Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele is (...) associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

The dramatic events of the crisis have reignited debates on the independence of central banks and the scope of their mandates. In this article, I contribute to the normative understanding of these developments by discussing John Rawls’s position in debates of the 1950s and 1960s on the independence of the US Federal Reserve. Rawls’s account of the central bank in his property-owning democracy, Democratic Central Banking (DCB), assigns authority over monetary policy directly to the government and prioritizes low unemployment (...) over price stability. I contrast DCB with Central Bank Independence (CBI), which requires that the central bank is independent of the government and pursues low inflation. I evaluate DCB by asking whether justice as fairness requires democratic control of the central bank and argue that it does not. Instead, so I argue, the choice between DCB and CBI should be justified in terms of the difference principle. By reflecting on central banking in a property-owning democracy, I cast new light on the Rawlsian realistic utopia of a just capitalist society, while also investigating democratic objections to today’s independent central banks. (shrink)

Traditional conventionalism about modality claims that a proposition is necessarily true iff it is true by convention. In the wake of the widespread repudiation of truth-byconvention, traditional conventionalism has fallen out of favour. However, a family of theories of modality have arisen that, whilst abandoning truth-by-convention, retain the spirit of traditional conventionalism. These ‘neo-conventionalist’ theories surpass their forebears and don’t fall victim to the criticisms inherited through truth-by-convention. However, not all criticisms levelled at traditional conventionalism target truth-by-convention. Any conventional theory (...) of modality must face the contingency problem. This claims that the contingency of our linguistic conventions jeopardises the necessity of the necessities they determine. I present the contingency problem as relevant to both the traditional conventionalist and the neo-conventionalist. I examine a response from Einheuser that builds upon a response from Wright. I show that the Einheuser response does more to accommodate the conventionalist’s modal beliefs, but that it does not fully satisfy some further conditions that ought to be laid upon such a response. I then suggest how the response can be revised so as to satisfy these conditions. The resulting model of conventionalism is compatible with the validity of S4, and suitably in the spirit of conventionalism. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how African national leaders can make global democracy relevant to sustainable development in Africa. Seeing the problem of sustainable development in Africa from the structural and functional angles, this paper begins with an introduction and a clarification of terms such as ‘democracy’, ‘globalization’ and ‘development’. It then analyzes the underlying foundations of global democracy and its implications to cultures of the African peoples. This paper tries to place the impact of global democracy on Africa in perspectives (...) by weighing the pros and cons of global democracy. Tracing the genesis of functional and developmental problems in the post-colonial Africa to structural problems occasioned by Africa’s colonial experience, this paper however strongly contends that the main problem militating against sustainable development in the post-colonial Africa is bad politics and mismanagement of national resources. African peoples need to be taught that some of the African national leaders are responsible for the bad condition of underdevelopment in the global period because of bad political governance ranging from the inability of African leaders to calculate all the relevant factors in the making of their policies as well as failing to provide effective technologies and competent staff to deal with rigging of elections and other electoral problems in addition to corruption and mismanagement of public funds. There is no way for the African nations to survive without production of goods and services in terms of farming, agriculture and diversification of their revenue base. National leaders of the various African nations cannot avoid policies that enable the industrialization of African nations through the provision of the basic infrastructures and viable amenities for social, economic, and political development. They should however be wary of debt traps of International Monetary Fund and World Bank because borrowing nations are often given difficult conditions that often make it difficult for them to obtain the desired benefits in terms of sustainable development. The study recommends that for sustainable development to take place in Africa there is need for national leaders to embrace good political governance that places the people at the centre of development to be manifested in guileless electoral process and effective management of the resources. This paper contends that the realization of sustainable development in African nations requires moral, political, and economic integration. It concludes with perspectives for further research on the issue. (shrink)

I. Scientific method as a mental operation [by] T. Case.--II. On some aspects of the scientific method [by] F. Gotch.--III. Physiology; its scope and method [by] C. S. Sherrington.--IV. Inheritance in animals and plants [by] W. F. R. Weldon.--V. Psycho-physical method [by] W. McDougall.--VI. The evolution of double stars [by] A. H. Fison.--VII. Anthropology: the evolution of currency and coinage [by] Sir R. C. Temple.--VIII. Archaeological evidence [by] W. M. F. Petrie.--IX. Scientific method as applied to history [by] T. B. (...) Strong. (shrink)

The natural name theory, recently discussed by Johnson (2018), is proposed as an explanation of pure quotation where the quoted term(s) refers to a linguistic object such as in the sentence ‘In the above, ‘bank’ is ambiguous’. After outlining the theory, I raise a problem for the natural name theory. I argue that positing a resemblance relation between the name and the linguistic object it names does not allow us to rule out cases where the natural name fails to resemble (...) the linguistic object it names. I argue that to avoid this problem, we can combine the natural name theory with a type-realist metaphysics of language, and hold that the name is natural because the name is an instance of the kind that it names. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of the metaphysics of language for questions in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

Democratic societies are rife with talk of trust in institutions such as governments, banks, news agencies, medical practitioners, nuclear power plants, weather forecasters and social network sites. These institutions are anonymous in the sense that citizens tend to know very little about them. Philosophers have argued that trust in the absence of sufficient evidence may fit a child who trusts its parents but is inappropriate for the vigilant citizens of a democratic society. In this article, I defend the appropriateness (...) of trusting anonymous institutions against its critics. To this end, I develop two principles of appropriateness that apply to a wide range of trusting attitudes. First, the principle of epistemic duties according to which the truster should not be culpably ignorant about the trustee, where, what constitutes culpable ignorance will depend on the relationship of trust. Second, the principle of appropriate normative expectations according to which a truster should have normative expectations that fit the relationship with the trustee and the valued outcome at stake in the trust relation. I then show that it is often appropriate to trust anonymous institutions. In fact, the evidential requirements on trust are sometimes so low as to allow citizens to trust institutions which they know literally nothing about. (shrink)

Many ethical concerns surrounding human genetics studies remain unresolved. We report here the situation in Cameroon.Objectives: To describe the profile of human genetic studies that used Cameroonian DNA samples, with specific focus on i) the research centres that were involved, ii) authorship, iii) population studied, iv) research topics and v) ethics disclosure, with the aim of raising ethical issues that emerged from these studies.Method: Bibliometric Studies; we conducted a PubMed-based systematic review of all the studies on human genetics that used (...) Cameroonian DNA samples from 1989 to 2009.Results and Discussion: Fifty articles were identified, involving predominantly research centres from Europe (64%) and America (32%). Only 7 (14%) Cameroonian institutions and 14 (28%) Cameroonian authors were associated with these publications.At least 52% of publications were devoted to population genetics (variation/migration patterns) amongst 30 Cameroonian ethnic groups. Very few studies concerned public health related genetic issues and only 5 (10%) references were found for hemoglobinopathies like sickle cell anaemia. Almost all DNA samples are ‘banked’ outside of the African continent.Capacity building, rights to the genetic information and benefits to the individuals, communities and populations who contribute to these studies are addressed.Conclusions: 1) Our data suggests the need for a wider debate towards building capacity and addressing ethical issues related to human genomic research in sub-Saharan Africa and specifically in Cameroon; 2) National ethical guidelines and regulations concerning the collection, use and storage of human DNA are urgently needed in Cameroon. (shrink)

The concept of truth is a fundamental category in the theory of knowledge and philosophy in general. Other philosophical categories presuppose the concept of truth as their content or as the goal of investigatory inquiry. Philosophy begins historically with rejection of any form of opinion in the name of truth and with the counterposing of what truly exists to the variety of appearance. Thus was born theoretical thought, for which in antiquity philosophy was a synonym.

Critical study of Tattvārthādhigamasūtra, work on Jaina philosophy, ethics and doctrines by Umāsvāti.

The question of the relation of Marxism to utopianism is first of all the question of its relation to Utopian socialism and communism. However, the concepts of Utopia and utopianism are much broader than the substance of the particular socialist and communist teachings that preceded Marxism or existed alongside it. For precisely this reason the concept of Utopia must first of all be examined separately from Marxism. Only such an approach can reveal the real content and, in a sense, the (...) enduring significance of the Utopian element in people's consciousness, thinking, and worldview. (shrink)

The history of philosophical thought has often been compared to a comedy of errors, and is one of the most important dimensions of the intellectual history of mankind. Quests for a correct view of the world and tragic mistakes, the polarization of philosophy into mutually exclusive trends, which is sometimes thought of as a permanent scandal in philosophy — these are not merely the searchings and sufferings of individual thinkers. This is the intellectual odyssey of mankind, and those to whom (...) it appears a farce apparently interpret the tragic only as the idols of the theater. But the fact is that antinomies, crises, retracing of steps, the discarding of real truths in favor of erroneous concepts long since refuted but stubbornly taken as true — are these things characteristic of philosophy alone? Philosophy is the intellectual image of mankind, and the contradictions of its development are of no small importance to the intellectual biography of humanity. (shrink)

In The Manifesto of the Communist Party the founders of Marxism demarcated in a principled way the qualitatively different forms of Utopian socialism. They critically analyzed "feudal socialism," petty-bourgeois socialist Utopias, bourgeois pseudo-socialism and, finally, the critical-Utopian socialism of St. Simon, Fourier, and Owen, which was one of the theoretical sources of the scientific ideology of the working class. This analysis shows that as early as the first half of the nineteeth century ideologies that were foreign to the working class (...) frequently appeared under the banner of socialism. In some cases this socialism had an imaginary, purely phraseological character. In others, it represented a petty bourgeois interpretation of the proletarian liberation movement. But critical-utopian socialism was the reflection of "the first instinctive yearnings of the proletariat for a universal reconstruction of society." This class characterization of the various modifications of socialist doctrine during the epoch of the West European bourgeois democratic revolutions has great methodological significance for understanding the whole subsequent evolution of the ideology of capitalism. (shrink)

On Islamic practices, doctrines and on Islamic ethics.

Актуальність теми дослідження в тому, що представлено напрями підвищення промислового менеджменту в сучасних умовах. Від того, яким чином буде здійснюватися управління виробничим процесом підприємства, залежить його ефективність, прибутковість та конкурентоспроможність в умовах ринкової економіки. Постановка завдання – аналіз різноманітних напрямів підвищення ефективності промислового менеджменту з використанням інформаційних ресурсів; оцінка ролі і значення виробничого потенціалу підприємства в суспільному виробництві. Аналіз останніх досліджень і публікацій - в статті представлено аналіз основних положень теоретичного обґрунтування напрямів підвищення ефективності промислового менеджменту, які знайшли своє відображення (...) у роботах вітчизняних науковців Г.Осовської, В.Воронкової, Р.Фатхутдинова, Н.Подольчак, А.Шегди. Методологічним фундаментом здійснення дослідження обраної тематики стали праці провідних вчених, фахівців, науковців, зокрема дослідженням показниківпідвищення ефективності роботи підприємства займалися І Бойчик, О.Гетьман, І.Ковальчук, С.Покропивний, Ю.Пономарьова, В.Сідун, В.Шаповал та інші. Виділення недосліджених частин загальної проблеми – проведено на основі непередбачуваності сучасних економічних умов діяльності підприємств, що потребує подальшого дослідження і визначення реальних шляхів стабілізації та можливого підвищення ефективності роботи підприємств. Методологія – системного, структурного, структурно-функціонального аналізу, що дозволили проаналізувати проблеми напрямів підвищення ефективності промислового менеджменту з використанням інформаційних ресурсів. Виклад основного матеріалу. В статті проаналізовано виробничий потенціал підприємства. Розглянуто питання вимірювання величини і рівня ефективності використання виробничого потенціалу за допомогою використання сучасних методик на основі дослідження провідних методологій. Доведено, що уявлення про величину виробничого потенціалу підприємства і окремих його елементів дозволяє до певної міри управляти характеристиками потенціалу, внаслідок чого виникає можливість цілеспрямованої дії на віддачу виробничих ресурсів. Висновки - Провівши дослідження доведено, що під резервами підвищення економічної ефективності виробництва розуміють невикористані можливості збільшення випуску продукції в розрахунку на одиницю сукупних витрат завдяки більш раціональному використанню усіх видів ресурсів підприємства. (shrink)

In this paper I undertake to resolve a main pragmatic puzzle triggered by Bank-type cases. After accepting ‘sanitized’ intuitions about Truth-Values, as reflected in x-phi experiments, the pragmatic puzzle about whether the husband is inconsistent remains, and if he isn’t, which intuitively is the case, how are we to explain it. The context in such cases is pragmatic, with awareness of high risks, and the treatment I propose is pragmatic as well, but not Gricean. I offer a new Pragmatics whose (...) main tools are Steering Thrust and Posting. It focuses on what I call Action-Directed Pragmatics. An overall view of Pragmatics centers on the primary resort to Sayability rather than to Truth-Values, and to the Pragmatic phenomenon of co-present operative norm-types, which can conflict in some cases vis-à-vis particular actions and about what subjects can say. The very satisfactory explanation of the above puzzle that I offer is in such terms. In particular, attention is focused on the phenomenon of Negative-Polarity Pragmatic Functors. (shrink)

In the article, the organic principle of the Euroasian philosophy is studied. The organic principle acts as a basis of special style of thinking and a certain methodology of scientific knowledge here. The Euroasian methodology of studying of development of society allows establishing of the nature of communications between social processes and the phenomena of wildlife. In the article, the most important components of the Euroasian organic principle of thinking are shown: special terminology and possibilities of its application for the (...) description and forecasting of the social phenomena. Prerequisites of change of the style of thinking dominating in modern science are also noted. The author considers advantages of the organic principle of the Euroasian methodology in solution of national political, social-economic and cultural problems and in possible prospects of its use for formation of scientific methodology. The organic principle of thinking creates complex idea of reality, which can appear before us new, party unknown earlier. Lack of division of sensual experience and ‘pure reason‘, irrational and rational in organic thinking is unconditional advantage of organic approach. Organic principle presented by the Euroasian philosophical organization of the beginning of the twentieth century and continued by Lev Gumilev in the theory of ethnogenesis acts as alternative developed in the west of one-dimensional, mechanistic methodology. It can be told with confidence that owning all of variety of intellectual traditions is necessary for the modern humankind to become capable to realize global ecological threats and negative consequences of influence of culture in which ethics of individualism prevails. (shrink)