The paper seeks to contribute to clarifying agnotology as an ‘epistemic strategy’, conceived as ‘epistemically damaging and hurt[ing] the production of knowledge’. My general claim is that the grammar of intentions ‘embedded’ in agnotological arguments is often not considered accurately. I use considerations from the philosophy of action as a theoretical framework to make more explicit what is implied in agnogenetic manoeuvres. Agnotology, as a ‘theory’ about epistemic states, in particular knowledge and ignorance, would be seriously incomplete without that component. (...) The following can thus be read as a contribution to an analysis of the presuppositions of the strategic variant of Agnotology. My first claim is that the more common objections to the introduction of intentions are in no way definitive. My second, more specific, claim is that we need a room, in our conceptual toolbox, for ‘anti-epistemic intentions’, which play a key role in agnotological arguments. (shrink)

A common objection to a pragmatist perspective on scientific expertise is that, while there is a well-known pragmatist theory of inquiry, which was formulated first by Peirce, then refined by Dewey and others, this theory cannot provide a clear-cut account of scientific expertise. In this paper, after addressing this objection in the second section, I claim that, on the contrary, pragmatism offers robust tools to think scientific expertise. In Sections 3 to 7, I present five important insights that one can (...) derive from a pragmatist epistemology when responding to contemporary problems posed by expertise: about science and scientific expertise in a legal context (sections 3 and 4), about collective expertise (sections 5 and 6), and even about expertise on ignorance (section 7). (shrink)

L’ignorance peut être autre chose que la pure absence de savoir ou que le simple fait d’être privé de connaissances possédées par d’autres : elle peut être domptée, elle peut aussi être produite. Quels sont les variétés et les modes de l’ignorance, et pourquoi est-il essentiel d’en tenir compte dans les débats environnementaux et sanitaires ? Lorsqu’elle est « produite », comme l’estiment certains, comment l’est-elle ? L’ouvrage répond à ces questions et, au-delà de l’opposition tranchée entre l’ignorance conçue comme (...) front de la science et l’ignorance stratégique, explore une véritable « zone grise » qui constitue une partie de ce paysage : conflits d’intérêt, débats sur les sources de financement de la recherche, crise de la réplication des expérimentations. Quand et comment peut-on sortir de cette « zone grise » où tout devient indiscernable pour qualifier plus nettement les phénomènes en jeu ? Si nos enquêtes comme nos actions peuvent réussir ou échouer, échouer de manière épisodique ou persistante, sous l’action d’un tiers ou non, dans quels cas est-il raisonnable de relier ces échecs à des intentions ? (shrink)

In this short survey, I show that one can argue that Peirce’s reception is just starting, with a strong scholarship that has been developing in the last thirty years in France, even if the reception dates, as in Peirce’s own country, back to the 1870s, after a kind of Peircean “craze” in the 1960s and 1970s.

The goal of this chapter is to contribute to ignorance studies by taking advantage of the pragmatist epistemology of Peirce and Dewey, which, in my view, would be an “unfinished” business without facing sundry problems raised by ignorance studies. Five typical pragmatist claims provide the framework for this chapter. They can be endorsed by other philosophies, but their conjunction is typical of pragmatism: (1) the first is Peirce’s pragmatist maxim for clarifying our ideas, where the reference to “practical bearings”, to (...) situations, conducts and contexts, is pivotal; (2) the second is pragmatism’s focus on inquiry as a norm-governed practice, rather than on mere knowledge; (3) the third idea is their “externalism”, the conviction that mind, reason and knowledge are not properties of atomic individuals but are distributed over community of inquirers or “publics” and their environment; (4) the fourth idea is that philosophy has condemned itself to skepticism when it was looking for absolute theoretical certainties; and (5) the last claim is their rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. My own general claim is that pragmatism has under-appreciated relevance for understanding the epistemology of ignorance and its social implications, and each section explores one possible dimension – semantic, epistemic, externalist, doxastic and normative – for this contribution. (shrink)

Building on recent texts, I give a characterization of Richard Shusterman’s specific variant of pragmatism, understood as a melioristic or perfectionist pragmatism, where ethical and political dimensions are deeply intertwined with the epistemological one. To do so, I focus on what seems to be Shusterman’s latest contribution to his inter- rupted dialogue with Richard Rorty in Thinking through the Body.

Si l’intérêt de Peirce pour l’historien des sciences William Whewell est bien connu, l’influence de ce dernier sur la première formulation du pragmatisme peircien a moins été étudiée. Le présent article s’appuie sur une conférence, consacrée à Whewell et donnée par Peirce en 1869, pour analyser plus en détail ce que Peirce pouvait alors entendre par « éclaircissement des conceptions ». Les repères décisifs sont ici fournis par le triple rapport au kantisme, à l’histoire des sciences et aux controverses scientifiques.

James a maintes fois célébré les rencontres philosophiques et l’on sait les efforts de James et de Bergson pour se voir, lors des passages de James en Europe. Proximité physique ne signifie évidemment pas convergence ni capillarité philosophiques, comme l’apprend à ses dépens Agathon dans le Banquet de Platon. Or, le rapprochement, mais aussi les confusions, entre la philosophie de Bergson et celle de James, voire entre « bergsonisme » et « pragmatisme », restent un passage obligé de l’étude des (...) deux hommes. Si cette confusion — peut-être ces familles de confusions — sont caractéristiques du début du XXe siècle , il serait sans doute illusoire de croire que nous en sommes sortis aujourd’hui. C’est en France une expérience encore très répandue chez le jamesien que devoir se justifier par rapport au « bergsonisme », et c’en est une autre pour le « bergsonien » que de devoir dire qu’il n’est pas forcément « pragmatiste ». Ces glissements ont déjà été maintes fois analysés et je tiendrai ici pour acquis que Horace Kallen , Floris Delattre , Ralph Barton Perry et Millic Capek , qui ont procédé à la revue de détail, nous ont donné suffisamment d’éléments pour qu’il ne soit pas nécessaire de reprendre le dossier dans son ensemble. Le propos sera plutôt de décomposer un travers de lecture que l’on inflige généralement aux deux auteurs à partir d’un terrain plus limité : le thème du « courant », ou flux (stream), de conscience, thème prétendument commun aux deux hommes. Je vais pour cela tenter d’identifier, dans la première section, deux grandes manières d’aborder le rapport entre les deux hommes qui ont conduit à méconnaître leur apport propre. L’une interdit tout simplement de les lire comme philosophes, même si elle est couramment pratiquée, ce que j’illustrerai à la lumière de deux exemples. L’autre type de lecture engage, lui, un contresens sur la thèse même de James, et c’est ici que la face critique de ce chapitre se retourne en argument positif. Le cœur de ce contresens est de croire que James aurait introduit le thème du courant de pensée ou de conscience, et que ce serait là son originalité. Or, comme il est normal chez un auteur pragmatiste après tout, l’originalité réside dans l’usage qui est fait de ce thème. En examinant dans la deuxième section les rouages de ce contresens, dont il n’est pas certain que tous les lecteurs de Bergson l’aient totalement évité alors même qu’ils pensaient le déposer, on tentera donc de préciser tout d’abord en quoi le thème lui-même n’est pas spécifiquement jamesien, ensuite en quoi le propos de James n’est pas tant de décrire ce flux pour lui-même que de nous expliquer ce qui nous guette si nous le négligeons systématiquement, enfin quelles sont les fonctions remplies par les passages sur le courant de conscience dans l’argument de James. (shrink)

The present paper deals thus with some fundamental agreements and disagreements between Peirce and James, on crucial issues such as perception and consciousness. When Peirce first read the Principles, he was sketching his theory of the categories, testing its applications in many fields of knowledge, and many investigations were launched, concerning indexicals, diagrams, growth and development. James's utterances led Peirce to make his own views clearer on a wide range of topics that go to the heart of the foundations of (...) psychology and that involve the relationship between perception and logic, between consciousness and the categories, between abstraction and the 'stream of thought'. The idea is to show that Peirce detected important discoveries and insights in the Principles, but felt that James could not make proper use of them because of logical confusions, and also because of his "clandestine" metaphysics. The point in this essay is thus not to look for remains of psychologism in Peirce's writings,13 but to look at Peirce's comments about James's psychology in an attempt to identify where and why Peirce amended James's views. Since the project to provide some insight on Peirce's extensive reading ofJames's Principles of Psycho/.ogy would deserve a full volume, I shall focus here on three occasions where Peirce explicidy commented on Jarnes's Principles. In the first section, I shall consider bis assessment of James's chapter on space, which was published as a series of articles in 1887, in Mind. I shall then turn to the 1891 review of the Principles in The Nation for important complements on perception as inference. In the third section, I shall deal with Peirce's manuscript "Questions on James's Principles"(Rl099). These "Questions" reveal a deep interest in psychological problems and suggest different ways along which Peirce's new advances in the field of the categories, of continuity, and abstraction could provide a proper basis for the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In addition to providing a rebuttal of the “paper-doubts” of the would-be skeptic, pragmatists have also been quite responsive to the social dimensions of doubt. This is true concerning the causes of doubt. This is true also regarding its consequences: doubt has consequences on epistemic trust; on the way we discuss truths, either about the sciences or about the “construction of good”. Readers of Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty and of some of his most important political writings can easily see (...) how practical uncertainty can degenerate into practical and political skepticism, preventing the emergence of the public. This social aspect of the question has received less attention, perhaps, than the general pragmatist stance towards skepticism, and the present symposium offers a rst round of insights into this aspect of the question: the papers retrieved below all cast light on important aspects of the debate on justi cation, on scienti c dogmatism, on irony and skepticism, on doubt and legal theory, on skepticism and political anarchism. (shrink)

Pour traiter de la question singulière de la relation entre James et Renouvier à la lumière de cette préoccupation plus générale, nous choisirons ici une période un peu plus limitée que la carrière de James dans son ensemble : depuis ses premiers écrits jusqu’à la série d’articles de 1884-1885, qui allaient être si importants à la fois pour la psychologie et pour l’oeuvre philosophique, c’est-à-dire précisément jusqu’au point où les itinéraires philosophiques de James et de Renouvier commencent à diverger. Il (...) s’agit de voir en quoi la Critique philosophique est un cadre hospitalier pour le jeune James, mais aussi en quoi, dès la fin de cette période, des différends importants se font jour, sur la conscience notamment, ce qui donne lieu à une situation paradoxale où l’organe même qui a contribué à faire connaître James se retrouve à rebours de plusieurs de ses thèses importantes, avant la publication des Principles of Psychology (1890) et encore plus avant le Pragmatisme (1907). (shrink)

Je montre dans ce texte que la thèse de Jean Wahl sur les Pluralistes d'Angleterre et d'Amérique n'est pas tant un tableau des pensées pluralistes qu'une problématisation du pluralisme. La révélation que Wahl va trouver à rebours de certains textes de William James, c'est celle d'un restant moniste, attentif au fond non relationnel de l'expérience, ce qui va le conduire à explorer, beaucoup plus hardiment que nombre de ses contempo- rains, les proximités entre James et Bradley. Cette voix moniste, que (...) l'on retrouverait derrière la lettre des «philosophies pluralistes», est le véritable enjeu de la thèse de 1920 qui, après un inventaire des critiques de l'unité abstraite, propose dans sa méditation conclusive une vision du monde dans laquelle, une fois la critique des abstractions du pluralisme opérée, subsiste ce sens du « particulier concret » qui en est la marque propre. Ce sera l'objet de la deuxième section. Alors qu'une partie du public français lit l'empirisme radical à travers la «volonté de croire», les derniers textes à partir des premiers, traduits et présentés dès leur parution par Renouvier dans La Critique, Wahl semble au contraire retrouver, dans les premiers textes l'accent des derniers, à travers l'insistance sur le fait brut de l'existence, hypothèse qui sera éclairée dans la troisième section. (shrink)

In this paper, I'm giving an account of William James's reception in the columns of Charles Renouvier's journal, La Critique philosophique. The papers explores the discussions between James and Renouvier on Free Will, Philosophical systems, Consciousness and Pluralism.

Contribution to a Symposium on Joseph Margolis.

La thèse du présent article est que l’opposition factice entre James, repré- sentant supposé des « relations externes », d’une part, et Bradley, représen- tant supposé des « relations internes », d’autre part, est due à une mauvaise appréhension des thèses de ce dernier. Ce premier contresens conduit alors à manquer le propos même de James.

Interpretations of Peirce’s development after 1898 often mix three kinds of arguments: one argument about belief, one argument about philosophy and practice, and one argument about the causal role of James’s writings on Peirce’s development. I shall focus here on the last two points: theory and practice and the alleged role of James. James’s role in Peirce’s development is somewhat overestimated and one can doubt Peirce’s worries about the dogmatic use of the scientific method and of philosophy in morals are (...) conditioned by James’s writings only. Peirce’s re-readings and refinements of his Illustrations started no later than the early 1880s, at a time when James was not as central a reference as it became after 1900 for the philosophic stage. To support that claim, I wish to focus here on one particular point: the distrust towards those who try to “mingle” philosophy and practice is by no means a new theme in the 1890s. One of the most telling examples of such a claim is the 1885 review of Royce’s The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, some thirteen years before the quarrel over pragmatism started. (shrink)

In one of his contributions to The Nation, Peirce claims that ―Crystal clearness, such as we justly require in mathematics, in law, in economics, is in philosophy the characteristic of the second-rates.‖ The statement might seem paradoxical enough: isn't Peirce the author of How to Make our Ideas Clear (hereafter: HMIC), the seminal paper for the pragmatist tradition, a paper that is sure to be included in each and every anthology of American thought? How can clearness then be ―the characteristic (...) of the second-rates‖? I take it that these perplexities arise only in a superficial reading of HMIC and that the present quote tells quite a lot about Peirce's doctrine and style. My first section concerns the method one should adopt in philosophy according to Peirce and explains in part why belief and doubt play such an important role in the Illustrations series. The second one concerns the kind of problems Peirce felt attracted to and how we can make sense of what he says about the ―"strongest" thinkers. (shrink)

Chapter 12, on duties and moral obligations, has a clear function: accounting for the specificity of the Right, after the Good, and before the Virtues. Still, the same chapter leaves the reader with three different but related perplexities, which is the subject-matter of the present chapter: (1) Why would Dewey say, quite early in his career, that James’s treatment of obligation was “the simplest and best” and never use it again in his own writings, and in particular, in this chapter? (...) (2) Since we have previous versions of Dewey’s treatment of obligation in 1891 and 1908, are there some groundbreaking arguments or new concepts in the “new” analysis of duty and the Right? (3) Why is Chapter 12’s ending so “dark”? Why would Dewey devote a chapter to duties to conclude that “the new forms of lawlessness and the light and loose way in which duties are held cannot be met by direct and general appeal to a sense of duty or to the restraint of an inner law”? (shrink)

More than a century ago, reviewing the raging controversy over pragmatism, Jean Bourdeau wrote that “Pragmatism is an Anglo-Saxon reaction against the intellectualism and rationalism of the Latin mind […] It is a philosophy without words, a philosophy of gestures and of acts, which abandons what is general and holds only to what is particular” (Trans. William James, W:MT, 113). Bourdeau certainly missed the point of the first pragmatist revolution, but it can also be argued that, ironically,...

En affirmant que l’esprit est organiquement relié à l’agir, le pragmatisme a nourri de nouvelles approches de l’enquête, de la signification et du mental. L’épistémologie et la sémantique pragmatistes sont aujourd’hui mieux connues. En revanche, les controverses au sujet de l’esprit, notamment entre James et Peirce, restent à explorer. Elles fournissent une introduction privilégiée à leurs pensées respectives, au moment même où elles trouvent leur première expression originale. On corrigera par là quelques idées tenaces : l’idée d’un James « passant (...) » de la psychologie à la philosophie, l’idée d’une opposition frontale entre Peirce et James, l’idée d’un « tournant pratique » qui s’opérerait brutalement dans les premières années du mouvement. C’est donc un regard nouveau que jette sur le pragmatisme la présente étude, à partir des vifs dialogues entre Peirce et James, des différends avec des positions voisines, celles du jeune Dewey, de Royce, de Bergson, comme des critiques de Helmholtz et Spencer. -/- . (shrink)

La post-vérité apparaît en général dans des énoncés exprimant une inquiétude, et c’est sur cette dernière que portera cet article, en s’interrogeant sur son sens. L’inquiétude en question pourrait tout d’abord n’être que l’envers d’un trouble sémantique, en ce que l’expression semble désigner un danger sans que celui-ci soit clairement identifié. On évoquera d’abord cette indétermination, qui pourrait conduire à récuser ce terme (Première section), avant d’examiner trois manières d’en préciser le sens, en envisageant successivement que la post-vérité soit une (...) excroissance du post-modernisme (Deuxième section), l’expression de dispositions à la « foutaise » (Troisième section), ou enfin l’envers d’une « crise de l’attention » (Quatrième section), avant de revenir sur le lien entre post-vérité et confusion (Cinquième section). (shrink)

A “prova” do pragmatismo e, em geral, a ideia que a relevância da máxima pragmatista tinha que ser “provada”, é uma questão controversa. Devemos ter cautela antes de considerá-la. Christopher Hookway dedicou um livro a essa mesmíssima questão e os argumentos, frequentemente, envolvem a consideração de ínfimos detalhes dos escritos tardios de Peirce, bem além do âmbito deste trabalho. Contentar-me-ei aqui com um enigma, lógica e cronologicamente precedente: acadêmicos assumem, há muito tempo, que Peirce aplicou, em um novo contexto lógico (...) e metafísico, a doutrina de Bain de que uma crença era uma “prontidão para agir” e que essa aplicação forneceu o cerne do primeiro pragmatismo de Peirce. Penso que mesmo nos primeiros textos, isto não é bem assim e, contrariamente ao que é frequentemente considerado, disposições à ação não desempenham um papel tão óbvio nas Ilustrações da Lógica da Ciência. Em suma, não está claro se os exemplos de Peirce foram, na época, exemplos pragmáticos. A primeira seção deste trabalho apresenta um roteiro preliminar para aferir as diversas dimensões do pragmatismo de Peirce na década de 1870; a segunda aborda o suposto papel do disposicionalismo em Como Tornar Nossas Ideias Claras ; a terceira apresenta algums elementos contextuais que podem explicar o “surto” de disposicionalismo em 1878. (shrink)

French abstract: L’article étudie la relation de Peirce à Comte, en partant des critiques formulées dans ses écrits de jeunesse. Son enjeu est double : il relève d’abord d’une question d’histoire de la philosophie étonnamment peu traitée, alors même que Peirce lit, commente et critique Comte. Le second enjeu est épistémologique et métaphysique : Peirce voit dans la théorie comtienne des hypothèses une position proche du pragmatisme qu’il développe, mais grevée de présupposés nominalistes qui la rendent finalement intenable, à moins (...) que l’on n’en adopte une lecture « charitable ». La confrontation avec Comte semble alors être l’occasion privilégiée d’une explicitation de son propre pragmatisme. -/- English version (see link below on Cairn international) This article discusses Peirce’s relationship to Comte, based on criticisms made by Peirce in his early writings. It has a twofold purpose : firstly, addressing an important question in the history of philosophy that is surprisingly overlooked, even if Peirce reads, comments and criticizes Comte. The second issue is epistemological and metaphysical : Peirce sees in Comte’s theory of hypotheses a position close to the pragmatism he develops, but burdened with nominalist presuppositions that ultimately make it untenable, unless one adopts a “charitable” reading of it. The confrontation with Comte then seems to be a privileged opportunity, for Peirce, to clarify his own pragmatism. (shrink)

Je suis très sensible à l’honneur qui m’est fait de discuter L’esprit en acte. Psychologie, mythologies et pratique chez les pragmatistes, dans ces colonnes, comme à la qualité des remarques auxquelles je réponds. Avant d’entrer dans le détail, il ne me semble pas inutile de donner deux éléments de situation, qui peuvent aider à préciser quelle place occupe ce livre à mes yeux. §1. L’esprit en acte procède par essais, qui peuvent être lus indépendamment les uns des autres. Il a, (...) je l’espère,... (shrink)

In this chapter, while acknowledging an important and famous early influence of Renouvier on James’s notions of belief and free will, the author documents a major and growing disagreement in their exchanges. The author argues that this disagreement is by no means a peripheral matter, since it involves James’s assessment of Renouvier’s neo-Kantianism. After having presented the core of Renouvier’s main influence in the section “Free Will’s Champion, Kantian Style,” the author gives a brief survey of James’s presence in the (...) Critique Philosophique in the section “James’s Contributions,” and deals, in the following sections, with James’s early criticisms of Renouvier on philosophical method (the section “Methods and Categories”), on the perception of space and time (the section ”Unbounded Spaces”) and on consciousness (the section ”The Stream of Thought”). In order to accomplish this, the author focuses on a more limited period than James' career as a whole: the author follows him from the early writings to the mid-1880s—that is, precisely to the point where James and Renouvier's philosophical itineraries begin to diverge. The author’s larger goal is to illustrate how the Critique Philosophique was at first a hospitable publication for the young James, but also how, from the end of this period on, important disputes emerged, in particular over consciousness, which gave rise to a paradoxical situation: the very organ that contributed to make James known turned out to be at odds with several of his most important theses, before the publication of the Principles, and even more before Pragmatism. (shrink)

The release of Stéphane Madelrieux's William James, L'attitude empiriste (William James, The Empiricist Stance) is excellent news indeed for French James studies: it is the first comprehensive study of James's works in French. It will certainly prove to be a reference for James studies and empiricist studies in general.James was introduced quite early in France, and although there are a number of translations at hand,1 as well as two books by David Lapoujade,2 a comprehensive monograph was still lacking. Madelrieux's book (...) is, from this standpoint, a remarkable achievement. Massive problems, such as the relationship between James's philosophy and his psychology, between his naturalist approach to action and his .. (shrink)

Review of the French translation of Dewey's Quest for Certainty.

Dans L’esprit en acte, Mathias Girel propose une radiographie non pas d’un courant (le pragmatisme), non pas d’un auteur (James, Peirce ou Dewey), mais d’un moment clé de l’histoire du pragmatisme (les années 1870 à 1900). L’ambition de l’ouvrage est de montrer que les débats actuels sur la nature du rapport entre nos croyances et notre conduite étaient vifs dès la genèse du pragmatisme. Loin d’être dus à une complexification croissante du mouvement pragmatiste, qui verrait l’unité initiale ê...

The grounds of justice -- "Un pouvoir ordinaire": shared membership in a state as a ground of -- Justice -- Internationalism versus statism and globalism: contemporary debates -- What follows from our common humanity? : the institutional stance, human rights, and nonrelationism -- Hugo Grotius revisited : collective ownership of the Earth and global public reason -- "Our sole habitation" : a contemporary approach to collective ownership of the earth -- Toward a contingent derivation of human rights -- Proportionate use (...) : immigration and original ownership of the Earth -- "But the earth abideth for ever" : obligations to future generations -- Climate change and ownership of the atmosphere -- Human rights as membership rights in the global order -- Arguing for human rights : essential pharmaceuticals -- Arguing for human rights : labor rights as human rights -- Justice and trade -- The way we live now -- "Imagine there's no countries" : a reply to John Lennon -- Justice and accountability : the state -- Justice and accountability : the World Trade Organization. (shrink)

Phillips argues that blindsight is due to response criterion artefacts under degraded conscious vision. His view provides alternative explanations for some studies, but may not work well when one considers several key findings in conjunction. Empirically, not all criterion effects are decidedly non-perceptual. Awareness is not completely abolished for some stimuli, in some patients. But in other cases, it was clearly impaired relative to the corresponding visual sensitivity. This relative dissociation is what makes blindsight so important and interesting.

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis. Here we first give a brief history of the path to today’s severity criteria in (...) Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian perspective on severity might be conducive to the international discussion, given its long-standing use as a priority setting criterion, despite having reached rather different conclusions so far. We then argue that severity can be viewed as a multidimensional concept, drawing on accounts of need, urgency, fairness, duty to save lives, and human dignity. Such concerns will often be relative to local mores, and the weighting placed on the various dimensions cannot be expected to be fixed. Thirdly, we present what we think are the most pertinent questions to answer about severity in order to facilitate decision making in the coming years of increased scarcity, and to further the understanding of underlying assumptions and values that go into these decisions. We conclude that severity is poorly understood, and that the topic needs substantial further inquiry; thus we hope this article may set a challenging and important research agenda. (shrink)

The associative theory of creativity states that creativity is associated with differences in the structure of semantic memory, whereas the executive theory of creativity emphasises the role of top-down control for creative thought. For a powerful test of these accounts, individual semantic memory structure was modelled with a novel method based on semantic relatedness judgements and different criteria for network filtering were compared. The executive account was supported by a correlation between creative ability and broad retrieval ability. The associative account (...) was independently supported, when network filtering was based on a relatedness threshold, but not when it was based on a fixed edge number or on the analysis of weighted networks. In the former case, creative ability was associated with shorter average path lengths and higher clustering of the network, suggesting that the semantic networks of creative people show higher small-worldness. (shrink)

This article highlights the continuing relevance of a classic bioethical text, “Bioethics as a Discipline,” published by the Hastings Center’s cofounder Daniel Callahan in 1973. Connecting the text’s programmatic recommendations with later reflections and interventions Callahan wrote about the development of bioethics illuminates how the vision Callahan established and the reality this vision helped create were interrelated—just not in the way Callahan had hoped for. Although this portrait relies on an individual perception of the development of bioethics, it might nevertheless, (...) through its unique linkage of different bioethical temporalities, contribute to a broader reassessment of what bioethics became and why. (shrink)

In a recent extended essay, philosopher Daniel Hausman goes a long way towards dismissing severity as a morally relevant attribute in the context of priority setting in healthcare. In this response, we argue that although Hausman certainly points to real problems with how severity is often interpreted and operationalised within the priority setting context, the conclusion that severity does not contain plausible ethical content is too hasty. Rather than abandonment, our proposal is to take severity seriously by carefully mapping the (...) possibly multiple underlying accounts to well-established ethical theories, in a way that is both morally defensible and aligned with the term’s colloquial uses. (shrink)

Poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation is a post‐translational modification occurring in the nucleus. The most abundant and best‐characterized enzyme catalyzing this reaction, poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1), participates in fundamental nuclear events. The enzyme functions as molecular “nick sensor”. It binds with high affinity to DNA single‐strand breaks resulting in the initiation of its catalytic activity. Activated PARP1 promotes base excision repair. In addition, PARP1 modifies several transcription factors and thereby precludes their binding to DNA. We propose that a major function of PARP1 includes the (...) silencing of transcription preventing expression of damaged genes. Concomitant stimulation of DNA repair suggests that PARP1 acts as a switch between transcription and DNA repair. Another PARP‐type enzyme, tankyrase, is involved in the regulation of telomere elongation. Tankyrase modifies a telomere‐associated protein and thereby prevents it masking telomeric repeats providing access of telomerase for telomere elongation. Therefore, poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation reactions may act as molecular switches in DNA metabolism. BioEssays 23:543–548, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the place of utopia in realist political theory, by examining the ways in which the literary genre of critical utopias can productively unsettle ongoing discussions about “how to do political theory.” I start by analyzing two prominent accounts of the relationship between realism and utopia: “real utopia” and “dystopic liberalism”. Elaborating on Raymond Geuss’s recent reflections, the essay then claims that an engagement with literature can shift the focus of these accounts. Utopian fiction, I maintain, is useful (...) for comprehending what is and for contemplating what might be. Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed deploys this double function in an exemplary fashion: through her dynamic and open-ended portrayal of an Anarchist community, Le Guin succeeds in imagining a utopia that negates the status quo, without striving to construct a perfect society. The book’s radical, yet ambiguous, narrative hence reveals a strategy for locating utopia within realist political theory that moves beyond the positions dominating the current debate. Reading The Dispossessed ultimately demonstrates that realism without utopia is status quo–affirming, while utopia without realism is wishful thinking. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of parameterParametercalibrationCalibration in the confirmation and validation of complex computer simulation models. I examine the question to what extent calibration data can confirm or validate the calibrated model, focusing in particular on Bayesian approaches to confirmation. I distinguish several different Bayesian approaches to confirmation and argue that complex simulation models exhibit a predictivist effect: Complex computer simulation models constitute a case in which predictive success, as opposed to the mere accommodation of evidence, provides a more (...) stringent test of the model. DataData used in tuning do not validate or confirm a model to the same extent as data successfully predicted by the model do. (shrink)

von Lothar Brock Wer dieses Buch zur Hand nimmt, sollte sich einen Autor vorstellen, der einer Gruppe hartgesottener Geschäftsleute aus der Wüste von New Mexico morgens um sieben mit charmanter Leichtigkeit und spärlichen, aber Verbindung stiftenden Gesten einen Vortrag über die EU als einer vorgestellten Gemeinschaft hält und dafür überschwenglich gefeiert wird. Oder einen Theoretiker mit verblüffend praktischen Kenntnissen über Höhenmedizin und der unter bestimmten Umständen lebensrettenden Fähigkeit, panischen Berggefährten den Anblick der Tiefe erträglich zu machen. Oder den lead-Sänger einer (...) ziemlich professionellen Musikgruppe, die sich die öffentliche Pflege des Liedgutes der Rolling Stones zur Aufgabe gemacht hat und als Meister der Reproduktion die Bewunderer des Originals in Taumel versetzt - von Stockholm bis OfIenbach. Auf keinen Fall aber sollte man sich einen Autor vorstellen wie man ihn sich vorstellt, wenn man dieses Buch zur Hand nimmt. Oder doch? Doch! Es könnte ja sein, daß jemand dieses Buch nicht nur als lohnende Strapaze erlebt, sondern auch als Vergnügen, wenn er erst einmal über den Untertitel hinweggekommen ist. Zur Sache:,,Fallen der Welt-Ordnung" - die Fallen oder das Fallen? Das Thema verrät es nicht; denn zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne ist ein weites Feld, auf dem alles mögliche passieren kann. Worum also geht es? Mathias Albert versteht das Arbeitsgebiet der Internationalen Beziehungen (also der Lehre und Forschung über diesen Gegenstandsbereich) als jenen Teilbereich der Sozialwissenschaften, der sich mit der Weltordnung befaßt. (shrink)

Der Philosoph Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) gilt mit seiner sogenannten ›Wissenschaftslehre‹ als einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter einer transzendentalen Theorie über – modern gesprochen – Wissenschaftstheorie. Könnten so seine Entdeckungen nicht auch für die Theologie systematische Bedeutung haben, insbesondere in der Frage, ob diese selber eine Wissenschaft sein kann? Mathias Müller versucht anhand einer systematischen Konstruktionsanalyse von Fichtes Schrift »Die Principien der Gottes- Sitten- u. Rechtslehre. Februar und März 1805« zu zeigen, dass und wie in der Wissenschaftslehre diese selber eine (...) Grundlegung bildet, die als eine Grundlagentheorie der Theologie eingesehen werden kann. Mittels des Modells des ›Transzensus‹ wird versucht, einen für das transzendentale Ich gangbaren Weg nachzuzeichnen und anzubieten, um so – performativ erlebbar – die Wissenschaftlichkeit einer Theologie als transzendentale Fundamentaltheologie zu erschliessen. (shrink)

In this paper we present applications of the ACGT Master Ontology (MO) which is a new terminology resource for a transnational network providing data exchange in oncology, emphasizing the integration of both clinical and molecular data. The development of a new ontology was necessary due to problems with existing biomedical ontologies in oncology. The ACGT MO is a test case for the application of best practices in ontology development. This paper provides an overview of the application of the ontology within (...) the ACGT project thus far. (shrink)