Use of electronic health records within clinical encounters is increasingly pervasive. The digital record allows for data storage and sharing to facilitate patient care, billing, research, patient communication and quality-of-care improvement—all at once. However, this multifunctionality is also one of the main reasons care providers struggle with the EHR. These problems have often been described but are rarely approached from a philosophical point of view. We argue that a postphenomenological case study of the EHR could lead to more in-depth insights. (...) We will focus on two concepts—transparency and multistability—and translate them to the specific situation of the EHR. Transparency is closely related to an embodiment relation in which the user becomes less aware of the technology: it fades into the background, becoming a means of experience. A second key concept is that of multistability, referring to how a technology can serve multiple purposes or can have different meanings in different contexts. The EHR in this sense is multistable by design. Future EHR design could incorporate multistable information differently, allowing the provider to focus on patient care when interacting with the EHR. Moreover we argue that the use of the EHR in the daily workflow should become more transparent, while awareness of the computer in the specific context of the patient-provider relationship should increase. (shrink)

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

Gary Francione is an abolitionist: he maintains that we ought to abolish the institutions and practices that support the exploitation of animals. He also believes that veganism is the “moral baseline” — that is, he thinks it’s morally required of nearly everyone in the developed world, and many beyond it. Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues claims that abolitionism is guilty of racism, albeit “racism without racists.” I contend that his arguments for this conclusion aren’t successful.

Theories of language production propose that utterances are constructed by a mechanism that separates linguistic content from linguistic structure, Linguistic content is retrieved from the mental lexicon, and is then inserted into slots in linguistic structures or frames. Support for this kind of model at the phonological level comes from patterns of phonological speech errors. W present an alternative account of these patterns using a connectionist or parallel distributed proceesing (PDP) model that learns to produce sequences of phonological features. The (...) model's errors exhibit some of the properties of human speech errors, specifically, properties that have been attributed to the action of phonological rules, frames, or other structural generalizations. (shrink)

Theories of language production have long been expressed as connectionist models. We outline the issues and challenges that must be addressed by connectionist models of lexical access and grammatical encoding, and review three recent models. The models illustrate the value of an interactive activation approach to lexical access in production, the need for sequential output in both phonological and grammatical encoding, and the potential for accounting for structural effects on errors and structural priming from learning.

Interactive theories of lexical retrieval in language production assume that activation cascades from earlier to later processing levels, and feeds back in the reverse direction. This commentary invites Pickering & Garrod (P&G) to consider whether cascading and feedback can be seen as a form of forwarding modeling within a hierarchical production system.

Levelt, Roelofs & Meyer present a comprehensive and sophisticated theory of lexical access in production, but we question its reliance on binding-by-checking as opposed to binding-by-timing and we discuss how the timing of retrieval events is a major factor in both correct and errorful production.

Drawing inspiration from Aristotle's biological writings, I attempt to elucidate what it is for something to be alive by providing illuminating logically necessary and sufficient conditions for something's being a living thing in the broadest sense. I then propose a related account of identity conditions for carbon‐based living organisms.

Drawing inspiration from Aristotle's biological writings, I attempt to elucidate what it is for something to be alive by providing illuminating logically necessary and sufficient conditions for something'sbeing a living thing in the broadest sense. I then propose a related account of identity conditions for carbon‐based living organisms.

This volume is an invaluable resource for student and scholar alike.

I attempt to define the concept of ‘living organism’. Intuitively, a living organism is a substantial entity with a capacity for certain relevant activities. But biology has discovered that living organisms have a particular compositional or microstructural nature. This nature includes carbon-based macromolecules and water molecules. I argue that such living organisms belong to a natural kind of compound physical object, viz., carbon-based living organism. My definition of a living organism encompasses both the intuitively relevant activities and the empirically discovered (...) compositional nature. The definition is designed to deal with a variety of problem cases, e.g., viruses, proteinoid microspheres, sterile organisms, suspended animation cases, and living parts of organisms. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the ontological status of individual substances; intuitive examples of such entities include particles and living organisms. My aim is to assess the ontological status of individual substances in the light of arguments for an ontology of [concrete] facts, often called states of affairs. Advocates of a fact ontology have argued that these factive entities are the ontologically fundamental beings. I will address the salient question of whether individual substances are reducible to, or eliminable in favor of, facts. (...) I will further address the question of whether individual substances, even if not reducible to facts, are nonetheless ontologically dependent upon facts in a way that undercuts the claim that some individual substances are ontologically fundamental. Finally, I will argue that a persuasive case for the claim that facts are what is ontologically fundamental has yet to be made. (shrink)

Roderick Chisholm is a seminal figure in contemporary analytical metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. The current healthy state of metaphysics and epistemology is in no small measure due to his influence and positive example. Chisholm has defended realism in metaphysics, foundationalism in epistemology, and the primacy of intentionality in the philosophy of mind. Throughout his long career at Brown, Chisholm was absorbed in the technical philosophical problems internal to this program. For example, his Socratic quests for the required definitions (...) are deservedly legendary. Still, this book is Chisholm's first attempt to provide a systematic exposition of his philosophical views, and it may be regarded as the definitive statement of the mature Chisholmian weltanschauung. The book is characterized by the virtues we have come to expect from this master of analytical philosophy: erudition, clarity, ingenuity, subtlety, technical virtuosity, and great depth. It covers a very large range of topics, in a small number of pages, in a style that is notably laconic. Such a book can be profitably read by those who are not advanced students of philosophy, but can be fully appreciated only by the most philosophically sophisticated. This important book should be read by all those who have a serious interest in metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Baker calls the view that we are essentially animals Animalism. The animalist maintains that each of us is identical with a human animal. Baker argues that if Animalism is correct, then we have ontological significance in virtue of our being human animals or organisms, but not in virtue of our being persons.

Baker calls the view that we are essentially animals Animalism. The animalist maintains that each of us is identical with a human animal. Baker argues that if Animalism is correct, then we have ontological significance in virtue of our being human animals or organisms, but not in virtue of our being persons.

There is now a wealth of information that histone proteins play a primary role in the structural and transcriptional properties of chromatin, the protein‐DNA complex which constitutes the eukaryotic genome1, 2. In light of the crucial role of histones in cellular function, it is not surprising that their structural genes are found to be controlled in conjunction with the cell cycle, with the synthesis of most histones tightly coupled to nuclear DNA replication. The evidence suggests that this linkage between DNA (...) replication and histone synthesis involves the regulated adjustment of histone mRNA levels through both transcriptional and posttranscriptional control process. The possible mechanisms underlying these diverse control processes are described here. (shrink)

Near the end of Euripides' "Helen", Helen reportedly exhorts the Greek troops to rescue her Egyptian foes: "Where is the glory of Troy ? Show it to these barbarians" . Helen's rallying cry serves as a point of departure for investigating the nature and status of kleos in a play which invites reframing her question: Where, indeed, is the glory of Troy if the report of Helen's abduction by Paris is untrue? The drama deconstructs the notion of a unitary, transcendent (...) meaning of "kleos" by demonstrating the slippage between its two root-meanings in Homer as "immortal fame," legitimated by the gods, and as mere "report" or "rumor." A diminution of the status of the proper name runs in parallel with this slippage between the two senses of "kleos": the heroic name loses its privileged status as a stable, transparent sign of character and becomes instead a signifier vulnerable to dissemination . As a vehicle of deception, Helen's phantom-twin becomes a figure for the polysemy of the signifier, both visual and linguistic. The phantom's substitution for Helen also highlights her symbolic role as a marker of men's status in a competitive system of exchange. If the play presents Helen as a continual object of men's attempts to capture her in song as well as in war, it presents heroic kleos as an equally insecure possession, insofar as it is always contingent on the "report" of others. Indeed, Helen becomes a metaphor for the duplicity inherent in the mimetic process by which fame is transmitted. That "kleos" turns out to have been a dangerously deceptive signifier is a lesson of more than literary interest for the Athenians watching Euripides' "Helen" -the forces of the Sicilian expedition had been annihilated only a year earlier. (shrink)