What does the word clinic mean? The clinic is first a place to diagnose and treat sick persons. The clinic is also a way of thinking and speaking; it is a discursive practice that links health with knowledge. For Michel Foucault the clinic is a mode of perception and enunciation that allows us to see and name disease and to place statements about illness among statements about birth and death. Within the clinic resides understanding of disease visible on the surface, (...) yet hidden within the tissual depths, of an ailing patient. Foucault shows that by the dawn of the nineteenth-century medicine is no longer a two-dimensional reading of symptoms, but a three-dimensional probing from symptomatic surface into disease interior. The anatomical site of disorder hidden within tissual depths is visible to the scrutiny of pathologist, endoscopist or radiologist. The clinic, a discourse that enables us to think about disease when we make statements about health and death, operates not only in its familiar textual domain, the medical journal, but in pictures of the scene at the sickbed, and poetry about disease. The truth of disease and placement of that truth in a general plan of the world in Renaissance woodcuts and John Donne's poetry is different from the regime of truth after the birth of the clinic in Bichat'sTreatise on Membranes, the paintings of Laennec, Agnew and Gross, the modern lithographs and the verse of Walt Whitman and L. E. Sissman. Foucault's clinic is where knowledge and sickness some together in the modern period. (shrink)

Contemplating certain residual mists, the net proceeds of a material world exploded and disintegrated by the relentless penetration of scientific intellect, the more advanced physicist has been led in recent times to co-operate with the philosopher on a common plane. Not so long ago, and not always without reason, the philosopher was regarded somewhat askance. It is the old antithesis between the practical man and the theorist, the scientific man himself having been regarded for long as a dreamer. (...) All depends upon the level of action. Operating in the wilds the black tracker has nothing to gain by pausing for the slow, if sure, dictum of the scientist; and if a Mercator projection of the world, or a sextant, were offered to a primitive navigator of well-known home waters, these important aids to the sailor of longer voyages would probably be thrown in a corner, if not overboard. The launching forth on to wide oceans created the occasion for, and proved the value of, such products of exact thought. Thus, in his highest abstractions, the physicist must perforce become a philosopher. At the very least, the need of review and evaluation from a more general standpoint will be conceded. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical Bioethics at NIH:History and A New VisionJohn C. Fletcher (bio)On July 3, 1995, Dr. John I. Gallin, Director of the Magnuson Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), convened a one-day "Conference on the Future of Clinical Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Intramural Program." Conferees included NIH officials and a panel of consultants from bioethics programs around the nation.1 The subject was the (...) future of NIH's intramural bioethics program and specifically a vision of a new multi-component program, presented by Dr. Gallin, the first speaker. Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of NIH, was there to assure his support for Dr. Gallin's vision. This author, honored to be second speaker, was invited to sketch a brief history of bioethics at NIH. The present article reviews some of this history and then reports on Dr. Gallin's proposal, points of consensus among speakers and conferees, and the search for a Chief of the Clinical Bioethics Program.History of Bioethics at NIHIt is often said that NIH is a well-kept secret as the nation's leading biomedical research facility. Also, few people know that NIH has a long history in bioethics. Some key events in that history are shown in Figure 1, beginning with two that occurred prior to the birth of bioethics. NIH made an early policy response to protect human subjects of research and to find acceptable limits for scientific freedom. The Clinical Center (CC), a 550-bed research hospital, opened in 1953. A subcommittee of the Medical Board, the Clinical Research Committee (CRC), was formed for prior group review of all studies with normal volunteers. The traditional practice was for researchers themselves to decide when studies would begin, which subjects to recruit, and whether informed consent would be sought. The CRC intervention bit into this tradition. In addition, patient studies that posed significant risks or departed widely from medical practice were reviewed by referral from the Clinical Directors of the various Institutes. Was this CRC an early institutional review [End Page 355] board (IRB)? As a guest researcher, I was permitted to observe the CRCs meetings between 1966 and 1969. It functioned much like an IRB but had no community or non-scientist members. Other IRB-like review groups undoubtedly existed prior to the CRC. Robert Levine (personal communication, September 7, 1995) recalls that Beth Israel Hospital in Boston had one in 1938. Historical research is clearly needed on the earliest forms of research review.Table 1. Bioethics at NIHEventYearClinical Research Committee1953Surgeon-General's PPO #1291966NIGMS funds Hastings Genetics Group1973OPRR's Mission1974NLM's grant to KennedyInstitute for Bibliography of Bioethics1974Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee1974STEP Series Bioethics Speakers1975Pre-IRBs at the CC1975-76Assistant for Bioethics to Director, CC1977RAC-Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee1983Lipsett Proposal (ICD)1983Liaison Group, CC1983Bioethics Program, CC1985Durable Power of Attorney for Researchwith Incapacitated Subjects1985-86NLM funds National Reference Centerfor Bioethics Literature1985National Institute for Nursing Research1986Bioethics Post-Doctoral Fellows Program1989ELSI Program1989Bioethicists on CC-IRBs1989CC-Ethics Committee1990Office of Human Subjects Research1992 [End Page 356]Between 1963 and 1967, the media exposed instances of ethically troubling research, and Beecher (1966) and Pappworth (1967) published sharp criticisms of the weak state of research ethics. In 1966, Surgeon-General William Stewart and NIH Director James Shannon issued a policy requiring local group review of all research involving human subjects before making an application for NIH peer review (Surgeon General 1966). The policy was the first in any nation to mandate ethics committees for clinical research. However, it did not apply to the NIH intramural program until Congress passed the National Research Act in 1974 (Public Law 93-348; 202, 88 Stat. 342, 1974). This lag permitted NIH intramural investigators the luxury of feeling above the norms imposed on ordinary mortals and guaranteed more resistance to the inevitable change to come. Resistance to change marked the intramural program from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s... (shrink)

In this article John Merrill, a long-time observer of the journalistic scene and author/co-author of more than two-dozen books, picks the brain of Niccolo Machiavelli, who, if he had been asked, might have had some interesting observations about the ethics of journalism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society, and Artistic RationalisationJohn C. McEnroeJeremy Tanner. The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society, and Artistic Rationalisation. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. xvi + 331 pp. 62 black-and-white ills. Cloth, $99.In his introductory chapter, Jeremy Tanner quotes J. J. Winckelmann's eighteenth-century description of the Apollo Belvedere: "Among all the works of antiquity which (...) have escaped destruction, the statue of Apollo is the highest ideal of art... In the presence of this miracle of art, I forget all else, and I myself take a lofty position for the purpose of looking on it in a worthy manner" (6). Tanner makes it clear that Winckelmann, widely regarded as the founder of modern art history, was not simply recording a personal reaction. Instead, Winckelmann's notion of artworks as autonomous objects of aesthetic experience was deeply rooted in the transformation of the basic institutions of art during [End Page 423] the Enlightenment. These included changes in patronage and production, and the introduction of the new philosophy of aesthetics. The new conception of art as a form of individual expression was tied not only to the notion of personal liberty but also to the growing obsession with national identities. Winckelmann's rapturous response to the Apollo Belvedere is understandable only as a part of this broader set of social and intellectual currents.The kinds of art history that Tanner is concerned with in this book are quite distinct from Winckelmann's and belonged to profoundly different cultural networks. Tanner lays out three goals for the book: first, to analyze art as a form of material culture that was both shaped by society and, in turn, helped to shape society; second, to develop an analytic framework for comparing classical and modern art history without conflating the two; third, to move art history to the explanatory level, exploring not only how classical art developed over the long term, but why. Tanner's approach is sociological, drawing especially on the work of the once influential American sociologist, Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914). As a result, Tanner shifts from the traditional focus on artists to the interaction of artists, patrons, and viewers.In chapter 2 ("Rethinking the Greek Revolution," 31–96) Tanner addresses one of the central problems in art history, the apparently sudden transformation from abstraction to naturalism in Greek art in the beginning of the fifth century B.C.E., famously described by E. H. Gombrich as "the Greek Revolution." Why, after generations of continuity within the Archaic style, did Greek artists, alone among the artists working in the broader Middle Eastern tradition, develop the naturalistic style of art represented in, for example, Polykeitos's Doryphoros? For Gombrich, the "Greek Revolution" was fundamentally a matter of artists breaking from ingrained patterns and attempting, as individuals, to match the appearance of their statues with the natural world. Other writers, including several contributors to Diana Buitron-Oliver, ed., The Greek Miracle: Classical Sculpture from the Dawn of Democracy (Washington, D.C., 1992), have described the change in terms even more deeply grounded in Winckelmann: the revolution in style was a product of the birth of individuality and personal freedom that accompanied the birth of democracy in classical Greece.Tanner is specifically concerned with what the "Greek Revolution" meant for cult statues. While he rejects the simplistic equation democracy = naturalism as an explanatory device, Tanner nevertheless holds that political changes, marked by the Kleisthenic reforms, had profound effects on both the makers and the viewers of art. Through most of the sixth century B.C.E., the aristocracy was in firm control of religious art. Through the forms of the kouros and kore, aristocrats merged their identities with those of the gods. Through their sponsorship and control of the sanctuaries, they controlled the access ordinary viewers had to images of the sacred. While the immediate effects of the Kleisthenic reforms may have been more complex than Tanner implies, over the course of a generation the authority of the traditional aristocracy declined, and the sponsorship of cult images was... (shrink)

AMONG THE BEINGS KNOWN TO US, the human being is, so far as we are aware, the only one to trouble himself about his origins. Mountains have no more care for such matters than it is in their power to leap like rams. As for the rams, they have perhaps some mute memory of their parents, and some abiding affection for them, yet they clearly lack all ambition to retrace the steps of their ovine past. We alone desire to know (...) whence we came. It is true that some among us manifest this desire in an obsession about “ethnic origins,” for example, but this need not signify that our interest in our predecessors must be a purely parochial affair. While a concern for our past seems to be peculiar to our species, and while it necessarily finds its initial expression in questions about our immediate precursors, origins being what they are, we cannot long wonder about our own without soon having to consider the origins of the whole human race, and of everything else besides. (shrink)

In response to a sharp rise in opioid-involved overdose deaths in the USA, states have deployed increasingly aggressive strategies to limit the loss of life, including civil commitment—the forcible detention of individuals whose opioid use presents a clear and convincing danger to themselves or others. While civil commitment often succeeds in providing short-term protection from overdose, emerging evidence suggests that it may be associated with long-term harms, including heightened risk of severe withdrawal, relapse and opioid-involved mortality. To better assess (...) and mitigate these harms, states should collect more robust data on long-term health outcomes, decriminalise proceedings and stays, provide access to medications for opioid use disorder and strengthen post-release coordination of community-based treatment. (shrink)

Rakover has thought about the nature of explanation for a long time and he has written some insightful pieces on the possibility of incorporating mentalistic language into serious explanations of our activities. Here he takes an extreme tack and grounds his arguments on the oldest of all chestnuts, the mind/body problem. Ironically, as an undergraduate he may have misinterpreted the words of his favorite professor so as to lead him to agonize for decades over the proper interpretation of private (...) experience [for him it’s “mentalistic”]. This has ultimately led to this article, proposing a Multi-Explanation Framework that mixes what he calls “mentalistic” and “mechanistic” elements in behavioral sequences, incorporating a Mentalistic Purposive Explanation Scheme that has the virtue, in his eyes, of adding what “radical behaviorism” lacks. The reader is left with the impression that the explanations produced using this framework would seem more satisfying only because the vocabulary involved is the one we learned as children, and that their usefulness would be no more than that of the folk psychology that has always prevailed. Rakover and many others confuse radical behaviorism with behavior analysis, which leads to tiresome and pointless critiques of the former. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

We describe some of the signs and symptoms of left visuo-spatial neglect. This common, severe and often long-lasting impairment is the most striking consequence of right hemisphere brain damage. Patients seem to (over-)attend to the right with subsequent inability to respond to stimuli in contralesional space. We draw particular attention to how patients themselves experience neglect. Furthermore, we show that the neglect patient's loss of awareness of left space is crucial to an understanding of the condition. Even after left (...) space has been brought into the patient's consciousness (either by local cueing on the left or by an emphasis on global properties of the scene as a whole), this awareness of left space rapidly declines. We suggest that much of the symptomology of left neglect can be interpreted as a disconnection between brain mechanisms that are relatively specialized for local (detail) visual processing and global (panoramic) processing. This failure of communication between functional (subpersonal) mechanisms then has consequences for how perceptual and representational content enters into awareness. Failure of the local contents of left space to be consciously accessed is, in turn, an important aspect of why left neglect is so difficult to remediate. Patients can ''know'' that they have neglect but are cut off from the perceptual awareness that would enable them to overcome their attentional bias to the right. (shrink)

While the ethical implications of corporate actions have received increasing attention, one important area overlooked by both researchers and corporate codes of ethics is the significant ethical implications of corporate records management practices. This article discusses the operational and strategic purposes of modern corporate records management programs—including scorched earth programs which seek to reduce exposure to potential liability by eliminating documentary evidence from corporate files that could be used to establish culpability in future governmental investigations or in litigation by persons (...) injured by corporate actions. As a first step toward developing relevant ethical guidelines and decision criteria for socially-responsible records management practices, the ethical values of freedom of choice and avoidance of harm are applied to various corporate decisions as to (1) which information should be retained as records and for how long, (2) subsequent disclosure or non-disclosure of that information and to whom, and (3) decisions as to when information in corporate records may properly be destroyed. (shrink)

“Scholasticism” has not always been a term of opprobrium. Strictly speaking, the word simply targets a “school of thought,” and schools, like thoughts, can be good, bad, or indifferent. Francis Bacon did much to foster common derision of scholasticism. As he observed, “it is scarcely possible at once to admire authors and to surpass them, knowledge being like water, which will not rise above the level from which it fell.” Insofar as great thinkers do not reliably engender their equals, much (...) less set the cause of truth in motion by logarithmic progression, Bacon has a point. Yet the premise of the best schools of philosophy has always been the modest one that by standing on a giant’s shoulders one is sometimes able to see what would otherwise have lain hidden in the distance. In any case, Bacon did little to stem the scholastic tide. Despite all the antischolastic vitriol of the last several centuries, philosophical schools have multiplied profusely. Neo-Kantianism, logical positivism, existentialism, structuralism, feminism, and postmodernism represent only a small sample of recent possibilities. One can safely conclude from this list that as long as there is thinking, there will be schools of thought. A corollary suggests itself: the most antischolastic forms of thinking usually engender the most rigidly scholastic forms of thought. (shrink)

Fetal pain has long been a contentious issue, in large part because fetal pain is often cited as a reason to restrict access to termination of pregnancy or abortion. We have divergent views regarding the morality of abortion, but have come together to address the evidence for fetal pain. Most reports on the possibility of fetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience. Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the (...) cortex only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out fetal pain until the final trimester. Here, more recent evidence calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks. We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so fetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion. (shrink)

Not long ago, a colleague chided me for using the term "the biological revolution. " Like many others, I have employed it as an umbrella term to refer to the seemingly vast, rapidly-moving, and fre quently bewildering developments of contemporary biomedicine: psy chosurgery, genetic counseling and engineering, artificial heart-lung machines, organ transplants-and on and on. The real "biological revo lution," he pointed out, began back in the nineteenth century in Europe. For it was then that death rates and infant (...) mortality began to decline, the germ theory of disease was firmly established, Darwin took his famous trip on the Beagle, and Gregor Mendel stumbled on to some fundamental principles of heredity. My friend, I think, was both right and wrong. The biological revolution did have its roots in the nineteenth century; that is when it first began to unfold. Yet, like many intellectual and scientific upheav als, its force was not felt for decades. Indeed, it seems fair to say that it was not until after the Second World War that the full force of the earlier discoveries in biology and medicine began to have a major impact, an impact that was all the more heightened by the rapid bi omedical developments after the war. (shrink)

In recent years, a handful of model systems from the basal metazoan phylum Cnidaria have emerged to challenge long-held views on the evolution of animal complexity. The most-recent, and in many ways most-promising addition to this group is the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. The remarkable amenability of this species to laboratory manipulation has already made it a productive system for exploring cnidarian development, and a proliferation of molecular and genomic tools, including the currently ongoing Nematostella genome project, further (...) enhances the promise of this species. In addition, the facility with which Nematostella populations can be investigated within their natural ecological context suggests that this model may be profitably expanded to address important questions in molecular and evolutionary ecology. In this review, we explore the traits that make Nematostella exceptionally attractive as a model organism, summarize recent research demonstrating the utility of Nematostella in several different contexts, and highlight a number of developments likely to further increase that utility in the near future. BioEssays 27:211–221, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The time has come to challenge many of the age-old assumptions about schools and school learning. In this timely book, leading thinkers from around the world offer a different vision of what schools are for. They suggest new ways of thinking about citizenship, lifelong learning, and the role of schools in democratic societies. They question many of the tenets of school effectiveness studies which have been so influential in shaping policy, but are essentially backward looking and premised on school structures (...) as we have known them. Each chapter confronts some of the myths of schooling we have cherished for too long and asks us to think again and to do schools differently. (shrink)

Aristotelian commenters have long noted an apparent contradiction between what Aristotle says in Posterior Analytics I.2 and Physics I.1 about how we obtain first principles of a science. At Posterior 71b35–72a6, Aristotle states that what is most universal (καθόλου) is better-known by nature and initially less-known to us, while the particular (καθ’ ἕκαστον) is initially better-known to us, but less-known by nature. At Physics 184a21-30, however, Aristotle states that we move from what is better-known to us, which is universal (...) (καθόλου), to what is better-known absolutely, which is particular (καθ’ ἕκαστον). This paper turns to two of Aristotle’s most notable medieval commentators—Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas—to resolve this apparent contradiction. The key to Thomas and Albert’s solutions, we will argue, is a twofold distinction between a sense-perceptive and scientific universal, and the particulars as sensed individuals and as differentiating attributes. Our Synthetic treatment of these distinctions contributes to the ongoing scholarly effort to understand the Stagyrite’s complex theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Is the existence of God a reasonable metaphysical hypothesis? So asks A. C. Ewing in his important posthumous work, Value and Reality. Thus the topic of the book is theistic religion, not in its entirety, but rather merely in its intellectual part. That it does have such a part, and further that it makes claims ‘to objective truth in the field of metaphysics’, is defended on the grounds that a fictional ‘story’ about God has what religious or ethical impact it (...) may have because, or at least mainly because, it is taken precisely not as fictional, but as expressing an objective theological truth; and that a story, or an account, can constitute a good reason for one's acting in a certain way only if the account is, in fact, objectively true. Bearing on both points is Ewing's observation that ‘emotion, at least except in pathological cases, requires some objective belief about the real, true or false, to support it for long, and if it exists without knowledge or rationally founded belief with which it is in agreement, it is to be condemned as irrational or unfitting, as it would be unfitting to rejoice at something disastrous or be angry with an inanimate thing’. The claim is not, we are told, that religious statements are literal as distinguished from symbolic. The door would seem to be left open, in fact, to their all being symbolic. What is essential is that some of them symbolise distinctively metaphysical truths, or truths ‘going beyond the realm of science’ and ‘throwing some light on the general nature of the real’. We should indeed distinguish, Ewing notes, ‘belief in’ from ‘belief that’. Yet the former is not possible without the latter. ‘Unless I believe that God exists I cannot believe in God’. So in Ewing's opinion, statements of metaphysics—if not concerning God, then at least concerning certain general aspects of reality—are most important for religion as a whole, and are, in being true, conceptually necessary to its validity, or to its ‘fittingness’. (shrink)

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like (...) automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior? In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere. (shrink)

We identify a normative paradox of responsible management education. Business educators aim to promote social values and develop ethical habits and socially responsible mindsets through education, but they attempt to do so with theories that have normative underpinnings and create actual normative effects that counteract their intentions. We identify a limited conceptualization of freedom in economic theorizing as a cause of the paradox. Economic theory emphasizes individual freedom and understands this as the freedom to choose from available options. However, conceptualizing (...) individuals as profit-maximizing actors neglects their freedom to reflect on the purposes and goals of their actions. We build on the work of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who distinguishes between habitualized and creative problem-solving behaviors, conceptualizes knowledge construction as a process of interdependent scientific social inquiry, and understands actors as having the freedom to determine what kind of people they wish to be. We apply pragmatist theory to business education and suggest equipping students with a plurality of theories, supplementing neoclassical economics with other economic perspectives and views from other disciplines on economic behavior. Moreover, we suggest putting students into learning situations that require practical problem solution through interdependent social inquiry, encouraging ethical reflection. In doing so, we contribute by linking the problematic conceptions of freedom identified in economic theorizing to the debate on responsible management education. We conceptualize a pragmatist approach to management education that explicitly re-integrates the freedom to discursively reflect on the individual and societal purpose of business activity and thereby makes existing tools and pedagogies useful for bringing potential freedom back into business. (shrink)

Pancreatitis is a complex, progressively destructive inflammatory disorder. Alcohol was long thought to be the primary causative agent, but genetic contributions have been of interest since the discovery that rare PRSS1, CFTR and SPINK1 variants were associated with pancreatitis risk. We now report two associations at genome-wide significance identified and replicated at PRSS1-PRSS2 and X-linked CLDN2 through a two-stage genome-wide study. The PRSS1 variant likely affects disease susceptibility by altering expression of the primary trypsinogen gene. The CLDN2 risk allele (...) is associated with atypical localization of claudin-2 in pancreatic acinar cells. The homozygous CLDN2 genotype confers the greatest risk, and its alleles interact with alcohol consumption to amplify risk. These results could partially explain the high frequency of alcohol-related pancreatitis in men. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Intentionality is aboutness. Some things are about other things: a belief can be about icebergs, but an iceberg is not about anything; an idea can be about the number 7, but the number 7 is not about anything; a book or a film can be about Paris, but Paris is not about anything. Philosophers have long been concerned with the analysis of the phenomenon of intentionality, which has seemed to many to be a fundamental feature of mental states and (...) events. (shrink)

The behavior of people in the presence of scarce resources has long been a source of ethical concern and debate. Many of the responses, ranging from outright brutality and cheating on the one hand to altruism, nobility, and sacrifice on the other, were most recently demonstrated in the movie Titanic. It should come as no surprise, then, that rational efforts to allocate the very scarce life-saving resource of organs are sometimes circumvented by these natural human impulses and sheer human (...) creativity. This is especially true when the organs in question are required for continued life and cannot be temporarily or permanently replaced by technology. Thus the focus of this paper will be on the competition for livers. (shrink)

Although conscientious objection is a long-standing phenomenon, it has only recently become a major factor affecting armed forces and society. The only comprehensive, comparative scholarly study of conscientious objection to military service, this book examines the history of the practice in the Western world and state policies that have grown up in response to it. It shows how the contemporary refusal to bear arms is likely to be secular and widespread rather than religious and marginal, now including service people (...) as well as conscription resisters. No account of civil-military relations or peace movements in advanced industrial countries is complete without reference to conscientious objection, and this book will be the standard text on the subject. (shrink)

In this volume twenty-three major scholars comment on and critically evaluate In Search of a Universal Ethic, the 2009 document written by the International Theological Commission (ITC) of the Catholic Church. That historic document represents an official Church contribution both to a more adequate understanding of a universal ethic and to Catholicism s own tradition of reflection on natural law. The essays in this book reflect the ITC document s complementary emphases of dialogue across traditions (universal ethic) and reflection on (...) broadly applicable ethical guidance within the Christian tradition (natural law). Among other things, the document situates the natural law ethical tradition within the larger search for a universal ethic. Along with its insightful essays, Searching for a Universal Ethic offers — for the first time in published form — the Vatican s official English translation of In Search of a Universal Ethic. Contributors: John Berkman Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P. David Burrell, C.S.C. Lisa Sowle Cahill Joseph E. Capizzi David Cloutier Anver M. Emon Robert P. George Sherif Girgis Jennifer A. Herdt Russell Hittinger M. Cathleen Kaveny Anthony J. Kelly, C.Ss.R. Fergus Kerr, O.P. Steven A. Long William C. Mattison III Gilbert Meilaender Livio Melina Michael S. Northcott David Novak Jean Porter Martin Rhonheimer Tracey Rowland. (shrink)

The tsunami effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting many aspects of scientific activities. Multidisciplinary experimental studies with international collaborators are hindered by the closing of the national borders, logistic issues due to lockdown, quarantine restrictions, and social distancing requirements. The full impact of this crisis on science is not clear yet, but the above-mentioned issues have most certainly restrained academic research activities. Sharing innovative solutions between researchers is in high demand in this situation. The aim of this paper is (...) to share our successful practice of using web-based communication and remote control software for real-time long-distance control of brain stimulation. This solution may guide and encourage researchers to cope with restrictions and has the potential to help expanding international collaborations by lowering travel time and costs. (shrink)

According to the concept of desirable difficulties, introducing difficulties in learning may sacrifice short-term performance in order to benefit long-term retention of learning. We describe three types of desirable difficulty effects: testing, generation, and varied conditions of practice. The empirical literature indicates that desirable difficulty effects are not always obtained and we suggest that cognitive load theory may be used to explain many of these contradictory results. Many failures to obtain desirable difficulty effects may occur under conditions where working (...) memory is already stressed due to the use of high element interactivity information. Under such conditions, the introduction of additional difficulties may be undesirable rather than desirable. Empirical evidence from diverse experiments is used to support this hypothesis. (shrink)

We reflect, using a vignette, on conceptual tensions and the value judgements that lie behind difficult decisions about whether or not the older person with dementia should return home or move into long-term care following hospital admission. The paper seeks, first, to expose some of the difficulties arising from the assessment of residence capacity, particularly around the nature of evaluative judgements and conceptual tensions inherent in the legal approach to capacity. Secondly, we consider the assessment of best interests around (...) place of residence, which demonstrates significant conceptual tensions. In addition, ‘best interests’ raise issues around the perception of risk and the perceptions of the family and crucially involve the notions of autonomy and trust. Finally, we not only gesture at some practical considerations based on insights from values-based medicine, but also make the suggestion that we require tighter functional assessments of residence capacity coupled with broader judgements about best interests. (shrink)

The emergence of new obstetrical and neonatal technologies, as well as more aggressive clinical management, has significantly improved the survival of extremely low birth weight infants. This development has heightened concerns about the limits of viability. ELBW infants, weighing less than 1,000 grams and no larger than the palm of one's hand, are often described as of late twentieth century technology. Improved survivability of ELBW infants has provided opportunities for long-term follow-up. Information on their physical and emotional development contributes (...) to developing standards of practice regarding their care. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spirometer, Whale, Slave:Breathing Emergencies, c. 1850John Durham Peters (bio)Breath dramatically starts with a slap at birth and ceases with death and yet we typically ignore it until it is under duress. Unlike marine mammals such as whales and dolphins who can never fully automate breathing—they sleep one brain hemisphere at a time so as to keep conscious watch, like yogis, over their respiration—we humans are mostly somnambulists with regard (...) to breath. Unlike our briny cousins, we won't drown if we neglect our breath. Our relatively accommodating habitat at the fold of lithosphere and atmosphere enables a Lethe of oblivion, though many elements of our world are hostile to breath: water, fire, earth, extremes of height, heat, or cold. Nothing could be more fundamental for aerobic terrestrial creatures than breathing. So its routine cloaking in impercipience must somehow be functional and require a great deal of nervous expenditure. (It always takes a lot of work to make an infrastructure invisible.)Breathing is a good test case for the notion, common to many variants of critical theory, that nature for humans is always second nature: what would it mean to find culture, history, and politics in something that is so relentlessly universal and given? The intensity of the urge for drink, food, sex, or sleep pales compared to that of taking a breath withheld or expelling a breath too long held. Here, it seems, desire and need converge. Breathing morphs into awareness, art and artifice when threat, absence or curiosity rouse it from its slumber—when we swim, have a coughing fit, sing, or challenge someone to a breath-holding contest. Under the earth in a mine, high in the air on a mountain or airplane, ill with a respiratory disease, or in other extreme situations, we need techniques and technologies to breathe. Like everything supposedly natural, we can't leave breathing in peace. We mold breath in techniques of speech, song, and prayer and in technologies of diving, medicine, and air travel. A full accounting of such would form a full encyclopedia of human ingenuity.1 [End Page 85]With typical flamboyance, Peter Sloterdijk declared that the atmosphere first ceased to be taken for granted, i.e., became technical, a matter of art, on 22 April 1915, with the German deployment of poison gas in World War I. On a world-historical scale, he takes this weaponization of the environment as an "air-quake" that launched modern air-conditioning in its most literal sense of climatization (as French and German has it) and not just interior cooling (Sloterdijk 89-110 passim). We need a history of comparative breathing emergencies! Every era, like every life, has its encounters with the precarity of breathing, even if not as conveniently dated or climate-change prognostic as 22 April 1915. The urban concentration of human population starting a few thousand years ago, for instance, made people co-breathers (con-spirators) in new ways and thus more prone to the contagious respiratory illnesses that have long ravaged our species.I want to look at one such moment—one marked by a deadly global respiratory illness, new instruments for producing data, worries about radical alterations to the atmosphere, comparative interest in nonhuman forms of life, and the politicization of breathing. 1850, like 2020, was a moment when breath awoke from its autonomic quiet. The nineteenth century was the great age of tuberculosis, the tragic and romantic lung disease. It was a time of fog, smoke, and mud, of climate-changing volcanic eruptions and a year without a summer, and of a mysterious, brooding "storm-cloud" that John Ruskin complained of so bitterly. Medical instruments, the whaling industry, and struggles for the abolition of slavery all brought the lungs into the foreground.SpirometerThe nineteenth century was also the great age of instrumentation. Light and sound were only the two most famous dynamic processes to yield to new graphic methods of inscription such as photography and phonography. The spirometer was one of many devices designed to render visual data of physiological functions, such as the myograph, the flame manometer, sphygmomanometer, and the kymograph. Many of them are still in use. The invention... (shrink)

In this volume C.A. (Chet) Bowers, whose pioneering work on education and environmental and sustainability issues is widely recognized and respected around the world, brings together a carefully curated selection of his seminal work on the ideological, cultural, and linguistic roots of the ecological crisis; misconceptions underlying modern consciousness; the cultural commons; a critique of technology; and educational reforms to address these pressing concerns. In the World Library of Educationalists, international scholars themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge (...) to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions - so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself. Contributors to the series include : Michael Apple, James A. Banks, Joel Spring, William F. Pinar, Stephen J. Ball, Elliot Eisner, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, Peter Jarvis. (shrink)

The West has long had an ambivalent attitude toward the philosophical traditions of the East. Voltaire claimed that the East is the civilization "to which the West owes everything", yet C.S. Peirce was contemptuous of the "monstrous mysticism of the East". And despite the current trend toward globalizations, there is still a reluctance to take seriously the intellectual inheritance of South and East Asia. Oriental Enlightenment challenges this Eurocentric prejudice. J. J. Clarke examines the role played by the ideas (...) of Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism in the intellectual life of the West and how these ideas, far more than exotic distractions, or even instruments of colonial domination, have been the means towards serious self-questioning and self-renewal, used to dispute and even to undermine Western orthodoxies. (shrink)

IN examining Herodotos' account of the Samian tyranny, historians have long been disturbed by two considerations. First, it seems strange that the period of settled tyranny should have begun no earlier than the rise of Polykrates and his two brothers c. 533 B.C., even though Samos was among the most advanced cities in Ionia. Yet it seems equally impossible to revise this accession date in an upward direction, at least by any significant margin. Furthermore, there had been at work (...) in Samos from c. 600 or earlier many of the factors which elsewhere in Ionia did in fact lead to a comparatively stable period of tyranny at that date, for instance at Miletos and Ephesos. Secondly, though Herodotos knows of no tyrant before Polykrates, it has been observed that the policies ascribed to him as characteristic were very largely the continuation of policies initiated a generation or more previously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John P. Anton C. P. CAVAFY'S ARS POETICA ' It is generally recognized that Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) was not born a poet but became one only through persistence and labor, reaching his "first step" sometime after the midpoint of his life. In his effort to assess the quality of his earlier poetic production and sharpen his sensitivity in facing self-criticism, he decided to put in writing his (...) personal thoughts on his work sometime in 1903. The text was written in English in a personal shorthand Cavafy had devised for his own use. It was found among the papers he left to A. Sengopoulos and published for the first time in 1963 by M. Peridis, who also supplied the suitable title Ars Poetica. It falls outside the scope of this essay to discuss the antecedents of this document. Taken as a whole, the text has all the clarity and directness required of a testament designed to serve as a personal guide and handbook. The problems it discusses are limited to the needs of the poet. In this regard, the Ars Poetica has neither the range of topics nor the theoretical scope of, for instance, Aristotle's Poetics. It is quite certain that the ideas that preoccupy Cavafy in the Ars Poetica had been on his mind for a period of years. However, the Ars Poetica is his first prose piece where he gives a systematic treatment to technical and critical issues directly related to the assessment of his work and his role as a poet. In order to project here a clear image of Cavafy's struggle to reach his technical maturity which came after 1910, we need first to discuss the persistent problems he faced during this crucial decade, then to examine the attitudes and values he embodied in certain representative early poems, and finally to relate them to the guiding principles he formulated in his self-addressed poetics of 1903. A number of interrelated problems confronted Cavafy in his late twenties and throughout his thirties. They emerged one by one, to 85 86Philosophy and Literature make more pressing the demand for a consistent solution and a complete recasting of his outlook. Coming to terms with them was extremely difficult. Aside from the emotional and sexual pressures he had to face alone, there was the absence of suitable ideas and conceptual tools to provide him with even the rudiments of an intellectual framework. Whatever he borrowed from Europe and England, or resurrected from his own Hellenic heritage, proved either beyond assimilation or insufficiently digested. The lingering issues fell roughly into four areas. (i) Despite his determination to devote his life to the writing of poetry, the quality of his work was discouraging. He knew this and as a result he often expressed uncertainty about his ability to proceed. Time and again he appeared suffering from a feeling of inadequacy, but nevertheless he sought to engage a reflective mood from which to draw encouragement and hope. (ii) On the theoretical side, he identified with the long tradition which assigned a coveted cultural role to the savant-poet as discloser of truth and spokesman for humanity; this despite the prevailing climate of opinion in his immediate environment which recognized no such high position in his case. Cavafy knew that his standing with the Greek community of Alexandria had gradually dwindled with the loss of family wealth and his lowly employment, and also that his expectations to be respected in his role as a poet and leader in communal affairs were futile. This denial of personal recognition in a society dominated by commerce and finance contributed to his mood of depression. The feeling of being an outcast, despite his associations with the upper social circles of Alexandria, became a constant irritant to his sense of pride. (iii) The course of culture, the destiny of human institutions and the workings of history, became puzzles as he tried to view them through the opaque glass of disillusionment. These were the grand themes actively discussed in the writings of leading European intellectuals, but to the young poet they had a different personal urgency. His vital concern in this connection was not understanding science... (shrink)

The partisan split in American politics is the result of a major transformation of the West, as the psychology of the past based on hierarchy and privilege is being replaced by a psychology of equality. The status of women and minorities is at the center of this. The West's long history of inequality is gradually changing. When women's equality is considered symbolically, it represents the feminine rising to parity with the masculine, a status it has not held since prehistory. (...) Minority groups have carried the projected shadow of the White majority for centuries; that is gradually ending. Integration of the feminine and the shadow are core concepts of C.G. Jung's psychology of individuation. The emerging equality of women and minorities indicates that our group psychology is entering a period of individuation. This is a huge change, at least as profound as pagan Rome becoming Christian or medieval Europe transitioning into the modern West. The turmoil of our time is because of the great historical change as we leave what has been the modern West. The turmoil is the widespread appearance of the same conflicts that Jung saw in his patients a century ago. The same answer still applies, the path Jung realized at the time, individuation, and it is already beginning to shape our future. In this book author John Cahman traces the history of Western Civilization as a developmental process and shows how our time marks a great turning point in that story as we leave an age of sexism, racism, and hierarchy and enter one of individuation. (shrink)

Our embodied capacity for action and our dispositions towards goals define our perception of a situation and possible actions. Thus, situations are not constitutive of action, but they demand that we act. For Shane Ralston, the situations that call for action are historical, imagined, or projected debates involving John Dewey. When Dewey is portrayed not just as a presenter of theory, but as an actor in debates grounded in time, place, and daily life consequences, we understand his arguments in (...) new ways. When he is called upon to act by engaging in debates that arose even long after his death, the interaction (or transaction) of philosopher and situation produces new meaning.The non-teleological, creative .. (shrink)

Our love of art, writes John Barrow, is the end product of millions of years of evolution. How we react to a beautiful painting or symphony draws upon instincts laid down long before humans existed. Now, in this enhanced edition of the highly popular The Artful Universe, Barrow further explores the close ties between our aesthetic appreciation and the basic nature of the Universe. Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and (...) actions in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Drawing on a wide variety of examples, from the theological questions raised by St. Augustine and C.S. Lewis to the relationship between the pure math of Pythagoras and the music of the Beatles, The Artful Universe Expanded covers new ground and enters a wide-ranging debate about the meaning and significance of the links between art and science. (shrink)

William James, remarking in 1909 on the differences among the three leading spokesmen for pragmatism--himself, F. C. S. Schiller, and John Dewey--said that Schiller’s views were essentially "psychological,” his own, "epistemological,” whereas Dewey’s "panorama is the widest of the three.” The two main subjects of Dewey’s essays at this time are also two of the most fundamental and persistent philosophical questions: the nature of knowledge and the meaning of truth. Dewey’s distinctive analysis is concentrated chiefly in seven essays, in (...) a long, significant, and previously almost unknown work entitled "The Problem of Truth,” and in his book How We Think. As a whole, the 1910-11 writings illustrate especially well that which the Thayers identify in their Introduction as Dewey’s "deepening concentration on questions of logic and epistemology as contrasted with the more pronounced psychological and pedagogical treatment in earlier writings.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cicero's Correspondence: A Literary StudyJohn NicholsonG. O. Hutchinson. Cicero's Correspondence: A Literary Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. xv + 235 pp. Cloth, $65.The focus here is on rescuing Cicero's correspondence from the subliterary status of mere historical and biographical source material, and promoting an appreciation of its inherent artistic value and interest. Now that the text of the letters has finally been restored to a sound footing and (...) their historical contents well elucidated, Hutchinson cogently argues that it is time for scholars to pay more attention to them from a literary perspective. Accordingly, he shows how Cicero's constant rhetorical shaping of his material lifts the letters beyond the level of mere historical documents to that of a sophisticated and persuasive form of literature. In his introductory chapter he explains that critics have long shied away from this kind of literary approach because Cicero did not write these letters for publication. But even so, there is evidence that Cicero saw the potential of letters as a distinct and respectable literary genre. We are reminded, for example, that he knew and valued various published collections of letters, such as those by Plato and Epicurus, and that toward the end of his life he planned to publish a small edited selection of his own correspondence. We also know that he was conscious of different categories of letter writing based on [End Page 159] function and manner (Fam. 2.4.1), thereby showing his awareness of the aesthetic dimensions inherent in the form. In particular, examination of the dozens of his letters of recommendation (Fam. 13) reveals his deliberate manipulation of established epistolary conventions. Also notable is the prevalence of prose rhythms, similar to those found throughout his published works--a strong indication of self-conscious artistry in the composition of his letters. Finally, the goal of persuasion, central in much of the correspondence, naturally called forth the author's exceptional rhetorical powers to craft his words in an artfully persuasive way. Considering all these factors, Hutchinson argues that Cicero's letters must not be naively mined as historical source material without considering the aesthetic considerations which influenced their composition; in fact, he says, "the constant shaping of material for persuasive and aesthetic ends, in presentation, structure, and style, prevents any direct or straightforward access to history" (23). The present literary approach is therefore long overdue.After exploring in chapter 1 these general issues that justify his approach, Hutchinson devotes the remaining chapters of his book to discussing six specific themes, each illustrated by passages taken from a wide selection of different letters (including samples written to Cicero) and comparing them to passages from other types of literature. The six themes are Exile, Consolation, Narrative, Dialogue, Time, and Humor.The chapter on exile presents three letters Cicero wrote in 58 b.c. during the intense personal crisis of his banishment from Rome (Fam. 14.4, Att. 3.7, Q. Fr. 1.3). Though usually interpreted as embarrassing emotional exhibitions of a weak character out of control, these letters in fact show great eloquence and mastery of language, astutely molded to suit the addressee: to his wife he is tender, to Atticus he is argumentative, to his brother he is formal. Beneath the superficial emotional hyperbole, the subtlety and mobility of the author's intelligence remains evident throughout, and emotion blends with argument and rhetorical power just as deftly here as it does in the published speeches. So too in the next chapter, on consolation, where the subject matter remains emotionally gloomy, we can observe Cicero's renowned rhetorical skills at work. Writing in a recognized philosophical genre, he uses argument and persuasion to try to control and lessen the emotional excess of bereaved friends, mixing conventional Stoic adages with acknowledgment of harsh contemporary realities. The writing is elegant, neat, multilayered, and closely reasoned. For the sake of contrast and comparison, Hutchinson also presents two well-known letters of consolation written to Cicero after the death of his daughter in 45 b.c. (Fam. 5.14 and 4.5). The rhetoric in these, though impressive, nevertheless lacks Cicero's masterly smoothness and tact. In place of his... (shrink)

Progress cannot be reversed; what it has killed, we cannot restore to life. Professionalism, like pollution, is here to stay. However, the fact that professionalism and pollution are facts does not force us to welcome and implement them. Indeed, there are those who would accelerate "progress," their effective definition of which is what is going to happen willwe nillwe. I wonder why progressive thinkers do not, since it is inevitable we shall all die one day, advocate present universal suicide. Preferring (...) to cling to the remains of life rather than renounce it, preferring to strive for light so long as I can see a glimmer, I first recall the qualities ideal in one who is to search and trace the development of science.1 The workshop of the scholar in the history of science is the periods in which his authors lived. He should know those periods' ways of life and belief and education, both the common and the eccentric; their political histories; their variety in aspects; their social and economic structures; their architectures, literatures, and arts. He should feel at home in the houses of those times, sit easily in their chairs, both figurative and wooden, and discern what was then mostly admired or rejected in painting and sculpture and decoration. He should have read not only the books that carried the intellectual products of his period but also those that were then the fare of young minds as they were taught, such books having been commonly of an earlier time. The student who does not command, as a minimum, the main episodes of Holy Scripture, classic mythology, and the corpus of golden Latin is glaucomatose in the modes of thought of Western men educated before 1900. · 1. The text printed here is based on an address delivered at the banquet of the History of Science Society and the Society for the History of Technology, Washington, D.C., December 29, 1972. So as to retain definiteness and immediacy, I have not blurred the original focus upon the history of science and technology, trusting that any reader who can understand me at all will be able to turn the same lens upon his own field of learning or pseudolearning. Clifford Ambrose Truesdell, III, Professor of Rational Mechanics at John Hopkins University, is the author of, among others, Rational Thermodynamics, Six Lectures on Modern Natural Philosophy, and Essays in the History of Mechanics. He has edited or coedited six volumes of the Encyclopedia of Physics; he has founded three international journals of scientific and historical research and continues to edit two of them. Among his many honors, Professor Truesdell is a Foreign Member of seven European National Academies of Science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:WHAT HAPPENED TO PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN AQUINAS AND DESCARTES? JoHN DEELY Loras College Dubuque, Iowa INTRODUCTION a. Pondering the Imponderable HE NEO-THOMISTIC revival launched by Leo XIII eems to have run its main course with an almost exclusive ook at the works of Thomas himself without taking much into serious consideration the work of his Latin commentators. At this moment, we find that a book translated from the work (...) of the last of the Latin commentators, the Tractatus de Signis of John Poinsot, while receiving no significant treatment within the Catholic intellectual world,1 is seriously discussed within the international intellectual movement that has grown up in the last quarter century around the study of signs and reviewed in such mass media as the Times of New York, Los Angeles, and London.2 Such a situation participates in improbability. My own view is that The Semiotic of John Poinsot (as the work in question is subtitled in its contemporary edition) is a harbinger of what 1 For details, see footnote 2 of the article by James Bernard Murphy, "Language, Communication, and Representation in the Semiotic of John Poinsot," in this issue. 2 Thomas A. Sebeok, " A Signifying Man," feature review of Tractatus de Signis in The New York Times Book Review for Easter Sunday, 30 March 1986, pp. 14-15, also in German translation by Jeff Bernard in Semiotische Berichte Jg. 11 2/1987: 234-239, with translator's "Anmerkung" p. 240; Richard J. Morris, The Book Review of The Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 11 May 1986, p. 8; and Desmond Paul Henry, "The Way to Awareness," The Times Literary Supplement no. 4,413 (October 30-November 5, 1987), p. 1201. 543 544 JOHN DEELY the postmodern development may prove to be. Postmodernism, in my view, is not to be, as initially appears, a kind of literary/ sophistic attempt to eviscerate rational discourse in philosophy through a forced control of signifiers made rather to dismantle (under the mantra of " deconstruction ") than to constitute some text taken precisely as severed from any vestige of authorial intention. Postmodernism in the long run will be seen rather as the term inevitably employed through juxtaposition with the internal dimensions of the classical modern paradigm so as to establish thereby a philosophical sense of a change of age and temper of thought defined historically but able to link contemporary requirements of speculative understanding with late Latin themes omitted from the repertoire of analytic tools developed by modernity.3 b. Naming the names Several names here bear explaining, not the least of which is "semiotic." Suffice it to say that this is the name coined by John Locke in 1690 to designate the field of investigation that would result from thematic inquiry into the role of signs in human affairs wherever there is a question of experience or knowledge. This study, or "doctrine of signs," as Locke also called it, turns out to be extensive, since it embraces the whole of human knowledge from its origins in sense to its most refined intellectual forays in whatever field, and the realms of social interaction and cultural development as well.4 Sacramental theology has its foundations in the sign, and experimental study depends on the interpretation of signs throughout its ambit. Whether we look to communication as between God and human beings, between human beings among themselves, between human beings with 3 This is the argument of my work, New Beginnings: Early Modern Philosophy and Postmodern Thought (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1994). 4 " Sommaire: c'est dans la tradition de Peirce, Locke, et Jean de SaintThomas que la logique peut devenir une semiotique qui absorberait l'epistemologie et meme la philosophie de la nature" (Eleuthere Winance, Revue Thomiste, LXXX[juillet-aout 1983], 514-516. BETWEEN AQUINAS AND DESCARTES 545 other species, or between human beings and the physical world, we find ourselves caught up in a web of sign relations. It is hardly without interest to discover that the first thinker who was able to systematize the unity of the object of inquiry the action of signs provides was a thinker from the end of the Latin Age who also was a principal commentator on and... (shrink)

The Classical Theory of function in the nervous system postulates that the nerve impulse is the result of a sequential reversal of the membrane potential due to an increased permeability of the membrane, first to sodium ions, then to potassium ions. The new theory presents a bio-physical model which depicts the nerve impulse as an event involving the motions of electrons and waves, and their interactions with sodium and potassium atoms and ions. The velocity of the nerve impulse (the most (...) important parameter of nerve function) is determined by the product of two constants: c = the speed of light, which is a constant for all nerves; k =a constant for each nerve and is believed to be a specific property of nerve matter related in some way to the atomic process. The theory proposes that the nerve impulse in the axon is dualistic in nature (particles and waves play equally significant roles). The dualistic nature accounts for the three most fundamental characteristics of conduction of the nerve impulse: periodicity (conduction of a nerve impulse over long distances with constant velocity and form); non-summing (two nerve impulses cannot be in the same place at the same time); quantum nature of each nerve impulse — i.e., the unit message of the nerve impulse is an indivisible unit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reconfiguring the Past:Thyrea, Thermopylae and Narrative Patterns in HerodotusJohn DilleryThe recurrence of the wise–advisor, the endless parade of dynasts who destroy themselves through their self–delusion and excess, the inevitability of vengeance are all familiar motifs and story–patterns to those who read Herodotus; and indeed, scholars have long recognized the repetition of character types and story–lines in his History.1 To this ever increasing list of repeated narrative patterns I (...) would like to add another: the duel and the sole survivor in Herodotus. In particular I will examine two passages from two widely separated parts of the history that bear a striking resemblance to one another:2 the contest between Argos and Sparta for the control of a place called Thyrea (1.82),3 and the Spartan defence of the pass at Thermopylae (7.175, 202–32).But in exploring the connection between these two events, and others like them, I would like to move beyond simply providing the taxonomy of a new story pattern; I would like also to raise historiographic questions of major importance. If Herodotus tells us two remarkably similar stories that are widely separated by time and narrative space—indeed one that comes from what we may call the more legendary portion, and one from the more historical—does that mean he wants us to see the events as similar or even connected in some way? If the connection between them cannot reliably be considered "intended," what do we make of the similarities? Was Herodotus a liar who had certain "default" settings into which his mind naturally slipped when inventing? To what degree is a robust or "thick" description of the duel useful, one that aims at recovering the cultural assumptions that shape Herodotus' understanding and so explains perhaps the similarities between the conflicts?4 What, finally, can be learned by trying to see how Thyrea can be seen as a model for Thermopylae?Indeed it is with this last issue that I believe most is to be gained towards a better understanding of Herodotus' overall aims in his History. The narrative of Thyrea reflects an unconscious tendency of Herodotus to present duels and their sole survivors as tests that require "ratification" by a second contest. The "Thyrea" pattern, when applied to the battle of Thermopylae, reveals the more famous conflict to be one that Herodotus reconfigured from a defeat into a victory. Thermopylae, after the fashion of Thyrea, was a contest that tested the national character of both Sparta and Persia; it was a battle that Herodotus tried to show the Spartans actually won; and as proof of the Spartans' victory, the true outcome of the battle was in a sense ratified by the refighting of the contest at the battle of Plataea. At the conclusion of the paper I will briefly examine the Thermopylae Ode (PMG 531) of Simonides and show by way of corroboration that Herodotus was not alone in reconstituting the battle as a victory.Using Thyrea as an interpretive guide to Thermopylae will not only help illuminate this reconfiguring of the more famous battle, it will also help to shed light on two interrelated problems of more general importance to the study of Herodotus that I mentioned at the outset: the issues of narrative patterning and of Herodotus "the Liar." At issue, ultimately, is the difference between history and fiction. I will show that although Herodotus may be engaged in activity that overlaps significantly with the creation of literature, inasmuch as distinct and therefore presumably unhistorical patterns for the duel can be seen to emerge in his work, he was nonetheless attempting to present what he believed were facts about real events and real persons from the past. The reconfiguring of Thermopylae, while partially a literary enterprise, must finally be understood as an attempt to capture the truths of history.5The Story of Thyrea (Hdt. 1.82)Herodotus reports that at around the time of Croesus' request for help against the Persians (c. 547 B.C.), Sparta and Argos were in dispute (eris) over the borderland of Thyrea, an area that had been under Argos' control but which at some point prior to that... (shrink)

In recent issues of the Journal of Philosophy John Dewey and Arthur Bentley have been making an attack on certain logical positivists and other logicians on the ground, of all things, that they display amazing contempt for clear and consistent definition of the terms they use. That logicians, whose business it is to define consistency, should themselves be inconsistent in the use of their basic terms is not really so surprising. It may merely prove them to be human, the (...) victims of a simple failure to practice what they preach. If this were the case, the situation would not be so bad, for who better than a drunkard knows the evils of drink? And yet it is equally human to require preacher to be practitioner as well. So that the spankings which Bentley and Dewey are currently administering to Carnap, Cohen, Nagel, Ducasse, Lewis and Morris are quite in order. In fact in the case of the logical positivists they are long overdue. Carnap, particularly, has long outraged patience as well as common sense with rambling verbal analysis of the meaning of terms used in the exposition of logical positivism. (shrink)

A Unified Treatment of Moore's Paradox is the culmination of a decades-long engagement with Moore's paradox by the world's leading authority on the subject, the late John Williams. The book offers a comprehensive account of Moore's paradox in thought and speech, both in its comissive and omissive forms. Williams argues that Moorean absurdity comes in degrees, and shows that contrary to one tradition in the literature on Moore's Paradox, we cannot explain Moorean absurdity in speech in terms of (...) Moorean absurdity in thought, but must account for each form of absurdity in its own terms. Williams also explores the extent to which Moore's paradox may arise for attitudes other than belief, such as desire. Written with Williams' trademark clarity and wit, the book is packed with arguments bearing on a wide range of topics in epistemology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Overview The evolution of multicellularity raises questions regarding genomic and developmental commonalities and discordances, selective advantages and disadvantages, physical determinants of development, and the origins of morphological novelties. It also represents a change in the definition of individuality, because a new organism emerges from interactions among single cells. This volume considers these and other questions, with contributions that explore the origins and consequences of the evolution of multicellularity, addressing a range of topics, organisms, and experimental protocols. Each section focuses on (...) selected topics or particular lineages that present a significant insight or challenge. The contributors consider the fossil record of the paleontological circumstances in which animal multicellularity evolved; cooptation, recurrent patterns, modularity, and plausible pathways for multicellular evolution in plants; theoretical approaches to the amoebozoa and fungi (cellular slime molds having long provided a robust model system for exploring the evolution of multicellularity), plants, and animals; genomic toolkits of metazoan multicellularity; and philosophical aspects of the meaning of individuality in light of multicellular evolution. Contributors Maja Adamska, Argyris Arnellos, Juan A. Arias, Eugenio Azpeitia, Mariana Benítez, Adriano Bonforti, John Tyler Bonner, Peter L. Conlin, A. Keith Dunker, Salva Duran-Nebreda, Ana E. Escalante, Valeria Hernández-Hernández, Kunihiko Kaneko, Andrew H. Knoll, Stephan G. König, Daniel J. G. Lahr, Ottoline Leyser, Alan C. Love, Raul Montañez, Emilio Mora van Cauwelaert, Alvaro Moreno, Vidyanand Nanjundiah, Aurora M. Nedelcu, Stuart A. Newman, Karl J. Niklas, William C. Ratcliff, Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo, Ricard Solé . (shrink)