The financial toxicity of biotherapeutic treatments is examined. Kymriah, a new gene therapy, has a list price of $475,000 per treatment; Yescarta, from Kite Pharma, costs $373,000 per treatment. Such costs are a significant burden on patients, patients’ families, payers, health care systems, and communities. Studies have shown that financial toxicity—the effect of excessive treatment cost—diminishes patients’ quality of life, compliance, and survival. Some pharmaceutical companies promote outcomes-based pricing and other strategies to offset financial toxicity, but these approaches have not (...) been shown to reduce burdens. Catholic teaching holds that the benefits of treatment should outweigh its burdens, and that burdensome treatments are not obligatory. The financial toxicity of treatments should be included in the ethical assessment of burdens on the patient. (shrink)

Supporting Hamilton’s inclusive fitness theory, archival analyses of inheritance patterns in wills have revealed that people invest more of their estates in kin of closer genetic relatedness. Recent classroom experiments have shown that this genetic relatedness effect is stronger for relatives of direct lineage (children, grandchildren) than for relatives of collateral lineage (siblings, nieces, nephews). In the present research, multilevel modeling of more than 1,000 British Columbian wills revealed a positive effect of genetic relatedness on proportions of estates allocated to (...) relatives. This effect was qualified by an interaction with lineage, such that it was stronger for direct than for collateral relatives. Exploratory analyses of the moderating role of benefactors’ sex and estate values showed the genetic relatedness effect was stronger among female and wealthier benefactors. The importance of these moderators to understanding kin investment in modern humans is discussed. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching, in considering economic and patient justice, calls for “participating in patient care.” Corporations often are accused of not paying their fair share, which in turn has led to demands for government regulation to lower drug prices in the United States. Meanwhile, the millions of dollars spent by pharmaceutical foundations to help lower-income patients is not seen as corporations’ taking such responsibility to assist patients. The view that CST demands lower costs for prescription pharmaceuticals from corporations that make (...) excess profits misapplies CST principles and does not consider the pricing structure for drugs on a global scale. While a preferential option for the poor is needed, there needs to be a better definition of the poor. This paper looks to broaden the view of CST in regard to corporations and the preferential option for the poor when applied to the current cost of pharmaceuticals. (shrink)

Terrence Deacon has constructed a tome in which he unleashes his considerable learning in quest of several answers to the question, "What are we?" He is uniquely qualified to take an approach which details the origin and development of, first, language, then the brain, and, lastly, their "co-evolution".

In the worlds of philosophy, linguistics, and communications theory, a view has developed which understands conscious experience as experience which is 'reflected' back upon itself through language. This indicates that the consciousness we experience is possible only because we have culturally invented language and subsequently evolved to accommodate it. This accords with the conclusions of Daniel Dennett (1991), but the 'hermeneutic objection' would go further and deny that the objective sciences themselves have escaped the hermeneutic circle. -/- The consciousness we (...) humans experience is developed only within the context of crossing the 'symbolic threshold' (Percy 1975; Deacon 1997) and one of the earliest and most important symbols we acquire is that of the self, or 'the subject of experience'. It is only when we achieve self-awareness that the world, as such, comes to exist for us as an object (which contains categories and sub-categories of objects). Any consciousness imputed to prelinguistic stages of development is based on projection and guesswork, since we can know nothing directly of it. It can be said that any experience which does not separate an inner subject from an outer world is probably a continuum of sensation in which environmental stimulus and instinctive response are experienced as a unity; it may be 'lived experience' but it is experience 'lived' non-consciously. -/- Speech requires assertion and by learning to speak we find ourselves asserting, in essence, our selves into the world. The narrative form of language allows us to develop life stories, self-knowledge, and, most important, narrative memory coincident with narrative time. All this is made possible with the intersubjective 'net' of language which allows us to know ourselves by first identifying with the viewpoint of others; and, later, such allows us to identify with other minds as we anticipate their reception our communication. These three, assertion, narrative, and intersubjectivity are the essence of what language is and are the keystones that make culture possible outside of nature. (shrink)

Introduction: -/- It is likely that Boethius (480-524ce) inaugurates, in Latin Christian theology, the consideration of personhood as such. In the Treatise Against Eutyches and Nestorius Boethius gives a well-known definition of personhood according to genus and difference(s): a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Personhood is predicated only of individual rational substances. This chapter situates Boethius in relation to significant Christian theologians before and after him, and the way in which his definition of personhood is a (...) particular answer to the question, “Jesus has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, but is one what?” Among Greek (and Syriac) speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘hypostasis’. Among Latin speaking theologians, the typical answer is that Jesus is one ‘persona’. It is Boethius’s definition of ‘persona’ that inaugurates personhood as such in Latin speaking theology. Although the Greek and Syriac theologians that I survey come close to a concept of personhood as a distinct category, they do not have such a concept and did not need it for their theological purposes. I show that Rusticus the Deacon is an early witness to this Latin theological invention, and also show that for later Latin theologians, the rationality condition for personhood does very little metaphysical work for their Trinitarian theology or Christology. -/- Further, this chapter surveys Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians’ answers to the question, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are one God, but each is one what?” The same replies as above are typically given by Christian theologians. These two theological questions frame the discussion about personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) and put a boundary around what a satisfying account of personhood (and ‘hypostasis’) would be. -/- In contemporary philosophy, there is a lot of attention paid to the rationality condition for personhood. But if we look at the text in which Boethius defines a person, we do not find any precise criteria for it. In other texts, he says that a rational being is one compatible with (capable of) thought and free choice of the will. What we find is that detailed discussion of personhood shows up in theological questions about the Trinity and Incarnation, but not in e.g., applied ethics. The intrusion of personhood into contemporary applied ethics with a focus on detailed and disputed criteria for rationality as a condition for personhood seems to be a modern development. From a Patristic and Medieval Christian theology point of view, trying to find just the right detailed criteria for rationality in order to define personhood is a wild goose chase. This chapter makes clear another contribution that Christian theology had for personhood. Given the theological issues at play in developing a notion of personhood, Christian theologians came to posit that e.g., an individual human is a person contingently (i.e. not essentially), but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are each a person essentially. The contingency for created persons is not based on whether e.g., an individual human has conscious acts (as might be the case for John Locke) but on the possibility of a divine person’s assuming e.g., an individual human nature. -/- This sampling of Christian intellectual history spans over one thousand years. I make no claim of being exhaustive. The chapter consists of six sections, where each section covers significant historical conversation partners who together represent the sorts of things that Patristic and Medieval Christian theologians where concerned with in theorizing about ‘persona’ or ‘hypostasis’. -/- 1. Origen of Alexandria and the Cappadocians: Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa 2. Miaphysites: Severus of Antioch, John Philoponus, and Peter of Callinicum 3. Boethius and Rusticus the Deacon: Rationality, Subsistence, and the Invention of Personhood 4. Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Leontius of Byzantium 5. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (I): Gilbert of Poitiers, Richard of St. Victor, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ware 6. Scholastic Neo-Chalcedonians (II): Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham . (shrink)

To explore how molecules became signs I will ask: “What sort of process is necessary and sufficient to treat a molecule as a sign?” This requires focusing on the interpreting system and its interpretive competence. To avoid assuming any properties that need to be explained I develop what I consider to be a simplest possible molecular model system which only assumes known physics and chemistry but nevertheless exemplifies the interpretive properties of interest. Three progressively more complex variants of this model (...) of interpretive competence are developed that roughly parallel an icon-index-symbol hierarchic scaffolding logic. The implication of this analysis is a reversal of the current dogma of molecular and evolutionary biology which treats molecules like DNA and RNA as the original sources of biological information. Instead I argue that the structural characteristics of these molecules have provided semiotic affordances that the interpretive dynamics of viruses and cells have taken advantage of. These molecules are not the source of biological information but are instead semiotic artifacts onto which dynamical functional constraints have been progressively offloaded during the course of evolution. (shrink)

This article discusses the charity towards the poor that characterized the so-called cura animarum of Pope Gregory the Great. It draws its information first from the Registrum Epistularum and then from the Vita Gregorii Magni of John the Deacon. From the Registrum the author gathers information on the honesty and competence of the administrators of the ecclesiastical patrimony, and on the use of goodness and rigour in the exercise of power. From the Vita, the author highlights some hagiographic (...) aspects related to donations to the poor. This article presents the theme of Pope Gregory’s charity by drawing on both historical and hagiographic sources, highlighting how certain events and aspects of his life flourished in later hagiographical legend. (shrink)

Divine inspiration through the Holy Ghost is topical in the portraits of Gregory the Great: A dove brings him the divine words, which he writes himself or dictates to his deacon Petrus. Thus the charismatic Father of the Church became, like the Evangelists, a divinely inspired medium who transmitted the mandate of spreading the gospel and guaranteed the heavenly origin of the texts that were recited and sung in the liturgy. The preface ‘Gregorius presul’, which is to be (...) found in variant forms introducing antiphonaries and cantatories, states that Gregory, the “powerful teacher” of church chant, composed the songbooks (composuit hunc libellum musicae artis), thereby sanctifying them. Scholars see in this preface a Carolingian strategy of legitimation based on this dynasty’s theocratic concept of power. Gregorian chant, the quintessence of medieval monophonic tradition, has his origins in the Frankish church adopting the “authentic” Roman rite, which was declared canonical liturgy in all churches of the Frankish empire because of Gregory’s authorship. But the consolidation of Gregory’s myth unintentionally legitimated the process of composition, too, because the connection between the concepts of authorship and inspiration justified the composer’s claim to the ministry of spreading the gospel and of attaining the highest knowledge. (shrink)

A simple molecular system is described consisting of the reciprocal linkage between an autocatalytic cycle and a self-assembling encapsulation process where the molecular constituents for the capsule are products of the autocatalysis. In a molecular environment sufficiently rich in the substrates, capsule growth will also occur with high predictability. Growth to closure will be most probable in the vicinity of the most prolific autocatalysis and will thus tend to spontaneously enclose supportive catalysts within the capsule interior. If subsequently disrupted in (...) the presence of new substrates, the released components will initiate production of additional catalytic and capsule components that will spontaneously re-assemble into one or more autocell replicas, thereby reconstituting and sometimes reproducing the original. In a diverse molecular environment, cycles of disruption and enclosure will cause auto-cells to incidentally encapsulate other molecules as well as reactive substrates. To the extent that any captured molecule can be incorporated into the autocatalytic process by virtue of structural degeneracy of the catalytic binding sites, the altered autocell will incorporate the new type of component into subsequent replications. Such altered autocells will be progenitors of “lineages” with variant characteristics that will differentially propagate with respect to the availability of commonly required substrates. Autocells are susceptible to a limited form of evolution, capable of leading to more efficient, more environmentally fitted, and more complex forms. This provides a simple demonstration of the plausibility of open-ended reproduction and evolvability without self-replicating template molecules or maintenance of persistent nonequilibrium chemistry. This model identifies an intermediate domain between prebiotic and biotic systems and bridges the gap from nonequilibrium thermodynamics to life. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. By John Van Seters. The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. By Samuel E. Balentine. Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by James L. Crenshaw. Ce Dieu censé aimer la Souffrance. By François Varone. Evil and Evolution, A Theodicy. By Richard W. Kropf. ‘Poet and Peasant’ and ‘Through Peasant Eyes’: A Literary‐Cultural Approach to (...) the Parable in Luke. By Kenneth Bailey. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. By Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller. New Testament Foundations of Ministry. By Colin Kruse. Church, Ministry and Unity. By James E. Griffiss. Theology of Ministry. By Thomas Franklin O'Meara. Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. By Colin E. Gunton. I believe in the Holy Spirit. By Yves Congar. Between Jesus and Paul. By Martin Hengel. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background. By Frances Young. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. By G.R. Evans. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. By Clarissa W. Atkinson. Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929. Edited by N. Macdougall. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution. Collected Essays, Volume II. By Frances A. Yates. Seven‐Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentury, 1483–1983. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Ökumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer. Luther's Ecumenical Significance, An Interconfessional Consultation. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, in collaboration with Carter Lindberg and Harry McSorley. States of Mind: A Study of Anglo‐Irish Conflict 1780 to 1980. By Oliver MacDonagh. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth‐Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter Reform. By Gregory L. Freeze. Pusey Rediscovered. Edited by Perry Butler. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell's Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. By Nicholas Sagovsky. The Concept of Glaubenslehre. By Walter E. Wyman, Jr. The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso. Faith and Reason. By Anthony Kenny. Logic and The Nature of God. By Stephen T. Davis. Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality. By Josef Fuchs. Morality and Conflict. By Stuart Hampshire. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. By Sabina Lovibond. Intentionality. By John R. Searle. Philosophical Papers, I: Practical Reason. By G.H. von Wright. Philosophical Papers, II: Philosophical Logic. By G.H. von Wright. A Model of Making: Literary Criticism and its Theology. By Ruth Etchells. The Return of the Goddess: Femininity, Aggression and the Modern Grail Quest. By Edward Whitmont. The Power of the Poor in History. By Gustavo Gutierrez, translated by Robert R. Barr. The God of the Xhosa. By Janet Hodgson. Our Hymn Tunes: Their Choice and Performance. By Donald Webster. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. By William Morgan. An Introduction to Plato's Laws. By R.E. Stalley. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. By Kenneth M. Sayre. Plato's ‘Parmenides’: Translation and Analysis. By R.E. Allen. Politics in the Ancient World. By M.I. Finley. (shrink)

In the target article “How molecules became signs” I offer a molecular “thought experiment” that provides a paradigm for resolving the major incompatibilities between biosemiotic and natural science accounts of living processes. To resolve these apparent incompatibilities I outline a plausible empirically testable model system that exemplifies the emergence of chemical processes exhibiting semiotic causal properties from basic nonliving chemical processes. This model system is described as an autogenic virus because of its virus-like form, but its nonparasitic self-repair and reproductive (...) dynamics. The 16 commentaries responding to this proposal recognize its material plausibility but are divided on its value in resolving this basic biosemiotic challenge. In response, I have addressed some of the most serious criticisms raised and have attempted to diagnose the major sources of incompatible assumptions that distinguish the autogenic paradigm from other major paradigms. In particular, I focus on four main issues: the significance of the shift from a cellular to a viral perspective, the relevance of intrinsic versus extrinsic initiation and channeling of interpretive work, the insufficiency of molecular replication as a basis for grounding biological semiosis, and a (universal?) three step scaffolding logic that enables referential displacement of sign vehicle properties without loss of referential continuity (as exemplified by DNA-protein relations). Although I can’t conclude that this is the only way that biosemiotic properties can emerge from physical-chemical relations that otherwise lack these properties, I contend that this approach offers a biologically plausible demonstration that it is possible. (shrink)

Contemporary textbooks often define evolution in terms of the replication, mutation, and selective retention of DNA sequences, ignoring the contribution of the physical processes involved. In the closing line of The Origin of Species, however, Darwin recognized that natural selection depends on prior more basic living functions, which he merely described as life’s “several powers.” For Darwin these involved the organism’s capacity to maintain itself and to reproduce offspring that preserve its critical functional organization. In modern terms we have come (...) to recognize that this involves the continual generation of complex organic molecules in complex configurations accomplished with the aid of persistent far-from-equilibrium chemical self-organizing and self-assembling processes. But reliable persistence and replication of these processes also requires constantly available constraints and boundary conditions. Organism autonomy further requires that these constraints and co-dependent dynamics are reciprocally produced, each by the other. In this paper I argue that the different constraint-amplifying dynamics of two or more self-organizing processes can be coupled so that they reciprocally generate each other’s critical supportive boundary conditions. This coupling is a higher-order constraint that effectively constitutes a sign vehicle “interpreted” by the synergistic dynamics of these co-dependent self-organizing process so that they reconstitute this same semiotic-dynamic relationship and its self-reconstituting potential in new substrates. This dynamical co-dependence constitutes Darwin’s “several powers” and is the basis of the biosemiosis that enables evolution. (shrink)

We agree with Brette's assessment that the coding metaphor has become more problematic than helpful for theories of brain and cognitive functioning. In an effort to aid in constructing an alternative, we argue that joining the insights from the dynamical systems approach with the semiotic framework of C. S. Peirce can provide a fruitful perspective.

The technical concept of information developed after Shannon [22] has fueled advances in many fields, but its quantitative precision and its breadth of application have come at a cost. Its formal abstraction from issues of reference and significance has reduced its usefulness in fields such as biology, cognitive neuroscience and the social sciences where such issues are most relevant. I argue that explaining these nonintrinsic properties requires focusing on the physical properties of the information medium with respect to those of (...) its physical context—and specifically the relationship between the thermodynamic and information entropies of each. Reference is shown to be a function of the thermodynamic openness of the information medium. Interactions between an informing medium and its physical context that drive the medium to a less probable state create intrinsic constraints that indirectly reflect the form of this extrinsic influence. This susceptibility of an informing medium to the effects of physical work is also relevant for assessing the significance or usefulness of information. Significance can be measured in terms of work “saved” due to access to information about certain contextual factors relevant to achieving a preferred target condition. (shrink)

Language and information processes are critical issues in scientific controversies regarding the qualities that epitomize humanness. Whereas some theorists claim human mental uniqueness with regard to language, others point to successes in teaching language skills to other animals. However, although these animals may learn names for things, they show little ability to utilize a complex framework of symbolic reference. In such a framework, words or other symbols refer not only to objects and concepts but also to sequential and hierarchical relationships (...) with other symbols. This process is essential to human mental operations, including language, mathematics, and music. In humans, these operations may have coevolved with the prefrontal area of the cerebral cortex, which is proportionately much larger in humans than in other animals and more intricately linked with other areas of the brain. Analysis of the structure and function of the prefrontal area suggests that it is centrally involved in the operation of higher‐order associative relationships involving the subordination of one set of associations to another. This alternate learning strategy apparently appeared at the cost of certain sensory, motor, or limbic abilities. The payoff was symbolic thinking. Humans thus are unique among species, not just for their highly developed language ability but for their odd style of thinking and learning. (shrink)

To understand how we have become what we are requires, following Foucault, not a theory but an `analytics' which examines how technologies of power and knowledge have, since antiquity, intertwined and developed in concrete and historical frameworks. Distilling from Foucault's oeuvre as a whole a rough periodization of western political rationalities, this article shows how the processes whereby some people discipline or govern others are frequently closely connected to procedures of identity-constitution and knowledge-production. Platonic, Stoic and Christian pursuits of self-mastery (...) and self-knowledge, often via the intervention of an external master, were initially confined to an elite, but thereafter were amplified and generalized to encompass entire populations in conjunction with the rise of the modern state. Via techniques of confession and ascetic conduct, faith and empiricism, and selfreflection and everyday reality, western political rationalities, in the form of combined totalization and individualization technologies whereby some (struggle to) discipline others even as all (are exhorted to) discipline themselves, have come to dominate the globe. (shrink)

The opening sentence to Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's Empire1 is pregnant with promise and peril. Signifying a process deemed to be under way, it hearkens back to and beyond that famous Manifesto of 1848, even while looking forward to a time when what is now only imminent will have become reality. In part summoned into existence to fulfill the ancient prophecies of declining Rome and rising Christianity, Empire is said to be 'realizing' or 'manifesting' itself in time honoured 19th-century, (...) especially Marxist, fashion; but whereas the specter invoked by the Communist Manifesto haunted only a continent, the immaterial spirit of Empire, dripping crisis like ectoplasm, stalks the entire world. (shrink)

Reading development is integral to a universal model of reading. Developmental research can tell us which factors drive reading acquisition and which are the product of reading. Like adult research, developmental research needs to be contextualised within the language and writing system and it needs to include key cross-linguistic evaluations. This will create a universal model of reading development.

This article develops a Foucauldian account of the rise of the modern school, on the basis of a thorough examination of all references to education in Foucault's work. It analyses the seventeenth-century origins of mass schooling and traces its development up to the nineteenth century. It identifies several overlapping stages in this multifaceted and largely contingent development, particularly a fundamental shift from a negative to a positive conception of the school. This Foucauldian understanding of the rise of schooling as a (...) disciplinary technology suggests that an initial focus on the exclusion or confinement of disorderly groups was gradually superseded by a focus on the inclusion or “attachment” of diverse individuals and on the development of their potential. It concludes by cautioning against over-simplistic applications of Foucault's work to the field of education. (shrink)

Language is a spontaneously evolved emergent adaptation, not a formal computational system. Its structure does not derive from either innate or social instruction but rather self-organization and selection. Its quasi-universal features emerge from the interactions among semiotic constraints, neural processing limitations, and social transmission dynamics. The neurological processing of sentence structure is more analogous to embryonic differentiation than to algorithmic computation. The biological basis of this unprecedented adaptation is not located in some unique neurologieal structure nor the result of any (...) single mutation, but is vested in the synergistic interaction of numerous coevolved neurological biases and social dynamics. (shrink)

The first major advances in the understanding of the neurological bases for language abilities were the results of the study of the brains and behaviors of patients with language impairments due to focal brain damage. The two most prominent pioneers in this field are remembered because their names have become associated with distinctive aphasia (language loss) syndromes and the brain regions associated with them. In 1861 Paul Broca described the damage site in the brain of a patient who had lost (...) the ability to produce articulate speech as a result of a stroke. Broca's aphasia, as it is now commonly called, is produced by damage that involves the inferior left frontal lobe of the brain. It tends to produce both a loss of articulatory skill (sometimes but not always with paralysis) and (as discovered much later) problems with grammar and syntax, including grammatical comprehension under certain conditions. Despite speech production impairments, Broca's aphasics do not have basic word‐ and sentence‐comprehension difficulties, when comprehension is not dependent on syntactic analysis. In 1874 Carl Wernicke demonstrated that damage to the left superior temporal lobe produced a different syndrome of language impairments. Wernicke's aphasia generally spares fluent, syntactic speech but impairs the use and comprehension of content words. Wernicke's aphasics'speech includes inappropriate word substitutions, neologisms, and semantic confusions, and their comprehension is similarly disturbed. These early studies also demonstrated that these aphasic disturbances were almost exclusively associated with damage to the structures of the left cerebral hemisphere, even though anatomically corresponding structures are present on both sides of the brain. However, this is not true of all language functions. Some left‐handed individuals can suffer aphasia from right hemisphere damage, and recent studies of patients with right hemisphere damage without aphasia have demonstrated impairment of their comprehension above the sentence level (e.g., interpretation of jokes and stories) and in the production and interpretation of prosodic features of speech (rhythmic and tonal patterning that conveys emphasis and emotion). (shrink)

Il arrive qu’une complexité extrême mette le modèle de la sélection naturelle au défi d’expliquer quoi que ce soit. Depuis Darwin, l’aptitude humaine au langage est incessamment citée en exemple-type de ce cas de figure. Et ceux qui ont souligné les problèmes posés par cette faculté si spécifiquement humaine n’étaient pas tous des critiques du darwinisme. On sait l’argument avancé par Alfred Russel Wallace, co-instigateur de la théorie de la sélection naturelle, et réputé plus darwiniste que ..