I briefly discuss the Gettier Problem, problems with the justified theory of true belief, and offer support for Feldman's concept of no false grounds.

I briefly discuss the philosophical reasons for preferring the future over the present.

I briefly discuss the problems of Chisholm's entia successiva--the mind and body being successive parts of a machine.

I explore the political, economic, and cultural consequences of globalization of the reduction of space in the world. This work compares and contrasts the philosophical implications Jameson (and Marx) and Sloterdijk (with Heidegger) of globalization. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey is discussed as a metaphor for the cultural narratives Jameson and Sloterdijk provide.

I briefly compare and contrast the philosophy of Confucius as written in the I Ching and Lao Tzu's philosophy presented in the Tao Te Ching.

I briefly discuss the issues with Aristotle's concept of balance and justice and contrast this with the concept of liberty argued by Camus.

I briefly discuss and support the concept of social utility proposed by Hume.

Background Over the last decade, the return of results (ROR) in precision medicine research (PMR) has become increasingly routine. Calls for individual rights to research results have extended the “duty to report” from clinically useful genetic information to traits and ancestry results. ROR has thus been reframed as inherently beneficial to research participants, without a needed focus on who benefits and how. This paper addresses this gap, particularly in the context of PMR aimed at increasing participant diversity, by providing investigator (...) and researcher perspectives on and questions about the assumed value of ROR in PMR.Methods Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of investigators and researchers across federally funded PMR studies in three national consortia, as well as observations of study activities, focused on how PM researchers conceptualize diversity and implement inclusive practices across research stages, including navigating ROR.Results Interviewees (1) validated the value of ROR as a benefit of PMR, while others (2) questioned the benefit of clinically actionable results to individuals in the absence of sufficient resources for translating findings into health care for diverse and disadvantaged populations; (3) expressed uncertainties in applying the presumed value of ROR as a benefit for non-clinical results; and (4) and debated when the promise of the value of ROR may undermine trust in PMR, and divert efforts to return value beyond ROR.Conclusions Conceptualizations of diversity and inclusion among PM researchers and investigators raise unique ethical questions where unexamined assumptions of the value of ROR inform study recruitment efforts to enroll minoritized and under-represented populations. A lack of consideration for resources and infrastructure necessary to translate ROR into actionable information may hinder trustworthy community-research relationships. Thus, we argue for a more intentional interrogation of ROR practices as an offer of benefit and for whom. (shrink)

This article argues that the turn to the animal is a return to mythology. By reading multispecies scholarship as narrativization of contemporary mythology, I claim that the field voices anxieties about human futures through figures of animal others. Multispecies ethnography implicitly grapples with an apocalyptic mythos prevailing in the wake of modernity’s seemingly abandoned dreams. I reconsider the cultural function of multispecies research through two moves. First, I read Thom van Dooren’s Theory, Culture & Society article on ‘Authentic Crows’ as (...) such a quasi-allegorical account. Second, I develop how animal anthropology captures the contemporary mythos in an ‘affirmationist’ register that counters the pessimistic affect of late industrialism. Ultimately, the critical politics of such research may be redeemed through efforts to work closely with scientists and to render explicit the accounts’ situatedness within late-industrial mythology. (shrink)

Each of the following papers gives an account of a different UK clinical ethics committee. The committees vary in the length of time they have been established, and also in the main focus of their work. The accounts discuss the development of the committees and some of the ethical problems that have been brought to them. The issues raised will be relevant for other National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the UK that wish to set up such a committee.

Long‐term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory synapses is a leading model to explain the concept of information storage in the brain. Multiple mechanisms contribute to LTP, but central amongst them is an increased sensitivity of the postsynaptic membrane to neurotransmitter release. This sensitivity is predominantly determined by the abundance and localization of AMPA‐type glutamate receptors (AMPARs). A combination of AMPAR structural data, super‐resolution imaging of excitatory synapses, and an abundance of electrophysiological studies are providing an ever‐clearer picture of how AMPARs are (...) recruited and organized at synaptic junctions. Here, we review the latest insights into this process, and discuss how both cytoplasmic and extracellular receptor elements cooperate to tune the AMPAR response at the hippocampal CA1 synapse. (shrink)

This article is a response to Nancy Bauer's How To Do Things with Pornography. The main argument of the book is presented and evaluated. In particular, Bauer's criticisms of Catharine MacKinnon's work on pornography are considered and a defense of MacKinnon's views offered.

Invocations of Merleau-Ponty’s claim concerning the incompleteness that accompanies the phenomenological reduction have had a long and somewhat contentious history. In this paper I will further explore the implications of Merleau-Ponty’s claim and the itinerary from which it emerges. From the Structure of Behaviour onward, he argued that consciousness is not a transcendental presupposition but an achievement that emerges from and transforms the labor of our rational practices. Phenomenological theory rightly argued for the centrality of the experience of the reduction, (...) albeit too often by mistakenly bestowing immanence upon it. Statically regarded, the reduction may involve an ‘act’ but it is also a Stiftung, and thus a performative, one that Merleau-Ponty claims involves an institution and an acquisition: as he puts it quite simply, it is learned. The reduction involves intuition but it is also a conceptual practice involving “a multitude of operations”, a symbolic matrix always articulated through internal transformations. Finally the reduction is an experience but it is always a sequence “gradually effected” and thus an embodied history. It results then not in the Spinozist Habemus ideam verum, but as “The Philosopher and His Shadow” rightly concludes, an “artifact”. For Merleau-Ponty, all this forced the recognition of the “internal difficulty” in the reduction theorized through the concept of a constituting consciousness. Moreover, this not an anthropological claim about a faculty or finitude, but a claim about the rationality, the “metamorphosis” and “coherent deformation” of its experience, an “ordered sequence of steps” that “could not possibly reach completion in the intellectual possession of a noema”. It is not simply en presence, in the static relation of presence that phenomenology achieves justification. For Merleau-Ponty, its experience is not unrevisable, nor immanently completable: instead it is only through the ordered steps of its history that it acquires sufficiency. (shrink)

This chapter will be devoted to the itinerary of classical German thought, and especially Hegel, in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. I begin by examining Merleau-Ponty’s initial use of Hegel’s systematic and metaphysicalmetaphysics ideas in phenomenological analyses of behavior and perception. Next, I examine Merleau-Ponty’s role in controversies regarding the existentialists’ interpretation and objections to Hegel’s system. I trace his attempts to surmount antinomiesantinomy between subjectivitysubjectivity and system that emerged in the existentialist’s anthropological reading of Hegel. Here Merleau-Ponty focused on linguistics and more (...) general analyses of institution and expression. Finally, I will view the renewed role that classical German philosophy, including Schelling and Hegel, played in his final works. Still reflecting these interests, his writings and lectures engaged in a wide-ranging dialogue with contemporary aesthetics, sciencescience, and philosophy, culminating in an attempt to formulate a new ontologyontology. (shrink)

We re-examine the construct of Moral Hypocrisy from the perspective of normative self-interest. Arguing that some degree of self-interest is culturally acceptable and indeed expected, we postulate that a pattern of behavior is more indicative of moral hypocrisy than a single action. Contrary to previous findings, our results indicate that a significant majority of subjects (N = 136) exhibited fair behavior, and that ideals of caring and fairness, when measured in context of the scenario, were predictive of those behaviors. Moreover, (...) measures of Individualism/Collectivism appear more predictive of self-interested behavior than out-of-context responses to moral ideals. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The new edition of this highly successful text will once again provide the ideal introduction to free will. This volume brings together some of the most influential contributions to the topic of free will during the past 50 years, as well as some notable recent work.

Professor Guthrie was confronted with a number of problems when he came to write this third volume of his History of Greek Philosophy. He had intended to include Plato but this proved impossible. So we are given an account of the fifth-century enlightenment, the Sophists and Socrates. The next problem was whether to deal with thinkers separately, as he had done in the first two volumes, or to order the chapters by subjects. He chose the second method, adding to the (...) discussions a brief account of each of the principal participants. (shrink)

It should be stated first that the title is accidental for, as the editor explains, the contributors were invited to write on topics in Greek philosophy that were connected with philosophical issues that are still debated by contemporary philosophers, and all happened to write on either Plato or Aristotle. Consequently, the essays are all absolutely independent, and the emphasis on ‘Greekness’ or ‘modernity’ falls differently in different essays. Perhaps the most successful fusion is Owen’s essay ‘Aristotle on the snares of (...) ontology’, an attempt to chart the basic patterns of Aristotle’s analysis of existence, his account of the verb ‘to be’ in what is ordinarily called its ‘existential’ sense. Owen shows that we can distinguish at least three existential uses of the verb ‘to be’. Two of them are found in an example like the following: ‘while Arrowby is in existence there is at least one man still in existence, but if Arrowby dies there is one man who is no more’. The third is that involved in a question such as ‘Does time exist?’. Aristotle himself gives no express recognition to these distinctions. (shrink)