This target article discusses the verbal working memory system used in sentence comprehension. We review the concept of working memory as a short-duration system in which small amounts of information are simultaneously stored and manipulated in the service of accomplishing a task. We summarize the argument that syntactic processing in sentence comprehension requires such a storage and computational system. We then ask whether the working memory system used in syntactic processing is the same as that used in verbally mediated tasks (...) that involve conscious controlled processing. Evidence is brought to bear from various sources: the relationship between individual differences in working memory and individual differences in the efficiency of syntactic processing; the effect of concurrent verbal memory load on syntactic processing; and syntactic processing in patients with poor short-term memory, patients with poor working memory, and patients with aphasia. Experimental results from these normal subjects and patients with various brain lesions converge on the conclusion that there is a specialization in the verbal working memory system for assigning the syntactic structure of a sentence and using that structure in determining sentence meaning that is separate from the working memory system underlying the use of sentence meaning to accomplish other functions. We present a theory of the divisions of the verbal working memory system and suggestions regarding its neural basis. (shrink)

Commentaries on our target article raise further questions about the validity of an undifferentiated central executive that supplies resources to all verbal tasks. Working memory tasks are more likely to measure divided attention capacities and the efficiency of performing tasks within specific domains than a shared resource pool. In our response to the commentaries, we review and further expand upon empirical findings that relate performance on working memory tasks to sentence processing, concluding that our view that the two are not (...) strongly related remains viable in light of the material presented in the commentaries. We suggest that a productive research enterprise would be to develop the concept of working memory as a pool of resources in relation to specific tasks. (shrink)

It is well known that the appearance of food, particularly its color, can influence flavor perception and identification. However, food studies involving the manipulation of product color face inevitable limitations, from extrinsic flavors introduced by food coloring to the cost in development time and resources in order to produce different product variants. One solution lies in modern virtual reality technology, which has become increasingly accessible, sophisticated, and widespread over the past years. In the present study, we investigated whether making a (...) coffee look milkier in a VR environment can alter its perceived flavor and liking. Thirty-two United Kingdom consumers were given four samples of black cold brew coffee at 4 and 8% sucrose concentration. They wore VR headsets throughout the study and viewed the same coffee in a virtual setting. The color of the beverage was manipulated in VR, such that participants saw either a dark brown or light brown liquid as they sipped the coffee. A full factorial design was used so that each participant tasted each sweetness x color combination, Participants reported sweetness, creaminess, and liking for each sample. Results revealed that beverage color as viewed in VR significantly influenced perceived creaminess, with the light brown coffee rated to be creamier than dark brown coffee. However, beverage color did not influence perceived sweetness or liking. The present study supports the role of VR as a means of conducting food perception studies, either to gain a better understanding of multisensory integration, or, from an industry perspective, to enable rapid product testing when it may be time-intensive or costly to produce the same range of products in the real-world. Furthermore, it opens potential future opportunities for VR to promote healthy eating behavior by manipulating the visual appearance of foods. (shrink)

Water. One cannot think of Michigan without the image of water. Water as vast as the Great Lakes, as serene as the inland lakes, and as long and lazy or sleek and fast as the numerous byways that run between and among them. Waters of Michigan is a tribute to this treasured resource of Michigan. Combining the vision of internationally renowned photographer David Lubbers with the stewardship focus of environmentalist Dave Dempsey, this collection presents a truly unique view (...) and understanding of the waters of Michigan. Foreword by Governor Willim G. Milliken. (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the key ways in which water is mediated by technology and human artifacts. I show how the modes in which we conceive and experience this vital fluid are affected deeply by the techniques and instruments we use to interact with it. I argue that a notion of the domestication of water enables us to better grasp our relations with the environment given that vast volumes of water are now neither completely natural nor artificial in the (...) conventional senses of the terms. Instead, water is often filtered through an expansive technological network that not merely changes its flows and phenomenal forms but greatly alters or multiplies its meanings. As examples of this process, I investigate the practical engagement with water by the first Western philosopher; the construction of several large hydrological projects; efforts at river management in the aesthetic landscape; and the emergence of bottled water. (shrink)

This paper examines the legal justification for water fluoridation (WF) in the United Kingdom. While current legislation clearly permits WF, there is a degree of obfuscation concerning whether the practice amounts to medication, and were it to be acknowledged that fluoridated water constitutes a medicine, the legality of the practice would not be so obvious. It is concluded that an accurate and honest interpretation of the law would result in the conclusion that fluoridation does constitute medication, as it seeks to (...) improve health by the addition of a chemical. (shrink)

Contention about who discovered the compound nature of water (the 'water controversy') occurred in two phases. During the first phase, in the 1780s, the claimants to the discovery (Antoine Lavoisier, Henry Cavendish, and James Watt) produced the work on which their claims were based. This phase of controversy was relatively short and did not generate much heat, although it was part of the larger debates surrounding the 'chemical revolution'. The second phase of controversy, in the 1830s and 1840s, saw heated (...) exchanges in Britain between advocates of Watt on the one hand and of Cavendish on the other. This paper concentrates on this second phase. The concern is not to arbitrate the contest but to delineate the pattern of advocacy and the arguments used to support the opposing cases. 'Discovery' is not treated as an event but as the outcome of an after-the-fact process of attribution of credit. Apart from identifying the opposing argumentative strategies employed in making different attributions, the paper also seeks to explain why there was so much concern about this priority dispute long after the deaths of the protagonists. It is shown that while Scottish-English rivalries were important they were not the only or most significant impetus. Ideological struggles over the nature of science provided a context in which the attribution of discovery to Cavendish or to Watt was of major import. These ideological struggles are shown to have roots in the politics of early Victorian science that ultimately lay behind the second phase of the water controversy and shaped the course that it took. (shrink)

The tension between individual freedom and the public interest has been at the center of environmental debates since Garrett Hardin’s article on the tragedy of the commons. Debates over bottled wat...

The “scientific essentialist” doctrine asserts that the following are examples of a posteriori necessary identities: water is H2O; gold is the element with atomic number 79; and heat is the motion of molecules. Evidence in support of this assertion, however, is difficult to find. Both Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke have argued convincingly for the existence of a posteriori necessities. Furthermore, Kripke has argued for the existence of a posteriori necessary identities in regard to a particular class of statements involving (...) proper names. Neither Kripke nor Putnam, however, has argued convincingly that sentences containing syntactically complex terms or descriptive phrases can express a posteriori necessary identities. I will argue by way of a hypothetical example that ‘water is H2O’ does not express a necessary identity. My argument is unique in that it attacks the relevant sufficiency claim needed to underwrite this putative necessary identity.1 That is, even if we grant that water is necessarily composed of H2O, we should not accept that H2O necessarily forms water. (shrink)

Illustrates the prevalence of implicit quantification in deontic assertions in ordinary language.

Five medieval Sanskrit-language descriptions of a fabulous technique for extracting mercury from the “wells” in which it naturally resides are shown to be remarkably similar to accounts preserved in Chinese and Syriac. Whereas the Sanskrit and Chinese versions date from no earlier than the thirteenth century C.E., the Syriac version dates from no later than the tenth century. The present article first compares and contrasts these three alchemical narratives, and then suggests that all three are perhaps related to a broader (...) and far more ancient Indo-European mythic tradition of a deity associated with the phenomenon of “Fire in Water,” as attested in Vedic, Avestan, Roman, Irish, and Greek sources. All eight of these witnesses appear to attest to ancient religious and scientific traditions relative to geothermal phenomena. (shrink)

Gilbertson et al should be commended for their insightful exploration of expanded terminal sedation (ETS)1; however, there are a number of concerns that I will address in this response. I will first better characterise the currently accepted and commonplace ‘standard’ TS (STS), and then argue that the advocated forms of ETS draw very close to—and at times clearly constitute a subtype of—euthanasia, as opposed to representing a similar but separate practice. I will then conclude with concerns regarding the inappropriate application (...) of ETS, particularly in the non-voluntary context. Gilbertson et al distinguish ‘gradual’ TS, which they state is the currently accepted form of TS, from ‘rapid’ TS, which is then argued to be a justifiable form of ETS. However, in my experience working in multiple large public teaching hospitals in New South Wales, Australia and consistent with local clinical practice guidelines,2 3 STS falls somewhere in the middle between ‘gradual’ and ‘rapid’ TS. STS explicitly aims to achieve permanent unconsciousness so as to eliminate the potential for (and therefore relieve) suffering; conversely, lighter or more intermittent forms of sedation, or administering sedatives with aims other than to achieve unconsciousness (eg, anxiolysis), do not constitute TS proper. STS uses doses proportionate to the extent of symptoms so as to avoid ‘overshooting’ and inadvertently administering excessive doses which actually hasten/cause death, in order to distinguish STS from euthanasia in this respect. This is achieved by gradually uptitrating doses when the patient appears distressed, and is therefore by definition …. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel interpretation of the function of the word "human.".

In contrast to the European historical experience, Africa’s urban infrastructural systems are characterised by stagnation long before demand has been saturated. Water infrastructures have been stabilised as systems predominantly providing services for elites, with millions of poor people lacking basic services in the cities. What is puzzling is that so little emphasis has been placed on innovation and the adaptation of the colonial technological paradigm to better suit the local and current socio-economic contexts. Based on historical case studies of Kampala (...) and Nairobi, this paper argues that the lack of innovation in African urban water infrastructure can be understood using Pinch and Bijker’s concept of technological closure, and by looking at water technology from its embedded values and ideology. Large-scale water technology became part of African leaders’ strategies to build prosperous nations and cities after decolonisation and the ideological purpose of infrastructure may have been much more important than previously understood. Water technology had reached a state of closure in Europe and then came to represent modernisation and progress in the colonial context. It has continued to serve such a similar symbolic purpose after independence, with old norms essentially being preserved. Recent sector reforms have defined problems predominantly as of economic and institutional nature while state actors have become ‘unseeing’ vis-á-vis controversies within the technological systems themselves. In order to induce socio-technical innovation towards equality in urban infrastructure services, it will be necessary to understand the broader incentive structure that governs the relevant social groups, such as governments, donors, water suppliers and the consumers, as well as power-structures and political accountability. (shrink)

_Explores the ancient and perennial notion of the four elements as environmental ideas._.

This syllabus explores complex ways that Native peoples form relationships with environments. Topics include Native American environmental thought, ethics, technology, and aesthetics of practice. A comparative approach shows differences and similarities of Native and Western templates of understanding that frame relations in our human environment. Texts discuses understanding of traditional and contemporary indigenous philosophical frameworks of environmental practices, and why they collide with technology. Required text authors include Gregory Cajete, J. Baird Caldicott, Michael P. Nelson, Donald Grinde, and Bruce E. (...) Johansen; recommended readings include Krim Benterrak, Staphen Muecke, Paddy Roe, David Suzuki, and Peter Knudtson. (shrink)

This poetical study of water ranges from classical myth and literature to modern physics and microbiology. Because water exists in three forms or phases—liquid, solid, and gas—each needs its own constellation of ideas. Its subtle movement is the hidden source of question, questioner, and the phenomenon of life. Its power is transformation, the unspoken theme of the book.

Naturalistic ethics is the reigning paradigm among contemporary ethicists; in God and Cosmos, Baggett and Walls argue that this approach is seriously flawed. This book canvasses a broad array of secular and naturalistic ethical theories in an effort to test their adequacy in accounting for moral duties, intrinsic human value, prospects for radical moral transformation, and the rationality of morality. In each case, the authors argue, although various secular accounts provide real insights and indeed share common ground with theistic ethics, (...) the resources of classical theism and orthodox Christianity provide the better explanation of the moral realities under consideration. Among such realities is the fundamental insight behind the problem of evil, namely, that the world is not as it should be. Baggett and Walls argue that God and the world, taken together, exhibit superior explanatory scope and power for morality classically construed, without the need to water down the categories of morality, the import of human value, the prescriptive strength of moral obligations, or the deliverances of the logic, language, and phenomenology of moral experience. This book thus provides a cogent moral argument for God's existence, one that is abductive, teleological, and cumulative. (shrink)

Jared Diamond and other leading scholars have argued that the domestication of animals for food, labor, and tools of war has advanced the development of human society. But by comparing practices of animal exploitation for food and resources in different societies over time, David A. Nibert reaches a strikingly different conclusion. He finds in the domestication of animals, which he renames "domesecration," a perversion of human ethics, the development of large-scale acts of violence, disastrous patterns of destruction, and growth-curbing (...) epidemics of infectious disease. Nibert centers his study on nomadic pastoralism and the development of commercial ranching, a practice that has been largely controlled by elite groups and expanded with the rise of capitalism. Beginning with the pastoral societies of the Eurasian steppe and continuing through to the exportation of Western, meat-centered eating habits throughout today's world, Nibert connects the domesecration of animals to violence, invasion, extermination, displacement, enslavement, repression, pandemic chronic disease, and hunger. In his view, conquest and subjugation were the results of the need to appropriate land and water to maintain large groups of animals, and the gross amassing of military power has its roots in the economic benefits of the exploitation, exchange, and sale of animals. Deadly zoonotic diseases, Nibert shows, have accompanied violent developments throughout history, laying waste to whole cities, societies, and civilizations. His most powerful insight situates the domesecration of animals as a precondition for the oppression of human populations, particularly indigenous peoples, an injustice impossible to rectify while the material interests of the elite are inextricably linked to the exploitation of animals. Nibert links domesecration to some of the most critical issues facing the world today, including the depletion of fresh water, topsoil, and oil reserves; global warming; and world hunger, and he reviews the U.S. government's military response to the inevitable crises of an overheated, hungry, resource-depleted world. Most animal-advocacy campaigns reinforce current oppressive practices, Nibert argues. Instead, he suggests reforms that challenge the legitimacy of both domesecration and capitalism. (shrink)

At a time when politics and virtue seem less compatible than oil and water, _Democracy and Moral Development_ shows how to bring the two together. Philosopher David Norton applies classical concepts of virtue to the premises of modern democracy. The centerpiece of the book is a model of organizational management applicable to the state, business, the professions, and voluntary communities.

Increasingly, the world seems to shrink due to our ever-expanding technological and communication capacities. Correspondingly, our awareness of other cultures increases. This is especially true in the field of bioethics because the technological progress of medicine throughout the world is causing dramatic and challenging intersections with traditionally held values. Think of the use of pregnancy monitoring technologies like ultrasound to abort fetuses of the “wrong” sex in India, the sale of human organs in and between countries, or the disjunction between (...) the haves and the have-nots in South America when it comes to bone marrow transplants, while thousands of other children die for want of fundamental goods and services like clean water, basic inoculations, and food itself. (shrink)

In this beautifully written book David E. Cooper uses a gentle walk through a tropical garden, the view of the fields and hills beyond it, the sound of birds, voices and flute, the reflection of light in water, the play of shadows among the trees and presence of strange animals, as an opportunity to reflect on experiences of nature and the mystery of existence. Covering an extensive range of topics, from Daoism to dogs, from gardening to walking, from Zen (...) to Debussy, Cooper succeeds in conveying some deep and difficult philosophical ideas about the meaning of life in an engaging manner, and in showing how those ideas bear upon the practical question of how we should relate to our world and live our lives. A thought-provoking and compelling book, _Senses of Mystery_ is a triumph of both storytelling and philosophy. (shrink)

Hand's End offers a new philosophy of technology as the fundamental way in which humans experience and define nature―the tool as humanity extended. Rothenberg examines human inventions from the water wheel to the nuclear bomb and discusses theories of technology in the thought of philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Marx, Heidegger, Spinoza, Mumford, and McLuhan.

Intuitively, a question is indeterminate just in case it is unsettled, not merely epistemically, but metaphysically. We ordinarily ascribe indeterminacy by saying that there is no fact of the matter. We say for instance that there is no fact of the matter how many clouds exist. The distribution of water droplets in the sky would appear to settle that there are some clouds, but not how many. ;On the one hand, it seems obvious that certain questions are indeterminate. On the (...) other hand, it seems easy to reduce an arbitrary ascription of indeterminacy to absurdity: Suppose that it is indeterminate---that is, metaphysically unsettled---whether Jud is bald. Because it is true that Jud is bald only if it is metaphysically settled that he is bald, and because it is true that Jud is not bald only if it is metaphysically settled that he is not bald, it is not true that Jud is bald and not true that Jud is not bald. Because Jud is bald only if it is true that he is bald, and because Jud is not bald only if it is true that he is not bald, Jud is not bald and Jud is not not bald. This is a contradiction. Hence, our supposition is false. Moreover, because the issue of whether Jud is bald was chosen arbitrarily, the argument generalizes: indeterminacy is impossible. ;We are faced with a dilemma: take the anti-indeterminacy argument at face value and look for a way to explain away our pro-indeterminacy intuitions, or take our intuitions at face value and look for a way to reject the argument. Many philosophers are inclined toward the latter route, but I want to take the first step toward justifying the former. ;After emphasizing the costs of rejecting the preceding sort of argument, I show how five of the most salient phenomena that give rise to pro-indeterminacy intuitions can be accounted for without postulating genuine indeterminacy. I examine explicitly incomplete definitions, hidden relativity, vagueness, comparatives, and subjunctive conditionals. In each case I suggest a way to account for the phenomenon without postulating indeterminacy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 405-413 [Access article in PDF] Boxers and Generals At Mount Eryx David A. Traill The boxing match between Dares and Entellus gives rise to one of the most unusual similes in the Aeneid. Entellus, the older man, stands his ground, warily watching his opponent and dodging the blows, while Dares, the younger man, dances around him, looking for an opening. Dares' restless (...) probing is compared to the efforts of a general to find a weak spot in the defenses of a besieged mountain stronghold (5.437-42):stat gravis Entellus nisuque immotus eodemcorpore tela modo atque oculis vigilantibus exit.ille, velut celsam oppugnat qui molibus urbem440aut montana sedet circum castella sub armis,nunc hos, nunc illos aditus, omnemque pererratarte locum et variis adsultibus inritus urget. Stolidly, Entellus stands his ground and, poised in the same stance, dodges the blows with body movements only and with watchful eyes. Dares, like one who attacks a city towering high with massive walls or invests a mountain stronghold with armed troops, looks for a way in, now here, now there, and skillfully ranges over the whole terrain, pressing the attack with varied but futile assaults. Like the famous opening simile of the Aeneid (1.148-53), in which Neptune's quelling of the storm is compared to the calming effect of an honored statesman's eloquence on a disorderly crowd, the comparison of the boxer to the besieging general is distinctly Roman and quite unexpected. Both similes are unexpected in that they are, in a sense, inverted. 1 Comparing the hush that spreads over an unruly crowd to the sudden calming of a storm would have been straightforward and traditional, but the reverse is striking. Similarly, comparing two well-matched [End Page 405] generals to opponents in a boxing match was rather trite by Virgil's day. Inverted, however, the simile is fresh and arresting. 2 John Conington (1884, 373) assures us that "the comparison is Vergil's own." This is certainly true in the strict sense, but the whole truth is considerably more complex.The intrusion of a Roman ethos into the scene and the reference to siege warfare invite us to wonder if Virgil may be making an allusion here to later Roman history. Heinze, however, maintains that in the boxing match, in contrast to the boat race, Virgil "strongly emphasizes the mythical aspect" and "is careful to avoid making any historical implications." 3 Perhaps taking their cue from Heinze, scholars have tended to eschew any consideration of historical implications and to focus on how Virgil has shaped for his own purposes the material he has borrowed from earlier authors. 4 In this article I will argue that historical implications were very much on Virgil's mind and that he used the boxing match to link the Trojan present to the Roman future.First, let us consider where the boxing match takes place. Aeneas and his followers are forced ashore by a storm in the vicinity of Drepana--the inlaetabilis ora (3.707) where Anchises died a year earlier. While they are still at sea, Palinurus indicates that the litora... fida of Eryx and the Sicanian harbor (Drepana, though the name is used only in bk. 3) are not far off (5.23-24). Acestes sees them "procul ex celso... vertice montis" (5.35). This can only mean the summit of Mount Eryx itself or the top of [End Page 406] one of its spurs, as Trápani (Drepana) itself is so low-lying that the buildings "seem to float upon the waters" (Freeman 1891, 199). Once ashore, presumably at the harbor of Drepana, Aeneas delivers a speech, in which he points out that one year after his father's death the gods have brought him "ad cineres ipsius et ossa parentis" (5.55). He then leads a procession to the tomb, where ritual offerings are made (5.75-103). These rites are followed after an eight-day interval by the games. The first of these, the boat race (5.114-285), naturally takes place... (shrink)

William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial (...) of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or “internal” realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism. Wittgenstein is often admired as a high priest of the movement. Planting a stick in this water is probably futile, but having done it before I shall do it again, and—who knows?—enough sticks may make a dam, and the waters of error may subside. (Blackburn, 1998a, 157). (shrink)

I have been a Daniel Callahan reader for over thirty years. My first published review was of Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality. Callahan's latest book, The Five Horsemen of the Modern World: Climate, Food, Water, Disease, and Obesity, is a sustained and detailed explanation of a series of challenges facing humankind in this century. Callahan's prognosis is bleak, his analyses credible, and while hope is not lost, the moral of the story is that we had better get our act together (...) fast. Callahan argues that when we face challenges like these, rational persuasion is insufficient. Human emotions must be engaged. Without knowledgeable emotional engagement by millions of people, we are done for. It seems to me that he is really calling for a national cultural conversion experience, rather as, almost three hundred years ago, Jonathan Edwards declared that if there is a hell, it makes good sense to frighten people out of it! (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 124.3 (2003) 473-476 [Access article in PDF] Metamorphoses and Metamorphosis:A Brief Response David H. Porter Like Joseph Farrell, I found much to admire in Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, 1 but I nonetheless left the theater disappointed. Given all that the play—and this production—had to offer, what was it that I looked for but did not find? Excerpts from the foreword to Cesare Pavese's Dialogues with (...) Leucò suggest an answer: What is more acutely disturbing than to see familiar stories troubled into new life?... The surest, and the quickest, way for us to arouse the sense of wonder is to stare, unafraid, at a single object. Suddenly—miraculously—it will look like something we have never seen before. 2For me, what Pavese describes did not happen in Metamorphoses: I found the play an imaginative retelling of Ovid, but I'd been hoping for a true metamorphosis. In terms of the play's most famous feature, the pool of water that serves as a central stage, I felt most of the time that figures I knew from Ovid were playing out their expected roles around and in this pool. My hope had been that this brilliant theatrical innovation might mirror a play in which Ovid's tales themselves take on liquid freedom and fluidity, plunging, as it were, into this central metaphor to emerge changed, unexpected, reborn.The distinction I draw is one I've found useful both in assessing modern versions of ancient myth for myself and in teaching such works. 3 Readers will undoubtedly vary widely as to their favorites among the growing list of such versions, but I expect most would agree that a handful, including perhaps Joyce's Ulysses, Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, [End Page 473] Strauss's Elektra, Yeat's "Leda and the Swan," and Picasso's "Guernica," fall into a special category: different as they are in genre, style, and approach, all strike us as works of artists who have so inhabited a myth, so made it part of themselves—and themselves part of it—that what emerges is totally their own, totally transformed: a re-creation. With each we feel that never before have we experienced the myth this way, and that never again will the myth be quite the same for us—precisely what a New York Times reviewer wrote about a version of Medea that was playing at the Classical Theater of Harlem in April 2002: "I suspect that no matter how many versions I see in the future, my perception of them all will be affected by the revelations here." 4Again, this is the sort of reaction that Metamorphoses, for all its virtues, did not elicit in me, and I would extend this exclusion to most other modern reworkings of ancient myth—among them Pavese's own Dialogues with Leucò, which, despite the penetrating insights of his foreword, strike me the same way—as charming, distinctive retellings, not revelations. The issue, I think, has to do with the depth and degree of an artist's immersion in a myth, something that goes well beyond the superficial test of how far the artist diverges from "the original." Eliot's and O'Neill's myth-based plays, for instance, or a novel like Updike's The Centaur, make radical changes in the names and settings of the ancient myths, but in contrast to Joyce's Ulysses, the changes feel artificial, incompletely realized—transpositions rather than transformations. In contrast, Odilon Redon's painting of Polyphemus as a mountainous crag from which a huge voyeuristic eye peers out springs directly from an image in the Odyssey—and yet has a nightmare quality that is indeed "like something we have never seen before." 5A musical analogy may be useful. Listeners reported that when Franz Liszt played Beethoven, he gave the impression at each performance [End Page 474] that he was creating the music anew. 6 And Edward Steuermann, Arnold Schoenberg's long-time colleague, once wrote, "Is not music, the great music, so much alive because it was... (shrink)

William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial (...) of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or “internal” realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism. Wittgenstein is often admired as a high priest of the movement. Planting a stick in this water is probably futile, but having done it before I shall do it again, and—who knows?—enough sticks may make a dam, and the waters of error may subside. (Blackburn, 1998a, 157). (shrink)

In this article, we argue that the scope of bioethical debate concerning justice in health should expand beyond the topic of access to health care and cover such issues as occupational hazards, safe housing, air pollution, water quality, food and drug safety, pest control, public health, childhood nutrition, disaster preparedness, literacy, and many other environmental factors that can cause differences in health. Since society does not have sufficient resources to address all of these environmental factors at one time, it is (...) important to set priorities for bioethical theorizing and policy formation. Two considerations should be used to set these priorities: (1) the impact of the environmental factor on health inequality, and (2) the practicality of addressing the factor. (shrink)

In his writings, McKibben confronts us with a fundamental choice. The choice is not whether to drill ever deeper, deep-water oil wells or invest in further exploration for new oil fields because we will be running out of fossil fuel, as he argues. Nor is the choice whether to burn cleaner coal. The choice is not even whether to develop more efficient and less polluting technologies, more fuel-efficient and cleaner-burning automobiles, for instance, or whether to recycle or develop wind and (...) solar power or tilt farm policies away from industrial agriculture. He encourages these latter, of course, but they are by themselves insufficient answers to the deeper challenges of our time. For example, efficient and cleaner... (shrink)