The theme of the third annual Spring workshop of the HUPO-PSI was proteomics and beyond and its underlying goal was to reach beyond the boundaries of the proteomics community to interact with groups working on the similar issues of developing interchange standards and minimal reporting requirements. Significant developments in many of the HUPO-PSI XML interchange formats, minimal reporting requirements and accompanying controlled vocabularies were reported, with many of these now feeding into the broader efforts of the Functional Genomics Experiment (FuGE) (...) data model and Functional Genomics Ontology (FuGO) ontologies. (shrink)
Michel Seymour | : Dans ce texte, j’examine sur un mode programmatique la relation qui existe entre les peuples et les territoires. Les frontières des peuples souverains sont-elles sacrées, naturelles et absolues, voire irréfragables ? Le territoire a-t-il une importance identitaire ? Si oui, cette relation identitaire repose-t-elle sur l’attachement sentimental des citoyens ou sur une préférence rationnelle ? Doit-on plutôt l’expliquer par un rapport historique ? Le territoire est-il un élément constitutif de l’identité d’un peuple ? Le principe (...) de l’intégrité du territoire a-t-il une priorité absolue sur le principe affirmant le droit à l’autodétermination des peuples ? Tel est l’éventail de questions qui peuvent être posées en ce qui concerne la relation entre les peuples et leurs territoires. Je veux présenter une perspective qui me semble être originale. Dans la perspective du libéralisme politique, je pars d’une conception institutionnelle du peuple. Je me propose d’indiquer ensuite comment cette approche permet d’envisager des réponses à ces questions. | : In this paper, I examine in a programmatic fashion the relationship between peoples and territories. Are the borders of sovereign peoples sacred, natural and absolute, or even irrebuttable ? Does territory plays an important role for identity ? If so, is this relationship based on the sentimental attachment of citizens or on a rational preference ? Should it be explained instead by a historical relationship ? Is territory even constitutive of the identity of a people ? Does the principle of territorial integrity have priority over the principle asserting the right to self-determination of peoples ? Such are the issues that can be raised concerning the relationship between peoples and their territories. I want to present an account that I take to be original. In accordance with political liberalism, I start from an institutional conception of peoples. I then indicate how this approach allows to consider answers to some of these questions. (shrink)
Allen Buchanan holds that nations do not have a general primary unilateral right to secede. However, nations could legitimately secede if there were a special right to do so, if it were the result of negotiations and, more importantly, if some previous injustice had to be repaired. According to Buchanan, the three kinds of injustice that allow for unilateral secession are: violation of human rights, unjust annexation of territories, and systematic violations of previous agreements on self-government. I agree that nations (...) only have a general remedial right to unilateral secession. But I argue that nations also have a general primary right to self-determination not held by other cultural groups. In virtue of this general primary right, nations also have a primary right to internal self-determination. I will then argue that the "past injustices" should include a failure to comply with internal self-determination. I also want to show that this alternative version of the Remedial Right Only theory meets the constraints, imposed by Buchanan himself, upon any satisfactory institutionalization of the principles governing secession. In the end, it will appear that my own version fares much better than Buchanan's in meeting these constraints. (shrink)
Most contemporary philosophers who defend the compatibility of hell with the divine goodness do so by arguing that the damned freely choose hell. Thomas Talbott denies that such a choice is possible, on the grounds that God in his goodness would remove any 'ignorance, deception, or bondage to desire' which would motivate a person to choose eternal misery. My strategy is to turn the tables on Talbott and ask why God would not remove the motives we have for any sin (...) whatsoever. I argue that two plausible answers to this question also show why God would not remove our motives for choosing hell. (shrink)
Problem: if God has middle knowledge, he should actualize a world containing only persons whom he knows would freely choose heaven. Thus there should be no hell. Craig offers an answer to this problem in his article “ ‘No Other Name’: a Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation Through Christ.” Craig is mainly concerned to give a logically possible defense of hell, though he thinks his suggestion does not lack the sort of plausibility needed for a theodicy. I (...) consider various objections to the latter assessment. My conclusion is that, although Craig’s argument is implausible as a theodicy of conservative exclusivist soteriology, it is useful for less traditional ideas of hell. (shrink)
This essay emerges from a series of reflections on the presence of 'ethical' narratives and images of the Holocaust in debates and demonstrations around the recent conflict in Gaza. I argue that the lack of measure and violence of these narratives, which are now turned onto the descendants of the Holocaust, arise as a consequence of contemporary theories of the Holocaust that eschew the possibility of legal reflection, legal judgement and legal justice. I conclude with a discussion of Hannah Arendt's (...) attempts to rethink law in the wake of the Holocaust, a law that does not exceed its limited, but clearly defined, area of competence. (shrink)
We explore the relationship between ethnomethodology (EM), ethnography and the needs of managers and designers in industry, considering both ethnomethodological and industrial criteria of adequacy and explicating their relationship through the concept of “audience.” We examine a range of studies in this light, with a view to their possible candidacy as hybrid studies and identify three types of application of EM studies of work: market research, design, and business improvement. Application in the first of these fields we dub “anthropological,” in (...) that it consists in studying and reporting back on the ways of exotic people (customers). This is the application most commonly found in studies of computer supported co-operative work (CSCW). A second CSCW application, “technomethodology,” involves the introduction of EM concepts into the design process. A further application, dubbed “holding-up-a-mirror,” involves reporting back to members of a setting upon their own activities. We argue that technomethodology and holding-up-a-mirror both offer the possibility of creating hybrid disciplines. We consider the objection that improvement and design involve the introduction of value judgements that threaten the practice of EM indifference, arguing that action research can serve as a guarantee of unique adequacy (UA) by testing the researcher’s understanding as analysis in action in the setting. Furthermore, the standard of reporting required by the UA criterion contributes to the effectiveness of proposed solutions. (shrink)
Sean Carroll argues that we should endorse atheism since there are no good reasons for affirming the more complex thesis of theism over the less complexthesis of materialism. However, this argument relies on an epistemological minimalism we should reject.
This article is a joint critical notice of Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge's book Principled Ethics and Jonathan Dancy's book Ethics Without Principles.
What is the relation between acting intentionally and acting for a reason? While this question has generated a considerable amount of debate in the philosophy of action, on one point there has been a virtual consensus: actions performed for a reason are necessarily intentional. Recently, this consensus has been challenged by Joshua Knobe and Sean Kelly, who argue against it on the basis of empirical evidence concerning the ways in which ordinary speakers of the English language describe and explain (...) certain side-effect actions. Knobe and Kelly's argument is of interest not only because it challenges a widely accepted philosophical thesis on the basis of experimental evidence, but also because it indirectly raises an important and largely neglected question, the question of whether or in what sense an agent can perform a side-effect action for a reason. In this article, I address this question and provide a positive answer to it. Specifically, I argue that agents act for a reason whenever they perform side-effect actions as trade-offs. Thus, I claim that there are three distinct types of rational action: actions performed as ends in themselves, actions performed as means to further ends, and side-effect actions performed as trade-offs. Given this multiplicity of types of rational action, the question of whether or not actions performed for a reason are necessarily intentional is in need of refinement. The more specific question that lies at the heart of this article is whether or not side-effect actions performed as trade-offs are necessarily intentional. I conclude that, contrary to what Knobe and Kelly suggest, the question remains open. (shrink)
Scholarship in Heideggerian philosophy can be broadly differentiated into three groups, which evolved in the European and Anglo-American discourses after WWII, namely, first a transcendental (idealist Kantian) approach; second, an Aristotelian approach; and third, a Christian approach to Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein and his fundamental ontology. All of these basic positions are a result of Heidegger’s philosophy on his way to Being and Time (1927) which he developed both in his broad ranging and fascinating lecture courses in Freiburg, where he (...) taught as Husserl’s assistant between 1917 and 1923, and in Marburg, where he taught between 1923 and 1927 (before he returned to Freiburg in 1928 as Husserl’s successor). Interestingly, the analytic reception of Heidegger focuses on Heidegger’s main work Being and Time, whereas the European and “Continental” discourse is oriented towards larger issues, which include philosophical anthropology, theology, hermeneutics, and the history of philosophy. McGrath’s study belongs to the theologically motivated studies on Heidegger’s phenomenology and ontology and thereby contributes to the recent renewed interest in Heidegger’s early philosophy, which arose after his early lecture courses were published in his Collected Works and after it became clear that Heidegger’s way to Being and Time (and his later thinking) not only was heavily influenced by Scholasticism, especially by Duns Scotus, but also by Augustine, Eckhart, and Luther, all of which took effect before Heidegger encountered Husserl’s phenomenology, Neo-Kantianism or Aristotle’s philosophy. The greatness of Being and Time is indeed a result of the ingenious transformation of all these sources into something new. (shrink)
Drawing upon the work of Merleau-Ponty, Borrett et al. (2000) have attempted to model the primordial, "empty heads turned towards the world." Putting the issue of embodiment aside for another day, they propose two separate models, one of movement and the other of perception. While I am sympathetic to the point of their project, I argue in this commentary that their models are insufficiently vague. The following analytic abstractions to which they commit themselves seem seriously at odds with the nature (...) of their task: action versus perception; vision versus the other senses; spatial properties versus, for example, colour and meaning; and 'a controller' versus the body and its environment. (shrink)
Rarely have I encountered a book like All Things Shining. It bravely engages issues that are truly significant for our time, yet flaws run through it like faults in the California landscape. The book has spawned contentious critique unusual for a work by contemporary philosophers. Before I offer my own critical analysis, it is fitting first to appreciate what Dreyfus and Kelly attempt to achieve.The foremost contemporary problems the authors combat are what they term "the burden of choice" and a (...) pervasive mood of nihilistic confusion. They believe the rationalistic and existential programs that are typically advocated in our secular age fail to offer persons convincing grounds for making sustainable decisions. .. (shrink)
