This paper presents an analysis and discussion of the opinions of two generations of Asian parents with regard to their young children's education. A large number of parents were interviewed during 1970-1974 and a smaller number during 1995 to ascertain their views on a variety of topics relating to their children's early education. The findings are discussed in a qualitative way and reveal the increasing satisfaction of Asian parents with their children's education. A higher proportion of the mothers of the (...) 1990s help their children with homework, read them stories and are generally more participatory in their children's education compared with the 1970s group. The second generations are concerned with the lack of facilities for the teaching of mother tongues in schools. These and other findings are discussed within the changing lifestyles of second-generation Asians. (shrink)

Summary This paper presents an analysis and discussion of the opinions of two generations of Asian parents with regard to their young children's education. A large number of parents (n = 200) were interviewed during 1970-1974 and a smaller number (n = 40) during 1995 to ascertain their views on a variety of topics relating to their children's early education. The findings are discussed in a qualitative way and reveal the increasing satisfaction of Asian parents with their children's education. A (...) higher proportion of the mothers of the 1990s help their children with homework, read them stories and are generally more participatory in their children's education compared with the 1970s group. The second generations are concerned with the lack of facilities for the teaching of mother tongues in schools. These and other findings are discussed within the changing lifestyles of second-generation Asians. (shrink)

We applaud Norris et al.'s critical review of the literature on lexical effects in phoneme decision making, and we sympathize with their attempt to reconcile autonomous models of word recognition with current research. However, we suggest that adaptive resonance theory (ART) may provide a coherent account of the data while preserving limited inhibitory feedback among certain lexical and sublexical representations.

Like other Arab countries, Jordan must find ways of responding to the rapid processes of change affecting many aspects of social life. This is particularly urgent in healthcare, where social and technical change is often manifested in tensions about ethical decision-making in the clinic. To explore the attitudes, beliefs and concerns relating to ethical decision-making among health professionals in Jordanian hospitals, a qualitative study was conducted involving face-to-face interviews with medical personnel in four hospitals in Amman, the capital of Jordan. (...) Data were analysed thematically in relation to a pre-existing set of ethical categories. Interviews were conducted with thirty-eight doctors covering most medical specialities. Five major themes emerged from the interviews: ethical awareness, ethical issues, the impact of religion on ethical decision-making, practical and theoretical resources for ethical decision-making, and challenges. While uncertainty was expressed about some aspects of Western approaches to ethics, participants strongly supported adoption of a range of Western bioethical principles, including cultural and ethical diversity, along with adherence to Islamic religious norms. A range of serious ethical challenges facing the Jordanian health system were identified, covering social, legal, managerial, and technical issues. Ethical decision-making in Jordan is complex, having to accommodate the needs of patients, the opinions of doctors and their families, the views of religious authorities, managerial considerations, and both local norms and international standards. Health professionals struggle with three sets of tensions that emerge out of the struggle between traditional, community-embedded forms of social organization and the demands generated by globalization and the influence of Western culture: the tensions between tradition and modernity, conservatism and pragmatism, and religion and secularism. Doctors in Jordan prefer approaches to ethical decision-making that realize a balance between the extremes, although the exact nature of where that balance should lie remains uncertain. (shrink)

High-spin states have been studied in Pr-135(59), populated through the Cd-116(Na-23,4n) reaction at 115 MeV, using the Gammasphere gamma-ray spectrometer. The negative-parity yrast band has been significantly extended to spin similar to 45 (h) over bar and excitation energy 21.5 MeV, showing evidence for several rotational alignments. The positive-parity yrast band of Ce-135(58), populated through the p4n channel of this reaction, was also populated to spin similar to 38 (h) over bar and excitation energy 18 MeV. Cranking calculations indicate that (...) these nuclei are soft with respect to the triaxiality parameter gamma and that several competing nuclear shapes occur at high spin. (shrink)

It is very common these days to come across the claim that the notions of mental content and linguistic meaning are normative notions. In the work of many philosophers, it plays a pivotal role. Saul Kripke made it the centerpiece of his influential discussion of Wittgenstein’s treatment of rulefollowing and private language; he used it to argue that the notions of meaning and content cannot be understood in naturalistic terms. Kripke’s formulations tend to be in terms of the notion of (...) linguistic meaning, but his argumentative strategy makes it clear that he holds both versions of the claim.... (shrink)

Like other Arab countries, Jordan must find ways of responding to the rapid processes of change affecting many aspects of social life. This is particularly urgent in healthcare, where social and technical change is often manifested in tensions about ethical decision-making in the clinic. To explore the attitudes, beliefs and concerns relating to ethical decision-making among health professionals in Jordanian hospitals, a qualitative study was conducted involving face-to-face interviews with medical personnel in four hospitals in Amman, the capital of Jordan. (...) Data were analysed thematically in relation to a pre-existing set of ethical categories. Interviews were conducted with thirty-eight doctors covering most medical specialities. Five major themes emerged from the interviews: ethical awareness, ethical issues, the impact of religion on ethical decision-making, practical and theoretical resources for ethical decision-making, and challenges. While uncertainty was expressed about some aspects of Western approaches to ethics, participants strongly supported adoption of a range of Western bioethical principles, including cultural and ethical diversity, along with adherence to Islamic religious norms. A range of serious ethical challenges facing the Jordanian health system were identified, covering social, legal, managerial, and technical issues. Ethical decision-making in Jordan is complex, having to accommodate the needs of patients, the opinions of doctors and their families, the views of religious authorities, managerial considerations, and both local norms and international standards. Health professionals struggle with three sets of tensions that emerge out of the struggle between traditional, community-embedded forms of social organization and the demands generated by globalization and the influence of Western culture: the tensions between tradition and modernity, conservatism and pragmatism, and religion and secularism. Doctors in Jordan prefer approaches to ethical decision-making that realize a balance between the extremes, although the exact nature of where that balance should lie remains uncertain. (shrink)

In this chapter a new problem about rule-following is outlined, one that is distinct both from Kripke’s and Wright’s versions of the problem. This new problem cannot be correctly responsed to, as Kripke’s can, by invoking Wright’s Intentional Account of rule-following. The upshot might be called, following Kant, an antinomy of pure reason: we both must — and cannot — make sense of someone’s following a rule. The chapter explores various ways out of this antinomy without here endorsing any of (...) them. (shrink)

© Copyright 2015, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc..Signal transducer and activator of transcription factor 3 is hyperactivated in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. Cumulative evidence indicates that IL-6 production by HNSCC cells and/or stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment activates STAT3 and contributes to tumor progression and drug resistance. A library of 94,491 compounds from the Molecular Library Screening Center Network was screened for the ability to inhibit interleukin-6 -induced pSTAT3 activation. For contractual reasons, the primary high-content screening campaign was (...) conducted over several months in 3 distinct phases; 1,068 primary HCS actives remained after cytotoxic or fluorescent outliers were eliminated. One thousand one hundred eighty-seven compounds were cherry-picked for confirmation; actives identified in the primary HCS and compounds selected by a structural similarity search of the remaining MLSCN library using hits identified in phases I and II of the screen. Actives were confirmed in pSTAT3 IC50 assays, and an IFNγ-induced pSTAT1 activation assay was used to prioritize selective inhibitors of STAT3 activation that would not inhibit STAT1 tumor suppressor functions. Two hundred three concentration-dependent inhibitors of IL-6-induced pSTAT3 activation were identified and 89 of these also produced IC50s against IFN-γ-induced pSTAT1 activation. Forty-nine compounds met our hit criteria: they reproducibly inhibited IL-6-induced pSTAT3 activation by ≥70% at 20 μM; their pSTAT3 activation IC50s were ≤25 μM; they were ≥2-fold selective for pSTAT3 inhibition over pSTAT1 inhibition; a cross target query of PubChem indicated that they were not biologically promiscuous; and they were ≥90% pure. Twenty-six chemically tractable hits that passed filters for nuisance compounds and had acceptable drug-like and ADME-Tox properties by computational evaluation were purchased for characterization. The hit structures were distributed among 5 clusters and 8 singletons. Twenty-four compounds inhibited IL-6-induced pSTAT3 activation with IC50s ≤20 μM and 13 were ≥3-fold selective versus inhibition of pSTAT1 activation. Eighteen hits inhibited the growth of HNSCC cell lines with average IC50s ≤ 20 μM. Four chemical series were progressed into lead optimization: the guanidinoquinazolines, the triazolothiadiazines, the amino alcohols, and an oxazole-piperazine singleton. (shrink)

In this article, Whitehead's transition from a Philosophy of Evolution to a Philosophy of Organism is studied primarily on the basis of the evidence provided by the first two volumes of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, especially the second volume that deals with the period 1925–1927 and that is subtitled General Metaphysical Problems of Science.

This is a critical discussion of Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore's "Holism". The paper questions the existence of a slippery slope from some inferential liaisons are constitutive of meaning' to all inferential liaisons are constitutive of meaning'. "Interalia", it defends the existence of an analytic/synthetic distinction.

Samuelson's text was first published in 1948, and it immediately became the authority for the principles of economics courses. The book continues to be the standard-bearer for principles courses, and this revision continues to be a clear, accurate, and interesting introduction to modern economics principles. Bill Nordhaus is now the primary author of this text, and he has revised the book to be as current and relevant as ever.

Reply to Schiffer's comment on Externalism and Inference.

This paper argues that Devitt’s arguments in "Transcendentalism About Content" don’t show how to answer the challenge I laid down in "Status Of Content". I proceed as follows. I begin by looking at why I didn’t formulate content eliminativism in the way that Devitt does, and why I did formulate it as the thesis of “content irrealism.” I then show in detail why his criticisms are off-target.

Unlike the relativistic theses drawn from physics, normative relativisms involve relativization not to frames of reference but to something like our standards, standards that we have to be able to think of ourselves as endorsing or accepting. Th us, moral facts are to be relativized to moral standards and epistemic facts to epistemic standards. But a moral standard in this sense would appear to be just a general moral proposition and an epistemic standard just a general epistemic proposition. Pulling off (...) either relativism, then, requires not just relativizing the facts in the domain in question to the relevant standards; it requires taking a non-absolutist view of the standards themselves. Otherwise a commitment to absolute truths in the domain in question will show up in one’s attitude towards the standards themselves. But it is very hard to see how to take a genuinely non-absolutist attitude towards the standards themselves. That, in essence, is the difficulty for a relativistic view of a normative domain that I tried to develop in Chapter 6 of Fear of Knowledge. In their commentaries, Gideon Rosen and Ram Neta come up with ingenious ways of attempting to circumvent that difficulty. In my reply, I try to explain why I don’t believe they succeed. (shrink)

The question whether we can have a priori knowledge, and if so to what extent, has lain at the center of philosophy practically since the beginning. For many philosophers, including Plato, Leibniz, Kant, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and most of the Logical Positivists, to name just a few, it seems to have been the problem around which everything else was made to turn. It's an interesting question why philosophers have been so obsessed with this problem and why they have been inclined (...) to assign it so much importance. One reason, no doubt, has to do with its relation to the possibility of philosophy itself. Although it has become fashionable in some circles to pretend otherwise, I don't really see that anyone out there has much idea how analytic philosophy is to be done, if not a priori; in particular, I don't really see that anyone has much idea how it is to be done without a hefty helping of a priori conceptual analysis.... (shrink)

In the decade that followed 1972, the journal _boundary 2_ consistently published many of the most distinguished and most influential statements of an emerging literary postmodernism. Recognizing postmodernism as a dominant force in culture, particularly in the literary and narrative imagination, the journal appeared when literary critical study in the United States was in a period of theory-induced ferment. The fundamental relations between postmodernism and poststructuralism were being initially examined and the effort to formulate a critical sense of the postmodern (...) was underway. In this volume, Paul A. Bové, the current editor of _boundary 2_, has gathered many of those foundational essays and, as such, has assembled a basic text in the history of postmodernism. Essays by noted cultural and literary theorists join with Bové’s contemporary preface to represent the important and unique moment in recent intellectual history when postmodernism was no longer seen primarily as an architectural term, had not yet come to describe the wide range of culture it does now, but was finding power and place in the literary realm. These essays show that the history of postmodernism and its attendant critical theories are both more complex and more deeply bound with literary criticism than often is acknowledged today. _Early Postmodernism_ demonstrates not only the significance of these literary studies, but also the role played by literary critical postmodernism in making possible newer forms of critical and cultural studies. _Contributors_. Barry Alpert, Charles Altieri, David Antin, Harold Bloom, Paul A. Bové, Hélène Cixous, Gerald Gillespie, Ihab Hassan, Joseph N. Riddel, William, V. Spanos, Catharine R. Stimpson, Cornel West. (shrink)

This volume begins to show why the current period in humanistic studies could be known as "The Age of Edward Said." The collection brings together outstanding intellectuals from the wide variety of fields to which Edward Said, the most important humanist of his generation, has made contributions: literary criticism, postcolonial studies, musicology, Middle Eastern Studies, anthropology, and journalism. Featured is a new interview with Said, conducted by W. J. T. Mitchell, in which Said discusses the importance of the visual to (...) his thinking, specifically the works of Goya and Caravaggio, which in turn made possible Said's valuable contributions to our understanding of photography and painting. Other contributions reflect on Said's influences on the American public sphere; the subtle personal politics that inform the relationship between music and emotion; Said's importance to a thinking about "race before racism" and the disappearance of the American; and jazz man Jim Merod reflects on Said's "sublime lyrical abstractions." Covering with insight the many debates Said so deftly entered and formed, the distinguished contributors to this volume reflect upon his oeuvre to create an atmosphere of thoughtfulness, questioning, and interactivity. (shrink)

Paradox and origin : on the structure of legal communication -- History, law and hermeneutic self-reference -- Self-mastery and the conversion of force : an ethics of freedom -- The social metaphysics of law : Vico's communicative body and the paradoxical grounding of freedom and authority -- The creative formation and foundation of society's law : on the nature of poetic wisdom -- Between freedom and authority : Vico's history of roman law -- The technique of command : on the (...) problem of freedom in Weber's sociology of law. (shrink)

In over 200 separately-authored entries, this reference surveys both the historical and contemporary relations between religion and society. A selection of the world's leading scholars from varying disciplines and denominations cover all aspects of philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, economics and government, providing a brief definition of each term, a description of the principal ideas behind it, its history, development and contemporary relevance, and a detailed bibliography giving the major sources in the field. The Dictionary is prefaced by an introduction outlining (...) the scope and diversity of coverage. * Synthesizes theology, social thought, social philosophy and ethics * Prestigious editors and an international team of Consulting Editors * Selected entries include: AIDS, Domestic Violence, Madness, Prophecy, Terrorism, Women's Ordination, Fundamentalist Liberation Theology, Surrogacy. (shrink)

Chapter Seven discusses Edgar Ulmer's The Black Cat as the creation of a high modernist European émigré working in a lowbrow American genre, the horror movie. Ulmer portrays a self-destructive generation of Europeans permanently scarred by the horrors of World War I. Into their world, he introduces a young American couple on their honeymoon, who, in their naïveté, are almost destroyed by the mad Europeans, but escape their satanic clutches in the end. Hoping to succeed in his newly adopted homeland, (...) Ulmer seems to turn his back on his European heritage as a dead end, and yet he cannot help suggesting the cultural superiority of his sophisticated European characters. The Black Cat takes its place in a long line of European works critical of American culture, while at the same time raising serious doubts about Europe's future in the 1930s. (shrink)

Research Articles Paul A. Rahe, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, mentions Niccolò Machiavelli by name in his extant works just a handful of times. That, however, he read him carefully and thoroughly time and again there can be no doubt, and it is also clear that he couches his argument both in his Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline and in his Spirit of Laws as an appropriation and critique of the work of (...) the predecessor whom he termed ‘this great man’. In this paper I explore the manner in which the Frenchman redeployed the arguments advanced by the Florentine for the purpose of refuting the latter's conclusions. ☆ In citing Machiavelli, I employ N. Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. M. Martelli (Florence, 1971), and I refer to the divisions within each work provided by the author. To make my references to Machiavelli's Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio more precise, I sometimes also employ the paragraph enumeration added by the editors of N. Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, tr. H. C. Mansfield and N. Tarcov (Chicago, 1996). In citing Montesquieu, wherever possible, I have employed the splendid new critical edition being produced by the Société Montesquieu: Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. J. Ehrard, C. Volpilhac-Auger, et al., 22 vols. (Oxford, 1998-), which I cite as VF. I cite Montesquieu, Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734), ed. F. Weil and C. Courtney, as CR by chapter and, where appropriate, line from VF, ii, 89–285. I cite Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois (1757), as EL by part, book, chapter, and, where appropriate, page from Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. R. Caillois, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949–51), ii, 225–995, and Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Mes pensées as MP by number from Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. A. Masson, 3 vols. (Paris, 1950–5), ii, 1–677. (shrink)

This article will explore whether there are arguments for Aristotle's concept mixis which can aid our current discussions within the philosophy of chemistry. We remain troubled by the way and extent to which chemical substance in bulk can be identified with or reduced to the stability and structure of molecules, and whether these in turn can be identified with or reduced to elemental atoms and the quantum theoretical characterization of their electrons. Aristotle was as determined as we are to think (...) through the implications of substances comprised of constituents and to question their status in chemical compounds. (shrink)

Following Oliver Ramsbotham’s observation that conflict resolution and analysis have not taken radical disagreement seriously enough, and in light of his lament that he has not yet found an adequate philosophy of radical disagreement, this article claims that the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre provides some coreelements of any adequate philosophy of radical disagreement. MacIntyre’s theory suggests that the problem of radical disagreement is in fact more radical thanRamsbotham affirms. Ramsbotham’s account of the strategic engagement of discourses (SED) approach is critiqued (...) in light of MacIntyre’s diagnosis of radical disagreement, which calls into question its theoretical and philosophical basis. The main problem is held to be that of internal radical disagreement, which SED appears to skirt over. This is elucidated through a brief exploration of two philosophical approaches to moral-political disagreement in relation to Israeli peace activism and the Colombian conflict. (shrink)

In this article, I show how traditional Thomistic claims about the creation and fall of the first human beings—or “Adam”—are compatible with the claims of evolutionary science concerning human origins. Aquinas claims that God created Adam in a state or condition of original justice, wholly subject to God and so fully virtuous, as well as internally immune to bodily corruption, suffering, and natural death. In defense of “Aquinas's Adam,” I first argue that affirming that the prelapsarian Adam was internally immune (...) to suffering and death does not require denying that these things predated his emergence within evolutionary history, or that he would have faced real challenges posed to him by his natural environment. Next, I rebut the claim that Adam must have been spiritually and morally fragile, given the traits he inherited from his evolutionary ancestors. Finally, I dispute the claim that Adam only could have fallen if he existed in a spiritually and morally fragile state. (shrink)

When Benjamin Franklin suggested that man is by nature a tool-making animal, he summed up what was for his fellow Americans the common sense of the matter. It is not, then, surprising that, when Britain's colonists in North America broke with the mother country over the issue of an unrepresentative parliament's right to tax and govern the colonies, they defended their right to the property they owned on the ground that it was in a most thorough-going sense an extension of (...) themselves: the fruits of their own labor. This understanding they learned from John Locke, who based the argument of his Two Treatises of Government on the unorthodox account of providence and of man's place within the natural world that Sir Francis Bacon had been the first to articulate. All of this helps explain why the framers of the American constitution included within it a clause giving sanction to property in ideas of practical use. (shrink)

Rhodopsin, upon activation by light, transduces the photon signal by activation of the G‐protein, transducin. The well‐studied rhodopsin/transducin system serves as a model for the understanding of signal transduction by the large class of G‐protein‐coupled receptors. The interactive form of rhodopsin, R*, is conformationally similar or identical to rhodopsin's photolysis intermediate Metarhodopsin II (MII). Formation of MII requires deprotonation of rhodopsin's protonated Schiff base which appears to facilitate some opening of the rhodopsin structure. This allows a change in conformation at (...) rhodopsin's cytoplasmic surface that provides binding sites for transducin. Rhodopsin's 2nd, 3rd and putative 4th cytoplasmic loops bind transducin at sites including transducin's 5 kDa carboxyl‐terminal region. Site‐specific mutagenesis of rhodopsin is being used to distinguish sites on rhodopsin's surface that are important in binding transducin from those that function in activating transducin. These observations are consistent with and extend studies on the action of other G‐protein‐coupled receptors and their interactions with their respective G proteins. (shrink)

Replies to commentators (Loar, Yablo, Corbí, Moya) on "What the Externalist Can Know A Priori".

Only in recent years have developmental psychologists begun advocating and exploring dual-process theories and their applicability to cognitive development. In this paper, a dual-process model of developments in two processing systems—an “analytic” and an “experiential” system—is discussed. We emphasise the importance of “metacognitive intercession” and developments in this ability to override experiential processing. In each of two studies of sunk cost decisions, age-related developments in normative decisions were observed, as were declines in the use of a “waste not” heuristic. In (...) the second study, children and adolescents were presented with arguments for normative and non-normative sunk cost decisions. Following argument evaluation, participants were re-presented the original problems and a set of novel, transfer problems. Results indicated that post-argument improvements were most apparent during adolescence. Age-related improvements were most noticeable on the transfer problems. In general, the findings suggest that the ability to metacognitively intercede (i.e., reflect on arguments; inhibit experientially produced responses) emerges towards middle adolescence. However, even by the end of adolescence, in the absence of significant contextual cues and motivation, this ability is infrequently utilised. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

Quine is usually read as arguing either for a non-factualism about analyticity (1) ... Or, at the very least, for an error thesis about it: (2) ... These attributions — including the stronger non-factualist thesis — seem licensed by many passages, including the famous one which concludes Quine's discussion in "Two Dogmas" ... Nevertheless, Paul Horwich does not wish to read Quine as endorsing either (1) or (2). He certainly does not wish to attribute (1) to him. And he (...) wishes to attribute only a restricted version of (2). What this restriction is and why Paul wants to make it are matters I'll come to in just a moment. (shrink)

The very idea of narrative explanation invites two objections: a methodological objection, stating that narrative structure is too far from the form of a scientific explanation to count as an explanation, and a metaphysical objection, stating that narrative structure situates historical practice too close to the writing of fiction. Both of these objections, however, are illfounded. The methodological objection and the dispute regarding the status of historical explanation can be disposed of by revealing their motivating presupposition: the plausibility of an (...) exclusivist explication of explanation which appeals either to the unity-of-method thesis or some implicit notion of analytic equivalence, both problematic philosophical doctrines. The metaphysical objection fails with the rejection of the idea, in Mink's phrase, of an "untold story." The argument against history as an "untold story" develops from Danto's image of an Ideal Chronicler recording ideal events. A consequence of rejecting this view is that it no longer makes sense to speak of historical narratives as true or false. However, this failure engenders no special problem for assessing the objectivity or explanatory utility of narratives qua explanations. (shrink)