Cancers rely on multiple, heterogeneous processes at different scales, pertaining to many biomedical fields. Therefore, understanding cancer is necessarily an interdisciplinary task that requires placing specialised experimental and clinical research into a broader conceptual, theoretical, and methodological framework. Without such a framework, oncology will collect piecemeal results, with scant dialogue between the different scientific communities studying cancer. We argue that one important way forward in service of a more successful dialogue is through greater integration of applied sciences (experimental and clinical) (...) with conceptual and theoretical approaches, informed by philosophical methods. By way of illustration, we explore six central themes: (i) the role of mutations in cancer; (ii) the clonal evolution of cancer cells; (iii) the relationship between cancer and multicellularity; (iv) the tumour microenvironment; (v) the immune system; and (vi) stem cells. In each case, we examine open questions in the scientific literature through a philosophical methodology and show the benefit of such a synergy for the scientific and medical understanding of cancer. (shrink)

I argue that the arguments brought by Counsel for M to the English Court of Protection are morally problematic in prioritising subjective interests that are the result of ‘consistent autonomous thought’ over subjective interests that are the result of a more limited cognitive perspective.

In response to three papers about sex and disability published in this journal, I offer a critique of existing arguments and a suggestion about how the debate should be reframed going forward. Jacob M. Appel argues that disabled individuals have a right to sex and should receive a special exemption to the general prohibition of prostitution. Ezio Di Nucci and Frej Klem Thomsen separately argue contra Appel that an appeal to sex rights cannot justify such an exemption. I argue (...) that Appel’s argument fails, but not for the reasons Di Nucci and Thomsen propose, as they have missed the most pressing objection to Appel’s argument: Appel falsely presumes that we never have good reasons to restrict someone’s sexual liberty rights. More importantly, there is a major flaw in the way that all three authors frame their positive accounts. They focus on disability as a proxy for sexual exclusion, when these categories should be pulled apart: some are sexually excluded who are not disabled, while some who are disabled are not sexually excluded. I conclude that it would be less socially harmful and more productive to focus directly on sexual exclusion per se rather than on disability as a proxy for sexual exclusion. (shrink)

Technological evaluations have significantly enhanced college students’ fine arts competence development by providing advanced tools and platforms that foster creativity, improve technical skills, and enable innovative artistic expression. In this study 500 college students were mentioned as participators. The variables Technological Tools, Technical Proficiency, Advanced Technologies, Creativity and Innovation, Online Platforms, Skill Development, and Collaborative Competencies are built to evaluate various aspects of technological and creative capabilities in educational and professional settings. Fine arts competitions like the (Artificial Intelligence) AI art (...) contest, digital choreography competition, and speech AI innovation challenge are held for the students to improve their skill development. The questionnaires are taken to measure the student's technological skills development based on before and after competitions. The SPSS software version 28 is used to statistically analyze the data with multiple regression analysis and pearson correlation analysis. The results showed that the integration of technological tools and platforms significantly improved college student's technical proficiency, creativity, and collaborative skills in fine arts. Students exhibited notable enhancements in skill development and engagement with advanced technologies post-competition. Technology significantly enhances fine arts education by improving students' artistic skills and collaboration. Embracing digital tools offers valuable opportunities to enrich curricula and foster innovation. (shrink)

Books reviewed: The Literary Wittgenstein edited by John Gibson and Wolfgang Huerner, Routledge, London, 2004 (pp. xi + 356). Philosophy and Literature: A Book of Essays, M. W. Rowe, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004 (pp xii + 238). Reviewed by M. H. Weston, University of Essex University of Essex Wivenhoe Park Colchester CO4 3SQ.

t. 1. A-D -- t. 2. E-M -- t. 3. N-S -- t.4. T-I︠A︡.

I Want to comment on five passages where I have provoked disagreement by a previous discussion. In the first three, my discussion was in Philologus cx , 152–4, and my critic is Bruno Gentili in Quaderni Urbinati iv , 177–81. I was not the first to make an emendation in any of the three places, so that in defending the transmitted text Gentili is actually not only criticizing me but others such as Hermann, Naeke, O. Müller, Schoemann, Hunt, Murray, and (...) Page. (shrink)

This paper explores the core characteristics of Vratislav Effenberger’s theoretical system, highlighting his perspective on the significance of imagination in ideological thinking. It provides background and an overview of Effenberger’s concept of ideology, outlines the Surrealist notion of imagination, and presents the author’s methodological connection of Surrealism, psychoanalysis, and Prague Structuralism. Effenberger emerges as a thinker dedicated to bridging the gap between the modernist (primarily avant-garde) interpretation of the world and the postmodern tendencies evident from the mid-20th century onwards. In (...) Effenberger’s terms, ideology is an approach to reality that aims to grasp it as at least a potentially meaningful totality and engages in the actualization of this meaning or totality in social and psychological practice. He argues that such an approach is closely linked with avant-garde thought, which, for various reasons, has diminished in significance since the Second World War. In place of prior unifying perspectives, relativism and skepticism have become more dominant. However, Effenberger contends that integrative inclinations remain alive in human thought in the form of “idea models” found in the field of “psychoideology”—the realm of preconscious thought formation. These idea models play a pivotal role in psychoideology, nurturing the dialectics of imaginative and conceptual reasoning, which are vital for fostering innovation and creative endeavors. (shrink)

Günümüze kadar süregelen bir mezhep olarak Zeydiliğin Yemen bölgesinde geçirdiği süreçlerden birisi de 16. yy.’da imametini ilan eden Mansûr-Billâh Kâsım b. Muhammed ile başlayan ve Cumhuriyetin ilanına kadar iktidarın soyundan gelenlerin devam ettirdiği dönem bulunmaktadır. Ancak Kâsımîler dönemi olarak bilinen bu sürece dair literatürde yeterli bilgi bulunmamaktadır. Mansûr-Billâh Kâsım b. Muhammed’in akaid, fıkıh, usul gibi alanlarda kıymetli eserlerinin yanı sıra kaleme aldığı ufak bir risalesi de bulunmaktadır. Bu çalışmada ise Kâsımî Hanedanlığının kurucusu olarak bilinen Mansûr-Billâh Kâsım b. Muhammed’in oğlu Müeyyed-Billâh (...) Muhammed b. Kâsım için kaleme aldığı vasiyet metninin literatüre kazandırılması amaçlanmaktadır. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Opining the articuli fidei:Thomas Aquinas on the Heretic’s Assent to the Articles of FaithM. V. DoughertyTHOMAS AQUINAS’S ACCOUNT of the infused virtue (habitus) of faith presupposes that some intrinsically intelligible truths are beyond the range of the natural cognitive abilities of human beings. The possession of the virtue of faith allows the believer to transcend certain natural epistemic limitations so that he can assent to truths that are necessary (...) for salvation. Consonant with the Catholic theological tradition, Aquinas refers to such truths as the articles of faith (articuli fidei), and stock examples include propositions concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation.1In light of the many and well-known texts from the Corpus Thomisticum that highlight the disproportion or incommensurability between the articles of faith and the natural cognitive abilities of human beings, it would not be unreasonable for one to assume that faith is required to assent to such articles of faith [End Page 1] in this life. Such an interpretive assumption could be expressed as:A1: A human being can assent to the articles of faith in this life if and only if the human being is fortified with the infused virtue of faith.One might be led to ascribe A1 to Aquinas when one considers that he criticizes the Pelagians precisely for maintaining that the assent to matters of faith is caused by nothing other than free will.2 Still further, one might think that strong evidence for A1 is Aquinas’s claim that “free will does not suffice for believing, since those things that are of faith are above reason.”3I argue, however, that A1’s identification of the virtue of faith as a necessary condition for the assent to the articles of faith does not adequately reflect Aquinas’s position, despite the many texts that may suggest such a view.4 That Aquinas does not endorse A1 can be made evident by examining his largely overlooked account of the epistemic state of the heretic (haereticus). To be sure, most commentators who explore the Thomistic treatment of heresy focus on the psychology of error underlying the heretic’s denial of one or more of the articles of faith.5 In the present paper I take an alternate path, however, focusing on those epistemic acts whereby the heretic gets its [End Page 2] right, so to speak, by correctly assenting to some of the articles of faith. Aquinas maintains that the heretic does not possess the infused virtue of faith yet still assents to all the articles of faith except for the one or more articles that he denies. Bereft of faith, the heretic “holds those things that are of faith by another mode than through faith.”6 This seemingly anomalous epistemic condition deserves consideration.7I. Intellects without FaithThe heretic appears to be cognitively privileged, since without faith he assents to the things that are of faith, seemingly overcoming without divine assistance the aforementioned disproportion between the limited range of reason and the articles of faith. Aquinas is aware of the apparent difficulty; in the Summa theologiae he defuses the rather unusual objection that heretics appear to have greater cognitive capacities than the faithful, since heretics routinely and unassistedly assent to those higher truths without possessing the virtue of faith.8 Aquinas concludes that the heretic holds the articles of faith by opinion (opinio), not faith.What makes one a heretic? Frequently Aquinas identifies obstinacy (pertinacia, instantia) as a necessary condition for heresy.9 The cause of heresy is at times identified with pride [End Page 3] (superbia).10 On Aquinas’s account, heresy is a species of unbelief (infidelitas) and every heretic is a schismatic.11 But the heretic does get many things right. If one were to deny all of the articles of faith, one would not qualify as a heretic, but would simply be a nonbeliever or an apostate. So, apart from the denial of an article (or a few articles) that specifies heretics as the distinct kind of heretic they happen to be, heretics for the most part succeed in assenting to most—but not all—of the articles of faith.Although the... (shrink)

Two arguments favoring propositionalist accounts of attitude sentences are being revisited: the Church-Langford translation argument and Thomason's argument against quotational theories of indirect discourse. None of them proves to be decisive, thus leaving the option of searching for a developed quotational alternative. Such an alternative is found in an interpreted logical form theory of attitude ascription. The theory differentiates elegantly among different attitudes but it fails to account for logical dependencies among them. It is argued, however, that the concept of (...) logical consequence does not well apply to dependencies among belief sentences and that the requirement to account for logical relations among such sentences should be relaxed. (shrink)

The music ensemble has often been used as an analogy of organisation processes in general. Many versions of this analogy presuppose a specific organisation structure in the ensemble with clearly defined leader-follower relationships from which we can learn important points about successful leadership. This paper wishes to draw attention to the wide variety of organisation processes that may occur in a music ensemble, some of which are not dependent on leadership. Through the outlines of a logical analysis of a coordination (...) problem, it is argued that the music performance is in fact exemplary of a situation in which individual dedication to a goal promotes coordination in the entire group. (shrink)

Learning a mapping involves finding regularities in a training set and generalization to novel patterns. Clark & Thornton's type distinction has been discussed in terms of generalization, but has limited value in this respect. However, in terms of detection of regularities in the training set, the distinction is more valid, as it provides a measure of complexity and correlates with the size of search space.

System of References To keep footnotes to a minimum, references to classical sources are incorporated into the body of the narrative, normally in the ...

Direct Realism as a theory of perception has traditionally been thought to collapse on the existence of hallucinations. The cause of that collapse is what is familiar to philosophers as the Argument from Illusion. And what sustains that argument is the equally familiar No-Intrinsic-Difference Claim. The argument and the claim conspire to undermine Direct Realism as follows. We are first given cases in which we are acquainted with perceptual states of affairs that can be neither material bodies nor parts of (...) such bodies. We are told that what we see in such cases is phenomenally indistinguishable from what we see in cases of veridical perception: There is, so the argument goes, no characteristic of either kind of state of affairs available to inspection which enables us to distinguish one from the other. And since there is no phenomenal difference between them, there is also no intrinsic difference; hence, we are never directly aware of material bodies or their parts in perception—from which it is generally inferred that Direct Realism is false. (shrink)