The focus on translational research in clinical trials has the potential to generate clinically relevant genetic data that could have importance to patients. This raises challenging questions about communicating relevant genetic research results to individual patients. An exploratory pharmacogenetic analysis was conducted in the international ovarian cancer phase III trial, AGO-OVAR 16, which found that patients with clinically important germ-line BRCA1/2 mutations had improved progression-free survival prognosis. Mechanisms to communicate BRCA results were evaluated, because these findings may be beneficial to (...) patients and their families. Communicating individual BRCA results was not anticipated during clinical trial design. Consequently, options were not available for patients to indicate their preference for receiving their individual results when they signed pharmacogenetic informed consent. Differences in local requirements, clinical practice, and opinion regarding the ethical aspects of how to convey genetic results to patients are all potential barriers to returning individual BRCA results to patients. Communicating the aggregate BRCA result from this study provided clinical investigators with a mechanism to disseminate the overall study finding to patients while taking individual circumstances, local guidelines and clinical practice into account. This study illustrates the importance of increasing the clarity and scope of informed consent and the need for patient engagement to ensure clinical trial participants can indicate their preference regarding receipt of potentially important individual pharmacogenetic results. This study was registered in the NCT Clinical Trial Registry under NCT00866697 on March 19, 2009, following approval from participating ethics committees. (shrink)

Sustainability reporting and assurance of sustainability reports have been used by organizations in an attempt to provide accountability to their stakeholders. A better understanding of current practices is important to provide a base for comparative and trend analyses. This paper aims to consolidate and provide information on sustainability reporting, assurance of sustainability reports and types of assurance providers. Another aim of this paper is to provide a descriptive analysis of these practices for a global sample, comparing results with previous studies, (...) and suggesting opportunities for future research. To accomplish these objectives, a literature review was performed, an analysis of the organizations included in the Fortune Global 500 2010 was completed, and results were presented and consolidated by country. These results demonstrate that all organizations analysed provided some type of information in relation to their social or environmental performance in their official website. The percentage of organizations issuing a sustainability report has been increasing in the last few years. However, the percentage of organizations assuring their sustainability report has stagnated. Types of assurance engagements include those performed by accountants and non-accountants, and new practices have emerged, namely the “mixed approach” and the “stakeholder or specialist review”. The analysis also shows that the practices of issuing sustainability reports and having them assured have become a world-wide phenomenon, occurring in developed, and emerging economies around the world. (shrink)

Conditionals and conditional reasoning have been a long-standing focus of research across a number of disciplines, ranging from psychology through linguistics to philosophy. But almost no work has concerned itself with the question of how hearing or reading a conditional changes our beliefs. Given that we acquire much—perhaps most—of what we believe through the testimony of others, the simple matter of acquiring conditionals via others’ assertion of a conditional seems integral to any full understanding of the conditional and conditional reasoning. (...) In this paper we detail a number of basic intuitions about how beliefs might change in response to a conditional being uttered, and show how these are backed by behavioral data. In the remainder of the paper, we then show how these deceptively simple phenomena pose a fundamental challenge to present theoretical accounts of the conditional and conditional reasoning – a challenge which no account presently fully meets. (shrink)

Background: Although previous studies have shown an inverse relation between life meaning and eating disorder symptoms, the correlational nature of this evidence precludes causal inferences. Therefore, this study used an experimental approach to test the causal impact of life meaning on individuals' weight and shape concerns.Methods: Female students at risk for developing an eating disorder were randomly assigned to the control or the meaning condition, which involved thinking about and committing to pursue intrinsically valued life goals. A color-naming interference task (...) was used to assess the motivational salience of body-related stimuli, and self-report measures were used to assess participants' overvaluation of weight and shape.Results: The meaning manipulation was effective in activating intrinsically valued life goals. However, it did not result in lower self-reported overvaluation of weight and shape or lower color-naming interference effects of body-related stimuli, compared to the control condition. Post-hoc analyses suggested that baseline meaning in life was related to the impact of the manipulation.Conclusions: This experimental study did not provide evidence for a causal influence of life meaning on the overvaluation of weight and shape in a high-risk group. The current findings suggest that we first need to examine the relationship between life meaning and eating disorder symptoms in more detail, before implementing brief meaning manipulations in clinical practice. (shrink)

Acknowledgments 1. Culture Is Essential 2. Culture Exists 3. Culture Evolves 4. Culture Is an Adaptation 5. Culture Is Maladaptive 6. Culture and Genes Coevolve 7. Nothing about Culture Makes Sense except in the Light of Evolution.

Modern humans are probably a product of social and anatomical preadaptations on the part of our Miocene australopithecine ancestors combined with the increasingly high amplitude, high frequency climate variation of the Pleistocene. The genus Homo first appeared in the early Pleistocene as ice age climates began to grip the earth. We hypothesize that this co-occurrence is causal. The human ability to adapt by cultural means is, in theory, an adaptation to highly variable environments because cultural evolution can better track rapidly (...) changing environments than can genes. High resolution ice and sediment cores published in the early 1990s showed the last ice age was characterized by high amplitude millennial and submillenial scale variation, exactly the sort of variation mathematical models suggest should favor a costly capacity for culture. More recent cores suggest that over the last several 100 thousand year glacial cycles the amount of millennial scale variation has increased rather dramatically in parallel with increases in hominin brain size and sophistication of the artifacts they made. (shrink)

The metaphysical status of the placenta has bearing on several ongoing discussions within Catholic moral theology. Numerous bioethicists and theologians have touched on this topic briefly, but to date no robust metaphysical argument appears in the literature. The authors aim to provide such an analysis. First, they provide an overview of the existing literature on the topic. Second, they briefly review the anatomy and physiology of the placenta. Third, they provide metaphysical and biological reasons why the placenta cannot be a (...) part of the fetus, a part of the mother, simultaneously a part of both, the border at which mother and fetus meet, or a separate individual substance. Finally, they provide reasons that support their claim that the placenta is a quasi-substance that exists in symbiosis with mother and child. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14.2 : 295–333. (shrink)

Current cognitive models of addiction imply that speeded detection and increased distraction from substance cues might both independently contribute to the persistence of addictive behavior. Speeded detection might lower the threshold for experiencing craving, whereas increased distraction might further increase the probability of entering a bias-craving-bias cycle, thereby lowering the threshold for repeated substance use. This study was designed to examine whether indeed both attentional processes are involved in substance use disorders. Both attentional processes were indexed by an Odd-One-Out visual (...) search task in individuals diagnosed with alcohol use disorder and cannabis use disorder. To test whether the detection and/or the distraction component are characteristic for AUD and CUD, their indices were compared with matched individuals without these diagnoses. Individuals with CUD showed speeded detection of cannabis cues; the difference in detection between AUD and the comparison group remained inconclusive. Neither the AUD nor the CUD group showed more distraction than the comparison groups. The sample size of the CUD group was relatively small. In addition, participants made relatively many errors in the attentional bias task, which might have lowered its sensitivity to detect ABs. The current study provided no support for the proposed role of increased distraction in CUD and AUD. The findings did, however, provide support for the view that speeded detection might be involved in CUD. Although a similar trend was evident for AUD, the evidence was weak and remained therefore inconclusive. (shrink)

Nutrition and hydration—including artificially delivered, or assisted, nutrition and hydration (ANH)—are typically considered ordinary or proportionate care in the Roman Catholic moral tradition. They are thus morally obligatory, except when the benefit to the patient does not justify the burden their administration places on the patient or when they no longer prolong life (e.g., in end-stage disease when death is imminent). A review of Church documents and the medical literature provides convincing evidence that there are cases in which ANH provides (...) little hope of benefit and may impose an excessive burden on the patient. This paper closely examines advanced dementia of the Alzheimer’s (DAT) type and shows how ANH can be properly considered extraordinary care and hence is not obligatory in patients with advanced DAT. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 8.2 (Summer 2008): 291–305. (shrink)

While researchers are currently studying various forms of social network interaction among teachers for their impact on educational policy implementation and practice, knowledge on how various types of networks are interrelated is limited. The goal of this study is to understand the dimensionality that may underlie various types of social networks in schools. We assessed seven types of social interaction using social network data of 775 educators from 53 Dutch elementary schools. The quadratic assignment procedure, multidimensional scaling and network visualisations (...) were used to discern underlying dimensions that may explain the interrelatedness of these seven types of social networks. Findings suggest small to moderate similarity between the seven forms of social interaction. Results support a distinction between instrumental and expressive networks and suggest a second dimension of mutual in(ter)dependence to explain differences in social interaction among teachers. Implications for practice and research on teacher collaboration are discussed. (shrink)

Progress Unchained reinterprets the history of the idea of progress using parallels between evolutionary biology and changing views of human history. Early concepts of progress in both areas saw it as the ascent of a linear scale of development toward a final goal. The 'chain of being' defined a hierarchy of living things with humans at the head, while social thinkers interpreted history as a development toward a final paradise or utopia. Darwinism reconfigured biological progress as a 'tree of life' (...) with multiple lines of advance not necessarily leading to humans, each driven by the rare innovations that generate entirely new functions. Popular writers such as H. G. Wells used a similar model to depict human progress, with competing technological innovations producing ever-more rapid changes in society. Bowler shows that as the idea of progress has become open-ended and unpredictable, a variety of alternative futures have been imagined. (shrink)

A history of science text imagining how evolutionary theory and biology would have been understood if Darwin had never published his "Origin of Species" and other works.--publisher summary.

Advances in molecular biological research in the latter half of the twentieth century have made the story of the gene vastly complicated: the more we learn about genes, the less sure we are of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but the gene has also become curiously intangible. This collection of essays renews the question: what are genes? Philosophers, historians and working scientists re-evaluate the question in this volume, treating the gene as (...) a focal point of interdisciplinary and international research. It will be of interest to professionals and students in the philosophy and history of science, genetics and molecular biology. (shrink)

Alan C. LoveDarwinian calisthenicsAn athlete engages in calisthenics as part of basic training and as a preliminary to more advanced or intense activity. Whether it is stretching, lunges, crunches, or push-ups, routine calisthenics provide a baseline of strength and flexibility that prevent a variety of injuries that might otherwise be incurred. Peter Bowler has spent 40 years doing Darwinian calisthenics, researching and writing on the development of evolutionary ideas with special attention to Darwin and subsequent filiations among scientists exploring (...) evolution . Therefore, we would expect that when Bowler engages in a counterfactual history—imagining a world without Darwin—he is able to avoid historical injury and generate novel insights. My assessment is that the results are mixed. Before we can see why, it is necessary to walk briskly through the main contours of his argument.Bowler begins with an apologia for a counterfactual appr .. (shrink)

The Causal Theory of Quantum Mechanics provides a better understanding of the fundamentals of quantum mechanics than is provided by Orthodox (i.e. Copenhagen) Quantum Theory by describing micro-phenomena in terms of entities and processes in space and time, thereby embracing causality at the quantum level. The book focuses especially on finding solutions to conceptual issues about the nature of energy, the conservation of energy, forces, and the Exclusion Principle within the context of the Causal Theory of Quantum Mechanics.

It is exceedingly frequent for people to speak of the ‘passing of time’. We do not, on the other hand, speak of the ‘passing of space’. There do not seem to be any common locutions concerning spatial passage analogous to those of time’s assumed passage. Further, there is a long held belief in the philosophy of time that there is no spatial analogue of the passage of time. This opinion does not take into account circumstances that cannot be noticed in (...) day-to-day existence and which indicate that there is such a spatial analogue. (shrink)

The complexity of human societies of the past few thousand years rivals that of social insect societies. We hypothesize that two sets of social “instincts” underpin and constrain the evolution of complex societies. One set is ancient and shared with other social primate species, and one is derived and unique to our lineage. The latter evolved by the late Pleistocene, and led to the evolution of institutions of intermediate complexity in acephalous societies. The institutions of complex societies often conflict with (...) our social instincts. The complex societies of the last few thousand years can function only because cultural evolution has created effective “work-arounds” to manage such instincts. We describe a series of work-arounds and use the data on the relative effectiveness of WWII armies to test the work-around hypothesis. (shrink)

Although much has been written about the vigorous debates over science and religion in the Victorian era, little attention has been paid to their continuing importance in early twentieth-century Britain. Reconciling Science and Religion provides a comprehensive survey of the interplay between British science and religion from the late nineteenth century to World War II. Peter J. Bowler argues that unlike the United States, where a strong fundamentalist opposition to evolutionism developed in the 1920s (most famously expressed in the (...) Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925), in Britain there was a concerted effort to reconcile science and religion. Intellectually conservative scientists championed the reconciliation and were supported by liberal theologians in the Free Churches and the Church of England, especially the Anglican "Modernists." Popular writers such as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw sought to create a non-Christian religion similar in some respects to the Modernist position. Younger scientists and secularists—including Rationalists such as H. G. Wells and the Marxists—tended to oppose these efforts, as did conservative Christians, who saw the liberal position as a betrayal of the true spirit of their religion. With the increased social tensions of the 1930s, as the churches moved toward a neo-orthodoxy unfriendly to natural theology and biologists adopted the "Modern Synthesis" of genetics and evolutionary theory, the proposed reconciliation fell apart. Because the tensions between science and religion—and efforts at reconciling the two—are still very much with us today, Bowler's book will be important for everyone interested in these issues. Contents: Illustrations Preface Introduction: A Legacy of Conflict? Confrontation, Cooperation, or Coexistence? Victorian Background Science and Religion in the New Century Part One: The Sciences and Religion 1. The Religion of Scientists Changing Patterns of Belief Scientists and Christianity Scientists and Theism Method and Meaning Science and Values 2. Scientists against Superstition Science and Rationalism Religion without Revelation Marxists and Other Radicals Science, Religion, and the History of Science 3. Physics and Cosmology Ether and Spirit The New Physics The Earth and the Universe 4. Evolution and the New Natural Theology Science and Creation Evolution and Progress The Role of Lamarckism Darwinism Revived 5. Matter, Life, and Mind The Origin of Life Vitalism and Organicism Mind and Body Psychology and Religion Part Two: The Churches and Science 6. The Churches in the New Century The Challenge of the New The Churches’ Response 7. The New Theology in the Free Churches Precursors of the New Theology Campbell and the New Theology Modernism in the Free Churches 8. Anglican Modernism Modernism and the New Natural Theology Charles F. D’Arcy E. W. Barnes W. R. Inge Charles Raven 9. The Reaction against Modernism Evangelicals against Evolution Liberal Catholicism The Menace of the New Psychology Science and Modern Life Theology in the Thirties Roman Catholicism Part Three: The Wider Debate 10. Science and Secularism Against Idealism Popular Rationalism The Social Reformers 11. Religion’s Defenders From Idealism to Spiritualism Creative and Emergent Evolution Evolution and the Human Spirit Progress through Struggle The Christian Response Epilogue Biographical Appendix Bibliography Index. (shrink)

In the original publication of the article, the commentary of mine to Christopher Tindale’s article ‘Constrained Maneuvering: Rhetoric as a Rational Enterprise’, English translations of phrasings regarding several distinctions in the concept of rationality were taken from Stefan Gosepath’s book Aufgeklärtes Eigeninteresse: Eine Theorie theoretischer und praktischer Rationalität, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1992, without providing reference to his publication.

The article shows that Habermas’s modernism and Lyotard’s postmodernism are not as antithetical as they are often taken to be. First, we argue that Habermas is not a strong foundationalist concerned with identifying universal rules for language, as postmodern critiques have often interpreted him. Instead, he develops a social pragmatics in which the communicative use of language is the fundamental presupposition of any meaningful interaction. Second, we argue that Lyotard is not a relativist who denies any universal linguistic structure. Instead, (...) he claims that language involves a universal element of dissensus that cannot be subordinated to consensus. Third, we show that neither does Habermas defend a new version of the kind of philosophy of history characteristic of the Enlightenment, nor is Lyotard a historical relativist, but instead they both seek alternatives to these positions. The conclusion calls for more nuance in the interpretation of both perspectives. (shrink)

The Evolving Block Universe is a model where spacetime continuously emerges leading to a ‘growth’ of spacetime by which there is a passage of time. Its most recent version extends ideas on the passage of time and the various arrows of time (determined by the cosmological evolution of the whole universe). Attention is drawn to some principal problems with this model, especially how the present moment and the passage of time are defined.

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

Most arguments against the possibility of time travel use the same old, familiar objection: If I could travel back in time, then I could kill my earlier (i.e. younger) self. Since I do exist such an action would result in a contradiction. Therefore time travel is impossible. This is a statement of the Principal Paradox of Time Travel. Some philosophers have argued that such actions as attempting to kill one’s earlier self would always fail and that there is nothing especially (...) strange about such failures. Despite these arguments, the problem generally is not viewed as being solved in favour of time travel. The above objection to time travel is also used to dismiss a particular class of cosmological models as being unphysical. This paper provides a solution to the Principal Paradox by exploring both the logical and causal implications of time travel. (shrink)

A major problem facing no-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics in the tradition of Everett is how to understand the probabilistic axiom of quantum mechanics (the Born rule) in the context of a deterministic theory in which every outcome of a measurement occurs. Deutsch claims to derive a decision-theoretic analogue of the Born rule from the non-probabilistic part of quantum mechanics and some non-probabilistic axioms of classical decision theory, and hence concludes that no probabilistic axiom is needed. I argue that Deutsch’s (...) derivation begs the question. (shrink)

Noting minimal philosophical attention to the shift of the meanings of “genotype” and “phenotype,” and their distinction, as well as to the variety of meanings that have co-existed over the last hundred years, this note invites readers to join in exploring the implications of shifts that have been left unexamined.

The norm of assertion, to be in force, is a social norm. What is the content of our social norm of assertion? Various linguistic arguments purport to show that to assert is to represent oneself as knowing. But to represent oneself as knowing does not entail that assertion is governed by a knowledge norm. At best these linguistic arguments provide indirect support for a knowledge norm. Furthermore, there are alternative, non-normative explanations for the linguistic data (as in recent work from (...) Van Elswyk). Direct arguments would rely on normative judgments about the permissibility or impermissibility of assertions with and without the speaker knowing the content asserted. John Turri's work experimental results purport to show that our norm of assertion is factive, and probably knowledge. But as a number of recent experimentalists (Kneer, Reuter and Broessel, Marsili and Wiegmann) have shown, Turri's results rely on the problemmatic use of 'should' as in 'Maria should assert that she owns a 1990 watch.' Correcting for this, these experimentalists provide strong evidence that our norm of assertion is not factive. The standard reply to evidence like this from the assertion of unlucky falsehoods is the excuse maneuver. But Marsili and Wiegmann, following Turri's protocol for testing for excuse validation, show that participants who judge that assertions unlucky falsehoods are permissible are not guilty of excuse validation. Given our current understanding of the experimental evidence, knowledge is not our norm of assertion. (shrink)

Ecologists, particularly those who consider socially generated effects in the environment, grapple with complex, changing situations. Historians, sociologists and philosophers studying the construction of science likewise attempt to account for (or discount) a wide variety of influences, which make up what historian Charles Rosenberg has called “ecologies of knowledge” (Rosenberg 1988). This paper introduces a graphic methodology, mapping, designed to assist researchers at both levels—in science and in science studies—to work with the complexity of their material. By analyzing the implications (...) and limitations of mapping, I aim to contribute to an ecological approach to the philosophy of science. Let me start with two diagrams to open up the territory I will be exploring.Dansereau’s diagram (Fig. 1) conveys a dynamic equilibrium of energy and resource import, export, flows up a trophic hierarchy, and down again to exert control over lower levels in an ecosystem (Dansereau 1973). (shrink)

Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate (...) understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view. (shrink)