DNA methylation is a repressive epigenetic mark vital for normal development. Recent studies have uncovered an unexpected role for the DNA methylome in ensuring the correct targeting of the Polycomb repressive complexes throughout the genome. Here, we discuss the implications of these findings for cancer, where DNA methylation patterns are widely reprogrammed. We speculate that cancer‐associated reprogramming of the DNA methylome leads to an altered Polycomb binding landscape, influencing gene expression by multiple modes. As the Polycomb system is responsible for (...) the regulation of genes with key roles in cell fate decisions and cell cycle regulation, DNA methylation induced Polycomb mis‐targeting could directly drive carcinogenesis and disease progression.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays Unmasking risk loci: DNA methylation illuminates the biology of cancer predisposition Abstract. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects for safety-based theories of knowledge in the light of some recent objections.

The first Philosophers -- Plato -- Aristotle -- Augustine -- Thomas Aquinas -- Rene Descartes -- John Locke -- David Hume -- Immanuel Kant -- Karl Marx -- Soren Kierkegaard -- Fredrich Nietzsche -- Jean-Paul Sartre -- Darwin and Freud.

Much of the recent debate regarding scepticism has focussed on a certain template sceptical argument and a rather restricted set of proposals concerning how one might deal with that argument. Throughout this debate the ‘Moorean’ response to scepticism is often cited as a paradigm example of how one should not respond to the sceptical argument, so conceived. As I argue in this paper, however, there are ways of resurrecting the Moorean response to the sceptic. In particular, I consider the prospects (...) for three such proposals in this regard: a classical epistemic internalist neo-Mooreanism, a classical epistemic externalist neo-Mooreanism, and a non-classical McDowellian epistemic internalist neo-Mooreanism, and maintain that the last two of these proposals (both of which make appeal to a disjunctivist account of perception, broadly conceived) merit further exploration. Indeed, I claim that a suitably qualified version of neo-Mooreanism would actually sit quite well with the general philosophical motivations behind other key anti-sceptical views and I argue that given this fact neo-Mooreanism is actually at a dialectical advantage relative to other views when it comes to dealing with the sceptical problem as it is typically conceived. (shrink)

This paper surveys attempts in the recent literature to offer a modal condition on knowledge as a way of resolving the problem of scepticism. In particular, safety-based and sensitivity-based theories of knowledge are considered in detail, along with the anti-sceptical prospects of an explicitly anti-luck epistemology.

The status of boundaries and borders, questions of global poverty and inequality, criteria for the legitimate uses of force, the value of international law, human rights, nationality, sovereignty, migration, territory, and citizenship: debates over these critical issues are central to contemporary understandings of world politics. Bringing together an interdisciplinary range of contributors, including historians, political theorists, lawyers, and international relations scholars, this is the first volume of its kind to explore the racial and imperial dimensions of normative debates over global (...) justice. (shrink)

A common criticism of the use of algorithms in criminal justice is that algorithms and their determinations are in some sense ‘opaque’—that is, difficult or impossible to understand, whether because of their complexity or because of intellectual property protections. Scholars have noted some key problems with opacity, including that opacity can mask unfair treatment and threaten public accountability. In this paper, we explore a different but related concern with algorithmic opacity, which centers on the role of public trust in grounding (...) the legitimacy of criminal justice institutions. We argue that algorithmic opacity threatens the trustworthiness of criminal justice institutions, which in turn threatens their legitimacy. We first offer an account of institutional trustworthiness before showing how opacity threatens to undermine an institution’s trustworthiness. We then explore how threats to trustworthiness affect institutional legitimacy. Finally, we offer some policy recommendations to mitigate the threat to trustworthiness posed by the opacity problem. (shrink)

In this article, I explore recent work on realist political theory and international politics. I discuss how scholarship on the topic emanates from two different fields—International Relations and political philosophy—and argue that there is a good case for greater engagement between them. I open by delineating various kinds of realism, showing that the term covers a wide variety of methodological and political approaches. In particular, I suggest, it is important to recognize the difference between liberal and radical approaches. The remainder (...) of the essay examines assorted examples of realist international political theorizing, work that ranges from attempts to rewrite the canon of 20th century political thought to contributions to the vibrant global justice debates. (shrink)

Does Augustine put his finger on time? -- Time for history -- Determination -- Self-determination -- Time, knowledge and truth.

I reject three theories of practical reason according to which a rational agent's ultimate reasons for acting must be unchanging: that one is rationally obliged in each choice (1) to be prudent--to advance all the desires one foresees ever having (the self-interest theory), rather than just those one has at the time of choice, or (2) to cause states of affairs that are good by some timeless, impersonal measure (Thomas Nagel), or (3) to obey permanent, universalizable deontic principles (Kant). Whether (...) a rational agent's reasons consist in her desires, in the goodness of certain states, or in deontic principles, her reasons now can ask her to take different, conflicting things as reasons later; and contradiction results of rationally obliging her not to take the new things for reasons. (shrink)

In this article I pursue two main lines of argument. First, I seek to delineate two distinctive modes of justifying imperialism found in nineteenth-century political thought (and beyond). The 'liberal civilizational'li model, articulated most prominently by John Stuart Mill, justified empire primarily in terms of the benefits that it brought to subject populations. Its proponents sought to 'civilize'lthe 'barbarian'. An alternative `republican' model focused instead on the benefits - glory, honour and power above all - that accrued to the imperial (...) state. Less concerned with spreading civilization, its proponents concentrated on fortifying the imperial polity. Second, I offer a 'republican' interpretation of the writings of the historian and public moralist J.A. Froude (1818-94), arguing that he both diagnosed the problems of modern Britain and prescribed imperial solutions to those problems, based on his reading of the fate of the Roman republic. (shrink)

Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses provides an in-depth, engaging introduction to important issues in modern philosophy. It presents 13 key interpretive debates to students, and ranges in coverage from Descartes' Meditations to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. -/- Debates include: -/- Did Descartes have a developed and consistent view about how the mind interacts with the body? Was Leibniz an idealist, or did he believe in corporeal substances? What is Locke's theory of personal identity? Could there (...) be a Berkeleian metaphysics without God? Did Hume believe in causal powers? What is Kant's transcendental idealism? -/- Each of the thirteen debates consists of a well known article or book chapter from a living philosopher, followed by a new response from a different scholar, specially commissioned for this volume. Every debate is prefaced by an introduction written for those coming upon the debates for the first time and followed by an annotated list for further reading. The volume starts with an introduction that explains the importance and relevance of the modern period and its key debates to philosophy and ends with a glossary that covers terms from both the modern period and the study of the history of philosophy in general. -/- Debates in Modern Philosophy will help students evaluate different interpretations of key texts from modern philosophy, and provide a model for constructing their own positions in these debates. (shrink)

Gassendi and Hobbes knew each other, and their approaches to philosophy often seem similar. They both criticized the Cartesian epistemology of clear and distinct perception. Gassendi engaged at length with skepticism, and also rejected the Aristotelian notion of scientia, arguing instead for a probabilistic view that shows us how we can move on in the absence of certain and evident knowledge. Hobbes, in contrast, retained the notion of scientia, which is the best sort of knowledge and involves causal explanation. He (...) thought, however, that this sort of knowledge was only available in geometry and political philosophy. (shrink)

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways in political thought and social science. This essay challenges how the liberal tradition is typically understood. I start by delineating different types of response—prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory—that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. Liberalism, on this account, is best characterised as the sum of the (...) arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time and space. In the remainder of the article, I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how Locke came to be characterised as a liberal. I argue that the scope of the liberal traditionexpanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious understanding of liberalism was a product of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it. (shrink)

This article examines the changing scope and method of ecumenical public theology from the World Missionary Conference of 1910 until the present. Most changes were made in response to the changing ideological and political contexts. The collapse of liberalism and the social gospel was followed by a type of confessional ethics which arose directly out of the German Church Struggle. In opposition to this there emerged a realist ecumenical social ethics, much indebted to Reinhold Niebuhr, and of Ronald Preston. This (...) type of public theology and its distinctive ‘middle axiom’ method are examined and contrasted with the more recent public theologies which were influenced by liberation theology and grassroots movements. It is suggested that the ending of the Cold War and the fundamental changes that have taken place since September 11 2001 present a radically new kind of challenge to public theology. (shrink)

Discussing authorial power, landscape metaphor and the notions of community and sense of place, this explores the ways in which spatial and cultural analysis have found much common ground in making sense of ourselves and the landscape we inhabit.

The book opens with a discussion of different methods and approaches employed to study the subject, including analytical political theory, post-structuralism and critical theory.

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Grey zone attacks tend to paralyze response for two reasons. First, they present us with choice scenarios of inherently dilemmatic structure, e.g., Prisoners’ Dilemmas and games of chicken, complicated by difficult conditions of choice, such as choice under risk or amid vagueness. Second, they exploit our uncertainty about how much we do or should care about the things under attack¬—each attack is small in effect, but their effects accumulate: how should we decide whether to treat a given attack as something (...) meriting a serious response rather than a mere irritation to be ignored? This chapter brings standard decision theoretic tools to bear on the issues, tools such as the maximization of expected utility principle, and the precautionary principle. But it also develops three innovations. It shows that seeing it as possible to make choices not just of actions given our values, but also choices of values themselves, can extricate us from certain kinds of decision paralysis. It shows how we can rationally regard ourselves as having bright decision lines even when nothing in the circumstance of choice has these lines in its structure. And it shows how certain conflict escalation risks from the former two strategies can be managed by both parties seeing that cooperation can yield a sharable surplus of goods, and that cooperation can be rational upon a rationally defensible change in their values so that each comes to derive utility from the success of both parties. This yields cooperative solutions to what amount to Prisoners’ Dilemmas. The Cold War was prosecuted on the logic of strategic rationality and that part of game theory that is deterrence theory. We need a new logic from decision theorists for the games that constitute grey zone conflict. (shrink)

This article engages in debates about the potential for aesthetics to be a positive, ethical, and moral frame for relating to the environment. Human‐environment relations are increasingly tied up with aesthetics. We problematize this trend by contending that aesthetics is an insufficient paradigm to motivate and shape environmentalism because it exceptionalizes some landscapes while devaluing others. This article uses four illustrative case studies to complicate aesthetic environmentalist frames. These case studies indicate that even when positive aesthetic qualities are deployed in (...) environmentalist advocacy, their usefulness is mitigated by a range of factors including: sensationalization, obfuscation, and further degradation. (shrink)

The kind of empathy that is communicated through expressions like “I feel your pain” or “I share your sadness” is important, but peculiar. For it seems to require something perplexing and elusive: sharing another’s experience. It’s not clear how this is possible. We each experience the world from our own point of view, which no one else occupies. It’s also unclear exactly why it is so important that we share others' pains. If you are in pain, then why should it (...) matter, and be a good thing, that I am also in the same pain? Our goal in this paper is to address these questions. Specifically, our goal is to clarify how empathy, in the regimented sense of sharing another’s pain, is possible and why it is important. Central to our account is the concept of being acquainted with—that is, directly aware of—pain. When I feel my own pain, and am acquainted with it, I want the pain to stop, and I’m moved—sometimes compelled—to stop it. My acquaintance with the pain is what reveals that it is no good, to be gotten rid of, and to be avoided in the future. Acquaintance also appears to be implicated in our understanding of, and motivation to relieve, others’ pains. When I say “I feel your pain” I express an awareness of your pain, a direct appreciation of its noxious qualities, and, as with my own pain, an understanding of why it ought to be eased. Explaining how empathy is both possible and important therefore involves clarifying the nature of acquaintance: its limits, epistemic role, and motivational significance. What our analysis reveals is that agents have both epistemic and moral reasons to share other people’s pain because pain-sharing is the source of a species of character-building knowledge that we have no other way of accessing except through direct acquaintance with pain. (shrink)

This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of there being (...) determination relations where no such relations obtain. Since, plausibly, dependence relations just are asymmetric determination relations, we argue that once we come mistakenly to believe that there exist determination relations, the existence of other asymmetries (conceptual and temporal) explains why it appears that there are dependence relations. (shrink)

The Making of British Bioethics provides the first in-depth study of how philosophers, lawyers and other 'outsiders' came to play a major role in discussing and helping to regulate issues that used to be left to doctors and scientists. It details how British bioethics emerged thanks to a dynamic interplay between sociopolitical concerns and the aims of specific professional groups and individuals who helped create the demand for outside involvement and transformed themselves into influential 'ethics experts'. Highlighting this interplay helps (...) us appreciate how issues such as embryo research and assisted dying became high-profile 'bioethical' concerns in the late twentieth century, and why different groups now play a critical role in developing regulatory standards and leading public debates. The book draws on a wide range of original sources and will be of interest to historians of medicine and science, general historians and bioethicists. (shrink)

As a contribution to a wider discussion on moral discernment in theological anthropology, this paper seeks to answer the question “What is the impact of mental illness on an individual’s ability to make moral decisions?” Written from a clinical psychiatric perspective, it considers recent contributions from psychology, neuropsychology and imaging technology. It notes that the popular conception that mental illness necessarily robs an individual of moral responsibility is largely unfounded. Most people who suffer from mental health problems do not lose (...) the capacity to make moral decisions, and mental illness on its own rarely explains anti-social or criminal behaviour. Moreover, the assumptions of some scientists, that recent developments in neuropsychology and brain imaging suggest biological determinism, must be treated with caution. (shrink)

W. H. Auden's dictum "poetry makes nothing happen" has an enduring currency in poetic criticism, quoted ad nauseam to support the view that poetic discourse must never fall subservient to political ends.1 Conventional wisdom would hold that Hugh MacDiarmid, a poet more often noted for his obstinate commitment to communism, patently failed to heed this dictum. Indeed, as Scott Lyall notes, MacDiarmid's political poems are almost never anthologized, suggesting that the poems in which MacDiarmid's political views are made explicit are (...) of inferior poetic quality.2Yet one must acknowledge that its subject matter cannot be taken as an... (shrink)

This is a study of Hume's political thought based on a survey of all his writings in their original and revised versions, with very full reference to the works of predecessors and contemporaries, including journalists, pamphleteers and historians. Hume's political thinking is presented in its historical context as a modem, 'philosophical', empirically based system of politics for a new post-revolutionary age, and a political education for parochial, backward-looking party men.

Published in 2018, ‘Re:Print’ is an experimental artists’ book, edited by Véronique Chance and Duncan Ganley, that brings together images and text by 20 contributors whose work addresses the role and language of the reproducible image. This article by Duncan Ganley discusses the challenges of translating artworks and text originally presented in the context of an exhibition and symposium, into a work of print an artists’ book. The range of contributors emphasizes the diverse scope of forms, processes and (...) ideas in the expanded field of Printmaking. Addressing a variety of approaches to integrating and repurposing this visual and textual material for the printed page, the article outlines the theoretical underpinning of the creation of ‘Re:Print’ and the editorial and design decisions taken to create a hybridized form that is both document and artwork and aims to draw out new agencies of the ‘book’ in a digital world. (shrink)

The role of reason has been seriously neglected as a necessary element in our life of faith. In this booklet, Dr. R.C. Sproul demonstrates the interplay between faith and reason in all aspects of our lives as children of God. Dr. Sproul provides good reason to believe God through knowledge of Him in order to be able to live by faith. Central to understanding how to live by faith is understanding how God redeems people. Dr. Sproul explores (...) how God redeems sinners in Christ by looking at Martin Luther and a central doctrine of the Reformation: justification by faith. After examining the importance of justification, Dr. Sproul answers questions about dying well in faith, while looking to Abraham and the book of Hebrews for examples of people who have lived by faith to show why faithfulness should be a dominant character of every Christian. (shrink)

By bringing together the insights of ecclesial ethics, an approach that emphasizes the distinctive nature of the church as the community that forms its mind and character after its reading of Scripture, with the theory and practice of restorative justice, a way of conceiving justice-making that emerged from the Mennonite-Anabaptist tradition, this book shows why a theological account of the theory and practice of restorative justice is fruitful for articulating and clarifying the witness of the church, especially when faced with (...) conflict or wrongdoing. This can help extend the church's imagination as to how it might better become God's community of restoration as it reflects on the ways in which the justice of God is taking shape in its own community. “How does an ecclesial context shape the theological apprehension and praxis of justice?” This question orientates the book. In particular, it asks how, in view of its members having been admitted into God's restoring justice in Christ, the church might embody in the world this same justice of restoring right relationships. While Christian reflection on the nature of justice has tended to favour a judicial and retributive conception of justice, it will be argued that the biblical understanding of the justice of God is best understood as a saving, liberating, and restorative justice. It is this restorative conception that ought to guide the community that reads Scripture so that it might be embodied in life. (shrink)

Christian thought on the resolution of conflicts rests on a strong predisposition against violence and a determination to discourage outbreaks of violence, limit the means used, and bring the conflict to as speedy an end as possible. Less attention has been given to the psychological and social roots of violence, the moments of transition from violence to diplomacy and reconciliation, and alternative ways of conflict resolution. These three areas are explored with special reference to the use of sanctions, the WCC’s (...) Programme to Overcome Violence, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Gandhian Satyagraha, and the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Such measures should be judged against the same criteria as are used in relation to violence and war. (shrink)

When this work was first published in 1960, it immediately filled a void in Kantian scholarship. It was the first study entirely devoted to Kant's _Critique of Practical Reason_ and by far the most substantial commentary on it ever written. This landmark in Western philosophical literature remains an indispensable aid to a complete understanding of Kant's philosophy for students and scholars alike. This _Critique_ is the only writing in which Kant weaves his thoughts on practical reason into a unified argument. (...) Lewis White Beck offers a classic examination of this argument and expertly places it in the context of Kant's philosophy and of the moral philosophy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

The case for God -- Possibilities -- The illusion of Descartes -- Self-creation, part 1 -- Self-creation, part 2 -- Self-existence -- Necessary being -- The God of the Bible vs. the God of philosophy -- Kant's moral argument -- Vanity of vanities -- The psychology of atheism.

God must be personal, too. We must be able to talk to Him as well as about Him. We need to know His character. That is the purpose of this book.

Who are you, God? -- Who made you, God? -- I want to find you, God -- I can't see you, God -- How much do you know, God? -- Where is truth, God? -- The shadow doesn't turn -- The just judge -- The invincible power -- Can I trust you, God? -- The love that will not let us go -- The name above all names.

Question of conscience -- Creation ordinances -- Razor's edge -- Legalist distortion -- Distortion of lawlessness -- Degrees of sin.

Preface -- Ethics and morals -- Revealed ethics -- Legalism and antinomianism -- The ethics of materialism -- The ethics of capital punishment and war -- The ethics of abortion -- Ethics and the conscience.