Continuing rapid developments in the life sciences offer the promise of providing tools to meet global challenges in health, agriculture, the environment, and economic development; some of the benefits are already being realized. However, such advances also bring with them new social, ethical, legal, and security challenges. Governance questions form an increasingly important part of the discussions about these advances--whether the particular issue under debate is the development of ethical principles for human genome editing, how to establish regulatory systems for (...) the safe conduct of field trials of gene drive-modified organisms, or many others. However there are continuing concerns that the knowledge, tools, and techniques resulting from life sciences research could also enable the development of bioweapons or facilitate bioterrorism. Between June 10 and 13, 2018, more than 70 participants from 30 different countries and 5 international organizations took part in an international workshop, The Governance of Dual Use Research in the Life Sciences: Advancing Global Consensus on Research Oversight, in Zagreb, Croatia. Hosted by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the workshop was a collaboration among the InterAcademy Partnership, the Croatian Academy, the Croatian Society for Biosafety and Biosecurity, and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn everyday situations, people regularly receive information from large groups of people and from single experts. Although lay opinions and expert opinions have been studied extensively in isolation, the present study examined the relationship between the two by asking how many laypeople are needed to counter an expert opinion. A Bayesian formalisation allowed the prescription of this quantity. Participants were subsequently asked to assess how many laypeople are needed in different situations. The results demonstrate that people are sensitive to the (...) relevant factors identified for determining how many lay opinions are required to counteract a single expert opinion. People's assessments were fairly good in line with Bayesian predictions. (shrink)

This paper shows that the semantics of shenme ‘what’ in Chinese bare conditionals may exhibit a phenomenon of double quantification. I argue that such double quantification can be nicely accounted for if one adopts Carlson's (1977a, b) semantics of bare plurals and verb meanings as well as the following two assumptions: (i) shenme ‘what’ can be a proform of bare NPs and hence has the same kind of denotation as bare NPs, and (ii) Chinese bare NPs are names of kinds (...) of things. This analysis of Chinese bare conditionals lends support to Carlson's approach to bare plurals despite Wilkinson's (1991) criticisms. I also show that an extension of Heim's (1987) analysis of what as ‘something of kind x’ to Chinese shenme ‘what’ encounters problems when shenme ‘what’ is a shared constituent of a predicate which applies to kinds and another predicate which applies to objects. (shrink)

BackgroundThe interRAI 0–3 Early Years was recently developed to support intervention efforts based on the needs of young children and their families. One aspect of child development assessed by the Early Years instrument are motor skills, which are integral for the maturity of cognition, language, social-emotional and other developmental outcomes. Gross motor development, however, is negatively impacted by pre-term birth and low birth weight. For the purpose of known-groups validation, an at-risk sample of preterm children using the interRAI 0–3 Early (...) Years was included to examine correlates of preterm risk and the degree of gross motor delay.MethodsParticipant data included children and families from 17 health agencies in Ontario, Canada. Data were collected as part of a pilot study using the full interRAI 0–3 Early Years assessment. Correlational analyses were used to determine relationships between prenatal risk and preterm birth and bivariate analyses examined successful and failed performance of at-risk children on gross motor items. A Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine the mean difference in gross motor scores for children born at various weeks gestation.ResultsCorrelational analysis indicated that prenatal and perinatal factors such as maternal nicotine use during pregnancy did not have significant influence over gross motor achievement for the full sample, however, gross motor scores were lower for children born pre-term or low birth weight based on bivariate analysis. Gross motor scores decreased from 40 weeks’ gestation, to moderate to late preterm, and to very preterm, however extremely preterm performed comparably to very preterm.InterpretationThe interRAI 0–3 was evaluated to determine its efficacy and report findings which confirm the literature regarding delay in gross motor performance for preterm children. Findings confirm that pre-term and low birth weight children are at greater risk for motor delay via the interRAI 0–3 Early Years gross motor domain. (shrink)

Christianity during Portuguese era in Kerala, India.

The target article by Locke & Bogin (L&B) focuses on the evolution of language as a communicative tool. They neglect, however, that from infancy onwards humans have the ability to go beyond successful behaviour and to reflect upon language (and other domains of knowledge) as a problem space in its own right. This ability is not found in other species and may well be what makes humans unique.

For 170 years, Harriet Taylor Mill has been presented as a footnote in John Stuart Mill’s life. This volume gives her a separate voice. Readers may assess for themselves the importance and influence of her ideas on "women’s" issues such as marriage and divorce, education, domestic violence, and suffrage. And they will note the overlap of her ideas on ethics, religion, arts, and socialism, written in the 1830s, with her more famous husband’s works, published 25 years later.

Background: Pre-licensure ethics nursing education does not adequately prepare and instill confidence in nurses to address ethical issues, and yet ethics education provides nurses with greater confidence to take moral action, which can mitigate the negative effects of moral distress. Objectives: To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a nursing ethics education program that included simulated case-based ethics competencies as a form of evaluation. The program aimed at building nurses’ ethical knowledge and confidence to respond to ethical challenges in practice. (...) Research design: A prospective, longitudinal, correlational, single-cohort feasibility study using an investigator-developed survey and intervention field data. Participants and research context: Registered nurses were recruited from an academic quaternary-care medical center and 9 small- to mid-sized regional hospitals within one health system in the Midwest United States. Ethical considerations: IRB approval was obtained. Participants could complete the educational program regardless of research process participation. Findings: Of 20 participants, 19 (95%) provided post-program surveys and 18 completed competencies. Median (IQR) scores with quartiles for scheduling, timing, and length of sessions were all 10.0 [9.0, 10.0], and participants perceived that the content was interesting, increased knowledge and confidence in ethics, increased skills in providing ethical care, and would recommend the program to colleagues. Of factors, an increase in ethics knowledge had the highest “always agree” (17, 89.5%) response. Most participants reported that ethics competencies were appropriate 9.0 [9.0, 10.0] and sufficiently challenging 10.0 [9.0, 10.0]. Discussion: The education program developed nurses’ ethics knowledge and confidence. The single-cohort feasibility design provided early-stage intervention outcomes; however, a larger randomized controlled trial would substantiate program value. Conclusion: This novel ethics education program was highly feasible and acceptable to hospital-based nurses who reported increased knowledge and confidence in providing ethical care. Simulated case-based ethics competencies were an appropriate evaluation method. (shrink)

The article focuses in a particular way on two Jesuits of the XVII Century, Philips van Winghe e Jean l'Heureux . It describes their active participation in the scientific life of their time, as well as their own contributions to science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Historical Representation and the Nation-State in Romantic Belgium (1830–1850)Jo TollebeekThe transformation of the Ancien Régime society of estates into the modern state system as it exists in Europe today was concluded during the “long nineteenth century.” This process of transformation came about in two waves. In a first wave—during the decades preceding and following the French Revolution, roughly the years 1780-1848—the framework for the nation-state was created. It was (...) mainly the liberal bourgeoisie which stood at the forefront. After the Congress of Vienna, where the “ante bellum” situation had been restored, it led more or less successful national revolutions in Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Poland. In a second wave, starting with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and ending with the First World War, the framework of the nation-state was filled in. In those years a growing number of social groups found accommodation in the liberal house, which they also managed thoroughly to rebuild. This period can be described as the phase of integrated nationalism.Together with the nation-state came the rise of modern national his-toriography. The most well-known exponents of this typically nineteenth-century genre were the monumental outlines of national pasts which started appearing from 1890 onward. Karl Lamprecht in Germany (Deutsche Geschichte, 1890–1909), Pieter Jan Blok in the Netherlands (Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, 1892–1908), Henri Pirenne in Belgium (Histoire de Belgique, 1900–1932), and Ernest Lavisse and his collaborators in France (Histoire de France, 1901–11) all gave their respective countries’ pasts an impressive, scholarly design. The first phase of the emergence of the nation-state, however, was also ac-companied by a stream of national histories. Johannes von Müller in Switzerland (Geschichten Schweizerischer Eidgenossenschaft, 1786–1808), Simonde de [End Page 329] Sismondi in Italy (Histoire des Républiques italiennes du Moyen Age, 1807–18), Augustin Thierry in France (Lettres sur l’Histoire de France, 1820–27), and Willem Bilderdijk in the Netherlands (Geschiedenis des Vader-lands, posthumously 1833–53) all became authors of patriotic and romantically tinted surveys and studies of (fragments from) their own national history.The work of this second group of historians fits with the cultural nationalism which took root during the last decades of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries and which is sometimes considered to have been the heart of romantic nationalism. 1 The supporters of this nationalism were con-vinced that culture, lifestyle, and social institutions could only be understood as the expression of the “soul,” the “spirit,” or the “character” of a people or nation. They tried to deduce this individual character through the language, popular literature, art, and “national” (as opposed to Roman) law, as is demonstrated by the Gaelic revival in Ireland. 2 History, however, also attracted their interest; the nation and the people were after all considered to be dynamic entities which developed along the lines of a multiple causal process. In England, for example, where nationalism arose as a protest against excessive foreign—French—cultural influence, a group of historians, among them Catherine Macaulay and John Pinkerton, started publishing nationalistic histories during the early years of George III’s reign, paying special attention to the origin of the English people. 3 Such cultural nationalism could, however, easily take on political overtones, especially when it was the nationalism of a people who were either stateless or dispersed throughout different states, or whose state was still young.These earliest national histories were meant as a contribution to the formation, consolidation, and confirmation of a national identity. Their writers had to lend unity, specificity, and continuity to the national past. They had to, as Novalis observed in 1798, “organize historical essentials.” 4 Their work was less a matter of reconstruction than of construction. It not only required the exploration of a hitherto unknown field, but first and foremost the resolution of new problems of representation inherent in the writing of “national biographies.” In this essay, I shall discuss some of these problems in the light of Belgian national historical writing from 1830 through 1850. The year 1830 constitutes an important watershed in the history of national movements... (shrink)

Les enfants polyhandicapés ont des besoins de soutien intenses et complexes. Souvent, ils sont dans des établissements spécialisés, avec peu d’opportunités d’apprentissage, menant une vie passive et isolée. Pour améliorer leur qualité de vie, leurs activités et leur inclusion, en particulier l’éducation inclusive, nous avons développé et expérimenté, dans le cadre du projet Européen Enablin+, une formation continue interprofessionnelle. En 2015-2017, nous avons organisé 64 cours pilotes et ateliers de formation sur 41 sujets dans huit pays européens, suivis d’un cours (...) de formation des formateurs. Sur la base d’une évaluation qualitative par les participants, nous pouvons faire les recommandations suivantes: à côté de la formation de compétences spécifiques à la profession, une formation continue devrait en premier lieu travailler à sensibiliser à la faisabilité et à la nécessité de l’inclusion aussi pour les enfants de grande dépendance. Tous les niveaux hiérarchiques du personnel, ainsi que les familles devraient être impliqués. Bien qu’enracinée dans les cadres conceptuels modernes du handicap (inclusion, qualité de vie, droits, capacités), cette formation devrait offrir un véritable apprentissage interprofessionnel basé sur des cas, une “gestion de cas” centrée sur la personne et la famille, un apprentissage réflexif sur les systèmes de croyances et les pratiques concernant activités inclusives et participation. Les formats de cours doivent être adaptés aux circonstances locales afin de permettre la participation de l’ensemble du personnel. (shrink)

L'attenzione dell'A. si concentra sull'opposta concezione della distinzione tra essenza ed esistenza che per Egidio è reale, mentre per Enrico è solo intenzionale. In modo analogo, i due autori dissentono rispetto al tipo di realtà da ascrivere alle relazioni divine. Dopo avere dedicato un breve paragrafo al contesto dottrinale trinitario, l'A. passa ad esaminare in modo sistematico il pensiero dei due autori.

Is a conception of human nature still possible or even desirable in light of the “postmetaphysical sensibilities” of our time? Furthermore, can philosophy make any contribution towards the articulation of a tenable conception of human nature given this current intellectual climate? I will argue in this paper that affirmative answers can be given to both of these questions. Section I rehearses briefly some of the difficulties and even dangers involved in working out any conception of human nature at all, let (...) alone one that is philosophically informed. Section II sketches what I argue to be three necessary aspects of a tenable philosophical anthropology. Finally, section III argues that such a philosophical anthropology is only justifiable, given our postmetaphysical sensibilities, by its use of “transcendental arguments” in justifying its claims, ones that nonetheless must repudiate a common but damaging assumption that arguing for the conclusions of such arguments commits one necessarily to a hyper-strong conception of subjectivity. In general, my primary aim in this paper is only to make plausible, not so much to justify, let alone defend, adequately the aspects of a conception of a tenable philosophical anthropology as sketched below. (shrink)

In recent years a growing number of philosophers in the analytic tradition have focused their attention on the significance of human sociality. An older point of departure of analysis, which actually precedes this current tide of accounts of sociality, has revolved around the debate between “holism” and “individualism” in the philosophy of the human or social sciences and social theory. The more recent point of departure for various accounts of sociality has centered on the nature of conventions, social groups, shared (...) intentions, or collective intentionality. Putting aside the disagreements among these accounts, they all take for granted an antecedently intelligible notion of individual agency as explanatorily primitive and seek to explain the possibility of plural or collective agency in terms of the former. By contrast, other philosophers who have worked at the intersection of analytic and "continental" philosophy have emphasized the primacy of practice as the proper starting point for philosophical reflections on the nature of human sociality. In the analytic tradition this emphasis is typically framed in terms of the possibility of rule-following, a topic put on the philosophical agenda by the later Wittgenstein. Peter Winch’s and Saul Kripke’s influential but controversial readings of Wittgenstein explicitly thematize the issue of rule-following, readings which have in turn generated critical reflection in various disciplines for which this issue is relevant. -/- I begin by briefly explicating the positions of Pettit and Brandom on the issue of rule-following (putting aside any specific differences between them for the moment). Next I connect Pettit’s and Brandom’s views on rule-following, and more generally on normativity and its necessarily social basis, with the views of Theodore Schatzki and Joseph Rouse, whose conceptions of the significance of practice and its inherent sociality are indebted as much to the early Heidegger as well as the later Wittgenstein. I suggest that Pettit’s and Brandom’s views of the necessarily social nature of rule-following (i.e., practice) ought to acknowledge and integrate the shared insight of Schatzki and Rouse that practices are not only modes of activity, but constitute more basically the concrete setting or world within which practices qua modes of activity are intelligible (verständlich) at all. I conclude the paper by suggesting how an integrated account of the significance of the necessarily social nature of practice undermines the assumptions of those philosophers who seek to analyze human sociality solely on the basis of modes of interactions among individual agents. (shrink)

This volume presents the first comprehensive survey of the entire corpus of John Dewey’s work—almost one thousand items—and groups all these writings in twelve logical categories, so that the user can gain insight into_ _interrelationships among areas of Dewey’s thought and into Dewey’s total contribution to American letters. By arranging and analyz­ing_ _the complete body of Dewey’s published writings within the twelve areas, each with an introductory essay and bibliography, the book thus combines a thorough study of Dewey’s thought with (...) valuable reference material. The distinguished scholars contributing essays to the volume are: Herbert W. Schneider, Lewis E. Hahn, Gail Kennedy, Darnell Rucker, Wayne A. R. Leys, Bertram Morris, S. Morris Eames, Horace L. Friess, William W. Brickman, George E. Axtelle, Joe R. Burnett, Max H. Fisch, and Ou Tsuin-chen. (shrink)

Dans sa Somme, art. 34, Henri de Gand se penche sur les questions se rapportant à la vérité en Dieu . Il n’y a pas tant d’auteurs qui se sont donné la peine d’étudier ce problème à fond, nous fait-il remarquer1 — bien à tort, d’après lui. Car trois problèmes fondamentaux concernant la vérité se superposent: celui de la localisation, celui de la définition classique et celui de l’essence de la vérité.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 33.1 (2003) 81-94 [Access article in PDF] Voices from the Depths Reading "Love" in Luce Irigaray's Marine Lover Joanne Faulkner Yet, except for the case of the Hymn, which combines the dedication and the text itself, what follows the dedication (i.e., the work itself) has little relation to this dedication. The object I give is no longer tautological (I give you what I give you), it is interpretable; (...) it has a meaning (meanings) greatly in excess of its address; though I write your name on my work, it is for "them" that it has been written (the others, the readers). Hence it is by a fatality of writing itself that we cannot say of a text that it is "amorous," but only, at best, that it has been created "amorously," like a cake or an embroidered slipper. —Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: FragmentsIf, as Barthes writes, it is "by a fatality of writing itself" that a text cannot be amorous, then Luce Irigaray's Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche—written for, about, and with Nietzsche—can be read precisely as a revitalization of writing. Suppose we were to read Marine Lover not only as a critique, but as an encounter with Nietzsche: an amorous encounter, which serves to bring to life Nietzsche's dedication of his work to the "philosophers of the future." In her interpretation of his work, Irigaray poses to Nietzsche the possibility that his "philosopher of the future" might be a woman, even though his various stylizations of "woman" (as a trope for "truth," "dissimulation," "shame," "prudishness," "seduction," and slavish dependency, among other things) seem to preclude actual women as readers of Nietzsche's work. Although he writes "woman's" name continually over his texts, women are not the ones to whom Nietzsche dedicates his work: the philosopher of the future to whom he beckons is presumed by him to share certain prejudices—philosophers' prejudices—about women. What does this mean for his women readers? Feminism's encounter with Nietzsche has been interesting and productive, but never easy.A number of excellent accounts of Marine Lover have already been published that enumerate Irigaray's criticisms of Nietzsche, reading her elemental address to him in terms of his forgotten relation to certain women (his mother, his sister, and a postulated lover).1 I would like to contribute a new dimension to this conversation, by exploring the effects of the affective relation that Irigaray sets up between herself and Nietzsche in Marine Lover. In particular, I am interested in how her critique of Nietzsche's text quickens—or enlivens—his philosophy. Irigaray presents Marine Lover as an address directly to Nietzsche, writing from the perspective of the reader whom his philosophy [End Page 81] most excludes: she addresses him as his marine lover (l'amante marine: the fluid, active, woman lover rather than the passive—always feminine—beloved: l'aimée).2 Thus she addresses him as an equal and active participant in the love relation, resisting the images and ideals that Nietzsche projects upon "woman." In this paper, I will argue that it is through a relation of love with Nietzsche that Irigaray is able to initiate a conversation between them, opening his text to new possibilities; to new relations with women. I will first explore Nietzsche's understanding of friendship, as a privileged relation to the other, before turning to Irigaray's response to Nietzsche, in which love is understood as philosophy's origin and impetus. Nietzsche's "Friend": The Philosopher of the Future Let us... believe in our star friendship, even if we should be compelled to be earth enemies. —Nietzsche, The Gay SciencePhilosophy generally exhibits a curious "body language" to its reader. Arguments are constructed in order to demonstrate one way of thinking that excludes "rival" paths of thought. The reader is invited to think along the channel constructed by the philosopher, to inhabit his thought alone, and ultimately to become persuaded by it. The text is set up as a conduit that transports the reader to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Filosofi e animali in Roma antica: Modelli di animalità e umanità in Lucrezio e Seneca by Fabio TutroneJo-Ann SheltonFabio Tutrone. Filosofi e animali in Roma antica: Modelli di animalità e umanità in Lucrezio e Seneca. Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Pavia 126. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, 2012. 388pp. Paper, €34.The last decade has witnessed a proliferation, in many academic disciplines including Classics, of research into (...) the relationships between humans and other animals. Classical scholars have investigated the significance of other animals, whether utilized for food, labor, religious sacrifice, or entertainment, or, as Levi-Strauss declared, because they are good to think with. For millennia, we humans have sought to understand ourselves and our culture in large part by identifying both analogy with and the alterity of other animals. Fabio Tutrone, in his book, Filosofi e animali in Roma antica: Modelli di animalità e umanità in Lucrezio e Seneca, examines how two Roman authors explicated their theories of humanitas by references to other animals. There is only occasional discussion of other Roman philosophical writers, particularly Cicero. Tutrone’s main thesis is that both Lucretius and Seneca presented views about the nature and status of animals which differed from the orthodox views of their philosophical schools.The book is divided into two sections of equal length, the first about Lucretius (part 1, four chaps.), the second about Seneca (part 2, three chaps.). Throughout part 1, Tutrone analyzes the eclectic nature of Lucretius’ sources (also included as an appendix is a reprint of an article previously published by Tutrone on Lucretius’ use of Aristotle’s biological theory). Tutrone describes Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura as one of the most astonishing attempts to repudiate traditional anthropocentrism in the history of ancient culture (22). According to Tutrone, in order to persuade readers of the Epicurean doctrine that they, and the universe around them, were entirely material, Lucretius depicted the biological relationship between humans and other animals as one of parity. Comprehension of this parity was, in Lucretius’ view, fundamental to the acceptance of Epicurean physics and thus the attainment of the desired ataraxia. Anthropocentrism and anthropic hierarchy were essential elements in the Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines of teleology which Lucretius was attempting to refute. However, Epicurus, although opposed to teleology, had not renounced anthropic hierarchy. Classical scholars have generally believed that Lucretius presented in his De [End Page 709] Rerum Natura a very orthodox exposition of Epicureanism. Tutrone, however, argues that Lucretius deviated significantly from the teachings of Epicurus in his emphasis on the similarities between humans and animals. In contrast both to his Epicurean predecessors and to his anti-Epicurean contemporaries, Lucretius advocated an ethical theory based on the biological and cognitive proximity of humans to other animals.Tutrone’s insightful examinations of several passages of De Rerum Natura demonstrate their contributions to Lucretius’ advancement of his ethical arguments. For example, on Book 1.244–64, a passage explaining the Epicurean theory that, in the material universe, nothing disintegrates into nothing, Tutrone comments that Lucretius demystifies this process by employing illustrations which remind readers of what they already know: animals acquire nutrients by consuming plants which have in turn gained nutrients from rain water. The picture of contented cows in a lush pasture, providing milk for their calves, brings pleasure to readers even as it helps them comprehend the reality of the material universe. Tutrone contends, however, that animal images in Lucretius’ poem do more than delight, or reveal, by analogy, the correctness of Epicurean physics. Lucretius’ phrase, hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum (l. 254), denotes a parity between humans and animals: both groups are nourished in the same ways. Lucretius thereby reveals the status of humans in the material universe: we are parallel to animals.In Tutrone’s view, Lucretius did not limit his attribution of similarities between humans and animals to physical features. In Book 2.352–66, Lucretius creates a scene of a cow searching for her calf who has been killed at a sacrifice. One function of the image is to illustrate a scientific statement about the individual nature of each atomic form. The image also reinforces Lucretius’ criticism... (shrink)

L’article évoque les interrogations nouvelles autour de la responsabilité dans le domaine médical. Le caractère intolérable de la fragilité, le mouvement de médicalisation, l’individualisation de la perception des risques, l’évolution de la relation médecin-malade, etc., ont grandement complexifié la prise de décision et l’évaluation éthique en médecine et, plus largement, dans les questions relatives à la santé. L’Église catholique, comme toutes les institutions touchant de près ou de loin à la santé, ne manque pas d’être interrogée. La réflexion voudrait le (...) montrer à partir de l’épidémie de sida. Finalement, la responsabilité moderne ne se meut-elle pas nécessairement dans l’ambiguïté ? (shrink)