipline. It is toward more such dialogue that Human Presence serves as preparation. The author provides a probing contrast between traditional psychoanalysis and existential conceptions of time consciousness and he (...) articulates the issues involved in experience or lived time in their centrality to human self-understanding. The author suggests how both conceptions, the existential and the psychoanalytic, enlarge yet limit awareness and insight. In a revealing way, Human Presence raises deep and unavoidable issues regarding the human in us all. Stephen A. Erickson is Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College and Claremont Graduate School, and is a guest faculty member of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. (shrink)

Despite the presumed frequency of conflicts of interest in scientific peer review, there is a paucity of data in the literature reporting on the frequency and type of conflicts that occur, particularly with regard to the peer review of basic science applications. To address this gap, the American Institute of Biological Sciences conducted a retrospective analysis of conflict of interest data from the peer review of 282 biomedical research applications via several onsite review panels. The overall conflicted-ness of these panels (...) was significantly lower than that reported for regulatory review. In addition, the majority of identified conflicts were institutional or collaborative in nature. No direct financial conflicts were identified, although this is likely due to the relatively basic science nature of the research. It was also found that 65 % of identified conflicts were manually detected by AIBS staff searching reviewer CVs and application documents, with the remaining 35 % resulting from self-reporting. The lack of self-reporting may be in part attributed to a lack of perceived risk of the conflict. This result indicates that many potential conflicts go unreported in peer review, underscoring the importance of improving detection methods and standardizing the reporting of reviewer and applicant conflict of interest information. (shrink)

Drawing on Protestant scholasticism, Puritan "precisionism," and virtue ethics, "Virtue Reformed" offers a comprehensive rereading of the ethical position of ...

Few things matter more than the mental states of those nearby. Their ignorance defines limits on cooperation and presents opportunities to exploit in competition. What others feel, see and know can also provide information about events otherwise beyond your ken. It’s no surprise, then, that abilities to track others’ mental states are widespread. Many animals, including scrub jays, ravens, goats, dogs, ring-tailed lemurs, monkeys and chimpanzees, reliably vary their actions in ways that are appropriate given facts about another’s mental states. (...) What underpins such abilities to track others’ mental states? (shrink)

In animal cells, the Golgi complex undergoes reversible disassembly during mitosis. The disassembly/reassembly process has been intensively studied in order to understand the mechanisms that govern organelle assembly and inheritance during cell division. A long‐standing controversy in the field has been whether formation of Golgi structure is template‐mediated or self‐organizes from components of the endoplasmic reticulum. A recent study1 however, has demonstrated that a subset of proteins that form a putative Golgi matrix can be inherited during cell division in the (...) absence of membrane input from the endoplasmic reticulum. The outcome of this study suggests that a templating mechanism for the formation of Golgi structure may exist. This study has important implications for understanding mechanisms that govern Golgi biogenesis. BioEssays 24:584–587, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The development of children’s minds raises fundamental psychological and scientific questions, from how we are able to know about and describe basic aspects of the world such as words, numbers and colours to how we come to grasp causes, actions and intentions. This is the first book to properly introduce and examine philosophical questions concerning children’s cognitive development and considers the implications of scientific breakthroughs for the philosophy of developmental psychology. Each chapter explores a central topic in developmental psychology from (...) a philosophical perspective: social interaction and the developing mind children's awareness of objects and the question of 'object permanence' knowledge of numbers children and the acquisition of knowledge of colour language acquisition and the 'mapping problem' children's knowledge of the relation between actions and goals belief acquisition and the developing mind. Throughout the book Stephen Butterfill draws on several important case studies, including experiments with children on memory, ‘false belief tasks’, and the process by which children come to see other people, not just themselves, as capable of experience. He shows how these questions can illuminate some fundamental debates in philosophy of mind, such as the mind’s possession of concepts, rationality and the mind, the possibility of objective thought, and the nature of perceptual experience. Additional features, such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary provide helpful tools for those coming to the subject for the first time. (shrink)

The primary goal of the peer review of research grant proposals is to evaluate their quality for the funding agency. An important secondary goal is to provide constructive feedback to applicants for their resubmissions. However, little is known about whether review feedback achieves this goal. In this paper, we present a multi-methods analysis of responses from grant applicants regarding their perceptions of the effectiveness and appropriateness of peer review feedback they received from grant submissions. Overall, 56–60% of applicants determined the (...) feedback to be appropriate, although their judgments were more favorable if their recent application was funded. Importantly, independent of funding success, women found the feedback better written than men, and more white applicants found the feedback to be fair than non-white applicants. Also, perceptions of a variety of biases were specifically reported in respondents’ feedback. Less than 40% of applicants found the feedback to be very useful in informing their research and improving grantsmanship and future submissions. Further, negative perceptions of the appropriateness of review feedback were positively correlated with more negative perceptions of feedback usefulness. Importantly, respondents suggested that highly competitive funding pay-lines and poor inter-panel reliability limited the usefulness of review feedback. Overall, these results suggest that more effort is needed to ensure that appropriate and useful feedback is provided to all applicants, bolstering the equity of the review process and likely improving the quality of resubmitted proposals. (shrink)

This paper presents a concept for using robots as part of a design strategy that encourages a ‘bottom-up’ approach to environmental control. Robot friendly environments within the building enclosure are proposed and an analogy is made to natural ‘ecosystems’. Detail design issues are discussed, including the relationships that might occur between robots, building users and maintenance engineers. The concept is speculative in that it presents some of the implications of a mode of actuation that is radically different from the usual.