As the 20th century began, few effective therapies existed. This soon changed with major therapeutic discoveries turning the century into what has been called the golden age of therapeutics.1 The emphasis of most of these developments was on medicines for common disorders as they presented the greatest need. However, it also allowed pharmaceutical manufacturers to produce blockbuster drugs that provided a large return on investment. Rare disorders were overlooked because most are genetic in origin and scientific knowledge was lacking, making (...) it difficult to find treatments. The first genetic disorder with a therapy was phenylketonuria. The biochemist who proposed the first successful treatment in the 1950s was actively discouraged as phenylketonuria was genetic and ‘incurable’.2 Another reason was an absence of incentives to invest in developing medicines for which the return was limited, given the small numbers of potential patients. This changed from 1983 as several countries began introducing orphan drug policies, with Canada being a notable exception. As the millennium changed, some drugs for rare disorders were available, but the sequencing of the human genome in the early 2000s provided scientific knowledge to develop many more. The new therapies are often costly because they require millions, even billions, of dollars and years to develop, test and satisfy regulatory standards. …. (shrink)

These three Ciceronian references, each used only once, have given rise to a most confusing variety of interpretations. In this article I hope to show, as far as the evidence will allow, who these poets were and what sort of poetry Cicero probably had in mind.οί νєώτєροι.

These three Ciceronian references, each used only once, have given rise to a most confusing variety of interpretations. In this article I hope to show, as far as the evidence will allow, who these poets were and what sort of poetry Cicero probably had in mind.οί νєώτєροι.

Talk of “essences” has, since Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, gained significant currency in contemporary philosophy. It is no longer unfashionable to talk about the essence of this or that (natural) kind, and as such we now find a variety of brands of essentialism on the market including B.D. Ellis’s scientific essentialism, David Oderberg’s real Essentialism, Alexander Bird’s dispositional essentialism, and the contemporary essentialism of Kripke and Putnam. -/- Almost all these brands of essentialism share a particular gloss on Locke’s (...) famous objection to Aristotle that natural kinds are demarcated by nominal essences not real essences. Thus Oderberg claims that ‘Empiricists take [real] essences to be paradigmatically unobservable’ and that this ‘objection goes back at least to John Locke’ (Oderberg 2007: 21). Bird, presenting his dispositional essentialism, defines a notion of “being” as ‘the reverse of Locke’s definition of essence’ which he takes to be ‘the being of any thing, whereby it is what it is’ (Bird 2007: 100). Joseph LaPorte, discussing nominal and real essences, claims that ‘Kripke and Putnam seem to affirm something more substantive: that biological kinds have “real essences” in Locke’s terminology’ (LaPorte 2004: 49). Even avowed anti-essentialists such as John Dupré sanction the standard criticism of Locke that his scepticism about the knowability of real essences was ‘premature’, and claim that ‘genuine natural kinds provide the extensions of many terms of natural language, where these natural kinds are determined by true Lockean real essences’ (Dupré 1993: 22). -/- All of these essentialisms (even Dupré’s anti-essentialism) are wrong about Locke. Oderberg is wrong to claim that Locke thought that real essences were paradigmatically unobservable; Bird is wrong to think that Locke’s notion of essence is the being of anything whereby it is what it is; LaPorte is wrong to think that Kripke and Putnam are talking about Lockean real essences (although so are Kripke and Putnam); and Dupré is wrong to think that genuine natural kinds (if by genuine he means objective or mind-independent) are determined but true Lockean real essences . -/- The mistake stems from a standard, but ultimately incorrect, interpretation of Locke’s discussion of essences in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . This mistaken interpretation (Lowe 1995, 2006, Von Leyden 1973, Wiggins 1974) takes Locke to mean, by “real essence”, the Aristotelian notion i.e. ‘the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is’ (Essay III.iii.15), and interprets his objection as epistemological: we cannot come to know what real essences are, and therefore they cannot figure in our classifications of things into kinds. -/- This paper will present and defend the following two claims: i) that Locke’s notion of “real essence” is not the Aristotelian notion, and ii) that Locke’s objection to the Aristotelian notion was not merely epistemological. The first claim can be defended by presenting and applying Vienne’s (1993) terminological revision. Vienne argues that Locke did not introduce a dichotomy between real and nominal essence, but a trichotomy between real essence, nominal essence and real constitution. This terminological revision will be employed to highlight where ambiguous uses of the phrase “real essence” have caused some serious misunderstandings of Locke’s philosophy. The second claim (steering Locke around what is the classic objection to his thesis) can be defended by presenting a novel way of splitting up Locke’s objections to the Aristotelian notion of essence. The analysis will show that Locke’s anti-essentialism is still in good shape, and of contemporary significance. (shrink)

Relationships between current theories, and relationships between current theories and the sought theory of quantum gravity (QG), play an essential role in motivating the need for QG, aiding the search for QG, and defining what would count as QG. Correspondence is the broad class of inter-theory relationships intended to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of two theories whose domains of validity overlap, in the overlap regions. The variety of roles that correspondence plays in the search for QG are illustrated, using examples (...) from specific QG approaches. Reduction is argued to be a special case of correspondence, and to form part of the definition of QG. Finally, the appropriate account of emergence in the context of QG is presented, and compared to conceptions of emergence in the broader philosophy literature. It is argued that, while emergence is likely to hold between QG and general relativity, emergence is not part of the definition of QG, and nor can it serve usefully in the development and justification of the new theory. (shrink)

In this introduction, we describe the rationale behind this special issue on Principles of Quantum Gravity. We explain what we mean by ‘principles’ and relate this to the various contributions. Finally, we draw out some general themes that can be found running throughout these contributions.

Galton and subsequent investigators find wide divergences in people's subjective reports of mental imagery. Such individual differences might be taken to explain the peculiarly irreconcilable disputes over the nature and cognitive significance of imagery which have periodically broken out among psychologists and philosophers. However, to so explain these disputes is itself to take a substantive and questionable position on the cognitive role of imagery. This article distinguishes three separable issues over which people can be "for" or "against" mental images. Conflation (...) of these issues can lead to theoretical differences being mistaken for experiential differences, even by theorists themselves. This is applied to the case of John B. Watson, who inaugurated a half-century of neglect of image psychology. Watson originally claimed to have vivid imagery; by 1913 he was denying the existence of images. This strange reversal, which made his behaviorism possible, is explicable as a "creative misconstrual" of Dunlap's "motor" theory of imagination. (shrink)

In the last twenty years a critique of the idea of a right as the property of an individual subject has been articulated by some influential Anglican theologians – Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Oliver O’Donovan and John Milbank. Their objections are considerably based on an argument about intellectual history. Broadly pursuing an intellectual trajectory first set by Leo Strauss and C. B. Macpherson, these theologians think that the very concept of a ‘subjective right’ is tied, certainly historically but perhaps also logically, (...) to modern, Hobbesian social contract theory, and therefore to radical individualism and moral subjectivism. Therefore, they think that to affirm individual subjective rights is to exclude a larger objective order of moral right, and to undermine the authority of the claim of social obligation. Against this critique, this article, first, argues that a morally realist conception of subjective rights prevailed before Hobbes, and continued to prevail long afterwards. Second, the article proceeds to refute Ernest Fortin’s thesis that Hobbes came to dominate modern rights-talk through John Locke. Finally, it suggests that the contemporary detachment of the concept of subjective rights from a larger context of objective moral right has more plausible and more proximate roots in twentieth century philosophical and cultural developments. (shrink)

The framework of effective field theory is a natural one in which to understand the claim that the spacetime of general relativity is an emergent low-energy phenomenon. I argue for a pragmatic understanding of EFT, given that the appropriate conception of emergence it suggests is necessarily epistemological in a sense. Analogue models of spacetime are examples of the top-down approach to EFT. They offer concrete illustrations of spacetime emergent within an EFT, and lure us toward a strong analogy between condensed (...) matter physics and GR. I argue that we should be wary of this strong analogy, not least because the pragmatic view of EFT places limits on how much we can legitimately draw from it. On the other hand, programs that treat GR as an EFT and calculate quantum corrections are an example of the bottom-up approach and are explicitly pragmatic in character. I explore what we may learn about the nature of emergent spacetime by comparing these two approaches. (shrink)

This book covers a very broad spectrum of experimental and theoretical activity in particle physics, from the searches for the Higgs boson and physics beyond the Standard Model, to detailed studies of Quantum Chromodynamics, the B-physics sectors and the properties of hadronic matter at high energy density as realised in heavy-ion collisions. Starting with a basic introduction to the Standard Model and its most likely extensions, the opening section of the book presents an overview of the theoretical and phenomenological framework (...) of hadron collisions, and current theoretical models of frontier physics. In part II, discussion of the theory is supplemented by chapters on the detector capabilities and search strategies, as well as an overview of the main detector components, the initial calibration procedures and physics samples, and early LHC results. Part III completes the volume with a description of the physics behind Monte Carlo event generators, and a broad introduction to the main statistical methods used in high energy physics. LHC Phenomenology covers all of these topics at a pedagogical level, with the aim of providing young particle physicists with the basic tools required for future work on the various LHC experiments. It will also serve as a useful reference text for those working in the field. (shrink)

This response has two parts: a reply to Nigel Biggar's specific criticisms of my exegesis and an appeal for attention to more fundamental theological issues. Biggar generally disregards the narrative and epistolary contexts of the verses he cites and introduces anachronistic conceptual distinctions. Beyond specific exegetical disagreements, his argument fails to address the broader christological, ecclesiological, and eschatological warrants for Christians to embody Jesus' way of peace. The moral vocation of the people of God is grounded in the story (...) of Jesus Christ. It is this story that makes just war theologically problematical. (shrink)

This response has two parts: a reply to Nigel Biggar's specific criticisms of my exegesis and an appeal for attention to more fundamental theological issues. Biggar generally disregards the narrative and epistolary contexts of the verses he cites and introduces anachronistic conceptual distinctions. Beyond specific exegetical disagreements, his argument fails to address the broader christological, ecclesiological, and eschatological warrants for Christians to embody Jesus' way of peace. The moral vocation of the people of God is grounded in the story (...) of Jesus Christ. It is this story that makes just war theologically problematical. (shrink)

In seeking an answer to the question of what it means for a theory to be fundamental, it is enlightening to ask why the current best theories of physics are not generally believed to be fundamental. This reveals a set of conditions that a theory of physics must satisfy in order to be considered fundamental. Physics aspires to describe ever deeper levels of reality, which may be without end. Ultimately, at any stage we may not be able to tell whether (...) we've reached rock bottom, or even if there is a base level – nevertheless, I draft a checklist to help us identify when to stop digging, in the case where we may have reached a candidate for a final theory. Given that the list is – according to (current) mainstream belief in high-energy physics – complete, and each criterion well-motivated, I argue that a physical theory that satisfies all the criteria can be assumed to be fundamental in the absence of evidence to the contrary (i.e., I argue that the necessary conditions are jointly sufficient for a claim of fundamentality in physics). (shrink)

The first sustained phenomenological approach to modern art, taking a new approach and drawing upon an unsual selection of thinkers.

This book uses the philosophy of Wittgenstein as a perspective from which to challenge the idea of a critical social theory, represented pre-eminently by Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar.

This is done by exploring some of his other ideas concerning how critical comparisons inform our cultivation of taste, and art's relation to genius.

Why are visual artworks experienced as having intrinsic significance or normative depth? Why are some works of art better able to manifest this significance than others? In his latest book Paul Crowther argues that we can answer these questions only if we have a full analytic definition of visual art. Crowther's approach focuses on the pictorial image, broadly construed to include abstract work and recent conceptually-based idioms. The significance of art depends, however, essentially on the transhistorical nature of (...) the pictorial image, the way in which its illuminative power is extended through historical transformation of the relevant artistic medium. Crowther argues against fashionable forms of cultural relativism, while at the same time showing why it is important that an appreciation of the history of art is integral to aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

The word 'athletics' is derived from the Greek verb 'to struggle for a prize'. After reading this book, no one will see the Olympics as a graceful display of Greek beauty again, but as war by other means. Nigel Spivey paints a portrait of the Greek Olympics as they really were - fierce contests between bitter rivals, in which victors won kudos and rewards, and losers faced scorn and even assault. Victory was almost worth dying for, and a number (...) of athletes did just that. Many more resorted to cheating and bribery. Contested always bitterly and often bloodily, the ancient Olympics were not an idealistic celebration of unity, but a clash of military powers in an arena not far removed from the battlefield. (shrink)

In his Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism, Paul Crowther argued that art and aesthetic experiences have the capacity to humanize. In Art and Embodiment he develops this theme in much greater depth, arguing that art can bridge the gap between philosophy's traditional striving for generality and completeness, and the concreteness and contingency of humanity's basic relation to the world. As the key element in his theory, he proposes an ecological definition of art. His strategy involves first mapping out and analyzing (...) the logical boundaries and ontological structures of the aesthetic domain. He then considers key concepts from this analysis in the light of a tradition in Continental philosophy (notably the work of Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hegel) which--by virtue of the philosophical significance that it assigns to art--significantly anticipates the ecological conception. On this basis, Crowther is able to give a full formulation of his ecological definition. Art, in making sensible or imaginative material into symbolic form, harmonizes and conserves what is unique and what is general in human experience. The aesthetic domain answers basic needs intrinsic to self-consciousness itself, and art is the highest realization of such needs. In the creation and reception of art the embodied subject is fully at home with his or her environment. (shrink)

Renowned as the chief challenger of traditional views of morality, man's freedom, and religion from 1650-1750, Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77) spread alarm and ...

This is a critical survey of writing on the philosophy of photography.

Cognitive science has always included multiple methodologies and theoretical commitments. The philosophy of cognitive science should embrace, or at least acknowledge, this diversity. Bechtel’s (2009a) proposed philosophy of cognitive science, however, applies only to representationalist and mechanist cognitive science, ignoring the substantial minority of dynamically oriented cognitive scientists. As an example of nonrepresentational, dynamical cognitive science, we describe strong anticipation as a model for circadian systems (Stepp & Turvey, 2009). We then propose a philosophy of science appropriate to nonrepresentational, dynamical (...) cognitive science. (shrink)

Philosopher's zombies are hypothetical beings behaviorally, functionally, and perhaps even physically indistinguishable from normal humans, but who lack our consciousness. Many people seem to be convinced that such zombies are a real conceptual possibility, and that this bare possibility entails that understanding human consciousness must remain forever beyond the reach of science. However, the conceptual entailments of zombiehood have not been sufficiently examined. This brief article shows that any way of understanding the behavior of zombies that does in fact support (...) the suggested entailment, leads to contradictions and absurdities. Zombies are _not_ conceptually possible. (shrink)

The 'postmodern condition,' in which instrumentalism finally usurps all other considerations, has produced a kind of intellectual paralysis in the world of education. The authors of this book show how such postmodernist thinkers as Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard illuminate puzzling aspects of education, arguing that educational theory is currently at an impasse. They postulate that we need these new and disturbing ideas in order to "think again" fruitfully and creatively about education.

This timely book addresses concerns about educational and moral standards in a world characterised by a growing nihilism.