These essays provide the first interdisciplinary assessment of the links between the Anglo-Saxons and the Irish before 800. This overview of recent advances in the field ranges widely in scope, covering language and literature, legal traditions, ecclesiastical history, and the evidence of material culture, through art history and archaeology.

In 2004 Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich published what has become one of the most widely discussed papers in experimental philosophy, in which they reported that East Asian and Western participants had different intuitions about the semantic reference of proper names. A flurry of criticisms of their work has emerged, and although various replications have been performed, many critics remain unconvinced. We review the current debate over Machery et al.’s (2004) results and take note of which (...) objections to their work have been satisfactorily answered and which ones still need to be addressed. We then report the results of studies that reveal significant cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions when we control for variables that critics allege have had a potentially distorting effect on Machery et al.’s findings. These variables include the epistemic perspective from which participants are supposed to understand the research materials, unintended anchoring effects of those materials, and pragmatic factors involved in the interpretation of speech acts within them. Our results confirm the robustness of the cross-cultural differences observed by Machery et al. and thereby strengthen the philosophical challenge they pose. (shrink)

While the concept of work ethic has been discussed in the Arab context :35–49, 2009), the significant conceptual and methodological limitations of the existing work ethic and work value research elucidate the need for a more robust investigation of the multidimensional work ethic construct in the Arab context. Multidimensionality of the work ethic concept has gained considerable attention in recent years as researchers attempt to move away from the religiously labeled Islamic and Protestant work ethic conceptualizations. The current study examines (...) the Arab work ethic through the use of the multidimensional work ethic profile on a sample of future business leaders in the United Arab Emirates. A total of 484 business students completed an Arabic version of the MWEP short form. The results show that centrality of work and hard work are the highest scoring work ethics followed by self-reliance, wasted time, and leisure. There are significant differences in work ethic dimensions across gender and categories of family breadwinner. No significant differences in work ethic dimensions are observed across categories of nationality and work preference groups. The findings are discussed in relation to the unique insight they offer on the nature of work ethic in an Arab context. (shrink)

McKay & Dennett's (M&D's) description of beliefs, and misbeliefs in particular, is a commendable contribution to the literature; but we argue that referring to beliefs as adaptive or maladaptive can cause conceptual confusion. “Adaptive” is inconsistently defined in the article, which adds to confusion and renders it difficult to evaluate the claims, particularly the possibility of “adaptive misbelief.”.

Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), previously called apotemnophilia, is an extremely rare condition where sufferers desire the amputation of a healthy limb because of distress associated with its presence. This paper reviews the medical and philosophical literature on BIID. It proposes an evidenced based and ethically informed approach to its management. Amputation of a healthy limb is an ethically defensible treatment option in BIID and should be offered in some circumstances, but only after clarification of the diagnosis and consideration of (...) other treatment options. (shrink)

Despite the swirling tide of controversy surrounding the work of Machery et al. , the cross-cultural differences they observed in semantic intuitions about the reference of proper names have proven to be robust. In the present article, we report cross-cultural and individual differences in semantic intuitions obtained using new experimental materials. In light of the pervasiveness of the Knobe effect and the fact that Machery et al.’s original materials incorporated elements of wrongdoing but did not control for their influence, we (...) also examined the question of whether the moral valence of actions described in experimental materials might affect participants’ responses. Our results suggest that uncontrolled moral valence did not distort participants’ judgments in previous research. Our findings provide further confirmation of the robustness of cross-cultural and intra-cultural differences in semantic intuitions and strengthen the philosophical challenge that they pose. (shrink)

When Ferdinand Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe in 1519, he wasn’t able to bring a digital camera or a smartphone with him. Yet, as the eagerly awaited images from the Mars rover prove, modern exploration is inconceivable without photography. Since its invention in 1839, photography has been integral to exploration, used by explorers, sponsors, and publishers alike, and the early twentieth century, advances in technology—and photography’s newfound cultural currency as a truthful witness to the world—made the camera an (...) indispensable tool. In Photography and Exploration, James R. Ryan uses a variety of examples, from polar journeys to space missions, to show how exploration photographs have been created, circulated, and consumed as objects of both scientific research and art. Examining a wide range of photographs and expeditions, Ryan considers how nations have often employed images as a means to scientific advancement or territorial conquest. He argues that because exploration has long been bound up with the construction of national and imperial identity, expeditionary photographs have often been used to promote claims to power—especially by the West. These images also challenge the way audiences perceive the world and their place within it. Featuring one hundred images, Photography and Exploration shines new light on how photography has shaped the image of explorers, expeditions, and the worlds they discovered. (shrink)

I argue that coherentists can admit that there are facts about what systems of beliefs communities accept, without being committed to the claim that these facts are the truth conditions of sentences about what communities accept. (edited).

Piety is a social virtue. This study argues that piety as devoted action must include dialogue. Piety is an intersubjective act that attends to divine and human realities. This Project Demonstrating Excellence establishes piety as the virtue that requires wider dialogue not strict application of dogma. ;Each chapter is preceded by a Case Study of either a literary or a personal figure that represents characteristics of the virtue of piety. The threads that run through each case study, and the two (...) in Chapter 5, are the social and political aspects of piety. ;Chapters 1 and 2 concentrate upon the human condition as open to theological reality and inspired by philosophical insight. They retrieve systematic positions of Paul Tillich, such as the discovery of ultimacy through theonomous reason, and Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical interplay of dialectic and historically effected consciousness. ;Chapter 3 is a hermeneutical look at the relationship of tradition and newness in experience that supports social values in human action, as exemplified in the work of Wendell Berry. Chapter 4 looks into the application of open tradition in social and political action, particularly in the Communitarian movement. It depends chiefly on Gadamer's hermeneutics and the understanding of being-in-the-world as a practical activity of care and concern. Others presented are Charles Taylor, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and David Hollenbach. ;Piety as the social virtue of dialogical devoted action is contrary to a popular notion which values the narrow relationship between the devotee and the one receiving devotion. Case studies here of this publicness of piety include Plato's Euthyphro, Virgil's Aeneas, Sophocles' Antigone, the prophets Amos, Hosea, and Micah, Dorothy Day, Vaclav Havel, and Tom Pringle. This study concludes that piety becomes public action in the application of tradition that is perpetually open to new understanding. This is the public action of social justice. In dialogue the human person realizes a certain distinction in creation. This "open tradition" that characterizes dialogical devoted action establishes piety as a social virtue. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

The Yijing/Binary System Episode involved Leibniz' discovery of a de facto representation of the binary number system in the sixty-four-hexagram Fu Xi "Yijing." Scholars have left the match unexplained, since they have found no evidence of a forgotten binary number system in ancient China. The interesting similarities and differences are discussed between the thought of Leibniz and that of Shao Yong, both of whom, it is argued, understood and recognized the importance of the double geometric progression in the diagram.

_Forest Family_ highlights the importance of old-growth forests to Australian art, community, culture, history, and politics. The volume will be of interest to general readers of environmental history, as well as scholars in critical plant studies and the environmental humanities.

sirIn a scholarly and thought-provoking paper, Clarke sets out to debunk the concept of “rational suicide” as nonsensical.1 His motivation in this is to undermine any support that the notion of rational suicide might give to a “categorical right to suicide”. If his enterprise were successful, however, it would go far beyond the “rights issue” and would have a profound impact on all arguments raised in support of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.Clarke's major thrust might be termed the argument from posthumous (...) ignorance. He begins with a claim that the process of making a rational decision involves the process of “gaining all possible facts and `imagining' all possible consequences”. He goes on to say that making a rational decision “in the consideration of life or death . . . would seem to be impossible”. It is “impossible” …. (shrink)

I argue that Mencius puts forth a defensible form of ethical naturalism, according to which moral properties, moral motivation, and moral deliberation can be accounted for within the parameters of a naturalistic worldview. On this position, moral properties are the subjectively real properties which acts have in virtue of their corresponding to our most coherent set of shared desires. I give a naturalistic definition of 'right' which, I argue, is implicit in Mencius' philosophy. I address the objection that some of (...) the contemporary-sounding views which I attribute to Mencius are positions which are alien to the ancient thinker, and I argue that the version of Mencius given here is not only quite faithful to Mencius but also a true metaethical theory. (shrink)

Although Justice Scalia purported to be driven by originalism and precedent, his opinions in three education cases—Grutter v. Bollinger, Parents Involved v. Seattle School District, and United States v. Virginia —tell a different tale. In these cases, his arguments are difficult to defend on originalist grounds and, surprisingly, Justice Scalia himself makes no attempt to do so. Similarly, his views are difficult to square with precedent. It is hard to escape the conclusion that, in some of his most noteworthy cases (...) related to education, Justice Scalia was as results-oriented as the justices and judges he loved to criticize. (shrink)

On the surface, the Doyles are the archetypal happy Irish family, loving, secureand tradtional. They all have their small rebellions, but somehow power remains in the hands of Mr Doyle, a benign patriarch controlling all their lives. But, in the world outside, the old order is being dismantled and the traditional roles the Doyles have always accepted are finally being challenged. Right at the heart of the Doyle household, threatening their own miniature household, sits a revelation that will throw them (...) unwillingly and inexorably into conflict. (shrink)

This article examines the basic content of the Brahmasutra and compares and contrasts the commentaries of Ramanuja and Shankara on it. Firstly the issue of possible errors or interpolations in the BSis addressed. Then the full contents of the BS is surveyed briefly but with important detail. Finally, the important disagreements between the commentaries of Ramanuja and Shankara on the BSare discussed. This includes discussion of selected sutras in question.

Features of gait are determined at multiple levels, from the selection of the gait itself (e.g. walk or run) through the specific parameters utilized (stride length, frequency, etc.) to the pattern of muscular excitation. The ultimate choices are neurally determined, but what is involved with that decision process? Human locomotion appears stereotyped not so much because the pattern is predetermined, but because these movement patterns are good solutions for providing movement utilizing the machinery available to the individual (the legs and (...) their requisite components). Under different circumstances the appropriate solution may differ broadly (different gait) or subtly (different parameters). Interpretation of the neural decision making process would benefit from understanding the influences that determine the selection of the appropriate solution in any set of circumstances, including that of normal conditions. In this review we survey an array of studies that point to energetic cost as a key input to the gait coordination system, and not just an outcome of the gait pattern implemented. We then use that information to rigorously define the construct proposed by Sparrow and Newell (1998) where the effects of environment, organism and task act as constraints determining the solution set available, and the coordination pattern is then implemented under a pressure for energetic economy. Environment is defined in terms of affordances based on the ecological psychology definition of the concept and organism is defined as classic morphology and physiology based capabilities. We rely on a novel conceptualization of task that recognizes that the task goal needs to be separated from the mechanisms that achieve the goal if the motivation behind the selection of the mechanism strategy is to be exposed and understood. This reformulation of the Sparrow and Newell construct is then linked to the proposed pressure for economy by considering it as an optimization problem, where the most readily selected gait strategy will be that which achieves the task goal at (or near) the energetic minimum. (shrink)

After briefly arguing that neither (Kantian or utilitarian) rule-based ethics nor virtue ethics offers promise as a moral theory, I state that argument by analogy (i.e., deliberation within coherence constraints) is a satisfactory form of moral deliberation. I show that what is right must be whatever corresponds to the largest and most coherent set of a society’s moral values. Since we would not know how to interpret the claim that what is right might be repugnant to all our shared moral (...) values, I argue that a definitional naturalist position passes Moore’s open question test. “X is right” just means “performing X satisfies the largest and most coherent set of our altruistic and self-interested desires.” On this view, moral properties are real relational properties. I raise and respond to several objections. (shrink)