William P. Alston was the founding editor of the Philosophy Research Archives and a president of the American Philosophical Association. This special volume was prepared in honor and recognition of Alston's many contributions to philosophy as author, editor, teacher, and mentor. Publication of this volume was made possible by his colleagues and the philosophy department at Syracuse University.

Research on the nature of science and science education enjoys a longhistory, with its origins in Ernst Mach's work in the late nineteenthcentury and John Dewey's at the beginning of the twentieth century.As early as 1909 the Central Association for Science and MathematicsTeachers published an article – ‘A Consideration of the Principles thatShould Determine the Courses in Biology in Secondary Schools’ – inSchool Science and Mathematics that reflected foundational concernsabout science and how school curricula should be informed by them. Sincethen (...) a large body of literature has developed related to the teaching andlearning about nature of science – see, for example, the Lederman and Meichtry reviews cited below. As well there has been intensephilosophical, historical and philosophical debate about the nature of scienceitself, culminating in the much-publicised ‘Science Wars’ of recent time. Thereferences listed here primarily focus on the empirical research related to thenature of science as an educational goal; along with a few influential philosophicalworks by such authors as Kuhn, Popper, Laudan, Lakatos, and others. Whilenot exhaustive, the list should prove useful to educators, and scholars in otherfields, interested in the nature of science and how its understanding can berealised as a goal of science instruction. The authors welcome correspondenceregarding omissions from the list, and on-going additions that can be made to it. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

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)

This lavishly illustrated book highlights the conservation importance of congregatory animals species--those which gather in vast groups. It also focuses on the irreplaceability of the congregation sites which are able to support such large gatherings of animals, fish, or birds.

This is a description of an avian-shaped feature that rests below a network of cellular structures found on a mound within the Argyre Basin of Mars in Mars Global Surveyor image M14-02185, acquired on April 30, 2000, and released to the public on April 4, 2001. The area examined is located near 48.0° South, 55.1° West. The formation is approximately 2,400 meters long from the tip of its beak to the tip of its farthest tail feather. There is a minimum (...) of six different variations in appearance of the surface material over this small area. Utilizing the public targeting request form provided on the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) website, co-author Miller secured a second image of the area that was obtained on July 3, 2006, showing this feature under different conditions S20-00165. The new image was then released to the public on August 11, 2006. A third image of the formation identified as MGS S13-01480 was acquired on December 15, 2005, and although officially processed on June 20, 2006, it was not made available to the public until August 22, 2009, on NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS) website. All three of the MGS images reveal defining aspects of this avian feature, including a head, beak, body, eye, leg, foot, toes, wing, and feathers. When taken together, these components induce the visual impression of an avian-shaped formation that exhibits a unique set of proportional features. Adjoining this formation is a composite of complex cellular features that form a compartmentalized infrastructure. The three authors who are veterinarians provide a critical analysis of the avian features, and the geologist and geoscientist authors examine natural mechanisms that could contribute to the formation of this feature. An extensive search of comparable regions within and beyond the area of the Argyre Basin was conducted. A list of these sites is provided, and terrestrial comparisons are also offered. (shrink)

The most prevalent approach to understanding recreation experiences in resource management has been a motivational research program that views satisfaction as an appropriate indicator of experience quality. This research explores a different approach to studying the quality of recreation experiences. Rather than viewing recreation experiences as a linear sequence of events beginning with expectations and ending with outcomes that are then cognitively compared to determine experience quality, this alternative approach views recreation as an emergent experience motivated by the not very (...) well-defined goal of acquiring stories that ultimately enrich one's life. Further, it assumes that the nature of human experience is best characterized by situated freedom in which the environment sets boundaries that constrain the nature of the experience, but that within those boundaries recreationists are free to experience the world in unique and variable ways. Therefore this alternative approach seeks a more context specific description of the setting/experience relationship that is intended to complement more general management frameworks (e.g., the Recreation Opportunity Spectrum) developed in conjunction with the motivational research program. (shrink)

This book offers a new interpretation of William James's ethical and religious thought. Michael Slater shows that James's conception of morality, or what it means to lead a moral and flourishing life, is intimately tied to his conception of religious faith, and argues that James's views on these matters are worthy of our consideration. He offers a reassessment of James's 'will to believe' or 'right to believe' doctrine, his moral theory, and his neglected moral arguments for religious faith. And (...) he argues that James's pragmatic account of religion is based on an ethical view of the function of religion and a realist view of the objects of religious belief and experience, and is compatible with his larger conception of pragmatism. The book will appeal to readers interested in the history of modern philosophy, especially pragmatism, as well as those interested in moral philosophy, religion, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

This essay examines one of the most important but understudied aspects of William James’s philosophy, his doctrine of pluralism. It aims to shed new light on the complex and sometimes ambiguous relationship between James’s pluralism and his doctrines of pragmatism and radical empiricism, and shows that his pluralism is a much more pervasive feature of his philosophy than has usually been thought. In particular, the essay shows that James was a pluralist not only in his metaphysical views, but also in (...) his epistemological, ethical, and religious views, and that these latter views are not always clearly dependent upon his pluralistic metaphysics. (shrink)

The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of human (...) dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

William Gavin’s William James in Focus: Willing to Believe is a brief and creative introduction to James’s philosophy aimed at students and non-specialists. As the subtitle of the book suggests, Gavin uses James’s will to believe doctrine as the organizing theme for his interpretation of James’s philosophy. One might initially think that this implies reading the latter in the light of James’s views on religion, but Gavin downplays the religious aspects of James’s will to believe doctrine and focuses instead on (...) its relevance for understanding what he terms the “latent image” of James’s personal life, which according to Gavin is primarily concerned with human mortality and the need to affirm philosophical positions.. (shrink)

The network approach proposed by Cramer et al. suggests fascinating new directions of research on mental disorders. Research is needed to find evidence for the causal power of symptoms, to examine symptoms thoroughly, to investigate individual differences in edge strength, to discover etiological processes for each symptom, and to determine whether and why symptoms cohere into distinct mental disorders.

The behavioral sciences have flourished by studying how traditional and/or rational behavior has been governed throughout most of human history by relatively well-informed individual and social learning. In the online age, however, social phenomena can occur with unprecedented scale and unpredictability, and individuals have access to social connections never before possible. Similarly, behavioral scientists now have access to “big data” sets – those from Twitter and Facebook, for example – that did not exist a few years ago. Studies of human (...) dynamics based on these data sets are novel and exciting but, if not placed in context, can foster the misconception that mass-scale online behavior is all we need to understand, for example, how humans make decisions. To overcome that misconception, we draw on the field of discrete-choice theory to create a multiscale comparative “map” that, like a principal-components representation, captures the essence of decision making along two axes: aneast–westdimension that represents the degree to which an agent makes a decision independently versus one that is socially influenced, and anorth–south dimensionthat represents the degree to which there is transparency in the payoffs and risks associated with the decisions agents make. We divide the map into quadrants, each of which features a signature behavioral pattern. When taken together, the map and its signatures provide an easily understood empirical framework for evaluating how modern collective behavior may be changing in the digital age, including whether behavior is becoming more individualistic, as people seek out exactly what they want, or more social, as people become more inextricably linked, even “herdlike,” in their decision making. We believe the map will lead to many new testable hypotheses concerning human behavior as well as to similar applications throughout the social sciences. (shrink)

The authors were involved in developing an ethical framework to assist the Queens Region Board (Prince Edward Island, Canada) set priorities in health and health care. Two and one half years after the adoption of this framework, the authors undertook an evaluation of the framework. This paper will discuss: a) the historical background of regionalization in Canada, and in particular the circumstances leading up to the institution of regional boards in Prince Edward Island; b) the sorts of ethical issues facing (...) the Queens Regional Board; c) issues arising in connection with the use and development of ethics frameworks for managing ethical issues in priority setting; d) the framework adopted by the Queens Board and the process that led to its development; e) issues arising as concerns implementation of the framework; f) questions and issues pertinent to other boards and bodies considering similar initiatives. (shrink)

In this book, Michael R. Slater provides a new assessment of pragmatist views in the philosophy of religion. Focusing on the tension between naturalist and anti-naturalist versions of pragmatism, he argues that the anti-naturalist religious views of philosophers such as William James and Charles Peirce provide a powerful alternative to the naturalism and secularism of later pragmatists such as John Dewey and Richard Rorty. Slater first examines the writings of the 'classical pragmatists' - James, Peirce, and Dewey - and (...) argues for the relevance of their views for thinking about such topics as the nature of religion and the viability of natural theology. His final three chapters engage with the religious views of later pragmatists such as Rorty and Philip Kitcher, and with current philosophical debates over metaphysical realism, naturalism, and evidentialism. His book will be of particular interest to philosophers of religion, theologians, and specialists in American philosophy. (shrink)

Background: The field of clinical ethics is examining ways of determining competency. The Assessing Clinical Ethics Skills (ACES) tool offers a new approach that identifies a range of skills necessary in the conduct of clinical ethics consultation and provides a consistent framework for evaluating these skills. Through a training website, users learn to apply the ACES tool to clinical ethics consultants (CECs) in simulated ethics consultation videos. The aim is to recognize competent and incompetent clinical ethics consultation skills by watching (...) and evaluating a videotaped CEC performance. We report how we set a criterion cut score (i.e., minimally acceptable score) for judging the ability of users of the ACES tool to evaluate simulated CEC performances.Methods: A modified Angoff standard-setting procedure was used to establish the cut score for an end-of-life case included on the ACES training website. The standard-setting committee viewed the Futility Case and estimated the probability that a minimally competent CEC would correctly answer each item on the ACES tool. The committee further adjusted these estimates by reviewing data from 31 pilot users of the Futility Case before determining the cut score.Results: Averaging over all 31 items, the proposed proportion correct score for minimal competency was 80%, corresponding to a cut score that is between 24 and 25 points out of 31 possible points. The standard-setting committee subsequently set the minimal competency cut score to 24 points.Conclusions: The cut score for the ACES tool identifies the number of correct responses a user of the ACES tool training website must attain to “pass” and reach minimal competency in recognizing competent and incompetent skills of the CECs in the simulated ethics consultation videos. The application of the cut score to live training of CECs and other areas of practice requires further investigation. (shrink)

In a recent article, William C. Roach offers a presuppositional critique, which is inspired by Carl F. H. Henry, of Michael R. Licona’s so-called New Historiographical Approach to defending the resurrection. More precisely, Roach attempts to defend six key theses, namely, that the NHA is an evidentialist approach, the NHA is a deductive argument, the NHA is an insufficient approach, believers and unbelievers share no common ground, the NHA does not embrace a correspondence theory of truth, and the presupposition (...) of divine revelation is necessary for apologetics. We respond to each of Roach’s arguments, respectively. (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

This book contains new work on character from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, and psychology. From a virtual reality simulation of the Milgram shock experiments, to understanding the virtue of modesty in Muslim societies, to defending soldiers’ moral responsibility for committing war crimes, these chapters break new ground and significantly advance our understanding of character. The main topics covered fall under the heading of our beliefs about character, the existence and nature of character traits, character and ethical theory, virtue epistemology, (...) the nature of particular virtues, character development, and challenges to character and virtue from neuroscience and situationism. The book significantly shapes discussions of character in scholarship. (shrink)

This book assesses how Vatican II opened up the Catholic Church to encounter, dialogue, and engagement with other world religions. Opening with a contribution from the President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, it next explores the impact, relevance, and promise of the Declaration Nostra Aetate before turning to consider how Vatican II in general has influenced interfaith dialogue and the intellectual and comparative study of world religions in the postconciliar decades, as well as the contribution (...) of particular past and present thinkers to the formation of current interreligious and comparative theological methods. Additionally, chapters consider interreligious dialogue vis-à-vis theological anthropology in conciliar documents; openness to the spiritual practices of other faith traditions as a way of encouraging positive interreligious encounter; the role of lay and new ecclesial movements in interreligious dialogue; and the development of Monastic Interreligious Dialogue. Finally, it includes a range of perspectives on the fruits and future of Vatican’s II’s opening to particular faiths such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. (shrink)

Pragmatism is often thought to be incompatible with realism, the view that there are knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or properties. In this article, I show that there are, in fact, realist versions of pragmatism and argue that a realist pragmatism of the right sort can make important contributions to such fields as religious ethics and philosophy of religion. Using William James's pragmatism as my primary example, I show (1) that James defended realist and pluralist views in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and (...) philosophy of religion, and (2) that these views not only cohere with his pragmatism but indeed are basic to it. After arguing that James's pragmatism provides a credible and useful approach to a number of basic philosophical and religious issues, I conclude by reflecting on some ways in which we can apply and potentially improve James's views in the study of religion. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a re-reading of "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," William James's most well known work on ethics. I show that while James defends a naturalistic account of the basis of morality in the essay, he also makes a practical argument for religious faith, one that closely connects the piece to such works as "The Will to Believe" and The Varieties of Religious Experience. After discussing some of the strengths and weaknesses of James's moral theory (...) and metaethical views, I argue that the religious aspect of the essay—which has tended to be either ignored or downplayed by previous interpreters—is of crucial importance for understanding James's ethics, and that his practical argument is valid and worthy of serious consideration. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kant’s most famous objection to the ontological argument -- that existence is not a real predicate -- is not, in fact, his most effective objection, and that his ”neglected objection’ to the argument deserves to be better known. It shows that Kant clearly anticipates William Rowe’s later objection that the argument begs the question, and discusses why Kant himself seems to have overlooked the force of this criticism in his attempt to demolish the traditional proofs for (...) God’s existence. (shrink)

Michael Walzer has argued that nations fighting a just war may be permitted indiscriminate attacks on enemy noncombatants if they are genuinely necessary to avoid an imminent and morally disastrous defeat. Critics often challenge this "supreme emergency" exemption from just war principles by arguing that it is inconsistent with his critiques of utilitarianism, realism, and sub-state terrorism. While morally troubling, I argue that Walzer's doctrine is both tightly cabined and consistent with his meta-ethical pluralism, his emphasis on the value (...) of political community, and his doubts about abstract philosophy's ability to answer pressing political questions. (shrink)

PurposeTo use the power of knowledge acquisition and machine learning in the development of a collaborative computer classification system based on the features of age-related macular degeneration (AMD).MethodsA vocabulary was acquired from four AMD experts who examined 100 ophthalmoscopic images. The vocabulary was analyzed, hierarchically structured, and incorporated into a collaborative computer classification system called IDOCS. Using this system, three of the experts examined images from a second set of digital images compiled from more than 1000 patients with AMD. Images (...) were annotated, and features were identified and defined. Decision trees, a machine learning method, were trained on the data collected and used to extract patterns. Interrelationships between the data from the different clinicians were investigated.ResultsSix drusen classes in the structured vocabulary were largely sufficient to describe all the identified features. The decision trees classified the data with 76.86% to 88.5% accuracy and distilled patterns in the form of hierarchical trees composed of 5 to 15 nodes. Experts were largely consistent in their characterization of soft, and to a lesser extent, hard drusen, but diverge in definition of other drusen. Size and crystalline morphology were the main determinants of drusen type across all experts.ConclusionsMachine learning is a powerful tool for the characterization of disease phenotypes. The creation of a defined feature set for AMD will facilitate the development of an IDOCS-based classification system. (shrink)

This essay offers a re-assessment of William James’s methodological approach to religion and his theory of religion. It argues that, despite certain shortcomings, James’s views on these matters are both more complex and more credible than many of his critics allow. It also aims to shed new light on some neglected or poorly understood features of his views on religion.

: This essay seeks to contribute to our understanding of William James's ethics by reexamining a classic text—The Varieties of Religious Experience—that is not usually read in an ethical light. It shows that James develops an ethics of human flourishing in Varieties, which he grounds in a "piecemeal supernaturalist" cosmology and account of human nature. It also shows that, under the terms of James's view, religious and ethical issues are fundamentally interconnected, and leading a religious life is a necessary (though (...) not a sufficient) condition of maximal human flourishing. Overall, I show that for James the highest degree of human flourishing can be achieved only through the experience of metaphysical intimacy, or the self's harmonious relationship or unification with "a wider self.". (shrink)

This essay seeks to contribute to our understanding of William James's ethics by reexamining a classic text— The Varieties of Religious Experience—that is not usually read in an ethical light. It shows that James develops an ethics of human flourishing in Varieties, which he grounds in a "piecemeal supernaturalist" cosmology and account of human nature. It also shows that, under the terms of James's view, religious and ethical issues are fundamentally interconnected, and leading a religious life is a necessary (though (...) not a sufficient) condition of maximal human flourishing. Overall, I show that for James the highest degree of human flourishing can be achieved only through the experience of metaphysical intimacy, or the self's harmonious relationship or unification with "a wider self.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unconventional Guest: Masao Abe’s Dialogue with the American AcademyWilliam R. LaFleurDuring the two years we were together at Princeton I once took Masao Abe to meet my parents, then alive and living in New Jersey. I had told them some things in advance about Abe, about Zen, and about what in Abe’s ways could at times be unconventional. My mother, I knew, would put lots of effort into preparing (...) the Sunday dinner we ate on the day of our visit. At the meal’s conclusion Abe turned to my mother and declared: “Mrs. LaFleur, this meal has been simply outrageous! ” For a moment I thought he might have meant “delicious” and had landed on the wrong word. But then I saw his smiling eyes and mouth. He had meant what he said. Everyone laughed and my mother promptly thanked him for his “compliment.”Being at times a genially unconventional guest, one who also in academic or dialogic contexts would say surprising or even unsettling things, was something at which Abe excelled. He was also unconventional in his teaching. He frustrated us when we expected the usual approach. In the book edited by Donald Mitchell I told how in 1969 at the University of Chicago Abe aggravated those of us graduate students who wanted to do a survey of all of modern Japanese philosophy; Abe forced us to stay with certain sentences in Nishida, wanting our minds to be changed. He would not budge.1Some years later at Princeton he proved to be maddeningly insistent on this. Reading The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch with graduate students in 1977 who knew some Chinese and Japanese was not for Professor Abe going to be exercise in the usual historico-textual excavation; all that was available, he said, in the introduction and notes to Philip Yampolsky’s translation of that text. He was not interested in an “objectification” that put distance between the voice speaking through the text and the person being addressed by it today. For him the ancient text must read as if written for us and for us today. With Abe as teacher the dialogic mode of the seminar room had to replicate in its own way the lecture hall of the Ta-fan Temple! But graduate students at Princeton, inured as they were to the conventional mode of textual-historical analysis, were made clearly uncomfortable by this. Therefore, hoping I might serve as a mediator, they asked me to ask Abe if we might be more historical and move on more quickly. When, with some trepidation, I transmitted this request [End Page 127] to Abe, he merely chuckled and smiled, leaving me to guess why we should expect no change in his emphasis. What follows is my attempt to unpack what was involved in this... and why it remains relevant today.Even some more recent scholars of East Asian Buddhism in our academy today resemble those graduate students back then in Princeton. They, too, have been suggesting that there was something “behind the times” or in need of being updated in the dialogic teaching mode used so brilliantly by Abe—as well as by Hisamatsu Shin’ichi and D. T. Suzuki. However, there is, I think, something both laughably conventional and arrogantly neocolonialist in these critics’ assumptions. They believe that textual and historicist methods (of which Ideologiekritik is an extension) remain something that the West still needs to teach to the non-West, that these render all other methods outdated and irrelevant, and that they can be deployed to expose what remains flawed in the way that, for instance, Japanese such as Abe study and teach Buddhism and Zen.Ironically, this presumptuous stance itself crumbles under historical and textual analysis—at least when applied to Japan. In various studies, Michael Pye has shown that Tominaga Nakamoto’s studies of Buddhist texts, historical and critical to the core, were done in the early seventeenth century and show a solid tradition of scholarship in this mode arising there without any influence from Europe. As Pye shows, interest in the plurality of religions and an early stage of a “science of religions” were present in Japan... (shrink)