In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

To what extent does perceptual language reflect universals of experience and cognition, and to what extent is it shaped by particular cultural preoccupations? This paper investigates the universality~relativity of perceptual language by examining the use of basic perception terms in spontaneous conversation across 13 diverse languages and cultures. We analyze the frequency of perception words to test two universalist hypotheses: that sight is always a dominant sense, and that the relative ranking of the senses will be the same across different (...) cultures. We find that references to sight outstrip references to the other senses, suggesting a pan-human preoccupation with visual phenomena. However, the relative frequency of the other senses was found to vary cross-linguistically. Cultural relativity was conspicuous as exemplified by the high ranking of smell in Semai, an Aslian language. Together these results suggest a place for both universal constraints and cultural shaping of the language of perception. (shrink)

Introduction, by D. J. Silver.--The issues: Some current trends in ethical theory, by A. Edel. Contemporary problems in ethics from a Jewish perspective, by H. Jonas. What is the contemporary problematic of ethics in Christianity? By J. M. Gustafson. Modern images of man, by J. N. Hartt. Is there a common Judaeo-Christian ethical tradition? By I. M. Blank. Problematics of Jewish ethics, by M. A. Meyer. Revealed morality and modern thought, by N. Samuelson.--The Jewish background: Does Torah mean law? By (...) J. Neusner. Confrontation of Greek and Jewish ethics: Philo: De Decalogo, by S. Sandmel. Reprobation, prohibition, invalidity: an examination of the Halakhic development concerning intermarriage, by L. Silberman. Death and burial in the Jewish tradition, by S. B. Freehof. God and the ethical impulse, by W. G. Plaut.--Social action: Civil disobedience and the Jewish tradition, by S. G. Broude. Religious responsibility for the social order: A Jewish view, by E. L. Fackenheim. Toward a theology for social action, by R. G. Hirsch. The mission of Israel and social action, by E. Lipman. Some cautionary remarks, by J. Kravetz.--The mission of Israel: On the theology of Jewish survival, by S. S. Schwarzchild. Meaning and purpose of Jewish survival, by A. Gilbert. Beyond the apologetics of mission, by D. J. Silver. (shrink)

Many psychological studies of categorization and reasoning use undergraduates to make claims about human conceptualization. Generalizability of findings to other populations is often assumed but rarely tested. Even when comparative studies are conducted, it may be challenging to interpret differences. As a partial remedy, in the present studies we adopt a 'triangulation strategy' to evaluate the ways expertise and culturally different belief systems can lead to different ways of conceptualizing the biological world. We use three groups (US bird experts, US (...) undergraduates, and ordinary Itza' Maya) and two sets of birds (North American and Central American). Categorization tasks show considerable similarity among the three groups' taxonomic sorts, but also systematic differences. Notably, US expert categorization is more similar to Itza' than to US novice categorization. The differences are magnified on inductive reasoning tasks where only undergraduates show patterns of judgment that are largely consistent with current models of category-based taxonomic inference. The Maya commonly employ causal and ecological reasoning rather than taxonomic reasoning. Experts use a mixture of strategies (including causal and ecological reasoning), only some of which current models explain. US and Itza' informants differed markedly when reasoning about passerines (songbirds), reflecting the somewhat different role that songbirds play in the two cultures. The results call into question the importance of similarity-based notions of typicality and central tendency in natural categorization and reasoning. These findings also show that relative expertise leads to a convergence of thought that transcends cultural boundaries and shared experiences. (shrink)

This unique volume is a comprehensive,well-illustrated study of the organization of the white matter pathways of the brain. Schmahmann and Pandya have analyzed and synthesized the corticocortical and corticosubcortical connections of the major areas of the cerebral cortex of the rhesus monkey. The result is a detailed understanding of the constituents of the cerebral white matter and the organization of the fiber tracts. The findings from the 36 cases studied are presented on a single template brain, facilitating comparison of the (...) locations of the different fiber pathways. The summary diagrams provide a comprehensive atlas of the cerebral white matter. The text is enriched by close attention to functional aspects of the anatomical observations. The clinical relevance of the pathways is addressed throughout the text and a chapter is devoted to human white matter diseases. The introductory account gives a detailed historical background. Translations of seminal original observations by early investigators are presented, and when these are considered in the light of the authors' new observations, many longstanding conflicts and debates are resolved. This scholarly book is an important addition to systems and cognitive neuroscience that will be of lasting value to neurobiologists, anatomists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, neuroradiologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and to their students and trainees. (shrink)

During evolution, the genomes of eukaryotic cells have undergone major restructuring to meet the new regulatory challenges associated with compartmentalization of the genetic material in the nucleus and the organelles acquired by endosymbiosis (mitochondria and plastids). Restructuring involved the loss of dispensable or redundant genes and the massive translocation of genes from the ancestral organelles to the nucleus. Genomics and bioinformatic data suggest that the process of DNA transfer from organelles to the nucleus still continues, providing raw material for evolutionary (...) tinkering in the nuclear genome. Recent reconstruction of these events in the laboratory has provided a unique tool to observe genome evolution in real time and to study the molecular mechanisms by which plastid genes are converted into functional nuclear genes. Here, we summarize current knowledge about plastid‐to‐nuclear gene transfer in the context of genome evolution and discuss new insights gained from experiments that recapitulate endosymbiotic gene transfer in the laboratory. BioEssays 30:556–566, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

give a proof of the existence of nonlocal influences acting on correlated spin-1/2 particles in the singlet state which does not require any particular interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). (Except Stapp holds that the proof fails under a many-worlds interpretation of QM—a claim we analyse in 1.2.) Recently, in responding to Redhead's ([1987], pp. 90-6) criticism that the Stapp 1 proof fails under an indeterministic interpretation of QM, Stapp [1989] (henceforth Stapp 2), has revised the logical structure of his proof (...) including its crucial locality assumption. Our main aim is to show that this revision is a step in the wrong direction because it faces two difficulties which undermine the resulting proof's significance (3.1) and validity (3. 2). We also clarify and extend the Stapp 1 proof (1. 1) with the aid of Lewis' analysis of counterfactuals (1. 2) and causal dependence (2. 2 and 2. 3). In so doing, we are able to identify two new defects in the Stapp 1 proof (1. 3 and 2. 1) in addition to corroborating Redhead's criticism (2. 2). Also, the additional assumptions which save the Stapp 1 proof's validity are detailed (2. 3) and some new difficulties for the determinist are pointed out by exploiting a slightly extended version of the proof (2. 4). In providing this full analysis of the Stapp 1 proof, we also construct the necessary framework within which to provide a critique of Stapp 2's proof (3). *Portions of this paper were presented by R. K. Clifton to the 1988 British Society for the Philosophy of Science Conference at the University of Southampton. R. K. Clifton wishes to thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and the Governing Body of Peterhouse at Cambridge University for support during this work. (shrink)

In Alfonso de Cartagena's 'Memoriale virtutum' (1422) María Morrás and Jeremy Lawrance offer a new edition from the manuscripts of a compilation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics addressed by the major Castilian intellectual of the day, bishop Alfonso de Cartagena, to the heir to the throne of Portugal, crown prince Duarte. The work was a speculum principis, an education for the future king in the virtues suitable to a statesman; Cartagena's choice of Aristotle was thus a significant index of (...) the advent of new Renaissance ideas. This edition shows how the "memorial" throws light on the ideological transformation of society those ideas would bring, setting new ethical guidelines for the ruling class at the crossroads between medieval feudalism and Renaissance absolutism. (shrink)

We discuss some aspects of the relation between dualities and gauge symmetries. Both of these ideas are of course multi-faceted, and we confine ourselves to making two points. Both points are about dualities in string theory, and both have the ‘flavour’ that two dual theories are ‘closer in content’ than you might think. For both points, we adopt a simple conception of a duality as an ‘isomorphism’ between theories: more precisely, as appropriate bijections between the two theories’ sets of states (...) and sets of quantities. The first point is that this conception of duality meshes with two dual theories being ‘gauge related’ in the general philosophical sense of being physically equivalent. For a string duality, such as T-duality and gauge/gravity duality, this means taking such features as the radius of a compact dimension, and the dimensionality of spacetime, to be ‘gauge’. The second point is much more specific. We give a result about gauge/gravity duality that shows its relation to gauge symmetries to be subtler than you might expect. For gauge theories, you might expect that the duality bijections relate only gauge-invariant quantities and states, in the sense that gauge symmetries in one theory will be unrelated to any symmetries in the other theory. This may be so in general; and indeed, it is suggested by discussions of Polchinski and Horowitz. But we show that in gauge/gravity duality, each of a certain class of gauge symmetries in the gravity/bulk theory, viz. diffeomorphisms, is related by the duality to a position-dependent symmetry of the gauge/boundary theory. (shrink)

We further develop a recent new proof (by Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger—GHZ) that local deterministic hidden-variable theories are inconsistent with certain strict correlations predicted by quantum mechanics. First, we generalize GHZ's proof so that it applies to factorable stochastic theories, theories in which apparatus hidden variables are causally relevant to measurement results, and theories in which the hidden variables evolve indeterministically prior to the particle-apparatus interactions. Then we adopt a more general measure-theoretic approach which requires that GHZ's argument be modified (...) in order to produce a valid proof. Finally, we motivate our more general proof's assumptions in a somewhat different way from previous authors in order to strengthen the implications of our proof as much as possible. After developing GHZ's proof along these lines, we then consider the analogue, for our proof, of Bohr's reply to the EPR argument, and conclude (pace GHZ) that in at least one respect (viz. that of most concern to Bohr) the proof is no more powerful than Bell's. Nevertheless, we point out some new advantages of our proof over Bell's, and over other algebraic proofs of nonlocality. And we conclude by giving a modified version of our proof that, like Bell's, does not rely on experimentally unrealizable strict correlations, but still leads to a testable “quasi-algebraic” locality inequality.“... to admit things not visible to the gross creatures that we are is, in my opinion, to show a decent humility, and not just a lamentable addiction to metaphysics.”J. S. Bell. (shrink)

We give an introductory review of gauge/gravity duality, and associated ideas of holography, emphasising the conceptual aspects. The opening sections gather the ingredients, viz. anti-de Sitter spacetime, conformal field theory and string theory, that we need for presenting, in Sect. 5, the central and original example: Maldacena’s AdS/CFT correspondence. Sections 6 and 7 develop the ideas of this example, also in applications to condensed matter systems, QCD, and hydrodynamics. Sections 8 and 9 discuss the possible extensions of holographic ideas to (...) de Sitter spacetime and to black holes. Section 10 discusses the bearing of gauge/gravity duality on two philosophical topics: the equivalence of physical theories, and the idea that spacetime, or some features of it, are emergent. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way many people live their lives. The increasing amount of time spent indoors and isolated during periods of lockdown has been accompanied by an increase in the time people spend playing video games. One such game which soared in popularity during the early stages of the pandemic was Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Through semi-structured interviews with players, and using a theory-informed qualitative analysis, we document and examine players’ motivations and experiences playing Animal Crossing: New (...) Horizons during the pandemic. Findings suggest that playing the game helped satisfy various psychological needs—autonomy, relatedness, and competence—as described by Self-Determination Theory. Conversely, players stopped playing the game when they found that their psychological needs were thwarted or better met through other activities. Our findings offer support that video games can offer psychological relief in stressful contexts by providing opportunities for people to satisfy key psychological needs. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The philosophy of evidence-based medicine -- What is EBM? -- What is good evidence for a clinical decision? -- Ruling out plausible rival hypotheses and confounding factors : a method -- Resolving the paradox of effectiveness : when do observational studies offer the same degree of evidential support as randomized trials? -- Questioning double blinding as a universal methodological virtue of clinical trials : resolving the Philip's paradox -- Placebo controls : problematic and misleading baseline measures of effectiveness -- Questioning (...) the methodological superiority of "placebo" over "active" controlled trials -- Examining the paradox that traditional roles for mechanistic reasoning and expert -- Judgment have been up-ended by EBM -- A qualified defence of the EBM stance on mechanistic reasoning -- Knowledge that versus knowledge how : situating the EBM position on expert clinical judgment -- Moving EBM forward. (shrink)

Contributed articles on Buddhist doctrines and philosophy; festschrift in honor of Narayan Hemandas Samtani, Buddhist scholar.

The new critical edition of the works and correspondence of Jeremy Bentham is being prepared and published under the supervision of the Bentham Committee of University College London. In spite of his importance as jurist, philosopher, and social scientist, and leader of the Utilitarian reformers, the only previous edition of his works was a poorly edited and incomplete one brought out within a decade or so of his death. Eight volumes of the new Collected Works, five of correspondence, and (...) three of writings on jurisprudence, appeared between 1968 and 1981, published by the Athlone Press. Further volumes in the series since then are published by Oxford University Press. The overall plan and principles of the edition are set out in the General Preface to The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 1, which was the first volume of the Collected Works to be published.An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham's best-known work, is a classic text in modern philosophy and jurisprudence. First published in 1789, it contains the important statement of the foundations of utilitarian philosophy and a pioneering study of crime and punishment, both of which remain at the heart of contemporary debates in moral and political philosophy, economics, and legal theory. Printed here in full is the definitive edition, edited by the distinguished scholars J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. An introductory essay by Hart, first published in 1982 and a widely acknowledged classic in its own right, is reprinted here. It contains an important analysis of Bentham's principle of utility, theory of action, and an account of the relationship between law and morality.A new introduction by the leading Bentham scholar F. Rosen, specially written for this Clarendon Paperback edition, provides students with a helpful survey of Bentham's main ideas and an extensive bibliographical study of recent critical work on Bentham. Professor Rosen's essay also contains a new analysis of the principle of utility in Bentham's philosophy which is compared with its use in Hume and J. S. Mill. (shrink)

La pensée du jurisconsulte anglais Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) se prête particulièrement bien à une approche interdisciplinaire telle que celle qui est menée dans le présent ouvrage. Si Bentham, en effet, a consacré l'essentiel de ses travaux à des projets de réforme de la société anglaise de son temps par le biais de la codification des lois, il n'a cessé d'enrichir cette réflexion par des emprunts faits à d'autres disciplines, dans lesquelles il était également passé maître, telles la morale, la (...) psychologie, la logique, la théorie du langage, l'économie ou la politique. Cette pensée, à la fois plurielle et ambiguë (est-elle conservatrice, réformiste, révolutionnaire ou utopique? est-elle descriptive, explicative ou normative?), révèle aujourd'hui son étonnante actualité. Il est peu de thèmes juridiques contemporains qui ne trouvent en effet leur place dans l'œuvre de Bentham : ainsi les questions de l'utilité, de la balance des intérêts, de la constitution d'une science du droit et d'une logique déontique; ainsi les concepts de système juridique, de codification, de déontologie, de contrôle social, d'opinion publique et de majorité politique. L'intérêt de cette " relecture " de la pensée de Bentham réside dès lors sans doute moins dans l'exégèse de ses multiples détours que dans la mise en lumière de ses ambiguïtés et de ses limites qui, pour une large part, sont aussi les nôtres. Parmi celles-ci, l'oscillation constante, déjà inscrite dans les textes benthamiens, entre deux figures de l'État moderne (État libéral et État-providence), n'est sans doute pas la moins actuelle. (shrink)

Do people morally deserve what they earn in the market? More specifically, can people legitimately claim to deserve what they earn in the market in a way that counts against redistributing those earnings? As most liberal political philosophers do, I argue that the answer is no. Unlike many of these philosophers, however, I do not focus on whether or not people can be deserving. Instead, I focus on the relationship between social institutions and moral desert, and advance two claims. First, (...) in the market, desert claims are undermined by the very nature of the market even if people can be deserving in general. Second, part of the intuition that motivates accounts of moral desert may be explained instead with reference to a principle of fairness that demands the fulfillment of people's legitimate expectations as to what they will receive, and this principle places much weaker restrictions on redistributive policies than do claims of moral desert. (shrink)

Many argue that transgenic technology will have wide-ranging implications for farmers in developing nations. A key concern is that competencies may be destroyed by predominantly foreign multinational transgenic technologies, exacerbating problems of social exclusion in the case of subsistence farmers. Conversely, those that fail to adopt the technology may become uncompetitive, particularly in commodity-based export markets. Drawing on interview data conducted in Brazil and supporting data collected in North America, Europe and China, we found that the impact of transgenic technology (...) varies. It has less impact on farmers that adapt the products to their crop systems and environment, and greater negative implications for less formally educated subsistence farmers in consequence of both complexity and compatibility. Earlier attempts at industrializing agriculture through technological innovation led to vastly improved agricultural output and exports, but the benefits of productivity was not equitably distributed [D. Lee: 2005, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 87, 1325-1334], nor was it designed to meet specific local environmental and socioeconomic farmer conditions, exacerbating social exclusion. Multinationals attempting to introduce transgenic technology without considering the broader social and ethical implications will invite resistance. We discuss the implications for policy makers, multinationals and small-scale farmers. (shrink)

Possible worlds semantics for conditionals leave open the problem of how to construct models for realistic domains. In this paper, we show how to adapt logics of action and change such as John McCarthy’s Situation Calculus to conditional logics. We illustrate the idea by presenting models for conditionals whose antecedents combine a declarative condition with a hypothetical action.

One of the earliest and best-known of Bentham's works, the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation sets out a profound and innovative philosophical argument. This definitive edition includes both the late H. L. A. Hart's classic essay on the work and a new introduction by F. Rosen.

In Voir l'invisible Michel Henry applies his philosophy of autoaffection (which is both inspired by, and critical of, Husserl) to the realm of aesthetics. Henry claims that autoaffection, as non-objective experience, is essential not only to self-experience, but also to the experience of objects and their qualities. Intentionality tempts us to experience objects merely from the 'outside', but aesthetic experience returns us to the inner life of objects as a lived experience. On the basis of an examination of Henry's aesthetic (...) theory in the light of Husserl's analysis of our experience of visible objects, I conclude that revisions are required in both Husserl's and Henry's approaches: Husserl's noema must be considered to be a lived-through experience, and non-objective lived-through experience must be recognized as primordial evidence; Henry's claim that intentionality makes unreal all that it objectifies must be replaced by a recognition of the interdependence between autoaffection and heteroaffection. (shrink)

Recent legislation, such as the Patient Self-Determination Act, establishes advance directives as an acceptable procedural means of incorporating patients’ preferences for life-sustaining treatments into their medical care. Advance directives can enhance medical decision making since they provide patients with an opportunity to communicate their preferences before suffering from an acute illness that may preclude their ability to do so.Although patients expect discussions about life-sustaining therapies to be initiated by their physicians, very little is known about what prompts physicians to discuss (...) advance directives with their patients. As in other areas of clinical decision making, there is evidence that patients’ sociodemographic factors influence whether discussions about advance directives occur between patients and their physicians. In one study of persons with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, those who had not had discussions about advance directives with their physicians tended to be non-white, have no prior hospitalization, and were more likely to have been cared for in a health maintenance organization than in a teaching hospital. (shrink)

The period between 1945 and 1952 marked the development of Professor Ryle's conception of the principles of inference as performance rules. This development has paralleled that of his now well-known distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that. Indeed, the former is a corollary to the latter. Beginning with the inaugural address to the Aristotelian Society in 1945 and reaching full fruition in The Concept of Mind in 1949, it finds its most detailed and illuminating expression in “‘If’, ‘So’, and ‘Because’,” which appeared (...) in 1950. The present essay will attempt to explore this conception of rules in some detail, in the hope of clarifying the nature of Professor Ryle's views on classical logic and on certain problems within the philosophy of logic. Professor Ryle belongs, if his views may be so labeled, to the school of informal language analysts. On the other hand, we incline more toward formalism. We tend to agree with those philosophers who consider certain schemata indispensable tools for the solution of philosophical problems. Logic and the philosophy of logic are, as everyone knows, the areas in which the formalists’ technique originated. In these areas it is accepted by virtually everybody. The only recent exception is a group of English writers, many of whom take their inspiration from Ryle. One may hope, then, that the present criticism of Ryle's view from the other standpoint will throw some light on both positions. What follows falls naturally into two parts. The first deals mainly with Ryle's objections to current logical theory, the second with his own philosophy of logic. (shrink)