Chemical kinds (e.g. gold) are generally treated as having timelessly fixed identities. Biological kinds (e.g. goldfinches) are generally treated as evolved and/or evolving entities. So what kind of kind is a biochemical kind? This paper defends the thesis that biochemical molecules are clustered chemical kinds, some of which–namely, evolutionarily conserved units–are also biological kinds.On this thesis, a number of difficulties that have recently occupied philosophers concerned with proteins and kinds are shown to be resolved or dissolved.

In ‘Rethinking Disease’, Powell and Scarffe1 propose what in effect is a modification of Jerome Wakefield’s2 3 harmful dysfunction analysis (HDA) of medical (including mental) disorder. The HDA maintains that ‘disorder’ (or ‘disease’ in Powell and Scarffe’s terminology) is a hybrid factual and value concept requiring that a biological dysfunction, understood as a failure of some feature to perform a naturally selected function, causes harm to the individual as evaluated by social values. Powell and Scarffe accept both the HDA’s evolutionary (...) biological function component and its incorporation of a value component. Their proposed ‘new twist’ is to revise the value component: ‘Our proposed definition of disease is as follows: a biomedical state is a disease only if it implicates a biological dysfunction that is, or would be, properly disvalued’. So, they propose that a disorder is a ‘properly disvalued dysfunction’ rather than a ‘harmful dysfunction’, an approach they term ‘thickly normative’ in contrast to the thin normative approach of the HDA. There has been a surge of interest recently in better understanding the ‘harm’ component of the HDA. Powell and Scarffe’s analysis is a helpful contribution to this discussion. We focus here exclusively on their proposal regarding the analysis of the concept of disorder and ignore many important related issues that the authors address, ranging from prioritising resource allocation between disorders and non-disorders to whether the concept of disorder should be replaced by a generic welfarist concept. The resolution of these additional issues depends on first understanding ‘disorder’. The authors’ proposed changes to the HDA also deserve evaluation because the HDA, which has been endorsed by leading nosologists,4 plays an influential role in nosological debate across categories of disorder ranging, for example, from sexual paraphilias5 to psychopathy.6 A basic problem is that Powell and Scarffe misinterpret …. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to William Rowe, with great affection, respect, and admiration. The philosophy of religion, once considered a deviation from an otherwise analytically rigorous discipline, has flourished over the past two decades. This collection of new essays by twelve distinguished philosophers of religion explores three broad themes: religious attitudes of faith, belief, acceptance, and love; human and divine freedom; and the rationality of religious belief. Contributors include: William Alston, Robert Audi, Jan Cover, Martin Curd, Peter van (...) Inwagen, Norman Kretzmann, George Nakhnikian, John Hawthorne, Philip Quinn, James Ross, Eleonore Stump, and William Wainwright. (shrink)

Is the no-minimum claim true? I have argued that it is not. Andrew Cullison contends that my argument fails, since human sentience is variable; while Michael Schrynemakers has contended that the failure is my neglect of vagueness. Both, I argue, are wrong.

Phenomenology of practice is a useful, rigorous way of deeply understanding human phenomena. Therefore, it allows research to be conducted into nursing's most sensitive and decisive aspects. While it is a widely used research approach and methodology in nursing, it is seldom addressed and made use of in its practical and applied value. This article aimed to approach the global outlook of van Manen's hermeneutic‐phenomenological method to better understand its theoretical background and to address and support the contribution this method (...) can make to nursing, if rigorously applied. For a professional discipline like nursing, van Manen's approach is especially interesting because, in addition to contributing to the body of knowledge of nursing, it provides a special kind of knowledge that allows nurses to act in a more reflective manner, and with tact and skill, in certain situations and relationships that arise in their daily practice. A more in‐depth understanding of this research methodology may help nurse‐researchers make good use of it and also harness knowledge derived from this type of research. This comes as a result of assuming that phenomenological texts, the final product of the research, have tremendous educational potential for people who read them carefully. (shrink)

In “Genetic Privacy, Disease Prevention, and the Principle of Rescue,” Madison Kilbride argues that patients have a duty to warn biological family members about clinically actionable adverse genetic findings. The duty does not stem from the special obligations that we may have to family members, she argues, but rather follows from the principle of rescue, which she understands as the idea that one ought to prevent, reduce, or mitigate the risk of harm to another person when the expected harm is (...) serious and the cost or risk to oneself is sufficiently moderate. We doubt, however, whether the principle of rescue can ground a duty to warn in the cases Kilbride envisages, and we suggest that Kilbride may have underappreciated the role that special obligations could play in generating a duty to warn family members. (shrink)

While much of the social and political attention surrounding the nationwide opioid epidemic has focused on the dramatic increase in overdose deaths among white, middle-class, suburban and rural users, the impact of the epidemic in Black communities has largely been unrecognized. Though rates of opioid use at the national scale are higher for whites than they are for Blacks, rates of increase in opioid deaths have been rising more steeply among Blacks than whites over the last five years. Moreover, the (...) rate of opioid overdose deaths among Blacks already exceeds that of whites in several states. The lack of discussion of Black overdose deaths in the national opioid discourse further marginalizes Black people, and is highly consistent with a history of framing the addictions of people of color as deserving of criminal punishment, rather than worthy of medical treatment. This article argues that, because racial inequalities are embedded in American popular and political cultures as well as in medicine, the federal and state governments should develop more culturally targeted programs to benefit Black communities in the opioid crisis. Such programs include the use of faith-based organizations to deliver substance use prevention and treatment services, the inclusion of racial impact assessments in the implementation of drug policy proposals, and the formal consideration of Black people's interaction with the criminal justice system in designing treatment options. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend a modest anti-realist conception of aesthetic properties – e.g. being unified, moving, delicate, tragic, etc – in order to motivate a contextualist semantic view about aesthetic judgments. We argue that aesthetic properties are plausibly seen as viewpoint-dependent even though our epistemic access to the presence of aesthetic properties is decidedly more complicated than other, less controversial instances of viewpoint-dependent properties. On the basis of our anti-realist conception, we argue, utilizing the Kaplanian distinction between (...) character and content within a possible worlds semantic theory, that the contents expressed in aesthetic thought and language are sensitive to certain contextual features of a particular thinker’s or speaker’s situation. Finally, we address a number of formidable objections to our view, objections concerning certain context-sensitivity diagnostics, and sho... (shrink)

This interdisciplinary, empirical and theoretical approach to forgiveness and revenge considers the roles of truth, restitution and ritual in the promotion of forgiveness and deterrence of revenge in multiple contexts.

Terror management theory and research can rectify shortcomings in Atran & Norenzayan's (A&N's) analysis of religion. (1) Religious and secular worldviews are much more similar than the target article supposes; (2) a propensity for embracing supernatural beliefs is likely to have conferred an adaptive advantage over the course of evolution; and (3) the claim that supernatural agent beliefs serve a terror management function independent of worldview bolstering is not empirically supported.

Language for Learning in the Primary School is the long awaited second edition of _Language for Learning_, first published in 2004 and winner of the NASEN/TES Book Award for Teaching and Learning in 2005. This handbook has become an indispensable resource, packed full of practical suggestions on how to support 5-11 year old children with speech, language and communication difficulties. Colour coded throughout for easy referencing, this unique book supports inclusive practice by helping teachers to: Identify children with speech, language (...) and communication needs Understand speech, language and communication skills Consider roles and responsibilities at primary school Plan a differentiated and adapted curriculum Consider the language demands across subjects Adopt a whole school approach Make use of a wide range of positive strategies Empower children to access the curriculum Language for Learning in the Primary School comes complete with a wealth of photocopiable resources, giving teachers and teaching assistants the confidence to help children with SLCN more effectively in mainstream settings. It will also be an extremely useful resource for speech and language therapists, specialist teachers and educational psychologists. (shrink)

Very little research has attempted to describe normal human variation in female genitalia, and no studies have compared the visual images that women might use in constructing their ideas of average and acceptable genital morphology to see if there are any systematic differences. The objective of the present work was to determine if visual depictions of the vulva differed according to their source so as to alert medical professionals and their patients to how these depictions might capture variation and thus (...) influence perceptions of ‘normality’. A comparative analysis was conducted by measuring (a) published visual materials from human anatomy textbooks in a university library, (b) feminist publications (print and online) depicting vulval morphology and (c) online pornography, focusing on the most visited and freely accessible sites in the UK. Post hoc tests showed that labial protuberance was significantly less (p<0.001, equivalent to approximately 7 mm) in images from online pornography compared to feminist publications. All five measures taken of vulval features were significantly correlated (p<0.001) in the online pornography sample, indicating a less varied range of differences in organ proportions than the other sources where not all measures were correlated. Women and health professionals should be aware that specific sources of imagery may depict different types of genital morphology and may not accurately reflect true variation in the population, and consultations for genital surgeries should include discussion about the actual and perceived range of variation in female genital morphology. (shrink)

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Beginning the nineteenth-century and continuing down to the present, many authors writing on the history of geology and paleontology have attributed the theory that fossils were inorganic formations produced within the earth, rather than by the deposition of living organisms, to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Some have even gone so far as to claim this was the consensus view in the classical period up through the Middle Ages. In fact, such a notion was entirely foreign to ancient and medieval (...) thought and only appeared within the manifold of ‘Renaissance episteme,’ the characteristics of which have often been projected backwards by some historians onto earlier periods. This paper endeavors to correct this error, explain the development of the Renaissance view, describe certain ancient precedents thereof, and trace the history of the misinterpretation in the literature. -/- . (shrink)

SummaryBorn to a noble family in the Italian Trentino, Prati studied philosophy in Austria and Germany. Returning to Italy, he joined the carbonari, a network of revolutionary secret societies. Forced into exile in Switzerland, he worked as an educator alongside Pestalozzi. Following his expulsion from Switzerland, Prati sought refuge in Britain, becoming acquainted with Coleridge, the Benthamite utilitarians, and the Owenites. Following the July Revolution, Prati went to Paris, where he became a Saint-Simonian. Returning to Britain, he sought to convert (...) the British to Saint-Simonism, before undertaking a series of other literary projects. He eventually returned to Italy, where he entered into correspondence with the Roman Catholic philosopher Antonio Rosmini. Prati left behind him a trail of letters, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books, written in four different European languages. These have been hitherto neglected by scholars, and constitute the basis of the current article. (shrink)

Cognitive psychologists tend to treat intentionality as a control variable during experiments, yet ignore it when generating mechanistic descriptions of performance. Wynn's work brings this conflict into striking relief and, when considered in relation to recent neurophysiological findings, makes it clear that intentionality can be regarded mechanistically if one defines it as the planning of distal effects.

Fragile X‐linked mental retardation is an enigmatic inheritable syndrome in which severe mental retardation, a cytogenetically detectable fragile site at Xq27.3 (FraX) and a number of dysmorphic features are associated. Genetic analysis shows that the mode of inheritance is more complex than a straightforward X‐linked recessive trait and probably involves a two‐step process for which several models have been proposed. Early attempts ‘at cloning the fragile site’ provided several DNA segments lying in its general vicinity, and large scale DNA mapping (...) methods were extensively applied in an effort to generate maps including this region. These efforts were complemented by more focussed methods such as microdissection; together these approaches have now provided a number of DNA segments within a 5cM interval around FraX, and with the help of these new probes the site is indeed being cloned. Unravelling the nature of the sequence(s) responsible for the mental retardation syndrome will probably take some time, however. (shrink)

Hartmann's way of conceiving what he terms "the actual ought-to-be [aktuales Seinsollen]" offers a fruitful approach to crucial issues in the phenomenology of action. The central issue to be dealt with concerns the description of the "constitution" of anticipated possibilities as projects for action. Such potentialities are termed "problematic possibilities" and are contrasted with "open possibilities" in most of the works published by Husserl as well as those published by Alfred Schutz. The description given by Alfred Schutz emphasized that the (...) projecting of possibilities is thoroughly conditioned by the agent's habitual beliefs and interests. Schutz, however left open the possibility that other factors might affect the projecting of courses of action and the choosing of one in preference to others. In particular, he left open the possibility that the agent come to take an interest in possibilities in which she had no prior interest. More recent interpretations of his position on this issue have left this possibility undiscussed or else excluded it altogether. The result has been that a sort of value nihilism (subjectivism, sociologism, lingualism, anthropologism, historicism, psychologism, etc.) came to prevail in the phenomenological description of actions. A quite parallel development occurred in interpretations of Heidegger's account of actions (of "explication [Auslegung]" in the vocabulary of Being and Time). Heidegger expressly and emphatically rejected most ways of conceiving values in discussing the forms of action (circumspection and assertion in the vocabulary of Sein und Zeit). it came quite generally to be assumed that he subscribed to some variation of nihilism regarding values despite his insistence in the "Letter on Humanism" that he meant no such thing. The literature on this subject has concentrated on Scheler's work to the complete exclusion of Hartmann's axiology — as happened in Parvis Ermad's Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Values, His Critique of Intentionality, foreword by Walter Biernel (Glen Ellyn, Illinois: Torey Press, 1981). Scheler's view entails the radical separation of ontic traits from axiotic traits, of what-is from what-ought-to-be. However, for Hartmann, the set of ontic traits that becomes actual when laws about what-ought-to-be are satisfied is identical with the set of traits that ought-to-be, Hartmann's way of conceiving the ought-to-be, the actual ought-to-be, and the three-fold structure of the finalistic nexus seems entirely compatible with Heidegger's way of thinking about actions. They are also an enlightening supplement to Schutz's description of "Choosing Among Projects of Action" (in Collected Papers 1, 67-96). That description requires that choice and action be thoroughly conditioned by psychological, social, and historical facts about the agent. However, nothing of this vital determination of actions is sacrificed when these concepts that are so central to Hartmann's "absolutism" with respect to values are introduced into the description. Their introduction provides an elaboration that Schutz himself neglected, perhaps due to pragmatic deference to biases which were prevalent then in the intellectual climate of philosophy and sociology in the U.S. Still, the transformation they bring is a significant improvement. It shows decisively that being conditioned linguistically, psychologically, socially, and historically does not enclose the choice among projects within a "Hermeneutical Circle" such as would exclude the possibility that agents be open to previously unfamiliar values. Hartmann's conception of the plurality as well as the absoluteness (or "objectivity") of primary goods allows, put in Kantian terms, that an agent may, however rarely, take an interest in possibilities such as she may never before have been interested in at all; or, put in Heideggerian terms, that she may come to care about possibilities such as have never concerned her before. (shrink)

Die nachfolgenden Texte sind ein Vorabdruck aus dem Buche "Der Naturwissenschaftler vor der religiösen Frage", welches vom Verfasser unter Förderung durch einen Forschungsauftrag der Klopstock-Stiftung zur Zeit bearbeitet wird. Teil I und II gehören zum Kapitel "Naturerkenntnis als Glaubensanfechtung" ; Teil III gehört zum Kapitel "Die Physik im 20..Jahr-hundert". - Das Buch soll im Herbst 1963 erscheinen.

PROMISE AND PERIL includes essays that explore the idea of republicanism across the history of political thought, focusing on the challenges and dilemmas endemic to popular government.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy by John InglisMark D. JordanJohn Inglis. Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, volume 81. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 1998. Pp. x + 324. Cloth, $99.50.Modern philosophers have shown themselves quite unphilosophical about the academic history of their own discipline. Content with grand stories that move from Plato to themselves, (...) they have treated institutional histories, recent histories, and bibliographical histories as unworthy of attention. John Inglis sets out to change all that for the study of medieval philosophy. He demonstrates by the book’s end that we have failed to recognize our historiographical procedures as conventions—with very particular histories of their own.The first part of the book traces the genealogy of the dominant (one might say, hegemonic) model in recent studies of medieval philosophy. The genealogy is prefaced with two chapters that show how various were the motives for reconstructions of medieval thought before 1850 in authors such as Billuart, Goudin, and Brucker or Hegel, Ritter, and Hauréau. These chapters might be dismissed by contemporary scholars as so much antiquarianism. There can be no dismissing the relevance to contemporary work of Inglis’s main genealogy, which runs with surprising directness from Joseph Kleutgen (1811–1883) and Albert Stöckl (1823–1895) to Norman Kretzmann and Anthony Kenny.It adds to the piquancy of Inglis’s argument that most specialists in medieval philosophy will not even recognize the names of Kleutgen and Stöckl, much less feel kinship with them. But Inglis shows convincingly what Kleutgen and Stöckl did to make the study of medieval philosophy possible in modern universities. Kleutgen mapped the medieval texts onto a system of “spheres,” of fields or topics, recognizable to professors of philosophy. This means that he necessarily privileged epistemology, as he necessarily connected a medieval thinker’s views across the “spheres” into a system—or a failed attempt at one. Kleutgen then emphasized the reason/revelation dichotomy and an allegiance to what he understood as the system of Thomas Aquinas. Put these elements together and you have a surprisingly familiar story. It remained for Stöckl to write it up as an erudite and monumental narration.Inglis follows this „Kleutgen-Stöckl model” through a number of more familiar authors, including De Wulf, Gilson, Boehner, Weinberg, and the editors of the Cambridge [End Page 530] History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Of course, in reducing the genealogy to a list of famous names I ignore two of its great virtues. The first is the detail with which it retells the institutional circumstances and the forgotten intermediaries of the scholarly tradition. Behind the genealogy, around its borders, there stands Inglis’s enormous effort of original research, much of it archival. The genealogy’s second virtue is the dialectical subtlety with which it locates continuities under contradictions. Gilson is usually touted as the antithesis of De Wulf, and Kretzmann of Gilson. Inglis makes such antitheses seem superficial by comparing them with an abiding if tacit agreement about how medieval texts can be appropriated within modern philosophy. To seal the comparison, Inglis suggests in the book’s second part what a real antithesis to the Kleutgen-Stöckl model might be. He reconstructs, in his last two chapters, Thomas’s accounts of human knowledge and of theology’s relations to philosophy in opposition to that model’s prescriptions.No review can represent—or even adequately praise—the enormous learnedness of this book. Moreover, since the book already discusses so much, it must seem ungrateful to suggest that it ought to discuss anything else. Let me end then rather by posing two questions beyond the book’s end. First, does Inglis’s genealogy mean to suggest that the Kleutgen-Stöckl model is now chiefly received in English-speaking philosophy departments? I wonder, for example, how far Inglis might judge Alain de Libera’s Penser au Moyen Age (Paris: Éds. de Seuil, 1991) an alternative to that model. Certainly de Libera shows more self-consciousness about the culturally determined history behind our historiography. His emphasis on the thirteenth-century recovery... (shrink)

Ballard et al. model eye position as a deictic pointer for spatial perception. Evidence from research on gaze control indicates, however, that shifts in actual eye position are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce shifts in spatial perception. Deictic context is instead provided by the interaction between two deictic pointers; one representing actual eye position, and the other, intended eye position.