Is it permissible to use a human embryo in stem cell research, or in general as a means for benefit of others? Acknowledging each embryo as an object of moral concern, Louis M.Guenin argues that it is morally permissible to decline intrauterine transfer of an embryo formed outside the body, and that from this permission and the duty of beneficence, there follows a consensus justification for using donated embryos in service of humanitarian ends. He then proceeds to show (...) how this justification commands assent even within moral and religious views commonly thought to oppose embryo use. Beneath his moral reasoning lies a carefully constructed metaphysical foundation incorporating accounts of the ontology of development, embryos, and species. He also incisively discusses nonreprocloning, reprocloning, ectogenesis, and related scientific frontiers. This compelling philosophical study will interest all concerned to understand virtue and obligation in the relief of suffering. (shrink)

I consider the argument, thought to clinch the moral case for use of a human embryo solely as a means, that only a human individual can be a person, because it can happen at any time before formation of the primitive streak that an embryo splits into monozygotic twins, no embryo in which the primitive streak has not formed is a human individual, and therefore no embryo in which the primitive streak has not formed is a person. I explore the (...) following proffered arguments for : indivisibility is a necessary condition of individuality, nonidentity of an embryo with successor twins impugns the embryo’s individuality, and totipotency of an embryo’s constituents is inconsistent with the embryo’s being a human individual. These arguments are tested and found wanting; so too is an alternative to , the argument that indivisibility is intrinsic to personhood. Whereupon is unsustained. In search of ways to rehabilitate the nonindividuation argument, I canvass alternative metaphysical views and inquire further into biological individuality, but find that the argument cannot be saved. I conclude by analyzing where this leaves matters concerning the morality of embryo use. (shrink)

The rationale of patents on transgenic organisms leads to the startling notion of the human qua infringement. The moral reasons by which we may tenably reject such notion are not conclusive as to human life forms outside the body. A close look at recombinant DNA experimentation reveals ingenious processes, but not entities that the body lacks. Except for artificial genes, the genes of biotechnology are found on chromosomes, albeit nonconsecutively, and their uninterrupted transcripts appear in messenger RNA. An enhanced form (...) of protection for ingenious processes, the human methods patent, is proposed and defended as a replacement for product patents. The proposed patent would pertain to biotechnology manufacturing and genetic intervention in somatic and germ cells. A counterpart could govern nonhuman life forms. It is argued that compulsory licensing protections should be a condition of such patent. Contrary to the conservative assumption that statutory sobriquets suffice, the reckoning of what qualifies as a patentable ingenious process will continue to require systematic scientific guidance. (shrink)

Set theoretic formulation of Arrow's theorem, viewedin light of a taxonomy of transitive relations,serves to unmask the theorem's understatedgenerality. Under the impress of the independenceof irrelevant alternatives, the antipode of ceteris paribus reasoning, a purported compilerfunction either breaches some other rationalitypremise or produces the effet Condorcet. Types of cycles, each the seeming handiwork of avirtual voter disdaining transitivity, arerigorously defined. Arrow's theorem erects adilemma between cyclic indecision anddictatorship. Maneuvers responsive theretoare explicable in set theoretic terms. None ofthese gambits rival in (...) simplicity the unassistedescape of strict linear orderings, which, by virtueof the Arrow–Sen reflexivity premise, are notcaptured by the theorem. Yet these are therelations among whose n-tuples the effetCondorcet is most frequent. A generalization andstronger theorem encompasses these and all otherlinear orderings and total tierings. Revisions tothe Arrow–Sen definitions of `choice set' and`rationalization' similarly enable one to generalizeSen's demonstration that some rational choicefunction always exists. Similarly may onegeneralize Debreu's theorems establishing conditionsunder which a binary relation may be represented bya continuous real-valued order homomorphism. (shrink)

A theory of justice for the basic structure of society may constrain though not directly govern colleges. The principle of "equal opportunity" commonly applied to jobs either does or does not apply to varsity opportunities. If it applies, it interdicts sex discrimination but, one fallacious argument notwithstanding, it states no obligation to expend resources on new teams. If it does not apply, an analogue of Rawls's difference principle may appropriately constrain inequalities between the sexes. In either case the preferences of (...) a majority of the sex affected by any inequality are pivotal in fashioning any tenable distributive policy. Those preferences are neglected by a government policy that assimilates equal opportunity to equality of (i) the ratio of male:female varsity athletes and (ii) the ratio of male:female students. It is argued that such policy rests on affirming the consequent. Its effects include misallocations of resources and overvaluation of athletics. It is argued that what should approximately be equal is competitive access, the ratio of available positions to aspirants, for each sex. Two versions of a principle of equal competitive access are proposed, the recommended one of which pertains to teams whose net consumption of resources is positive. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly apparent that human embryo research has the very real potential to generate significant humanitarian benefits. Equally, it is clear that the destruction of embryos that such research inevitably involves is highly controversial within societies such as ours, where many hold either that from the moment of conception the embryo is morally considerable or that as a member of the human species it should not be treated as a mere means. How might we balance the potential humanitarian (...) benefits of embryo research against the various strongly felt moral objections to such use?In this rich and highly sophisticated work, Guenin argues for the experimental use of a bounded range of embryos, namely those which were intentionally produced for research ex utero and for which the progenitor has explicitly banned any intrauterine transfer. He argues that since they are not possible persons, it is morally permissible to perform experiments on this set of embryos .1 Indeed, he suggests that given the suffering that such research might relieve, it would be uncaring for us not to undertake it .As one might expect, the focus of the book is primarily on stem cell research. The ‘pluripotent’ stem cells one finds in …. (shrink)

The phenomenon of misconduct in scientific research illustrates how great can be the social damage of not knowing the incidence of a malady. Many urgings about such phenomenon have predicated views about the extent of institutional and governmental vigilance on observers' differing surmises about how frequently misconduct occurs. Such is the measurement error of extant data about incidence1 that one can venture little more than the deliberately imprecise conclusion that “misconduct is neither common nor rare.”.

Recent public hearings on misconduct charges belie the conjecture that due process will perforce defeat informed scientific reasoning. One notable case that reviewed an obtuse description of experimental methods displays some of the subtleties of differentiating carelessness from intent to deceive. There the decision of a studious nonscientist panel managed to reach sensible conclusions despite conflicting expert testimony. The significance of such a result may be to suggest that to curtail due process would be both objectionable and unproductive.

Two utilitarian defenses, traceable to Bentham and Mill, arecommonly offered for patents. It is contended that patents induce innovation, and thatpatents induce disclosure of innovation. Patents on some or all of the human genomepose particular challenges for these defenses. In the first instance, patents on nucleotidesequences entail the perverse notion of human reproduction qua infringement. In the second place, when such patents are available (as is presently the case), the two defenses involve a counterfactual claim, viz., that if there were (...) no such patents, biotechnological progress would wane. Even if these challenges are met, concerns about respect for humanity generate opposition to property interests in compounds manipulated outside the human body but significantly homologous to compounds found in humans. This stance about things human might appear to commit the fallacy of division. In a dialogue between a Kantian and a utilitarian, arguments for and against property interests in the human genome are presented. (shrink)

“Any bad settlement,” the wise patent litigator Elmer S. Albritton once observed, “is better than a good lawsuit.” Given the notorious strain of court proceedings and the recognition that settlement does not always prove attainable, a popular movement has recently arisen in favor of “alternative dispute resolution” . Indeed it has seemed to many who have participated as committee members, witnesses, or respondents in scientific misconduct cases that there ought to be some method of resolving such matters that is less (...) vexing than traditional adjudication. (shrink)

Engaging a listener’s trust imposes moral demands upon a presenter in respect of truthtelling and completeness. An agent lies by an utterance that satisfies what are herein defined as signal and mendacity conditions; an agent deceives when, in satisfaction of those conditions, the agent’s utterances contribute to a false belief or thwart a true one. I advert to how we may fool ourselves in observation and in the perception of our originality. Communication with others depends upon a convention or practice (...) of presumed nonuniversal truthfulness. In support of an asserted duty of nondeceptiveness, I offer a reconciliation of pertinent Kantian passages, a sketch of arguments within utilitarianism, contractarianism, and other views, and an account arguing for application of that duty to assertions, implicatures, omissions, equivocation, prevarication, and sophistry insofar as they affect listeners’ doxastic states. For scholarship, this duty is exceptionless. I describe the kernel of intellectual honesty as a virtuous disposition such that when presented with an incentive to deceive, the agent will not deceive. Intellectual honesty delivers candor when it counts. I contrast this with complementary virtues and the surpassing virtue of ingenuousness. An account is given of the connection between intellectual honesty and an influential physical model of integrity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Supplement News from the Russell Editorial Project by Louis Greenspan As 1 WRITE, the Project room is completely silent. Richard Rempel is pu~suing the elusive tracks of Russell as ghost-writer, Research Associate Mark Lippincott is deciphering some manuscripts and our typesetter, Arlene Duncan, is keying in new texts for Volume 4. Albert Lewis vigilant-' Iy works daily on the computer, and over in the Russell Archives Ken Blackwell, (...) with the assistance ofSheila Turcon, continues to sleuth out new Russell writings, which we accept eagerly and appreciatively. In the age of the wordprocessor, silence has replaced the clacking of typewriters and the din of machinery. Silence signifies that there are people hard at work. Indeed we are! 1990 will be an important year. Volume 2, Philosophical Papers, 1896-99 (editedby Nicholas Griffin and Albert Lewis) has reached the publisher; we plan to have the first volume of the Bibliography (by Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja) and Volume 6, Logical andPhilosophical Papers, 1909-13 (edited by John Slater) there by the end of the year; and Volume 3, Toward the "Principles", 1900-02 (edited by Gregory Moore), will not be far behind in 1991. Also in 1991 Volume 14, Pacifism and Revolution, 1916-18 (edited by L. Greenspan and R.A. Rempel with M. Lippincott) will be ready, and Volume 4, Foundations ofLogic, 190205 (edited by Alasdair Urquhart) will be coming to the home stretch. We will soon be working as quickly as Russell did! There are problems. In an age when even the Pentagon is suffering from cutbacks, so are we. The copy must be prepared by one typesetter who also acts as the Project secretary. That one person is handling a load that had previously been handled by three. Our university, like most others, is slashing budgets so that it has been forced to reduce its contributions to our funding. While we remain relatively fortunate in our level of university support, we in the Project have had to tighten our already taut belts even more. McMaster's budget cuts could mean that we cannot hire summer students for our research. This loss would be difficult but bearable. Next year some of the grants will run out. Then we will be even more dependent on a university, like others in Ontario, which is retrenching through a hiring 96 Russell summer 1990 freeze and other mortifications. Fortunately our May 1989 grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada remain unchanged. But the Russell Project has demonstrated that it is a hardy survivor. In the past we have endured cuts from S.S.H.R.C.C. and cutbacks from the university. But we have persevered and certainly accelerated our output significantly as our understanding of this massive enterprise has continued to develop. We welcome the fact that, through McMaster's support, John Passmore will be back this summer to give guidance, support and wisdom. The Bertrand Russell Editorial Project McMaster University... (shrink)

Formal accounts of negotiation tend to invoke the strategic models of conflict which have been impressively developed by game theorists in this half-century. For two decades, however, research on artificial intelligence (AI) has produced a different formal picture of the agent and of the rational deliberations of agents. AI's models are not based simply on intensities of preference and quantities of probability. AI's models consider that agents use language in various ways, that agents use and convey knowledge, that agents plan, (...) search, focus, and argue. Agents can choose their language, apply their knowledge, change their plans, continue their search, shift their focus, and rebut another's arguments. (shrink)

Recent writings about Thomas More have questioned his integrity and motivation and have challenged the long-held view of him as a humane, wise, and heroic "man for all seasons." This new book responds to these revisionist studies by closely and persuasively analyzing More's writings as well as Holbein's portraits of More and his family. "Martz cuts down the revived charge of More as a bloodthirsty hunter of heretics, a furious, sexually repressed, and frustrated man.... This penetrating rebuttal of the revisionists (...) deserves high commendation."—_Choice_ "Martz draws a compelling picture of More's attempts during his lonely imprisonment to adjust to his human fear of death and to see his own plight in the perspective of the universal human condition. In these essays More's voice and personality speak to us from his own literate and humorous prose."—M. Edmund Hussey, _Antioch__ Review_ "In his gracefully written _Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man_, Louis L. Martz provides a sharply different account of the 'dark side' of More.... [He] lays out the case for a more complex, ironic construction of More's texts."—Stanley Stewart, _Studies in English Literature_ "This... book is a gemstone."—Terence R. Murphy, _History: Reviews of New Books_ "Correcting the view of Thomas More as a cold-blooded prosecutor of heresy, Martz here considers the gentle, affectionate, yet upright man pictured in Holbein's family portraits and implicit in More's prose."—Judith Fair, _Theological Studies_. (shrink)

This article attempts to show the importance of the concept of superstition in understanding a range of psychological problems. With this aim, we critically analyze several constructs that, without actually using the term “superstition,” concern this phenomenon and its role in the development of mental disorders. First we discuss “Thought–Action Fusion” and “magical thinking,” two concepts from the cognitive tradition that view superstition as basically an ideational phenomenon. Second, we look at “Experiential Avoidance,” a post-Skinnerian concept that understands superstition as (...) a type of avoidance behavior for certain private events. Third, we discuss superstition as an emotional phenomenon, in particular, Jean-Paul Sartre’s phenomenological analysis of emotions as magical operations. Finally, we review a cultural approach to superstition and its influence on psychopathology. In this perspective, superstition is seen as a cultural form linked to the historical–social context, which is fostered by certain social practices or institutions, including (perhaps surprisingly) certain features of modernity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Moral Sentiments and the Structure of the Treatise LOUIS E. LOEB ACCORDING TO NORMAN KEMP SMITH and Thomas Hearn, Hume classified moral sentiments as direct passions.' According to Pb.II A,rdal, Hume classified the basic moral sentiments of approval and disapproval of persons as indirect passions. if either of these interpretations is correct, there is an intimate connection between Books II and 111 of Hume's Treatise. This is (...) because the direct and indirect passions (together with the will) are the subject of Book 11 and moral sentiments are discussed in Book 111. So if moral sentiments are special cases of either direct or indirect passions, the treatment of passions in Book Ii is central to the understanding of Book 111. 1 contend, on the contrary, that Hume's moral sentiments are neither direct nor indirect passions. Consequently, the connection between Books 11 and 111 of the Treatise is much less intimate than A,rdal and Hearn have recently suggested.' i. Hume's Classification of the Impressions of Reflection In the four paragraphs of II, i, I Hume provides an exhaustive "Division of the Subject"--the "subject" being "all the perceptions of the mind. ''4 Nowhere else in the Treatise is a complete "division" to be found. As A,rdal points out, such introductory chapters "are likely to be written after the bulk of the book has been completed, or at least to be carefully revised in the light of the main arguments in the book. ''~ For these reasons, there is a strong presumption that the "division" in!I, i, 1should be taken as canonical. Hume's "division" is straightforward. In the first paragraph, perceptions are divided into ideas and impressions; in the first and second paragraphs, impressions are divided into those of sensation and those of reflection; in the third paragraph, impressions of reflection are divided into the calm and the violent; in the fourth (as I am indebted to Wdham Frankena, Ronald Glossop, and Peter Jones for their most helpful comments. ' Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume (New York: St. Martm'~ Press, 1966), pp. 167-168; and Thomas K. Hearn, Jr., "Ardal on the Moral Sentiments in Hume's rreattse," Phtlosophy 48 (1973):290. z Passton and Value m Hume's "Treatise" (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1966), pp. I 1, 109-133. For a discussion heavily influenced by Ardal, see Stewart R. Sutherland, "Hume on Morality and the Emotions," Phllosophwal Quarterly 26 (1976) : 14-19 especially. ' See Ardal, pp. I-5, 109-133; and Hearn, pp. 288, 292. 9 A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p. 275; hereafter cited as T followed by page number. 9 Ardal, p. 94. 13951 396 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY indicated by the last sentence of the third), the violent impressions of reflection are divided into the direct and the indirect. The structure is of a genus-species sort, and none of the distinctions cut across each other: J calm i sense of beauty and deformity (T, 276), moral sentiments impressions of reflection = emotions (secondary impressions) violent = passions direct indirect desire, aversion, grief, joy, pride, humility, love, hope, fear (T, 277, 439) hatred (T, 276-277) This classification is based upon the only natural reading of paragraph three and the first sentence of paragraph four of II, i, I. I quote this material, adding my own emphasis and deleting Hume's: The reflective impressions may be divided into two kinds, viz. the calm and the violent. Of the first kind is the sense of beauty and deformity in action, composition, and external objects. Of the second are the passions of love and hatred, grief and joy, pride and humility. This division is far from being exact. The raptures of poetry and music frequently rise to the greatest height; while those other impressions, properly called passions, may decay into so soft an emotion, as to become, in a manner, imperceptible. But as in general the passions are more violent than the emotions arising from beauty and deformity, these impressions have been commonly distinguish'd from each other. The subject of the human mind being so copious and various, I shall here take... (shrink)

This anthology on creativity represents a lifetime of reading and study by the late Charles Dewey Tenney, a philosopher who had been a student of Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard. In a series of fourteen essays Tenney considers the various factors that can be identified in creativity, followed by the recorded testimony of philosophers, artists, historians, explorers, scientists and others, both theorists and practitioners. The contributors extend in time from Aristotle and Sophocles to Buckminster Fuller and May Sarton. They include (...) such diverse thinkers as Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Lewis Carroll, Julian Huxley, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Gertrude Stein, Henry Nelson Wieman and Alfred North Whitehead. In all, more than 300 of the world's most creative individuals are included. Contents: Discovery, Invention and Creation; Roots of Discovery; Environs of Discovery; Agents of Discovery; Hinderances to Discovery; Observation and Discovery; Reason in Discovery; Reverie Discovery; Imagination in Discovery; Sensibility and Discovery; Method in Discovery; Artistry in Discovery; Diffusion; and Foresight and Discovery. (shrink)

In this volume, Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg discusses marriage from a spiritual perspective -- the ways in which men and women relate to each other both in this world and in the afterlife, and how marriages in heaven can either grow into a state of bliss and unity or wither away as partner discover their incompatibilities and seek their true soulmates. Swedenborg includes his perspective on sexual relationships in this world, both in and out of wedlock, and how the choices (...) that we make affect our spiritual development. Interwoven with the text are numerous examples of his experiences in heaven. This edition is a reprint of a 1915 translation by Samuel M. Warren, revised by Louis H. Tafel. (shrink)

This work begins by proposing the need for exploring the mode of being of mental disorders. It is a philosophical study in an Aristotelian perspective, with special emphasis on the anthropological–cultural dimension. It is difficult for such an inquiry to be carried out from within psychiatry or clinical psychology, committed as these fields are to their own logic and practical conditions. The issues are, in any case, more ontological than strictly clinical in nature. We therefore turn to Aristotle, and specifically (...) his doctrine of the four “causes,” to flesh out the social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders. In accordance with the present analysis, the material cause of disorders would be found in the contingencies of life; the formal cause would pertain primarily to the way clinical conditions themselves can serve as models of ‘being ill’ in our society; the efficient cause would correspond to the patients themselves, understood as active (albeit less than fully conscious) agents as well as to the pharmaceutical industry and the mass media; the final cause would be found in different adaptive functions served by the disorder. We conclude that the “mode of being” of most (if not all) mental disorders—in particular, their status as mental disorders—can often have more to do with cultural forms than with biological factors. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Worth of Persons by James FranklinLouis GroarkeFRANKLIN, James. The Worth of Persons, New York: Encounter Books, 2022. 272 pp. Cloth, $30.99In The Worth of Persons, James Franklin, the well-known Aristotelian mathematician, sets out to provide an account of the very first principles of ethics and morality. Franklin argues that morality begins with an acknowledgment of the intrinsic worth of human persons, understood as beings possessing “dignity” or (...) “absolute inner worth.” As it turns out, we recognize naturally, without epistemic complication, that human beings have innate moral value.Although Franklin does not use the term “personalism” and does not discuss that specific philosophical tradition, he traces his own account to a familiar source: Kant’s personhood formulation of the categorical imperative. He has, however, little use for Kant’s rigid absolutism and prefers something much closer to a natural law formulation of ethical obligation, in large part because it allows for casuistry, a negotiation of the messy circumstances of everyday life that confront us with moral dilemmas and competing duties requiring some kind of moral calculation.But Franklin’s book is not so much about normative ethics. It is an exercise in metaethics, an attempt to make sense of morality as a root cause of value in the world. Franklin wants to secure an epistemological basis from which we can “deduce” moral principles. He is particularly impressed with contemporary discussion of “supervenience” or “metaphysical grounding” as a bridge over the alleged is–ought gap that has preoccupied analytic philosophers following in the footsteps of David Hume [End Page 349], G. E. Moore, and J. L. Mackie. Franklin shows, very effectively, that similar “gaps” can be found in logic, mathematics, linguistics, computer science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and so forth. As examples of supervenience, he mentions the way necessary mathematical concepts supervene on the physical, the way the meanings of words are added to spoken or written symbols, the way logical inference arises from premises and conclusion in an argument, the way social organization emerges from a collection of individuals, and the way the identity of a statue of Hercules arises from its disposition of physical parts. The point is that an empiricist fundamentalism that reduces reality to perceptible facts without any higher (or “emergent”) identities provides an overly narrow account of the metaphysical content of human experience.If ethical value supervenes on some nonethical base, it does not follow that moral judgments and obligations are a human fabrication without any grounding in the world. If we can intellectually access the moral worth of human beings the way, for example, we intellectually access necessary mathematical concepts, we can deduce moral obligations from the worth of persons in a way that preserves the epistemic status of morality against noncognitive challenges. Once we recognize that individual humans have worth (because of the potentialities inherent in their natures), we can, for example, infer moral axioms such as “human beings must be respected” and, further, infer that murder is morally wrong because it involves the wanton destruction of human beings. Franklin does not focus on the normative content of specific actions, duties, obligations, or virtues. His basic point is that moral knowledge is possible once we rationally access (through understanding) the first principle of morality: that human beings are (to use Kantian terminology) ends in themselves, beings that rational agents will value as loci of dignity and moral value.This is a thorough treatment. Franklin is moderate, cautious, careful, diligent; he adds together technical points in present-day academic discussion to produce a well-rounded worldview. He writes in an accessible manner, with good examples and flashes of wit throughout, referring to a wide range of issues and authors: Pseudo-Dionysius, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Husserl, Moore, Wolterstorff, Mackie, Oderberg, MacIntyre, Midgley, Finnis, Korsgaard, Dworkin, Baier, Williams, Singer, Murdoch, and so on.The book includes eight chapters that discuss contrary positions, ethical concepts, supervenience, moral personhood, aesthetic worth, the value of animals and ecosystems, moral epistemology, and metaphysical systems compatible with a realist view of morality. There is a useful index, a modest bibliography, and a full section of notes, which contains many further references.The treatment seems a... (shrink)

In this study we shall analyze the postulate set into its various elements. In order to carry out our analysis, it is advisable to have before us a typical set.We take the set of five postulates for Boolean Algebras given by H. M. Sheffer in Trans. Am. Math Soc. 14, p. 482 ff.

In 1941 Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish friar from Warsaw was arrested for publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to Auschwitz. There he was beaten, kicked by shiny leather boots, and whipped by his prison guards. After one prisoner successfully escaped, the prescribed punishment was to select ten other prisoners who were to die by starvation. As ten prisoners were pulled out of line one by one, Fr. Kolbe broke out from the ranks, pleading with he Commandant to be allowed to (...) take the place of one of the prisoners, a Polish worker with a wife and children dependent upon him. "I'm an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose," the 45 year old priest pleaded. He was taken, thrown down the stairs into a dank dark basement with the other nine prisoners and left to starve. Usually, prisoners punished like this spent their last days howling, attacking each other and clawing the walls in a frenzy of despair. (shrink)

Diauxie is at the origin of research that led Jacques Monod, François Jacob, and André Lwoff to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for their description of the first genetic regulatory model. Diauxie is a term coined by Jacques Monod in 1941 in his doctoral dissertation that refers to microbial growth in two phases. In this article, we first examine Monod’s thesis to demonstrate how and why Monod interpreted diauxie as a phenomenon of enzyme inhibition or (...) suppression of adaptive enzymes. We also briefly investigate prior enzyme suppression studies, before Monod’s work, which indicate that he is the first person to observe diauxic growth. Second, we analyse Monod’s post-thesis publications throughout his scientific career, revealing that diauxic inhibition was a significant part of Monod’s scientific activities and greatly fascinated Monod until the end of his life. Paradoxically, Monod’s work and interest on diauxic inhibition are still neglected in historical recounts, focused mostly on Monod’s enzymatic adaptation studies. Indeed, we uncovered a statement by Monod’s colleague, Lwoff, who transformed a quotation from Monod by replacing the word phenomenon with enzymatic adaptation, which we believe has influenced historians. Finally, we offer hypotheses to explain why Lwoff altered Monod’s statement. (shrink)

To describe computers and sophisticated robots, many people today have no problem using personal attributes. Alan Turing published his famous intelligence test in 1950. From that time onwards, computers have gained increasingly higher status in this regard. Computers and robots nowadays are not only intelligent. They perceive, they remember, they understand, they decide, they play and so on. Recently, another such step has occurred but, this time, many researchers are seriously concerned. In February 2017, the European Parliament passed a Resolution (...) to attribute legal personhood to intelligent robots. If this is accepted as law, it will have very serious consequences for our self-understanding and for the way we live together as a community. The EU Resolution has stimulated various studies, arising mainly from the area of legal studies. It is urgent that the response include also a philosophical evaluation regarding the fundamental concepts at play. This paper seeks to make a contribution precisely in this area. It explores the attribution of legal personhood to machines by focusing on what is happening at the level of meaning. It explores crucial concepts like responsibility, autonomy, person and quasi-person by drawing inspiration from the seminal works of Aristotle and L. Wittgenstein and from the ensuing debates between current philosophers like P. Hacker and D. Dennett. The results of this paper indicate what dangers could lie ahead and what could be the right way to avoid them. (shrink)

Law and morals in the Hebrew Scriptures, Plato, and Aristotle, by M. R. Konvitz.--The ethics of the Pharisees, by L. Finkelstein.--Doubts about justice, by W. Kaufmann.--Law and disorder: Some reflections on the political philosophy of Edmond Cahn, by D. D. Williams.--Ethics and business, by P. Sporn.--Mission and opportunity: religion in a pluralistic culture, by R. Niebuhr.--Reflections on over-population, by C. Merrill.--Ethical issues in psychotherapy, by N. W. Ackerman.--Drama: a mirror of conflict, by E. M. Jackson.--Toward a new cultural federalism, by (...) E. Warren. (shrink)

This Ph.D. thesis is, in large part, a deepening of my M. A. dissertation, entitled: "Différance Beyond Phenomenological Reduction (Epoché)?" - an edited version of which was published in The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 1989. The M. A. dissertation explores the development of the various phases of the movement of epoché in Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and its relevance for Jacques Derrida's project of deconstruction. The analyses not only attend to the need for an effective propaedeutic to (...) an understanding of phenomenology as method, they also serve to demystify the logics of Derridean non-teleological strategy by explaining the sense of such a manoeuvre - as a kind of maieutic response to the Husserlian project - which operates within the horizon of a radical epoché. According to this orientation, Derrida's deconstruction of phenomenology is permitted to open itself up to a phenomenology of deconstruction. This doctoral thesis develops these analyses and utilizes a form of critique that points the way to the possibility of a phenomenological-deconstruction of the limits of Derrida's project of deconstruction through the themes of epoché, play, dialogue, spacing, and temporalization. In order to trace the resources from which he draws throughout the early development of deconstruction, this study confines itself to a discussion on the texts published between 1962 and 1968. This subjection of deconstruction to a historical de-sedimentation of its motivational, methodological, theoretical, and strategic moments, involves a certain kind of transformational return to the spacing between phenomenology and deconstruction that urgently puts into question the alleged supercession of phenomenology by deconstruction. The expression of such a 'beyond' is already deeply sedimented in contemporary deconstructive writing to the point at which it is now rarely even noticed, let alone thematized and brought into question. This conviction (regarding the transgression of phenomenology by deconstruction) traces itself out in the form of an attitude to reading which is, in fact and in principle, counter to D6rrida's own call for care. The meaning and limits of the very terms, transgression, beyond, supercession, etc., must be continually subjected to deconstruction. The notions of play, dissemination and supplementarity - with the concomitant sense of transformational repetition that defines them - do not function as a mere excuse for lack of scholarly rigour. Deconstruction is a movement of critical return, which must insert itself (with a sense of irony) within the margins and intersections of that which gives itself up to this practice of textual unbuilding. The strategy of play encourages the structural matrix of that with which it is engaged to turn in upon itself, exposing its limits and fissures in a kind of textual analogue to a psychoanalysis. To be sure, this does involve a certain kind of violence -a violation of the ( system's' own sense of propriety (what is proper [propre] and closest to itself) -but in no sense is this an anarchical celebration of pure destruction. We speak rather of irony, parody, satire, metaphor, double-reading and other tactical devices, which permit a reorganization of the deconstructed's (textual analysand's) self-relation and the possibility of playful speculation. Such play demands care and vigilance in regard to the appropriation of the logics of the system with which it is in a relation of negotiation. In order to play well, one must learn the game-rules. (shrink)

For decades, much literature on causality has focused on causal processes and causal reasoning in the natural sciences. According to a relatively new trend however, such research on causality remains insufficient because of its refusal to accept a certain degree of pluralism within the concept, a pluralism that is evident in how we use ideas of cause and effect in everyday life. I will build on work in this latter trend, following philosophers like G. E. M. Anscombe and N. Cartwright. (...) I explore the limits of the concept of causality by determining the extent to which our ideas can remain consistent as we stretch this concept along two dimensions, one concerning the maximizing of the effect and the other the maximizing of explanatory depth. Dealing with the cause of the universe, such an investigation touches upon some issues in current empirical cosmology and revisits some classic arguments regarding philosophy of religion and the Platonic notion of participation. The results indicate that the use of current conceptual, logical and analytic tools can deliver new insights that are useful especially for those interested in how causality in the natural sciences links with causality in everyday life. (shrink)

Two strains of male mice have bred over fortygenerations, starting with the work of RobertCairns and his colleagues, one strain with ahigh level of intra-species aggression, theother a low level of aggression. Thehigh-aggression mice tend to establishdominance hierarchies and particularly fight inthe presence of female mice. Thelow-aggression mice tend, in groups of theirown, to have a high degree of low-intensity,peaceful social contact, and to be more timidin initiating action than the high-aggressionmice. Biochemical differences have beenobserved between the two strains, and (...) confirmedby the present data: the high-aggression micehave greater dopamine concentrations (in thecaudate nucleus and nucleus accumbens), lowerlevels of the stress hormone corticosterone,and higher levels of testosterone than thelow-aggression mice. The current experimentswere designed to answer questions about theflexibility of adaptive behaviors:specifically, what is the effect of early dailymaternal separation on adult stress response ineach strain? What are the behavioral andhormonal mechanisms by which, as has beenobserved, low-aggression mice achieve adominant status when brought into situationswhere they compete for territory withhigh-aggression mice? Finally, what are thesocial and neurochemical mechanisms by whichhigh-aggression mice can develop low-aggressionbehavior if brought out of isolation and intogroups?Maternal separation was found to lead todecreases in stress levels, as measured bycorticosterone, in the low-aggression but notthe high-aggression, mice – presumably becauseof the surplus of maternal care the pupsreceive on returning to the nest. When alow-aggression mouse became dominant and ahigh-aggression mouse became submissive, theirusual pattern of corticosterone andtestosterone levels was found to be reversed. The change to low-aggression behavior inhigh-aggression mice switching from anisolation condition to a group condition, wasmediated by a decrease in D 1 dopaminereceptor densities.These results, like the ones on which theybuild, argue for substantial developmentalinfluences in expressions of the genesinfluencing aggressive or cooperative behavior. In this approach to evolution, epigenesis istreated not as a set of traits and behaviorspredetermined by the genome, but as a set ofprobabilistic tendencies toward certain traitsand behaviors. (shrink)

In a world dominated by things, we must work hard to account for one another's personhood. Drawing a diverse set of thought leaders, Paul Louis Metzger helps us navigate a pluralistic world through a personalist moral framework, addressing issues such as abortion, genetic engineering, immigration, drone warfare, and more.

In 1941 Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish friar from Warsaw was arrested for publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to Auschwitz. There he was beaten, kicked by shiny leather boots, and whipped by his prison guards. After one prisoner successfully escaped, the prescribed punishment was to select ten other prisoners who were to die by starvation. As ten prisoners were pulled out of line one by one, Fr. Kolbe broke out from the ranks, pleading with he Commandant to be allowed to (...) take the place of one of the prisoners, a Polish worker with a wife and children dependent upon him. "I'm an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose," the 45 year old priest pleaded. He was taken, thrown down the stairs into a dank dark basement with the other nine prisoners and left to starve. Usually, prisoners punished like this spent their last days howling, attacking each other and clawing the walls in a frenzy of despair. (shrink)

The way we understand the environment is analogous to the way we draw a map. Drawing insights from this analogy, this paper shows how the abstraction that occurs in ecological explanation can lead to damaging distortion. It is mistaken, therefore, to assume that by abstraction we can easily determine the correct variables for controlling a given ecosystem as if it were ideally closed. Recent work shows that the environment is a global composite with a very high degree of internal dependence (...) between its parts, a kind of dependence that makes it more holistic than a machine and perhaps even as holistic as an organism. This paper was presented at the 6th European Meeting of Jesuits in Science on “Science and Culture”, Frankfurt a. M., Germany (8th - 12th September 1999). (shrink)

, which uses the intuitionistic propositional calculus, with the only connective →. It is very important, because the well known Curry-Howard correspondence between proofs and programs was originally discovered with it, and because it enjoys the normalization property: every typed term is strongly normalizable. It was extended to second order intuitionistic logic, in 1970, by J.-Y. Girard [4], under the name of system F, still with the normalization property.More recently, in 1990, the Curry-Howard correspondence was extended to classical logic, following (...) Felleisen and Griffin [6] who discovered that the law of Peirce corresponds to control instructions in functional programming languages. It is interesting to notice that, as early as 1972, Clint and Hoare [1] had made an analogous remark for the law of excluded middle and controlled jump instructions in imperative languages.There are now many type systems which are based on classical logic; among the best known are the system LC of J.-Y. Girard [5] and the λμ-calculus of M. Parigot [11]. We shall use below a system closely related to the latter, called the λ c -calculus [8, 9]. Both systems use classical second order logic and have the normalization property.In the sequel, we shall extend the λ c -calculus to the Zermelo-Frænkel set theory. The main problem is due to the axiom of extensionality. To overcome this difficulty, we first give the axioms of ZF in a suitable (equivalent) form, which we call ZF ɛ. (shrink)

Nineteen articles of the philologist Alessandro Ronconi, published over the course of nearly half a century--from 1932 up to 1981--have been collected in this volume by friends and colleagues to honor the author upon his retirement from full-time teaching. Prof. Ronconi taught for many years in various Italian Universities--Urbino, Bari, and Florence--and acquired great authority and respect among his students and other scholars.

*This paper was presented at a conference on scientific concepts of time in humanistic and social perspectives organised by J.T. Fraser and held at the Rockefeller Study Center, Bellagio, Italy, in July 1981. I wish to thank Y. Elkana, Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation and M. Ron, Curator of the history of science collections at the Jewish National Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, for making facilities available to me in researching and preparing this paper.

Music can reduce stress and anxiety, enhance positive mood, and facilitate social bonding. However, little is known about the role of music and related personal or cultural variables in maintaining wellbeing during times of stress and social isolation as imposed by the COVID-19 crisis. In an online questionnaire, administered in 11 countries, participants rated the relevance of wellbeing goals during the pandemic, and the effectiveness of different activities in obtaining these goals. Music was found to be the most effective activity (...) for three out of five wellbeing goals: enjoyment, venting negative emotions, and self-connection. For diversion, music was equally good as entertainment, while it was second best to create a sense of togetherness, after socialization. This result was evident across different countries and gender, with minor effects of age on specific goals, and a clear effect of the importance of music in people's lives. Cultural effects were generally small and surfaced mainly in the use of music to obtain a sense of togetherness. Interestingly, culture moderated the use of negatively valenced and nostalgic music for those higher in distress. (shrink)

Spinoza and Judaism, by D.Rakhmian.- Spinoza and materialism, by L.I.Akselrod (Ortodoks) - Spinoza's world-view, by A.M.Déborin.- Spinoza's substance and finite things, by V.K.Brushlinski.- Spinoza's ethical world-view, by S.Y.Volfson.- Spinoza and the state, by I.P.Razumovski.- The historical significance of Spinoza's philosophy, by I.K.Luppol.