The polarized organization of epithelial cells is expressed in many ways including the morphology of the cell surface or cytocortex, the molecular composition of membrane domains and the distribution of cytoplasmic organelles. The differentiation of mouse trophectoderm is described with particular attention given to the maturation of the endocytic system in an attempt to define how the complex assembly of an epithelium may be generated.

Plato Tom Angier -- Aristotle Timothy Chappell -- Stoics Jacob Klein -- Aquinas Vivian Boland O.P -- Hume Peter Millican -- Kant Ralph Walker -- Hegel Kenneth Westphal -- Marx Sean Sayers -- Mill Krister Bykvist -- Nietzsche Ken Gemes and Christoph Schuringa -- Macintyre David Solomon.

In today’s world driven by technological innovation and change, publisher John Brockman has proclaimed scientists as the new “humanists”. Many in the science arena have seized the public podium not only to discuss advances in their area of expertise, but often to speak almost ex cathedra, on the social and philosophical implications for humans and the planet itself. The break with The Church in the 15th & 16th century set in motion a secular humanism which began the movement within the (...) scholarly communities to separate knowledge into disciplines. Following the Enlightenment, many in the social arena turned from the theory based, deductive, approaches toward the sciences with the hope that this inductive methodology would yield the same success found in the bio-physical arena. While this approach has failed to achieve such heights, “science envy” is now driving academic institutions, particularly in the United States and manydeveloping countries, to reposition The Academy to become innovative and contribute to both the private and public sector much in the same manner that Science’s handmaiden, Technology, has contributed in the bio/physical arena.The Humanities, as sensed by Brockman and others, has turned inward or has been ineffective in responding except to utter the mantra that its area represents humanity’s soul and thus provides the critical knowledge needed to save the planet and thus humans. Yet philosophy has not been able, or is unwilling, to accept the challenge and enter the academic lists or command the public pulpit. In this default, a surrogate, religious fundamentalism, has raised its head above the trenches reminiscent of the ancient Science/ Church confrontation and seeks to restore the idea of salvation in the next world, hoping to destroy the Gnostic ideal of humans being able to create such peace on earth. (shrink)

A systematic comparison between Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's ethics. I argue that Kierkegaard supplies a proleptic and largely successful critique of Nietzsche's claims and arguments in moral philosophy.

This collection illustrates the centrality of skill within ancient ethics, including ancient Chinese ethics, showing how skill or techne has been a touchstone from the beginning of philosophical thought. Covering Socrates' search for expertise in virtue, the Republic's 'craft of justice', Aristotle's delineation of the politike techne and the Stoics' 'art of life'. Divided into four sections on Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Chinese ethics, it brings together world-leading philosophers working across this broad topic. Yet it is not limited to (...) traditional figures and traditions, featuring essays on the importance of skill in lesser-known philosophers, such as Carneades and Antipater, and texts, such as the Zhuangzi. In doing so, it illustrates how skill, expertise and 'know how' are important in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of action and cognitive science. This collection of specially-commissioned chapters is the first to foreground skill as central to Ancient and Chinese ethics specifically making it an essential for anyone interested in the value of cross-cultural philosophy today. (shrink)

This Handbook provides an intellectually rigorous and accessible overview of the relationship between natural law and human rights. It fills a crucial gap in the literature with leading scholarship on the importance of natural law as a philosophical foundation for human rights and its significance for contemporary debates. The themes covered include: the role of natural law thought in the history of human rights; human rights scepticism; the different notions of 'subjective right'; the various foundations for human rights within natural (...) law ethics; the relationship between natural law and human rights in religious traditions; the idea of human dignity; the relation between human rights, political community and law; human rights interpretation; and tensions between human rights law and natural law ethics. This Handbook is an ideal introduction to natural law perspectives on human rights, while also offering a concise summary of scholarly developments in the field. (shrink)

A Robert Spaemann Reader: Philosophical Essays on Nature, God, and the Human Person. Edited and translated by.. Pp. 241. Price £62.16.).

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1858 Edition.

This book is a Festschrift offered by twelve Catholic theologians and philosophers to the great Jewish theologian David Novak. Each of the twelve essays is followed by a response by David Novak, and it thereby represents a significant addition to his oeuvre. The book includes an introduction by Matthew Levering surveying Novak's many contributions to Jewish-Christian dialogue, as well as a transcribed conversation between Robert George and David Novak that encapsulates Novak's sense of the present situation for Jews and Christians. (...) Among the topics treated by the authors are religious engagement in a pluralist and secular culture, the question of whether Jews and Christians worship the same God, the morality of suicide, the role of divine commandments in Catholic moral theology, the question of whether classical versions of natural-law doctrine are susceptible to the critiques proffered by Novak, the pedagogical impact of Dabru Emet, religious freedom, the recent debate about Pope Pius IX and Edgardo Mortara, the nature of justice, the relationship of reason and revelation, the sanctity of human life and the death penalty, and supersessionism. (shrink)

The current status of localization and related concepts, especially localized statevectors and position operators, within Lorentz-invariant Quantum Theory (LIQT) is ambiguous and controversial.1 Ever since the early work of Newton & Wigner (1949), and the subsequent extensions of their work, particularly by Hegerfeldt (1974, 1985), it has seemed impossible to identify localized statevectors or position operators in LIQT that were not counterintuitive—strange—in one way or another; the most striking strange property being the superluminal propagation of the localized states. The ambiguous (...) and controversial status of these concepts arises from the varied reactions that workers have to the strange properties. Some regard them, particularly the superluminal propagation, as utterly unacceptable, and conclude that no precise concepts of localized statevectors and position operators exist in LIQT (Wigner 1973, p. 325-327; 1983, pp. 310-313; Malament 1996). Others downplay the whole issue, on the grounds that current theoretical and experimental practice has no need of sharply formulated concepts of localization, localized states etc. (Birrell & Davies 1984, pp. 48-59; Haag 1992, p. 34). Still others, including ourselves, believe that the superluminal propagation does not lead to causal contradictions, and is not in conflict with available empirical data: so that it should not be ruled out. We also believe that the other strange properties are merely unfamiliar novelties of LIQT which we must simply learn to accept. (Like the superluminal propagation, they do not lead to causal contradictions, nor conflict with available data.) So in this paper, we aim to help remove the ambiguous and controversial status of localization concepts in LIQT. Overall, our strategy will be to assess a number of localization concepts, and thereby clarify the often complex relationships among them. (shrink)

Darwin begins On the Origin of Species by asking the reader to “reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated” (1859, p. 7); almost five-hundred pages later, he closes by having the reader consider the “endless forms most beautiful and wonderful” that have evolved (1859, p. 490). Darwin contemplates diversity throughout the Origin and presents the principle of divergence as a way to explain it. Darwin formulated the principle of divergence around 1857 (Browne 1980), (...) at which point he began replacing his previous view of “limited perfect adaptedness” with a view of relative adaptedness (Ospovat 1981; Burian 1983). Proponents of perfect adaptedness, such as Paley and .. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a great deal of skepticism about appeals to intuitions in philosophy. Appeals to intuition often get expressed in the form of what ‘we’ believe. Many people take the ‘we’ in this context to refer to what the folk believe. So the claim about what we believe is an empirical claim. And it looks like the support for this claim comes from a biased sample consisting solely of analytic philosophers. In this paper I want to explain a (...) different way appeals to intuition are used in the literature and why it survives such attacks. The basic idea, which comes from Bernard Williams, is that the 'we' used in many appeals to intuitions is not a referring expression at all. The appeal to intuition is not a claim about what any group of individuals believes. Rather it is an invitation to make a judgment. I argue that when you hear a philosopher say 'P is what we intuitively believe' the proper response is not 'who is this 'we'?’ The proper response is to wonder whether one ought to accept P. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Deductions, Kant attempts to establish the necessary applicability of the categories to what is encountered in experience. As I see it, the argument is intended to deduce two distinct, but, in Kant’s eyes, interrelated, claims. The first is that it is a necessity that experience be of an objective world. Call this rough idea the objectivity thesis. The second thesis is that the categoriesapply only to mere appearances, that is, the world insofar as we structure it. Call (...) this the idealist thesis. P. F. Strawson attempted to split the two claims in order to save the objectivity thesis from what he saw as its unnecessary idealist trappings. My thesis is that the objectivity thesis depends upon the idealist thesis and cannot survive on its own. (shrink)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

Volume I. The history of evil in antiquity : 2000 BCD-450 CE -- volume II. The history of evil in the medieval age : 450-1450 -- volume III. The history of evil in the early modern age : 1450-1700 -- volume IV. The history of evil in the 18th and 19th centuries : 1700-1900 -- volume V. The history of evil in the early twentieth century : 1900-1950 -- volume VI. The history of evil from the mid-twentieth century to today (...) : 1950-2018. (shrink)

On December 15, 2011, a final report was issued by the Committee on the Use of Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which had been convened by the U. S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) in collaboration with National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. Within a month of its release, this report was designated by Wired Science one of the “top scientific discoveries of 2011” (Wired Science Staff 2011). The ad hoc Committee responsible for this report was formed at (...) the request of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in response to congressional inquiry that had been prompted by expressions of public concern.1 The issues addressed in the report are profoundly ethical, despite NIH’s .. (shrink)

In the relatively short time since 2006—when Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics published an issue on moral issues relevant to the use of nonhuman animals in research [1]—significant changes have occurred for nonhuman animals in many quarters. Public sentiment, new policy initiatives, and scientific studies of nonhuman animals’ capacities have all influenced the ways in which nonhuman animals are perceived and treated in research. Today, a large body of information is available for use in decision making about the acceptability of using (...) nonhuman animals in research. The articles in this issue assess how moral argument and empirical studies stand to guide animal research policies and practices in future years.Many in bioethics have come to regard issues of animal research as a subfield of research ethics, bringing it closer to human research ethics. Animal ethics, like public health ethics, has struggled for recognition in bioethics. As the contributions to this issue show, some in bioe. (shrink)

The first set of case studies on animal use, this volume offers a thorough, up-to-date exploration of the moral issues related to animal welfare. Its main purpose is to examine how far it is ethically justifiable to harm animals in order to benefit mankind. An excellent introduction provides a framework for the cases and sets the background of philosophical and moral concepts underlying the subject. Sixteen original, previously unpublished essays cover controversies associated with the human use of animals in a (...) broad range of contexts, including biomedical, behavioral, and wildlife research, cosmetic safety testing, education, the food industry, commerce, and animal use as pets and in religious practices. Scientific research is accorded the closest scrutiny. The authors represent a wide range of expertise within their specialized areas of research--physiology, public policy, ethics, philosophy, law, veterinary science, and psychology. The careful analysis of each case makes it possible to elevate the discourse beyond over-simplified positions, and to demonstrate the complexity of the issues. The Human Use of Animals will be welcomed by students and faculty in law, philosophy, ethics, public policy, religion, medicine, and veterinary medicine. It will also interest activists in the animal protection movement, and members of animal protection organizations and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees. (shrink)

High-profile failures in financial trading have led to interest in how the culture of the industry produces risky and unethical behaviours among traders. Yet, there is no established theoretical framework for studying this: we apply safety culture theory to examine ten recent high-profile trading mishaps investigated by the UK financial regulator. The results show that the dimensions of safety culture used to understand organisational accidents in domains such as aviation also explain failures in Risk Management within financial trading organisations. This (...) counters narratives focusing on traders who are unethical ‘rule breakers’, and emphasises the value of a systemic approach, whereby safety culture theory is used to explain why risky behaviours in financial trading occur. Safety culture therefore provides a conceptual basis for further research on risky and unethical behaviours in financial trading, alongside providing insights for possible intervention. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

Taking a cue from the appalling incidents of September 2001, these essays explore the ostensible reasons behind the American war on terrorism, apologize for the pre-emptive nature of the war itself and address the concept of terrorism in the moral discourse of humanity.

ABSTRACTAnalytic philosophy is often associated with a physicalistic naturalism that privileges natural-scientific modes of explanation. Nevertheless there has since the 1980s been a heterodox, somewhat subterranean trend within analytic philosophy that seeks to articulate a more expansive, ‘non-reductive‘ conception of nature. This trend can be traced back to P.F. Strawson’s 1985 book Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. However, Strawson has long been ignored in the literature around ‘soft naturalism’ – especially in comparison to John McDowell. One of the reasons for (...) this is that Strawson’s account of soft naturalism is not often viewed as particularly plausible – it has come in for heavy criticism from the likes of Sebastian Gardner and Robert Stern. In this paper, I argue that Strawson’s soft naturalism ought to be re-assessed: that his critics can be refuted, and that his naturalism remains a compelling alternative to the likes of McDowell’s. I attempt this through a ‘radicalisation’ of the modest Strawson’s position, demonstrating that his naturalism has implicit in it something like Marx’s conception of human ‘species-being’. (shrink)

Conservatives claim that all phenomenal properties are sensory. Liberals countenance non-sensory phenomenal properties such as what it’s like to perceive some high-level property, and what it’s like to think that p. A hallmark of phenomenal properties is that they present an explanatory gap, so to resolve the dispute we should consider whether experience has non-sensory properties that appear ‘gappy’. The classic tests for ‘gappiness’ are the invertibility test and the zombifiability test. I suggest that these tests yield conflicting results: non-sensory (...) properties lend themselves to zombie scenarios but not to inversion scenarios. Which test should we trust? Against Carruthers & Veillet (2011), I argue that invertibility is not a viable condition of phenomenality. In contrast, being zombifiable is credibly necessary and sufficient for phenomenality. I conclude that there are non-sensory properties of experience that are ‘gappy’ in the right way, and that liberalism is therefore the most plausible position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mettle of Moral Fundamentalism: A Reply to Robert Baker*Tom L. Beauchamp (bio)AbstractThis article is a reply to Robert Baker’s attempt to rebut moral fundamentalism, while grounding international bioethics in a form of contractarianism. Baker is mistaken in several of his interpretations of the alleged moral fundamentalism and findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He also misunderstands moral fundamentalism generally and wrongly categorizes it as morally (...) bankrupt. His negotiated contract model is, in the final analysis, itself a form of the moral fundamentalism he declares bankrupt.Robert baker’s imaginative and incisive articles on international bioethics (Baker 1998a & b) are rich in history and philosophy, but they are as profoundly misguided as they are misdirected. In this comment, I will concentrate both on a pivotal interpretation and criticism that he offers of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE 1996) and on his philosophical thesis that a moral fundamentalism of principles and rights is bankrupt. Baker seriously misinterprets the ACHRE report, distorts and fails to refute moral fundamentalism, and ultimately embraces a form of the very fundamentalism that he declares bankrupt. These three topics are connected in that Baker’s misconceptions of the ACHRE report launch his critique of moral fundamentalism and his mistaken understanding of moral fundamentalism drives his critique of the ACHRE report. 1 [End Page 389]Some Misunderstandings of the Human Radiation CommitteeBaker proclaims a conflict between ACHRE’s moral fundamentalism and multiculturalism. He presents this conflict as primarily a factual issue regarding whether different cultures and eras accept different moral principles—“the difference claim,” in his vernacular (Baker 1998a, pp. 208–9). This interpretation eventuates in a critique of the work of both ACHRE and Ruth Macklin:[W]hen Macklin and the Radiation Committee consider the challenge of multiculturalism, they construe this challenge, not as dispute about anthropological fact, but as a dispute about philosophical theory. More specifically, they treat any assertion of the difference claim as a form of “ethical relativism.”... They thus respond to the multiculturalist’s factual observations—even to factual observations by anthropologists—as if they were philosophical analyses.(Baker 1998a, p. 209)Baker thinks that a factual question has been fallaciously transformed into a philosophical one. However, this false dilemma is a figment of his fancy. He provides no citation to ACHRE to show that it holds this view, and for an understandable reason: This position is neither stated nor presumed in the Report. ACHRE is quite clear that relativism involves both an anthropological (I would prefer to say historical) dispute about fact and a philosophical dispute about value—and that they are not the same.The Committee and its staff proceeded as follows: They first collected a large body of historical documents and facts about the practices, policies, and values that prevailed during the period they were studying. Chapters 1 through 3 and 5 through 13, 12 of the Report’s 18 chapters, display the results of this empirical work. The Committee concluded, on this basis, that research investigators and government officials were aware of the obligations generated by universal principles. The ACHRE report specifically lists six “basic” moral principles and maintains that these principles were pervasively recognized at the time of the radiation experiments (ACHRE 1996, pp. 114ff, 124). ACHRE received testimony, conducted interviews, and compiled documents that indicated how deeply these principles were woven into the fabric of American culture at the time, so deeply that no responsible research investigator could have been unaware of them. ACHRE did not move beyond its list of six principles to a broader thesis about the (factual) universality of other principles and did not examine other cultures or periods of history; such work would [End Page 390] have exceeded ACHRE’s mandate and would have done more to obscure than to further its arguments.ACHRE also found that some government officials had attempted to hide their wrongdoing—a clear indication that these officials were aware of the relevant moral principles and knew that they should not have been treating persons as they did (ACHRE 1996, pp. 152–53; Chapman 1946). These factual findings were not armchair philosophy or empirical guesswork... (shrink)

In this study, we examined moral issues and gender differences in ethical judgment using Reidenbach and Robin’s [Journal of Business Ethics9 (1990) 639) multidimensional ethics scale (MES). A total of 340 undergraduate students were asked to provide ethical judgment by rating three moral issues in the MES labeled: ‚sales’, ‚auto’, and ‚retail’ using three ethics theories: moral equity, relativism, and contractualism. We found that female students’ ratings of ethical judgment were consistently higher than that of male students across two out (...) of three moral issues examined (i.e., sales and retails) and ethics theories; providing support for Eagly’s [1987, Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-role Interpretation. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc, Hillsdale, NJ, England)] social role theory. After controlling for moral issues, women’s higher ratings of ethical judgment over men’s became statistically non-significant. Theoretical and practical implications based on the study’s findings are provided. (shrink)

It is argued that a second-order belief to the effect that I now have some particular propositional attitude is always true (Incorrigibility). This is not because we possess an infallible cognitive faculty of introspection, but because that x believes that he himself now has attitude A to proposition P entails that x has A to P. Incorrigibility applies only to second-order beliefs and not to mere linguistic avowals of attitudes. This view combines a necessary asymmetry between 1st and 3rd person (...) ascriptions with Objectivism about the propositional attitudes. The epistemic justification of second-order beliefs is shown to be a further question. (shrink)

Paul Boghossian has argued that Externalism is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge because (i) the Externalist can cite no property to be the reference of an empty natural kind concept such as the ether; (ii) without reference there is no content; hence (iii) either we do know on the basis of introspection alone whether an apparent natural kind thought has content or not, in which case we can infer from self-knowledge and a priori knowledge of Externalism alone to the existence in (...) our environment of water, gold etc.; (iv) or we do not know, without empirical investigation, whether an apparent natural kind thought has content. An Externalist not wanting to accept either (iii) or (iv) can deny (i). All empty natural kind concepts refer to the necessarily uninstantiated property of being identical to nothing. Since they have different senses and self-knowledge is only held to extend to the existence and identity of sense, this is compatible with privileged self-knowledge, and Externalism is still true of the concepts. (shrink)

English summary: Tom Kleffmann provides a thorough interpretation of Nietzsche's concept of life in the chronological order of his writings. He also deals with the reception of this concept of life in German Protestant theology up to approximately 1930 analyzing works by Albert Schweitzer, Karl Barth and P. Tillich. German description: In der Philosophie Friedrich Nietzsches wird die kritische Wahrheit des Lebens atheistisch und doch in quasi-religioser Totalitat behauptet - und dies in einer Sprachmachtigkeit, die der zeitgenossischen Theologie zu fehlen (...) schien. Tom Kleffmann interpretiert zunachst Nietzsches Lebensbegriff nach der chronologischen Reihenfolge seiner Schriften. Dann beschaftigt er sich mit der Rezeption dieses Lebensbegriffs in der deutschen evangelischen Theologie bis ca. 1930. Hierbei wird neben Untersuchungen von Albert Schweitzers 'Kultur und Ethik' und der 2. Auflage des Romerbriefkommentars von Karl Barth erstmals eine Gesamtinterpretation von P. Tillichs 'Marburger Dogmatik' vorgelegt. Ein Schlusskapitel stellt die Ergebnisse fur den systematisch-theologischen Lebensbegriff dar. (shrink)

In an article published in 2009 titled "How Do Mādhyamikas Think?" I tried to go some distance with Yasuo Deguchi, Jay Garfield, and Graham Priest (henceforth "DGP") in reading certain Buddhist texts as dialetheist.1 The dialetheism that I saw as plausible for the Prajñāpāramitā-sūtras and Nāgārjuna was not the full-blown robust variety of DGP (i.e., acceptance of the truth of some statement of the form p & ¬p) but a non-adjunctive variety, acceptance of p and acceptance of ¬p. In short, (...) the adjunctive move to p & ¬p is blocked.In the article, I focused on texts like the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā-sūtra ("Diamond Cutter Suūtra") with its famous "signature formulae" along the lines of "x does not exist / x is not .. (shrink)

Continuous recordings of brain electrical activity were obtained from a group of 176 patients throughout surgical procedures using general anesthesia. Artifact-free data from the 19 electrodes of the International 10/20 System were subjected to quantitative analysis of the electroencephalogram (QEEG). Induction was variously accomplished with etomidate, propofol or thiopental. Anesthesia was maintained throughout the procedures by isoflurane, desflurane or sevoflurane (N = 68), total intravenous anesthesia using propofol (N = 49), or nitrous oxide plus narcotics (N = 59). A set (...) of QEEG measures were found which reversibly displayed high heterogeneity of variance between four states as follows: (1) during induction; (2) just after loss of consciousness (LOC); (3) just before return of consciousness (ROC); (4) just after ROC. Homogeneity of variance across all agents within states was found. Topographic statistical probability images were compared between states. At LOC, power increased in all frequency bands in the power spectrum with the exception of a decrease in gamma activity, and there was a marked anteriorization of power. Additionally, a significant change occurred in hemispheric relationships, with prefrontal and frontal regions of each hemisphere becoming more closely coupled, and anterior and posterior regions on each hemisphere, as well as homologous regions between the two hemispheres, uncoupling. All of these changes reversed upon ROC. Variable resolution electromagnetic tomography (VARETA) was performed to localize salient features of power anteriorization in three dimensions. A common set of neuroanatomical regions appeared to be the locus of the most probable generators of the observed EEG changes. (shrink)