The discovery of a novel polypeptide (Islet Amyloid Polypeptide: IAPP) isolated from human and cat islet amyloid and from amyloid of a human insulinoma is reviewed. Structurally, IAPP from the human and cat resembles calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP). The structural similarities between the neuropeptide CGRP and IAPP support the premise that IAPP is hormonal in nature. Our immunohistochemical studies also indicate that normal islet B‐cells of several mammalian species (including man and cat) give strong immunoreactivity with antiserum directed to a (...) synthetic peptide segment of IAPP. The fact that IAPP is deposited as amyloid in the pancreatic islets of type 2 (noninsulin‐dependent) diabetics strongly supports an important but yet unknown link between IAPP and the development of this disease. (shrink)

The article develops an ecopedagogical-philosophical approach to the creative lifeforce kindergarden as a future kindergarden for a nature-friendly and sustainable development. It draws empirically on an action-research project in Klokkergaarden nature- and culture kindergarden in Drammen, Norway. The focus has been on the good meetings between humans, culture and nature through the three main topics that are to mark kindergardens and schools over the next years: life mastery, democracy and sustainable development. The target group is the leadership and employees of (...) kindergardens, and the target is to make concrete what the creative lifeforce kindergarden is, how it shows in practice and how it can be developed as an actor in sustainable community development. (shrink)

Objectives: To compare attitudes of medical and law students toward informing a cancer patient about diagnosis and prognosis and to examine whether differences are related to different convictions about benefit or harm of information.Setting and design: Anonymous questionnaires were distributed to convenience samples of students at the University of Geneva containing four vignettes describing a cancer patient who wishes, or alternatively, who does not wish to be told the truth.Participants: One hundred and twenty seven medical students and 168 law students.Main (...) outcome measures: Five point Likert scale of responses to the vignettes ranging from “certainly inform” to “certainly not inform” the patient.Results: All medical students and 96% of law students favoured information about the diagnosis of cancer if the patient requests it. Seventy four per cent of medical students and 82% of law students favoured informing a cancer patient about his or her prognosis . Thirty five per cent of law students and 11.7% of medical students favoured telling about the diagnosis and 25.6% of law students and 7% of medical students favoured telling about the prognosis even if the patient had clearly expressed his wish not to be informed. Law students indicated significantly more often than medical students reasons to do with the patient’s good, legal obligations, and the physician’s obligation to tell the truth, and significantly less often than medical students that their attitude had been determined predominantly by respect for the autonomous choice of the patient.Conclusion: Differences in attitudes according to the type of case and the type of studies were related to convictions about the benefit or harm to the patient caused by being given information. The self reported reasons of future physicians and future lawyers are helpful when considering means to achieve a better acceptance of patients’ right to know and not to know. (shrink)

If Savulescu and Kahane’s Principle of Procreative Beneficence were implemented regarding cognitive enhancement, the result would be highly impoverishing for future children. For, apart from being inadequate to rationality itself, advocates’ accounts of cognitive enhancement sever reason from the input to judgments and decision-making that other faculties provide. When handling desire, supporters of cognitive enhancement frame conflicts between reason and the nonrational in terms of self-governance or akratic failure, depending on which one triumphs. Further, so-called negative emotions are treated as (...) simply deleterious and hostile to the rational. Alliances of the nonrational with reason toward shared ends are hence unthinkable. Having critiqued advocates’ views directly, I amplify my assessment through engagement with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Per Savulescu and Kahane, to know how to direct enhancement endeavors, “we need to form reasonable opinions on difficult questions about the nature of well-being and the good life.” Thus far, however, enhancement supporters have been largely silent on this crucial matter. Because the debate over enhancement is ultimately over what values our views of flourishing embody, it should be recast so that this crux is squarely at the fore. What is more, for our own and our children’s sakes, as we embark on this reframing, we would do well to bear in mind Aristotle’s insights about the nonrational in relation to reason and his unwavering focus on the human “that for the sake of which” (hou heneka) all that we do is, perforce, undertaken. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To ascertain which conditions nurses believe should be in a law allowing active voluntary euthanasia (AVE). DESIGN: Survey questionnaire posted to registered nurses (RNs). SETTING: Australian Capital Territory (ACT) at the end of 1996, when active voluntary euthanasia was legal in the Northern Territory. SURVEY SAMPLE: A random sample of 2,000 RNs, representing 54 per cent of the RN population in the ACT. MAIN MEASURES: Two methods were used to look at nurses' opinions. The first involved four vignettes which (...) varied in terms of critical characteristics of each patient who was requesting help to die. The respondents were asked if the law should be changed to allow any of these requests. There was also a checklist of conditions, most of which have commonly been included in Australian proposed laws on AVE. The respondents chose those which they believed should apply in a law on AVE. RESULTS: The response rate was 61%. Support for a change in the law to allow AVE was 38% for a young man with AIDS, 39% for an elderly man with early stage Alzheimer's disease, 44% for a young woman who had become quadriplegic and 71% for a middle-aged woman with metastases from breast cancer. The conditions most strongly supported in any future AVE law were: "second doctor's opinion", "cooling off period", "unbearable protracted suffering", "patient fully informed about illness and treatment" and "terminally ill". There was only minority support for "not suffering from treatable depression", "administer the fatal dose themselves" and "over a certain age". CONCLUSION: Given the lack of support for some conditions included in proposed AVE laws, there needs to be further debate about the conditions required in any future AVE bills. (shrink)

"The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy was founded in 1995 for the purpose of providing detailed, scholarly information on key topics and philosophers in all areas of philosophy." Articles are currently from three sources: (1) original contributions by specialized philosophers around the Internet; (2) adaptations of material written by the editors for classroom purposes; and (3) adaptations from public domain sources (typically from two or more sources for per article). The IEP offers access to a keyword site search engine and is (...) free of charge to all Internet users. It is continuously revised and updated. (shrink)

Background Informed consent confers upon participants the right to decline or accept participation in a study in equal measure. Consent declines can be used as a potential metric to assess the adequacy of the informed consent process. Limited literature is available on the reporting of consent declines in Clinical Research. We evaluated randomized controlled trials published in three high-impact factor journals for consent declines to assess the extent of exertion of autonomy by research participants. Methods CONSORT flow charts in RCTs (...) published in New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet and Journal of the American Medical Association between 2012 and 2015 were evaluated. The total and per journal proportion of RCTs reporting consent declines was calculated. Percentage of consent declines was also compared based on number of centers and type of setting. Between-groups analysis was done using Chi Square, Chi Square for trend and a Crude odds ratio [95% C.I] were calculated. Results Only 3.7% of the published articles were RCTs. Of the 1103 RCTs, only 532 reported consent declines. JAMA had the highest RCTs reporting consent declines, the Lancet [129,150/781,924, 16.5%] had the most participants declining consent. Difference was significant using Chi square for linear trend [ p < 0.00001]. Consent decline rate was higher in developed countries relative to developing countries [cOR: 2.27, p < 0.000001] and in single centric versus multicentric studies [cOR : 3.63, p < 0.0000001]. Conclusion Both authors and journal editors need to ensure better reporting of consent declines. (shrink)

The latest volume in the splendid critical edition of the Opera philosophica et theologica of William of Ockham in progress at the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University under the general editorship of Gedeon Gál, O.F.M. The project itself is something of a phenomenon in the area of critical editions of medieval Latin texts in terms of the rapidity at which quality volumes are produced at remarkably reasonable costs. Since 1967 five quarto volumes, totaling some three thousand four hundred pages, (...) have appeared. Three of these contain the first portion of Ockham’s most important theological work, the Ordinatio of his "commentary" on book 1 of the Sentences. The final portion is scheduled to appear early in 1979 as volume 4 of the Opera theologica. Volume 1 of the philosophical opera contains the monumental Summa Logicae, and volume 3 will also appear this year, thus completing with the present volume the edition of the most important of Ockham’s logical works. Editors are also assigned and are already at work on the other major non-political writings, notably the Quodlibet and commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics. Since the Opera politica Guillelmi de Ockham were published in three octavo volumes by the University of Manchester Press, we may expect to have very shortly substantially all the works of the Venerable Inceptor, thanks to the exceptional industry of a team of highly qualified researchers as well as substantial grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the De Rance Corporation. Two of the editors of individual works in the present volume are deceased. Father Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M., who came to the Franciscan Institute from Germany before the outbreak of World War II, first conceived of and began work on the critical edition. His text of the Tractatus de praedestinatione was first published in 1945 in Franciscan Institute Publications, Text Series No. 2 and was subsequently translated into English by M. M. Adams and N. Kretzmann in 1969. It differs little in Brown’s revision, which adds variants from the Bruges MS, unavailable to Boehner because of the war. The other posthumous edition is that of E. A. Moody. This too appeared in the aforesaid Text Series as No. 14. The present text is identical with the earlier version, but observations and suggested alternate readings by the general editor are added in footnotes. The thirty-two pages of introduction contains a wealth of information. To mention but two items: One concerns the probable reason why Ockham only incepted in theology but never served as regent master. This apparently had little or nothing to do with Lutterall’s opposition, as Chancellor of the University, to Ockham’s views and his summons later to the papal court at Avignon. It stemmed rather from the Franciscan custom of promoting those bachelors who had completed their magisterial studies to regent master on the basis of seniority. At his time a junior like Ockham could expect a wait of eight to ten years. It was during this period, beginning probably in 1321 that he began his lectures on logic, probably at the Franciscan house of studies in London where he later composed the Summa Logicae and his exposition of Aristotle’s Physics, before the summer of 1324 when he went to Avignon. Another item is the effective refutation of the authenticity views of Prantl and Anneliese Maier of the Expositiones and their relationship to the spurious and derivative Notabilia. As a final comment, we note that this second volume of the Opera philosophica contains all the works of Ockham edited by Marcus de Benevento under the title Expositio aurea et admodum utilis super artem veterem edita per Ven. Inceptorem Guilielmum de Occham, [[sic]] cum quaestionibus Alberti Parvi de Saxonia.—A.B.W. (shrink)

The computational paradigm, which has dominated psychology and artificial intelligence since the cognitive revolution, has been a source of intense debate. Recently, several cognitive scientists have argued against this paradigm, not by objecting to computation, but rather by objecting to the notion of representation. Our analysis of these objections reveals that it is not the notion of representation per se that is causing the problem, but rather specific properties of representations as they are used in various psychological theories. Our analysis (...) suggests that all theorists accept the idea that cognitive processing involves internal information-carrying states that mediate cognitive processing. These mediating states are a superordinate category of representations. We discuss five properties that can be added to mediating states and examine their importance in various cognitive models. Finally, three methodological lessons are drawn from our analysis and discussion. (shrink)

Nestes nossos tempos gerundistas e de valores-isopores o apelo ao eufemismo e à grandiloquência torna-se palavra de ordem e progresso. Oficinas mecânicas passam a ser chamadas de centros automotivos, açougues transmutam-se em butiques de carnes e sapatarias em recuperadoras de calçados.Daí a gente olha em volta e começa igualmente a não achar mais nem barbearias nem barbeiros.Quedê, perguntamos, a Tesoura de Ouro do Carlão? Pois seu salão ganhou a neomodernosa indicação de Cabeleireiro Masculino e virou ele esteticista capilar. Bate daí (...) saudade danada – possivelmente, diria. (shrink)

Background: The traditional approach to resolving ethics concerns may not address underlying organisational issues involved in the evolution of these concerns. This represents a missed opportunity to improve quality of care “upstream”. The purpose of this study was to understand better which organisational issues may contribute to ethics concerns. Methods: Directed content analysis was used to review ethics consultation notes from an academic children’s hospital from 1996 to 2006 (N = 71). The analysis utilised 18 categories of organisational issues derived (...) and modified from published quality improvement protocols. Results: Organisational issues were identified in 68 of the 71 (96%) ethics consult notes across a range of patient settings and reasons for consultation. Thirteen of the 18 categories of organisational issues were identified and there was a median of two organisational issues per consult note. The most frequently identified organisational issues were informal organisational culture (eg, collective practices and approaches to situations with ethical dimensions that are not guided by policy), policies and procedures (eg, staff knows policy and/or procedural guidelines for an ethical concern but do not follow it) and communication (eg, communication about critical information, orders, or hand-offs repeatedly does not occur among services). Conclusions: Organisational issues contribute to ethical concerns that result in clinical ethics consults. Identifying and addressing organisational issues such as informal culture and communication may help decrease the recurrence of future similar ethics concerns. (shrink)

From one of the most influential scientists of our time, a dazzling exploration of the hidden laws that govern the life cycle of everything from plants and animals to the cities we live in. The former head of the Sante Fe Institute, visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term "complexity" can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has found (...) an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities and our businesses. Fascinated by issues of aging and mortality, West applied the rigor of a physicist to the biological question of why we live as long as we do and no longer. The result was astonishing, and changed science, creating a new understanding of energy use and metabolism: West found that despite the riotous diversity in the sizes of mammals, they are all, to a large degree, scaled versions of each other. If you know the size of a mammal, you can use scaling laws to learn everything from how much food it eats per day, what its heart-rate is, how long it will take to mature, its lifespan, and so on. Furthermore, the efficiency of the mammal's circulatory systems scales up precisely based on weight: if you compare a mouse, a human and an elephant on a logarithmic graph, you find with every doubling of average weight, a species gets 25% more efficient--and lives 25% longer. This speaks to everything from how long we can expect to live to how many hours of sleep we need. Fundamentally, he has proven, the issue has to do with the fractal geometry of the networks that supply energy and remove waste from the organism's body. (shrink)

Most of the discussion in bioethics and health policy concerning social responsibility for health has focused on society’s obligation to provide access to healthcare. While ensuring access to healthcare is an important social responsibility, societies can promote health in many other ways, such as through sanitation, pollution control, food and drug safety, health education, disease surveillance, urban planning and occupational health. Greater attention should be paid to strategies for health promotion other than access to healthcare, such as environmental and public (...) health and health research.Lifestyle plays a major role in most of the illnesses in industrialised nations.1 Six of the 10 leading factors contributing to the global burden of disease are lifestyle related: unsafe sex, high blood pressure, tobacco use, alcohol use, high cholesterol and obesity.2 Lifestyle-related illnesses also contribute to the rising costs of healthcare. Spending on healthcare accounts for about 16% of the gross domestic product in the USA, or US$1.9 trillion.3 Although smoking has declined steadily there since the 1960s, smoking-related medical expenses are still about US$75.5 billion per year.4 Obesity, which has been climbing in the past two decades, accounts for about US$75 billion in healthcare costs there each year.5 Alcoholism and drug addiction in the USA account for annual healthcare costs of about US$22.5 billion and US$12 billion, respectively.6,7 Federal government spending on healthcare relating to HIV/AIDS is over US$13 billion per year.8Given the well-documented relationship between lifestyle, disease burden and healthcare costs, it makes economic and medical sense to hold individuals morally responsible for their health-related choices. While this view has a great deal of intuitive appeal, it also faces numerous objections.9–12 First, holding individuals entirely responsible for their own health conflicts with medicine’s obligation to treat the sick and society’s obligation …. (shrink)

Rosensohn’s interpretation rejects the thesis that Peirce had several systems, perhaps as many as four, each of which is responsive to his new discoveries in logic. Against this view Rosensohn traces the development of Peirce’s system as a coherent phenomenological search, shaped by his "lifelong interest in logic, the sciences, ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics", and culminating in his phaneroscopy, the description of the phaneron. Rosensohn’s text consists of two parts. Part I, "The Elements of Phenomenology," consists of three chapters, two (...) of which are devoted to a close investigation of Peirce’s 1967 "A New List of Categories." Part II consists of two long chapters, "Phenomenology and Nature " and "Phaneroscopy: The Description of the Phaneron." The book concludes with a critique of Peirce’s fundamental categories—Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness—as these bear on his own phenomenological project. From the standpoint of Peirce’s phenomenology, "whatever is present to the mind has Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness", but on the ontological level the cosmos’ evolution is viewed by him as linear. In addition to the usual bibliography and index, Rosensohn provides a helpful appendix of six key quotations in which Peirce explains phenomenology and phaneroscopy. This volume is vastly more substantial than its limited number of pages might suggest. The publisher crowds the pages with smallish print, generally exceeding 500 words per page. Rosensohn’s text itself is lucid, beautifully written, and skillfully argued. It represents at once an important contribution to Peirce scholarship and to the phenomenological literature.—B.M. (shrink)

In editing Plato's Sophist for the new OCT vol. I, ed. E. A. Duke, W. F. Hicken, W. S. M. Nicoll, D. B. Robinson, and J. C. G. Strachan , there was less chance of giving novel information about W = Vind. Supp. Gr. 7 for this dialogue than for others in the volume, since Apelt's edition of 1897 was used by Burnet in 1900 and was based on Apelt's own collation of W. The result was better than the somewhat (...) confused information printed by Burnet, even in his 1905 reprint, for W for the other dialogues in vol. I. But in the Sophist as elsewhere in vol. I collations largely due to Dr W. S. M. Nicoll added new facts about all of BDTWP and their correctors, and the search for testimonia largely carried out by Dr E. A. Duke added new facts in that area. A reviewer counts 66 changes in our text of the Sophist, which may perhaps be a slight over-estimate. Classification of changes as substantive or as falling into different groups is sometimes difficult, but I think plausible figures are as follows. We have in 25 places made a different choice of readings from the primary mss. and testimonia. We have printed conjectures where Burnet kept a ms. reading in 17 places, but conversely we have reverted to a ms. reading where Burnet had a conjecture in 8 places. We have printed alternative conjectures to conjectures adopted by Burnet in 6 places. So we have actually departed from the primary sources on at most 9 more occasions overall than Burnet. What must be noted is that Burnet had already printed conjectures on something like 87 occasions , so our percentage addition to Burnet's departures from the primary sources is modest. Moreover Burnet printed about 25 readings from testimonia; we have followed him in 20 or so of these cases, and this in turn implies that the primary mss. are in error at these further 20 places. It needs to be underlined that though Burnet undoubtedly deserved to be regarded as a safe and cautious editor, nevertheless he departed from the primary mss. on average about twice per Stephanus page in this dialogue. Sometimes, of course, testimonia showed him right to do this, but testimonia cover only a quite small part of this dialogue. Otherwise Burnet accepted almost 90 conjectures. For the Politicus the figures are fairly similar; Burnet accepted 22 Byzantine conjectures and 35–40 more modern ones. The new OCT there adds 15 or so more conjectures. (shrink)

In February 54 b.c. Cicero concludes a missive to his brother with a passing and – for us – tantalizing remark: Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. sed cum veneris. virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris; hominem non putabo. Quintus had, it seems, read De rerum natura, or at least parts thereof, just before he left Rome for an undisclosed location nearby, and he shared his enthusiasm with his brother per codicillos. Meanwhile, he (...) was corresponding with Julius Caesar, whose staff in Gaul he was about to join. When, a few months later, he was stationed with Caesar, he was involved in another literary affair, this time concerning his brother who wrote to him, inquiring about his autobiographical De temporibus suis: quo modo nam, mi frater, de nostris versibus Caesar? nam primum librum se legisse scripsit ad me ante, et prima sic ut neget se ne Graeca quidem meliora legisse; reliqua ad quendam locum ῥᾳθυμότερα. dic mihi verum: num aut res eum aut χαρακτὴρ non delectat? (shrink)

The death penalty by lethal injection is a legal punishment in the United States. Sodium Thiopental, once used in the death penalty cocktail, is no longer available for use in the United States as a consequence of this association. Anesthesiologists possess knowledge of Sodium Thiopental and possible chemical alternatives. Further, lethal injection has the look and feel of a medical act thereby encouraging physician participation and comment. Concern has been raised that the death penalty by lethal injection, is cruel. Physicians (...) are ethically directed to prevent cruelty within the doctor-patient relationship and ethically prohibited from participation in any component of the death penalty. The US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is not cruel per se and is not in conflict with the 8th amendment of the US constitution. If the death penalty is not cruel, it requires no further refinement. If, on the other hand, the death penalty is in fact cruel, physicians have no mandate outside of the doctor patient relationship to reduce cruelty. Any intervention in the name of cruelty reduction, in the setting of lethal injection, does not lead to a more humane form of punishment. If physicians contend that the death penalty can be botched, they wrongly direct that it can be improved. The death penalty cocktail, as a method to reduce suffering during execution, is an unverifiable claim. At best, anesthetics produce an outward appearance of calmness only and do not address suffering as a consequence of the anticipation of death on the part of the condemned. (shrink)

Leo Strauss’ controversial theory of esoteric philosophy, as presented in Persecution and the Art of Writing, sparked a fierce debate. Opponents and proponents of the theory utilised a wide range of perspectives to support their arguments. By investigating esoteric philosophy from a sociolinguistic perspective, this paper introduces a novel perspective to the Strauss dispute. In PAW Strauss is mistaken regarding esotericism and its role in philosophy. On one hand it is reasonable to endorse Strauss’ persuasive account on the origins of (...) esoteric writing. The Straussian account provides a plausible sociological background as to why philosophy, per se became an esoteric fliedH. On the other hand it seems as Strauss ascribed undue significance to possible clandestine massages that may be found within works of philosophy because philosophy is mostly already done in an esoteric linguistic space. (shrink)

The study of the effects of interactive media has mainly focused on dysregulated behaviors, the conceptualization of which is supported by the paradigms of addiction. Research into Game Transfer Phenomena examines the interplay between video game features, events while playing, and the manipulation of hardware, which can lead to sensory-perceptual and cognitive intrusions and self-agency transient changes related to video games. GTP can influence the interpretation of stimuli and everyday interactions and, in contrast to gaming disorder, are relatively common and (...) not necessarily negative. However, some players have reported feeling distress due to their GTP. This study focuses on how dispositional and interactive media habit factors are related to GTP and two forms of problematic interactive media [problematic video game playing and problematic social media use ]. A sample of 343 university students who played video games completed an online survey. Not all who had experienced GTP were identified as exhibiting PVG or PSMU, but all of those in the PVG group had experienced GTP. Overall, the profiles of the groups, including GTP, PVG, and PSMU, were in accordance with previous findings. Those in the GTP and the PVG groups were characterized by being male, being highly engaged in the game, and showed preferences for game-related activities. However, while those in the GTP group were significantly more likely to be fantasy-prone, those with PVG were the ones who played most per day. Those in the PSMU group were characterized by being female and/or extroverted, frequently using social/sharing platforms, and seldom playing video games. A hierarchical binary logistic regression revealed that males were more likely to experience GTP. Increases in PVG, fantasy proneness, and neuroticism increased the odds of GTP. Future work can benefit from considering the role of GTP in gaming disorder, since intrusive thoughts, cognitive biases, and poor impulse control are pivotal in the initiation and maintenance of dysfunctional playing behaviors. (shrink)

This paper presents an overview of the process of entanglement at the 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference (IPNC) at University of California at Irvine held on August 18, 2022. Representing collective work from the US, Canada, UK and Germany, our panel entitled ‘What can critical posthuman philosophies do for nursing?’ examined critical posthumanism and its operations and potential in nursing. Critical posthumanism offers an antifascist, feminist, material, affective, and ecologically entangled approach to nursing and healthcare. Rather than focusing on (...) the arguments of each of the three distinct but interrelated panel presentation pieces, this paper instead focuses on process and performance (per/formance) and performativity as relational, connected and situated, with connections to nursing philosophy. Building upon critical feminist and new materialist philosophies, we describe intra‐activity and performativity as ways to dehierarchise knowledge making practices within traditional academic conference spaces. Creating critical cartographies of thinking and being are actions of possibility for building more just and equitable futures for nursing, nurses, and those they accompany—including all humans, nonhumans, and more than human matter. (shrink)

In the philosophy of Alain Badiou, ethics can only arise in relation to an evental truth procedure that breaks from the economic logic of a situation. Further, because for Badiou there cannot be economic truths per se – rather, economic matters must be understood in their relation to one or more truths in the domain of love, art, science or politics – a Badiouian business ethics would look entirely distinct from any ethics that simply places limits on certain kinds of (...) economic activity. Although Slavoj Žižek, among others, has suggested that this marks an essential weakness in Badiou's economic/political theory, it may actually be the greatest strength of his position. Within a capitalist system, a Badiouian business ethics would then be a question of mobilizing economic resources in order to serve the ongoing construction of a truth procedure. For a business to be considered ethical on Badiou's terms, it must break – and continue to break – from the dominant logic of capitalism and its merely economic pursuit of profit maximization. (shrink)

The first section states two general theses: the claim that semeantic features are not expressible in language is indefensible; and, the role semantic expressions play in language consists in making language fully determinate. The second section elaborates on the main thesis of the paper; that is, ‘... is true’ expresses neither a predicate nor a PROsentence-forming operator (R. Brandom), but a PERsentence- (and PERproposition-) forming operator (‘PER’ from ‘PERfect’ or ‘PERform’). Contrary to the ‘anaphoric’ conception, it is argued that the (...) truth operator functions ‘cataphorically’ in the following sense: it applies to semantically indeterminate (or underdetermined) sentences (and propositions) and yields fully determinate sentences (and propositions), i.e., PERsentences (and PERpropositions). This leads to a surprisingly new understanding of (Tarski’s) Tbiconditionals. The final section shows how to conceive of the fully determinate semantical and ontological status of sentences and propositions. (shrink)

One of the vexed questions in the philosophy of wonder and indeed education is how to ensure that the next generation harbours a sense of wonder. Wonder is important, we think, because it encour- ages inquiry and keeps us as Albert Einstein would argue from ‘being as good as dead’ or ‘snuffed-out candles’ (Einstein 1949, 5). But how is an educator to install, bring to life, or otherwise encourage a sense of wonder in his or her stu- dents? Biologist Rachel (...) Carson suggests that exploring nature and specifically undertaking walks along the rocky coast of Maine would keep alive a person’s inborn sense of wonder (Carson 1984). Philosopher Jesse Prinz thinks that exposure to art will encourage wonderment because artworks, as he puts it, are “inventions for feeding the appetite that wonder excites in us” (Prinz 2013). Weird fiction (a subgenre of speculative fiction) – and in particular the work of one of its greatest exponents, the early-20th-century American author How- ard Phillips Lovecraft – is likewise a catalyst for wonder. The reason behind this is that Lovecraft’s ‘wonder-stories’ are densely packed with wonder per design; and in support of this claim I shall in what is to come 1) provide a brief introduction to Lovecraft and weird fiction; 2) present a working definition of wonder; and 3) clarify what is meant by something being ‘densely packed with wonder’ via bringing to the fore evidence of Lovecraft’s literary wonder- mongery. The paper ends with some reflections on the notion of ‘dark wonder’, why this peculiar label might be suitable for the kind of wonder we find in Lovecraft’s work, and why exposure to ‘dark wonder’ can be edifying, and in that sense educational. (shrink)

Beginning in the mid-1930s the comparative physiologists Laurence Irving and Per Fredrik Scholander pioneered the study of diving mammals, particularly harbor seals. Although resting on earlier work dating back to the late nineteenth century, their research was distinctive in several ways. In contrast to medically oriented physiology, the approaches of Irving and Scholander were strongly influenced by natural history, zoology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Diving mammals, they argued, shared the cardiopulmonary physiology of terrestrial mammals, but evolution had modified these basic (...) adaptive processes in extreme ways. In particular, seals’ remarkable ability to hold breath, lower metabolism, produce energy anaerobically, and resist asphyxiation, provided a sharp contrast with terrestrial mammals, including humans. This diving physiology was an extreme elaboration of a general regulatory mechanism that allowed seals and other diving mammals to remain active underwater for extended periods. The decrease in heart rate referred to as bradycardia or the “diving reflex” was highly developed in diving mammals, but also found in less developed form in many other organisms faced by asphyxia. It therefore served as a kind of “master switch” for lowering metabolism in diving, hibernation, parturition, drowning, and other physiological responses involving lack of oxygen. Studying bradycardia unified a wide diversity of physiological phenomena, while also providing a context for contrasting the physiological responses of various species, including humans. Conducted in the laboratory and the field, this research served as a bridge between a comparative physiological ecology focused on non-human species and a human-centered general physiology. (shrink)