As biological and biomedical research increasingly reference the environmental context of the biological entities under study, the need for formalisation and standardisation of environment descriptors is growing. The Environment Ontology (ENVO) is a community-led, open project which seeks to provide an ontology for specifying a wide range of environments relevant to multiple life science disciplines and, through an open participation model, to accommodate the terminological requirements of all those needing to annotate data using ontology classes. This paper summarises ENVO’s motivation, (...) content, structure, adoption, and governance approach. (shrink)

Any adequate account of the distinction between consequentialist and deontological moral systems must take account of the central place given to constraints in the latter. Constraints place limits on what each of us may do in the pursuit of any goal, including the maximisation of the good. There is some debate, however, both over how constraints are to be characterised, and over the rationale for their inclusion in a moral system. Some authors view constraints as agent-relative: a constraint supplies an (...) agent with an agent-relative reason to refrain from acting in the prohibited manner. A reason is agent-relative if it contains an ineliminable back-reference to the agent. On this characterisation, it is natural to suppose that constraints arise because of an agent’s concern with her own agency. There is perhaps, however, an alternative to this agent-focussed rationale: constraints, although characterised in terms of agent-relative reasons, might be best explained and defended via considerations of the potential victim of wrongdoing—yielding a victim- or patient-focussed rationale. Or, perhaps, constraints are not only best defended by a victim-focussed rationale; they are also best characterised by reference to the potential victim. In what follows, we advocate an agent-relative characterisation of, and an agent-focussed rationale for, constraints. We begin by developing a rigorous account of agent-focussed agent-relativity, before turning to consider patient-based approaches. (shrink)

We obsess about what our politicians are doing, but ignore that our companies are no longer investing, instead they are focusing on next quarter's profits in order to justify ever higher executive compensation. This is in turn accelerating the West’s economic decline versus the East. While the short-term focus of business is becoming widely acknowledged, we are not doing enough to reverse this. Looking at the less known history of companies shows us the choices we can no longer afford to (...) ignore. Some current reforms need to go further and some areas that need reform are currently being ignored. Encouraging our businesses to invest again is one of the most important issues of our time. (shrink)

This introduction to ethics judiciously combines moral theory with applied ethics to give an opportunity for students to develop acute thinking About Ethical Matters.; The Author Begins Motivating A Concern For moral discourse by dispelling often met objections over relativism and subjectivity. interweaving normative and meta-ethical considerations, a convincing modern account of moral thinking emerges.; Moral theories - consequentialism, Kantianism, contractualism - are explained and illustrated in a way that holds the reader's attention, and students of ethics will take away (...) a perceptive and practical understanding of the nature of moral reasoning and an ability, on such matters, to think afresh for themselves. (shrink)

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has always been plagued by what queer theorist Judith Butler calls gender trouble. In 2000, the IOC discontinued their practice of sex-testing because medical experts could not agree on what defined a genetic female and so an adequate medical testing measure could not be found. In response to outside pressure, the IOC adopted a policy enabling transsexual athletes to compete in the 2004 Olympic Games. This article argues that the IOC policy on sex reassignment does (...) not operate to guard against discrimination and harassment against transsexual athletes but that it operates to maintain the popular illusion that there are two, binary gender designations. While both transsexual and Olympic bodies have unique histories and vastly different experiences in the social and political realms, using psychoanalysis we contend that the need to test gendered bodies is incited by an anxiety about bodily deterioration, aging, and, ultimately, mortality. (shrink)

This article examines various models of legal interpretation and their implications for comparative law, drawing inspiration from Rodolfo Sacco’s early career theories. It contrasts the Tarskian Correspondence Model, which seeks objective reality in legal texts, with the Symphonic Model, which interprets legal language as a harmonious interplay of elements. The Tarskian model reflects classical legal thought’s search for fixed meanings, while the Symphonic model aligns with contemporary legal practice’s nuanced understanding. Further, the article explores Heraclitean Realism, acknowledging the fluidity of (...) language and meaning, and the Provocative Tapestry Model, which introduces paradox and tension in legal interpretation. These models are likened to narrative genres, offering varied approaches to understanding legal discourse: the Tarskian model as a detective novel, the Symphonic model as a comedy, the Living Tapestry model as a melodrama, and the Provocative Tapestry model as a tragedy. The article argues that these models of legal interpretation do not inherently carry a political essence; the political stance emerges from the choices of interpreters. It emphasizes the need for human agency in the application of legal norms and the responsibility of legal professionals to actively engage in the interpretation process. Comparative law is discussed as a discipline that benefits from understanding these diverse interpretative models, as it seeks to analyze legal systems across jurisdictions. The article concludes that while narrative styles in legal interpretation have political histories, they are not bound to specific ideologies, highlighting the versatility and subjectivity in the field of legal interpretation. (shrink)

‘Engineered’ and ‘organic’ have always represented two sides of a challenge that went along with human evolution. Since the dawn of its existence, humankind has been trying to adapt ‘Nature’, the phenomenal world, to his goals, through projects, techniques, instruments, devices, machines, in a process that received propulsion and acceleration from the advent of symbolic ability. Inside the phenomenal world, the ‘organic’ – the material carbon-based dimension on which life is founded, according to the sciences – has always represented a (...) very important subsystem, mainly the world of the living. The ‘organic’ as food, support, pleasure, invention, care, with human skill, has been developing since prehistory, to select, hybridize and breed animals and plants, through more and more successful techniques ranging from crossbreeding to genetic manipulation and engineering. But also as ways to take care of the human body and life with tools, dresses, signs, machines and medical treatments. Scientific evolution has led to the capacity to deeply modify existing organisms and create new ones, new species that would never have evolved naturally. One major technique to describe and simulate the world and to interoperate with Nature is digital technology. Artificial intelligence, artificial life and robotics are mainly digitally based, working at the edge of Nature and the engineered. Digitally based technologies such as 3D printing and the Internet of Things can get to an intimate relationship among the engineered, the organic and Nature, blurring the divide between matter and language, life and code, ‘hardware’ and ‘software’. Hence, through sciences and technologies humanity is creating a Third Life originating from knowledge and culture, which is independently and autonomously evolving, expanding Nature from inside the realm of Nature. (shrink)

For over a decade, a small group of scientists and philosophers—members of the Mind and Life Institute—have met regularly to explore the intersection between science and the spirit. At one of these meetings, the themes discussed were both fundamental and profound: can physics, chemistry, and biology explain the mystery of life? How do our philosophical assumptions influence science and the ethics we bring to biotechnology? And how does an ancient spiritual tradition throw new light on these questions? Pier Luigi Luisi (...) not only reproduces this dramatic, cross-cultural dialogue, in which world-class scientists, philosophers, and Buddhist scholars develop a holistic approach to the scientific exploration of reality, but also adds scientific background to their presentations, as well as supplementary discussions with prominent participants and attendees. Interviews with His Holiness the Karmapa, the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, and the actor and longtime human rights advocate Richard Gere take the proceedings into new directions, enriching the material with personal viewpoints and lively conversation about such topics as the origin of matter, the properties of cells, the nature of evolution, the ethics of genetic manipulation, and the question of consciousness and ethics. A keen study of character, Luisi incorporates his own amusing observations into this fascinating dialogue, painting a very human portrait of some of our greatest—and most intimidating—thinkers. Deeply textured and cleverly crafted, _Mind and Life_ is an excellent opportunity for any reader to join in the debate surrounding this cutting-edge field of inquiry. (shrink)

Donald Davidson is famous for, among other things, his theory of radical interpretation – an account of how it is that we can attribute meanings to people's words, and contents to their mental states, based on an apparent paucity of evidence. This account is infused with ideas from, and applications of, the general theory of measurement, as well as one specific instance of that theory – decision theory. In addition, however, Davidson also applies measurement theory – in the form of (...) his “measurement theoretic analogy” – from outside the theory of radical interpretation, to yield a novel account of one of its notable features: the indeterminacy of interpretation. I argue that the success of this application is limited, however, in dispelling a worry to which indeterminacy gives rise – namely that if Davidson's account of indeterminacy is correct, we have no mental states. (shrink)

The article examines the relationship between Western and Eastern aesthetics, analyzing some aspects of the musical production of Tōru Takemitsu, the great Japanese composer, now firmly included in the contemporary music “Western Canon”. The article tries to demonstrate that contemporary music represents an ideal field for verifying the intersection between Western and Eastern aesthetics. It is precisely the paradoxical co-belonging of Takemitsu’s musical thought to both worlds, which encourages us to reconsider our way of understanding the aesthetic “distance” between East (...) and West. Contemporary music represents the privileged place, to verify the idea, that such cultural distinctions are indeed relevant, but only to the extent that they should be transcended in a higher unity, in a “hypercultural” space. Within this space, the differences find their “place”, but also their reciprocal translatability. Takemitsu’s writings record the incessant oscillation between the great Western musical, aesthetic, poetic tradition, and the specifical Japanese cultural tradition. The names of Debussy, Messiaen, Nono, Feldman, Cage stand alongside those of Basho and Zeami, in an aesthetic convergence that is a prelude to a truly “global” aesthetic. The path proposed here analyzes this convergence, retracing, in Takemitsu’s production, three fundamental “figures”: silence, trees, and rain. (shrink)

In this paper, for the benefit of reflection processes in clinical and in local, regional, and national priority-setting, we aim to develop an ethical theoretical framework that includes both ethical principles and medium-range narratives. We present our suggestion in the particular case of having to choose between treatment interventions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and treatment interventions for other conditions or diseases, under circumstances of scarcity. In order to arrive at our model, we compare two distinct ethical approaches: a (...) generalist (principles) approach and a particularist (narratives) approach. Our focus is on Sweden, because in Sweden prioritization in healthcare is uniquely governmentally regulated by the “ethics platform.” We will present a (fictional) scenario to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the generalist principled perspective of the ethics platform and the particularist perspective of narrative ethics. We will suggest an alternative (moderately particularist) approach to prioritization, which we dub a “principles plus medium-range narratives” approach. Notwithstanding the undeniably central role of principles in distributive justice, we claim that medium-range narratives concerning individuals or groups who stand to benefit or lose from ADHD prioritization practices should also be read or listened to and taken into account at all levels of priority-setting. These narratives are expected to ethically optimize clinical priority-setting, as well as that undertaken at local, regional, and national levels. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.4 (2002) 381-382 [Access article in PDF] The Borderlands of Psychiatry and Theology Stephen Sykes Keywords: psychiatry, theology, spirituality. THE DISCUSSION OF THE TERMS we use to speak of experiences on the boundaries between spirituality and mental disorder is very important. Jackson and Fulford (1997) have gone a long way to avoid flattening the concepts into a single conceptual scheme, too far for some (...) of their critics like Littlewood (1997) and Storr (1997), but not far enough for Bratton and Marzanski (2002), who eventually accuse them of "anthropocentric psychologism." They want to preserve theological categories intact, mainly because this is how the subjects themselves see their experiences, but also because there is, they hold, additional explanatory value in such a language schema. As evidence they point to unremarkable attitudes and practices, which are nonetheless demonstrably part of the Christian way of life.The borderlands between theology and psychiatry are not alone in witnessing this dispute. A similar conflict has arisen in the discussion of public policy. In politics, people of religious conviction or representatives of faith communities have sometimes been told either to hold their tongues (because "not many people believe these things nowadays" or because "it's wrong to impose your beliefs on other people") or to formulate their proposals in nonreligious language. It is far from obvious that this is not a sophisticated form of discrimination, nonetheless objectionable for its being practiced by nonreligious people. The creation of genuine equality of access to the space for public discussion of political proposals is not at all easy.I have personal experience of the analogous difficulty in psychiatric practice. In a discussion of the overinvolvement of carers for a person with mental health problems self-sacrificing behavior was used with a negative connotation. But, as in the case of Carol, how were these actions to be construed—were they normal for a Christian or psychopathological? My personal response is that it is correct to say that a boundary exists between ordinary Christian spiritual experience (the kind that religious believers would immediately recognize as part of their religious lives) and disturbed or distorted perceptions that are the result of mental illness and can be mitigated by appropriate treatment. But the fact that a boundary exists in principle does not necessarily imply that it is always easy to draw the distinction in practice. Typically the cases that cause the most difficulty lie on the borderlands. Although on the face of it, it looks attractive to demonstrate the security of the criteria by making discriminations in precisely this area (and the point of the cases in Jackson and Fulford is precisely that they raise these complexities), in [End Page 381] fact it may be that such instances require both languages. In this case, Bratton and Marzanski are correct to argue for the retention of a theological frame of reference. The strength of their argument lies precisely in the support that fellow members of the respective faith communities are able to give to the people who, despite their manifest illnesses, persist in religiously justifiable courses of action.The paper raises one very important matter that bedevils a lot of the current literature, namely how spirituality is to be understood. In my view, there is a lot of purely arbitrary definition of this term, whose meaning has developed rapidly under specific social conditions (Sykes 2000a). In medicine, it functions best when it is taken to be a reminder that a patient may have had contact with a specific religious tradition that has contributed or still contributes to her worldview. In modern Western society, account has to be taken both of residual religiosities or fallback positions, and of new religions, as well as of traditional religious groupings. In the case of mental illness, it may be very important for a medical practitioner to be aware of the impact of these religious promptings on the formulation of the narrative identity of an individual—no easy task (Sykes 2000b).The generality of spirituality ought not to deflect the professional from attending to the particular tradition or traditions which have... (shrink)

This article addresses the long-standing problem of how to understand Mill’s famous harm principle in light of his failure to specify what counts as “harm” in On Liberty. I argue that standard accounts restricting “harm” to only certain negative consequences fail to do justice to the text, and that this fact forces us to rethink Mill’s defense of individual liberty. I then offer a new account of that defense in which “harm” is understood in an expansive sense, despite apparent problems (...) for such a view. (shrink)

This work reproduces that dramatic, cross-cultural dialogue.

This short contribution questions the ethics of basing the way we think and act in relation to mental disorder on beliefs and assumptions that are in the view of the author at best, unhelpful and at worst, simply incorrect.

This paper reviews evidence of a progression from animal abuse to interhuman violence. It finds that the "progression thesis" is supported not by a coherent research program but by disparate studies often lacking methodological and conceptual clarity. Set in the context of a debate about the theoretical adequacy of concepts like "animal abuse" and "animal cruelty," it suggests that the link between animal abuse and interhuman violence should be sought not only in the personal biographies of those individuals who abuse (...) animals but also in those institutionalized social practices where animal abuse is routine, widespread, and socially acceptable. (shrink)

“Self-transcendence” is proposed as a way in which individuals might find relief and support in the context of COVID-19, as well as other times of uncertainty. However, the authors propose that the multiple definitions of self-transcendence within existing literature lean towards the complex, sometimes obscure, and imprecisely spiritual. A concern is that this creates a circumstance, where the possibility of supporting self-transcendence in a wider population will become excluding in this complexity. In this paper, we have undertaken a critical summary (...) review focused primarily on historical foundations of the concept of self-transcendence, and key theoretical approaches in which self-transcendence and self-transcendent experiences are discussed with the motive of finding a clarity to understanding self-transcendence and the pathways towards it. We argue that this much-needed clarity in our understanding of self-transcendence may serve as an inclusive and democratized resource in which to support well-being and resilience in the context of COVID and beyond. (shrink)

In All Kinds of Magic, Piers recounts this voyage of re-enchantment, which led him from snow-blanketed villages in the Himalayas to a dappled, ancient Sufi ...

The binding problem is fundamental to visual perception. It is the problem of associating an object's visual properties with itself and not with some other object. The problem is made particular difficult because different properties of an object, such as its color, shape, size, and motion, are often processed independently, sometimes in different cortical areas. The results of these separate analyses have to be combined before the object can be seen as a single coherent entity as opposed to a collection (...) of unconnected features. Visual bindings are typically initiated and updated in a serial fashion, one object at a time. Here, we show that one type of binding, location-identity bindings, can be updated in parallel. We do this by using two complementary techniques, the simultaneous-sequential paradigm and systems factorial technology. These techniques make different assumptions and rely on different behavioral measures, yet both came to the same conclusion. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify what is, and is not, meant by claiming that special moral considerations apply to sexual behaviour that cannot apply to other areas of life. It then poses the problem by reference to virtue ethics, asking whether there are any virtues or vices specific to sex, which go beyond general considerations like justice and benevolence. This leads to a mostly sympathetic treatment of Scruton’s Aristotelian derivation of sexual morality, which stresses how some behaviour and fantasies are (...) debarred by a stable disposition to seek erotic flourishing. However, doubts are raised about some of the supposed implications of this account, and it is suggested that a better way to understand the moral distinctness of sex is to focus on the goods, rather than the evils, that arise uniquely in the erotic sphere. (shrink)

1. We sometimes angrily confront, pointedly ostracize, castigate, or denounce those whom we think have committed moral offences. Conduct of this kind may be called blaming behaviour. When genuine,...

My aim in this chapter is to push back against the tendency to emphasize Mill’s break from Bentham rather than his debt to him. Mill made important advances on Bentham’s views, but I believe there remains a shared core to their thinking—over and above their commitment to the principle of utility itself—that has been underappreciated. Essentially, I believe that the structure of Mill’s utilitarian thought owes a great debt to Bentham even if he filled in that structure with a richer (...) conception of human nature and developed it in more liberal directions. This commonality is revealed, in particular, in Mill’s own institutional designs and practical reform proposals in Considerations on Representative Government and related writings. If this is right, then the tendency of interpreters to highlight their differences rather than their similarities has been to the detriment of both Mill and Bentham scholarship, and so to our understanding of the rise of liberal utilitarianism. (shrink)

A comprehensive draft overview of John Stuart Mill's public life and philosophy, including discussion of: 1. A System of Logic. – 2. The Greatest Happiness Principle. – 3. Progress, Liberty, and Democracy. – 4. Equality. – 5. India and Empire. – 6. Distribution, Socialism, and Sustainability.

From the Proceedings of the meeting Mind and Life XII, 'What is matter, what is life?', held in Dharamsala, India, in 2002, in the presence of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama.

This contribution proposes to reflect on a different way of considering the link be-tween temporality and nature, between aiôn and physis, in dialogue with the words and works of the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Penone. The basic idea is the following: we will not be able to essentially determine our cognitive and experien-tial relationship with nature, until we are able to know, experience and represent the time inscribed in being itself. The philosophical tradition has developed its conception of temporality mainly along (...) two lines: a “cosmic” line, of a physical, objective temporality, and a “phenomenological” one, of a temporality as an in-ternal articulation of human consciousness. Through the archaeological and conceptual excavation carried out by Penone, we will ask ourselves what it does mean to take care of the “subjective time of things”. (shrink)