The cost and quality of health care services can vary significantly, with high cost not necessarily indicating high quality. As consumers pay for a growing proportion of their care, they have an increased need for cost and quality information before they receive care, so they can plan and make informed decisions. Transparency tools can provide such information to consumers and others. This book examines information on cost and quality available to consumers from selected transparency tools; characteristics of effective transparency tools; (...) limitations, if any, in the effectiveness of CMS transparency tools; and CMS efforts to expand cost and quality information available through transparency tools. The book also examines how various factors affect the availability of health care price information for consumers; and the information selected public and private health care price transparency initiatives make available to consumers. (shrink)

In this book we provide a collection of writing by eminent scholars in our field, in which we asked them to engage with the thoughts of many of the philosophers and theorists who have influenced thinking and practice about young children and their care and education. Some readers may feel their favourite philosopher or theorist has been omitted or been given little space but we do not claim the Handbook is comprehensive – there is always more to say, more to (...) write about. Further, it would be impossible to provide a real introduction to the vast and exciting discipline of Philosophy, which includes a number of different areas of study. (shrink)

Ethical corporate marketing—as an organisational-wide philosophy—transcends the domains of corporate social responsibility, business ethics, stakeholder theory and corporate marketing. This being said, ethical corporate marketing represents a logical development vis-a-vis the nascent domain of corporate marketing has an explicit ethical/CSR dimension and extends stakeholder theory by taking account of an institution’s past, present and (prospective) future stakeholders. In our article, we discuss, scrutinise and elaborate the notion of ethical corporate marketing. We argue that an ethical corporate marketing positioning is a (...) prerequisite for corporations which claim to have an authentic ethical corporate identity. Our article expands and integrates extant scholarship vis-a-vis ethical corporate identities, the sustainable entrepreneur and corporate marketing. In delineating the breadth, significance, and challenges of ethical corporate marketing we make reference to the BP Deepwater Horizon (Gulf of Mexico) catastrophe of 2010. (shrink)

Training in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) is required for many research trainees nationwide, but little is known about its effectiveness. For a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of a short-term course in RCR, medical students participating in an NIH-funded summer research program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) were surveyed using an instrument developed through focus group discussions. In the summer of 2003, surveys were administered before and after a short-term RCR course, as well as to (...) alumni of the courses given in the summers of 2002 and 2001. Survey responses were analyzed in the areas of knowledge, ethical decision-making skills, attitudes about responsible conduct of research, and frequency of discussions about RCR outside of class. The only statistically significant improvement associated with the course was an increase in knowledge, while there was a non-significant tendency toward improvements in ethical decision-making skills and attitudes about the importance of RCR training. The nominal impact of a short-term training course should not be surprising, but it does raise the possibility that other options for delivering information only, such as an Internet-based tutorial, might be considered as comparable alternatives when longer courses are not possible. (shrink)

In [T. Brihaye, C. Michaux, C. Rivière, Cell decomposition and dimension function in the theory of closed ordered differential fields, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic .] the authors proved a cell decomposition theorem for the theory of closed ordered differential fields which generalizes the usual Cell Decomposition Theorem for o-minimal structures. As a consequence of this result, a well-behaving dimension function on definable sets in CODF was introduced. Here we continue the study of this cell decomposition in CODF by proving three (...) additional results. We first discuss the relation between the δ-cells introduced in the above-mentioned reference and the notion of Kolchin polynomial in differential algebra. We then prove two generalizations of classical decomposition theorems in o-minimal structures. More exactly we give a theorem of decomposition into definably d-connected components and a differential cell decomposition theorem for a particular class of definable functions in CODF. (shrink)

Comment écrit-on l'histoire des sciences et des techniques? Ce livre présente les réponses que plusieurs générations successives ont apportées à ce problème essentiel des sciences humaines contemporaines. A partir du domaine extrêmement controversé de la biologie et de la paléontologie évolutionnistes, il étudie les débats épistémologiques et idéologiques entre historiens, philosophes, scientifiques et journalistes, qui développent des thèses souvent opposées à partir de l'étude de la dynamique culturelle. Peut-on parler de «précurseur» dans l'histoire des idées? Quel est le rôle du (...) milieu social dans la genèse des hypothèses scientifiques? L'idéologie imprègne-t-elle forcément toute théorie biologique? Doit-on rester neutre pour analyser objectivement un texte, un fait ou un procédé scientifique? Faut-il partir des connaissances actuelles pour comprendre les théories du passé? Quelle est la portée des révolutions dans l'histoire des sciences de la vie et de la Terre? Autant de thèmes revus aussi à la lumière du nouveau paradigme unificateur des sciences sociales: le modèle sélectif multipolaire. Pages de début Introduction Première partie. Les historiens de l'évolutionnisme Une histoire institutionnelle Les écoles philosophiques Jean Rostand et l'histoire scientifique modernisée Jacques Roger et la méthode historique Denis Buican et l'épistémologie évolutionniste Conclusion de la première partie Deuxième partie. Les questions de méthode La diversification des sources Internalisme contre externalisme Continuité et discontinuité L'objectivité en question L'historien et l'actualité scientifique Conclusion de la deuxième partie Troisième partie. Les sujets explorés Les « précurseurs » de l'évolutionnisme des lumières : mythe ou réalité? Cuvier : modèle ou anti-modèle scientifique? Le rôle de Lamarck dans la révolution transformiste Le néolamarckisme et l'affaire Lyssenko Le néodarwinisme et la sociobiologie sont-ils réductibles? Conclusion Une brève histoire de l'évolutionnisme en France Construction de l'arbre généalogique des idées aux xixe et xxe siècles Construction de l'arbre généalogique des idées auXVIIIe siècle Bibliographie Index Pages de fin. (shrink)

We show that Spector's “restricted” form of bar recursion is sufficient (over system T) to define Spector's search functional. This new result is then used to show that Spector's restricted form of bar recursion is in fact as general as the supposedly more general form of bar recursion. Given that these two forms of bar recursion correspond to the (explicitly controlled) iterated products of selection function and quantifiers, it follows that this iterated product of selection functions is T‐equivalent to the (...) corresponding iterated product of quantifiers. (shrink)

This book is about what makes law possible. A stranger to contemporary legal practice might think such a book unnecessary, but the eight authors of this book share the view that what makes law possible is under siege today. The authors also share the hope that by exploring how law is a humanistic practice that involves whole persons, the siege will be reversed. The pathbreaking work of University of Michigan Law professor Joseph Vining provides the authors' focus for their varied (...) analyses of how law works not through force but, instead, through affinity.Vining's four books and other writings, spanning four decades, reveal the hidden connections by which men and women freely create and sustain a world of meaning through the phenomena we associate with law. Drawing on legal philosophy, theology, musicology, and other humanistic disciplines, the authors join Vining in discovering how law is, as Vining has written, “evidence of view and belief far stronger than academic statement or introspection can provide.” Law as Vining and the other authors reveal it is evidence of our better selves, not of the totalizing and brutalizing selves humans are capable of becoming, sometimes even under cover of law.In addition to the three editors, the book's authors are Joseph Vining, Rev. John McCausland, Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr., Steven Smith, and James Boyd White.Lawyers and all who care about law, the human future, and what human freedom can do to connect person to person as valued will find much to ponder in the chapters of this book. By avoiding jargon and the cliché, the authors follow Vining's lead in illuminating the deep springs of law's vitality and authority. (shrink)

In the bygone days of U-2 spy planes and Sputnik, the only ethical issues attached to satellites seemed to involve military secrecy and national boundaries. Now, with high-powered lenses, infrared senso ry devices, ubiquitous sateIEites, and instan,t high-resolution image transmission, the communication ethics issues-like the powers of global observation-have greatly magnified. Possibly, conventional warfare has become obsolete because television networks have access to a worldwide satellite images that show troops, fleets, and fighter squadrons forming prior to attack. Civilian privacy has (...) changed drastically as well because backyard sunbathers, naturalists, couples, speeding vehicles, and naked paramours seen through bedroom windows can all be identified, photographed, and publicized without their awareness or permission. Because the power, range, fuequency, and commercialism of such space photography will increase, ethicists must survey the surveillance. Vendors in many countries now routinely sell space imagery to news outlets. This means there are at least two types of communication ethics to consider: (a) In journalism ethics, editors and producers must decide whether they will publish many types of invasive photographs, some of which may also deal with military secrecy; and (b) in new media ethics, decisions about who employs, duplicates, regulates, as well as who sells and buys satellite imagery, must be monitored and debated. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:14 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Melissa Oliver-Powell Beyond the Spectacle of Suffering: Agnès Varda’s L’Unechante,l’autrepas and Rewriting the Subject of Abortion in France In the spring of 1971, three years after the revolutionary fervor of May 1968 in France, 343 women put their names to a courageous manifesto announcing that they were criminals of a particularly gendered nature. The authors of (...) Manifeste des 343 (Manifesto of the 343) comprised a large group of culturally eminent French women and activists declaring that they had all illegally undergone abortions, which at this point, despite growing decriminalization throughout much of Western Europe, were still outlawed within their republic. Though many of the revolutionary fires had now eased to embers, French feminists demonstrated that reproductive rights were still a vital and unresolved topic of social justice. Including names as weighty as Simone de Beauvoir, Jeanne Moreau, and Catherine Deneuve, the manifesto brought together exceptional women from the fields of academia, law, theater, film and literature, alongside grassroots activists. Their action was a bold challenge to the French authorities, daring them to arrest some of the country’s brightest thinkers and cultural innovators under a law the signatories felt was deeply unjust, sexist, and antithetical to the values of individual liberty and citizenship. It was a case of those with the broadest shoulders weaponizing their privilege to present a robust front line in the wider struggle for women’s rights. One of the signatories was filmmaker Agnès Varda. Her name, like those of several others on the list, demonstrates the symbiosis between Melissa Oliver-Powell 15 cultural production and gender politics that has often characterized French feminist thought. From the multidisciplinary writings of Beauvoir, to the novels of the écriture féminine movement, to the lyrical academic prose of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and others, French and Francophone feminist writers have tended to connect art and politics with a great deal of fluidity. As a committed activist and a filmmaker, Agnès Varda falls very much within this tradition, often adopting and developing feminist practices within her cinema. This article examines how Varda’s 1977 film, L’Une chante, l’autre pas (One Sings, The Other Doesn’t) interacts with and participates in the feminist political project of reproductive rights as well as the ongoing intellectual and moral debates over abortion taking place in France throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. I look particularly at the adversarial construction of abortion narratives within these debates and the location of victimhood therein. Within mainstream cultural representations in and beyond France, abortion is typically constructed as either a traumatic or a transgressive moment. The same is often true on either side of political and social debates on abortion, which have tended either to characterize the women who get abortions as irresponsible and amoral or as sympathetic victims in need of protection. Though the transgressive element persists, it is the interaction with representations of trauma that interests me here. In approaching discussions of gendered injustice, it is common for feminist writers and activists to leverage pathos as a rhetorical strategy. While suffering can be a highly effective and galvanizing expression of oppression, such discourses also run the risk of producing excessive depictions of victimhood, which can displace the capacity for action from the subject of hardship onto the privileged oppressor. This risk is particularly at stake within the cultural form of film, as its visuality and identificatory mechanics have the potential to spectacularize the female victim and make her relatable only through suffering. This was often the case in earlier French films that featured abortion such as Les Mauvaises rencontres (1955), Des gens sans importance (1956), Journal d’une femme en blanc (1965), and Une femme en blanc se révolte (1966), all of which made their subjects sympathetic by entwining them in long narratives of victimization ending in death or disgrace. This article looks at how Varda’s L’Une chante, l’autre pas disengages from the spectacle of suffering that so often characterizes representations of women’s experiences 16 Melissa Oliver-Powell and rejects the idea that abortion narratives must... (shrink)

Social evolution theory provides a wide array of successful evolutionary explanations for cooperative traits. However and surprisingly, a number of cases of unexplained cooperative behaviour remain. Shouldn’t they cast doubt on the relevance of the theory, or even disconfirm it? This depends on whether the theory is akin to a research programme such as adaptationism, or closer to a theory – a set of compatible, confirmable hypotheses. In order to find out, we focus on the two main tenets of social (...) evolution theory, namely reciprocity explanations and kin selection. Reciprocity-based explanations are extremely hard to confirm. This is due, first to the multiple realisability of explanatory processes, factors and strategies, despite apparent reasons to the contrary; second, to the high quantity, and limited availability of data needed to eliminate or back up such explanations. One of our target cases vividly illustrates these limitations. Moreover, kin selection, while relatively easy to disconfirm in particular cases, seems to enjoy a more limited explanatory scope than previously thought. Overall, social evolution theory turns out to be neither a research programme nor a theory, but a heterogeneous scientific entity, composed of parts that are amenable to confirmation and others barely so. (shrink)

IntroductionThe observation that animals may respond to emotional states of conspecific or even hetero-specific individuals is not new. Darwin broached the question by underlying the ability of animals to express sympathy, i.e. the response to non-self-emotional status, and this across species barriers. More importantly, he tried to find the evolutionary origin of this animal trait, suggesting that it evolved from the selective advantages of kinship behaviour in the struggle for life (Darwin, 1872). Such a behaviour corresponds, for instance, to alloparental (...) care relatively common in mammals and birds, and now also characterized in fishes and insects (Josi, Taborsky, & Frommen, 2019; Wu, Walser, Sun, & Kölliker, 2020). After more than one century, the need of defining what exactly non-human animals are able to feel, and from this starting point, rethink the legal status and place of animals in human societies, suddenly arises. This can mainly be considered as an indirect consequence of people awareness of human-driven dramatic impacts on global climate, biodiversity, but also on a more daily basis on animal life and welfare. However, because assessable currencies are required to establish laws, animals were classified into categories based on ecological (e.g. invasive species, pest, wild, domestic), biological (e.g. vertebrates and invertebrates) or cognitive (e.g. primates, cephalopods) traits. This should help lawyers to define ethical rules of animal use by humans and t... (shrink)

If you are like most people, you’re not sure what Postmodernism is. And if this were like most books on the subject, it probably wouldn’t tell you. Besides what a few grumpy critics claim, Postmodernism is not a bunch of meaningless intellectual mind games. On the contrary, it is a reaction to the most profound spiritual and philosophical crises of our time–the failure of the Enlightenment. Jim Powell takes the position that Postmodernism is a series of “maps” that help (...) people find their way through a changing world. Postmodernism For Beginners features the thoughts of Foucault on power and knowledge, Jameson on mapping the postmodern, Baudrillard on the media, Harvey on time-space compression, Derrida on deconstruction and Deleuze and Guattari on rhizomes. The book also discusses postmodern artifacts such as Madonna, cyberpunk sci-fi, Buddhist ecology and teledildonics. (shrink)

This article explores the moral permissibility of sweatshop boycotts. We build explicitly on Tomhave and Vopat’s (2018) framework for evaluating the moral permissibility of boycotts in general for the specific case of sweatshop labor. We argue that sweatshop boycotts are more likely to be morally justified when targeting forced labor compared to free labor and we explore the relevant moral tradeoffs associated with boycotts of free labor sweatshops. We analyze the morality of three cases of sweatshop boycotts—Indonesia in the 1990s, (...) Bangladesh following the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster, and the Uyghur region in China—and then discuss how insights from these cases might provide a model to guide activists and business ethicists in analyzing the morality of other sweatshop boycotts. (shrink)

Mr. Agar in Homerica, Preface ix., has suggested that κακι γλνηι was the original reading, ‘Be off with the evil eye upon you.’ I have searched, but in vain, for any formula of imprecation corresponding to the formula of blessing, τύχγαθι, though I should like to see it in κακι τѵχι of the Treacherous Hound in Agamemnon 1230. Mr. T. C. Snow, objecting to Mr. Agar's alterations of the Homeric text, once suggested to me that we should rather retain the (...) vocative, and translate it, ‘Be off, evil eye.’ Others also may have thought of this, but it does not appear to have got into print. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Conceivability of Artificially Created EnlightenmentPaul Andrew PowellPointsman can only possess the zero and the one. He cannot, like [Roger] Mexico, survive anyplace in between.... [H]e imagines the cortex of the brain as a mosaic of tiny on/off elements.... [E]ach point is allowed only the two states:... [o]ne or zero.... [B]rain mechanics assumes the presence of these bi-stable points....If ever the Anti-pointsman existed, Roger Mexico is the man.... (...) How can Mexico play, so at his ease, with these symbols of randomness and fright? Innocent as a child, perhaps unaware—perhaps—that in his play he wrecks the elegant rooms of history.—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's RainbowWhen I first read about the Dalai Lama's remark that "if all the external conditions and the karmic action were there, a stream of consciousness might actually enter into a computer,"1 I couldn't help but wonder if a computer could then attain enlightenment. The answer, at first, seemed simple and obvious (though perhaps distasteful for some): if the machine was self-aware, sentient, and conscious, then it would be only reasonable to assume that it could also attain enlightenment. Yes, simple and obvious, of course, but this takes for granted some very large and complex issues. After all, what makes for self-awareness, sentience, and consciousness to begin with, and how would we manufacture them in a machine?If we take a moment to think about the creation of artificial enlightenment the paradox becomes clear. In order to manufacture enlightenment, we must first manufacture samsara, because for a Buddhist, enlightenment is the "event" of deconstructing the problematic natures of "self," sentience (suchness), and consciousness, all of which are samsaric illusions. "Self," sentience, and consciousness represent the prerequisites of samsara/Nirvana, realized or unrealized, artificial or organic. They represent the prerequisites of desire. They represent the prerequisites for the illusion of death and birth. And thus they represent the truly salient issues that must be addressed before we can assemble our complicated hard (and soft) ware. Interestingly, because computational information consists of a conceptualized, dualistic [End Page 123] binary system of ones and zeroes, and because the nature of Nirvana/samsara also consists of a conceptualized, dualistic system of "self"/"other," technology, in theory anyway, may probably be capable of manufacturing a facsimile of samsara, if only because computational information is, by its very nature, samsaric to begin with. Of course, all this demands that consciousness, self-awareness, and sentience be a function of information processing. Personally, I believe they are, and that, in fact, the words information and samsara are synonymous with one another. Thus it follows that information technology will most certainly be capable of manufacturing the prerequisites, at least, of enlightenment. If that blunt statement strikes you as utterly preposterous, technically impossible, or even offensive, you might want to first read any number of excellent texts describing the future of artificial intelligence (AI). Two of the best popular books on the subject are Robot by Hans Moravec and The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil. These will assuage your doubts concerning the soft problem, or, as it is sometimes called, the nuts-and-bolts problem.With these considerations in mind, let's see what we can come up with.In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not.—T.S. Eliot, "East Coker" (The Four Quartets)For most Buddhists, enlightenment can be defined as seeing through the illusion of the self and experiencing unadulterated suchness. In the words of Master Wolfgang Kopp, "The seer, the seen, and the process of seeing are one. The thinker, the thought, and the process of thinking fall together into one and multiplicity melts away. There is neither inside, nor outside in this state. There is only 'suchness,' tathata."2 So, enlightenment is suchness, or, things as they are, revealed as all that there is. As engineers of enlightenment, it would appear then that are at least two components we need to build into our machine: an illusionary "self" and suchness, or things as they are. As we shall see, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Marcia Muelder Eaton ANTHONY POWELL AND THE AESTHETIC LIFE Anthony POWELL'S work has been looked at carefully by relatively few critical scholars, in spite of the fact that he has been called "the most elegant writer presently working in the English language." ' I am surprised at how little he is read — at least in the United States. He is a splendid writer, often entertaining, always (...) a skilled craftsman. His earlier novels {Afternoon Men, 1931; Venusberg, 1932; From a View to a Death, 1933; Agents and Patients, 1936; and What's Become of Waring, 1939) are short satiric and ironic comedies dealing mainly with London bohemia in the 1920s. His later fictional work is a twelve volume tour de force (A Question of Upbringing, 1951; A Buyer's Market, 1952; The Acceptance World, 1955; At Lady Molly's, 1957; Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, 1960; The Kindly Ones, 1962; The Valley of Bones, 1964; The Soldier's Art, 1966; The Military Philosophers, 1968; Books Do Furnish a Room, 1971; Temporary Kings, 1973; Hearing Secret Harmonies, 1975) 2 in which the narrator, NicholasJenkins, attempts, with varying degrees of success, to make sense of life as A Dance to the Music of Time. Both the early and later works are populated by many characters. Manageable in the short, independent novels, they become so numerous in the interdependent volumes of Dance that several critics are dubious about anyone's keeping them straight; had I read them as they were published — with months, sometimes years and the novels of others between appearances — I am sure it would have been impossible to keep track of the minor characters. In 1960, Time and Tide published a cast ofcharacters for "readers who find it difficult to remember from book to book details of family and other more tenuous relationships between characters who have a habit of popping up surprisingly in the most unexpected places."3 The entries provide the following kinds of information: "McReith, Lady (Gwen): friend of Babs Templer and Jimmy Stripling; goes to bed with 166 Marcia Muelder Eaton167 Peter Templer when staying in the Templer (senior) house.... Tolland, George: son of Lord Warminster: was in Coldstream for some years then went into city. Very correct." More recently Hilary Spurling has compiled a book-length guide to the plots and characters ofDance. It also includes an index of books, paintings, and places referred to.4 Even with these guides there are loose ends, and it is not always clear what functions certain minor characters serve. Nonetheless, the popping-up in unexpected places is, as I hope to show, essential to the theme of the work. Powell is by no means universally acclaimed; his novels have been described as "contrived,"5 and "pseudo-Proustian" and "blandly snobbish."6 The early novels have been said to "tell about 'twentyish emancipation, silly parties at which drunks behave stupidly, ambitious young men on the make for the daughters of fox-hunting families, all with an air of slightness and couldn't-care less." 7 And Dance has likewise been scorned: To begin with, each character is introduced as he first appears to the narrator, who immediately speculates for three or four pages on the probable nature of a character who is blond, has small ears, and wears a black overcoat. The overcoat then says a few desultory words, whereupon the narrator takes several pages of pain to modify his original opinion in the light of this additional evidence.8 Like all parodies, these have some truth in them. But it is simplistic to describe his work in these terms — it amounts to painting in colors far too crude what is an enormously subtle picture of life. Powell's "easy modulations," as John Russell has called his novels,9 capture intricacies of human behavior and interaction in a profound and original way. And Powell's focus on ritual and the attempts of people to play chosen roles, ultimately provides a genuinely metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic interpretation of life. It is hopeless to try to provide a synopsis of the twelve volumes. The novels follow Nicholas Jenkins from his school days to late middle age. Friends such as Peter Templer, Charles... (shrink)

Abstract I argue that the two primary motivations in the literature for positing seemings as sui generis mental states are insufficient to motivate this view. Because of this, epistemological views which attempt to put seemings to work don’t go far enough. It would be better to do the same work by appealing to what makes seeming talk true rather than simply appealing to seeming talk. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s11406-012-9363-8 Authors T. Ryan Byerly, Department of Philosophy, Baylor (...) University, Waco, TX, USA Journal Philosophia Online ISSN 1574-9274 Print ISSN 0048-3893. (shrink)

It is shown that the logical truth of instances of the T-schema is incompatible with the formal nature of logical truth. In particular, since the formality of logical truth entails that the set of logical truths is closed under substitution, the logical truth of T-schema instances entails that all sentences are logical truths.

In his essay “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now” and his new book of the same title, Cedric Johnson persuasively argues for a multiracial, class-based movement toward racial justice, but he questions whether the legacy of the Panthers is suitable for this strategy. This essay argues that the Panthers in fact advocated for the very strategy Johnson recommends, and that they ought to be considered exemplars of the socialist rejection of elite identity politics.

The pioneering anthology Home Girls features writings by Black feminist and lesbian activists on topics both provocative and profound. Since its initial publication in 1983, it has become an essential text on Black women's lives and writings. This edition features an updated list of contributor biographies and an all-new preface that provides a fresh assessment of how Black women's lives have changed-or not-since the book was first published. Contributors are Tania Abdulahad, Donna Allegra, Barbara A. Banks, Becky Birtha, Julie Carter, (...) Cenen, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Cliff, Michelle T. Clinton, Willie M. Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Alexis De Veaux, Jewelle L. Gomez, Akasha (Gloria) Hull, Patricia Jones, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Raymina Y. Mays, Deidre McCalla, Chirlane McCray, Pat Parker, Linda C. Powell, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Spring Redd, Gwendolyn Rogers, Kate Rushin, Ann Allen Shockley, Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith, Shirley O. Steele, Luisah Teish, Jameelah Waheed, Alice Walker, and Renita Weems. (shrink)

Many philosophers invoke the "wisdom of nature" in arguing for varying degrees of caution in the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. Because they view natural selection as akin to a master engineer that creates functionally and morally optimal design, these authors tend to regard genetic intervention with suspicion. In Part II, we examine and ultimately reject the evolutionary assumptions that underlie the master engineer analogy (MEA). By highlighting the constraints on ordinary unassisted evolution, we show how intentional genetic (...) modification can overcome many of the natural impediments to the human good. Our contention is that genetic engineering offers a solution that is more eff icient, reliable, versatile, and morally palatable than the lumbering juggernaut of Darwinian evolution. In Part III, we evaluate a recent attempt to ground precautionary enhancement heuristics in adaptive etiology. Our problem with this approach is two-fold: first, it is based on the same "strong adaptationist" interpretation of evolution that motivates the flawed MEA, and second, the etiological concept of function on which it relies provides indirect and potentially misleading information about the likely consequences of genetic intervention. We offer instead enhancement criteria based on causal relationships in ontogeny. We conclude that rather than grounding a presumption against deliberate genetic modification, the causal structure of the living world gives us good moral reason to pursue it. (shrink)

Après deux millénaires de culpabilité chrétienne, on pourrait penser que la liberté de mœurs s'est imposée, or aucune liberté ne va sans angoisse. Afin de dissoudre cette angoisse de la sexualité, d'en éclairer les zones d'ombre, d'en annuler les déterminismes, la société contemporaine s'est lancée dans une folle entreprise : l'encadrer, comme tout échange, par les formes contractuelles des normes juridiques. Mais le contrat peut-il s'appliquer à la sexualité?? A-t-il les moyens de clarifier la relation humaine la plus intime qui (...) soit, de résoudre toutes les tensions liées au contact avec l'altérité?? Cédric Lagandré reprend le débat du statut culturel de la sexualité en Occident pour défendre, sur le socle du consentement mutuel, sa nature nécessairement infra-juridique. On ne peut accéder innocemment à la sexualité, non au sens où le désir sexuel serait moralement coupable, mais au sens où il implique un vertige, une angoisse et une mise à nu. La forme juridique, loin de civiliser la sexualité, l'enferme donc dans un cadre défini par la prostitution, et ne la repousse pas moins que la pornographie dans le registre trivial du besoin. L'effort contemporain pour passer l'intégralité du réel au crible des catégories juridiques ne peut donc qu'échouer devant l'ordre du symbolique: l'obscurité du désir rend la sexualité insaisissable à toute volonté de l'encadrer par la règle. (shrink)

We propose a Bayesian framework for the attribution of knowledge, and apply this framework to generate novel predictions about knowledge attribution for different types of “Gettier cases”, in which an agent is led to a justified true belief yet has made erroneous assumptions. We tested these predictions using a paradigm based on semantic integration. We coded the frequencies with which participants falsely recalled the word “thought” as “knew” (or a near synonym), yielding an implicit measure of conceptual activation. Our experiments (...) confirmed the predictions of our Bayesian account of knowledge attribution across three experiments. We found that Gettier cases due to counterfeit objects were not treated as knowledge (Experiment 1), but those due to intentionally-replaced evidence were (Experiment 2). Our findings are not well explained by an alternative account focused only on luck, because accidentally-replaced evidence activated the knowledge concept more strongly than did similar false belief cases (Experiment 3). We observed a consistent pattern of results across a number of different vignettes that varied the quality and type of evidence available to agents, the relative stakes involved, and surface details of content. Accordingly, the present findings establish basic phenomena surrounding people’s knowledge attributions in Gettier cases, and provide explanations of these phenomena within a Bayesian framework. (shrink)

Understanding how scientific activities use naming stories to achieve disciplinary status is important not only for insight into the past, but for evaluating current claims that new disciplines are emerging. In order to gain a historical understanding of how new disciplines develop in relation to these baptismal narratives, we compare two recently formed disciplines, systems biology and genomics, with two earlier related life sciences, genetics and molecular biology. These four disciplines span the twentieth century, a period in which the processes (...) of disciplinary demarcation fundamentally changed from those characteristic of the nineteenth century. We outline how the establishment of each discipline relies upon an interplay of factors that include paradigmatic achievements, technological innovation, and social formations. Our focus, however, is the baptism stories that give the new discipline a founding narrative and articulate core problems, general approaches and constitutive methods. The highly plastic process of achieving disciplinary identity is further marked by the openness of disciplinary definition, tension between technological possibilities and the ways in which scientific issues are conceived and approached, synthesis of reductive and integrative strategies, and complex social interactions. The importance – albeit highly variable – of naming stories in these four cases indicates the scope for future studies that focus on failed disciplines or competing names. Further attention to disciplinary histories could, we suggest, give us richer insight into scientific development. (shrink)

A letter from Martin Heidegger.--On the way to being; reflecting on conversations with Martin Heidegger, by Z. Adamczewski.--Heidegger's view and evaluation of nature and natural science, by E. G. Ballard.--Truth as art: an interpretation of Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (sec. 44) and Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, by C. D. Keyes.--The language of the event: the event of language, by T. Kisiel.--Heidegger: the problem of the thing, by T. Langan.--The late Heidegger's omission of the ontic-ontological structure of Dasein, by R. (...) class='Hi'>Powell.--Towards the movement of reversal: science, technology, and the language of homecoming, by J. Sallis.--Prolegomena to "Time and being": truth and time, by A. Schuwer.--Cosmos, nature, and man and the foundations of psychiatry, by A.-T. Tymieniecka.--Heidegger and the existential a priori, by J. Wild. (shrink)

In this review of Milan Ćirković’s The Great Silence: Science and Philosophy of Fermi’s Paradox, we attempt to reconstruct the logic of Fermi’s paradox as understood by the author, and we critically examine the reasoning that leads to the paradox. We show that there is no plausible solution to Fermi’s paradox that can satisfy all of Ćirković’s proposed desiderata, which in turn suggests that the author’s standards for hypothesis adjudication need to be revised.

T. Byram Karasu, M.D. reflects on loving, working, living, dying, and everything else—his philosophy of life expressed in microstyle.