The sequencing of the human genome and decreasing costs of sequencing technology have led to the notion of ‘personalized medicine’. This has been taken by some authors to indicate that personalized medicine will provide individualized treatments solely based on one’s DNA sequence. We argue this is overly optimistic and misconstrues the notion of personalization. Such interpretations fail to account for economic, policy and structural constraints on the delivery of healthcare. Furthermore, notions of individualization based on genomic data potentially take us (...) down the road of genetic reductionism obscuring the role of environmental factors in disease and ill health. We propose that one should see personalized medicine as a way of using personal genomic information to stratify individuals into subpopulations and suggest that personalized medicine be seen within a broader idea of personalized healthcare, reflecting healthcare that integrates personal genomic data into cultural, environmental and personal contexts. (shrink)

More than 1.5 billion students experienced disruption to education as a result of COVID-19, representing the most substantial interruption to global education in modern history. Many educational institutions transitioned to emergency remote teaching (ERT) overnight, which has presented an array of distinct challenges for educators. Using virtual interviews and an experiential approach to thematic analysis, the study examined Scottish primary teachers’ (n = 10) lived experiences of adapting to ERT practice. Findings demonstrated three main themes; ‘Meeting Learners’ Needs,’ ‘Influencing Engagement’, (...) and ‘The Impact of ERT on Teachers’. Key findings suggested that differentiating learning, engaging, and communicating with learners is more difficult during ERT than face-to-face teaching. Parental engagement is vital, however, is influenced by several mitigating factors. Finally, ERT is likely to have substantial effects on the wellbeing of those involved. Implications of these findings are considered and discussed. (shrink)

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between childhood IQ of parents and characteristics of their adult offspring. It was a prospective family cohort study linked to a mental ability survey of the parents and set in Renfrew and Paisley in Scotland. Participants were 1921-born men and women who took part in the Scottish Mental Survey in 1932 and the Renfrew/Paisley study in the 1970s, and whose offspring took part in the Midspan Family study in 1996. There (...) were 286 offspring from 179 families. Parental IQ was related to some, but not all characteristics of offspring. Greater parental IQ was associated with taller offspring. Parental IQ was inversely related to number of cigarettes smoked by offspring. Higher parental IQ was associated with better education, offspring social class and offspring deprivation category. There were no significant relationships between parental IQ and offspring systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, lung function, weight, body mass index, waist hip ratio, housing, alcohol consumption, marital status, car use and exercise. Structural equation modelling showed parental IQ associated with offspring education directly and mediated via parental social class. Offspring education was associated with offspring smoking and social class. The smoking finding may have implications for targeting of health education. (shrink)

Newborn bloodspot screening programs are some of the longest running population screening programs internationally. Debate continues regarding the need for parents to give consent to having their child screened. Little attention has been paid to how meanings of consent-related terminology vary among stakeholders and the implications of this for practice. We undertook semi-structured interviews with parents, healthcare professionals and policy decision makers in two Canadian provinces. Conceptions of consent-related terms revolved around seven factors within two broad domains, decision-making and information (...) attainment. Decision-making comprised: parent decision authority; voluntariness; parent engagement with decision-making; and the process of enacting choice. Information ascertainment comprised: professional responsibilities ; parent responsibilities; and the need for discussion and understanding prior to a decision. Our findings indicate that consent-related terms are variously understood, with substantive implications for practice. We suggest that consent procedures should be explained descriptively, regardless of approach, so there are clear indications of what is expected of parents and healthcare professionals. Support systems are required both to meet the educational needs of parents and families and to support healthcare professionals in delivering information in a manner in keeping with parent needs. (shrink)

Part 1 of this exploratory study demonstrated that for terminal, instrumental, and work values, supervisors could only accurately assess the extent to which their terminal values are congruent with their employees, whereas, employees could only accurately describe degrees of alignment with their supervisors' work values. Thus, supervisors appear to possess conscious awareness of the terminal values held by their employees and employees similarly possess conscious awareness of their supervisors' work values. Part 2 of the study examined what each of these (...) two parties might do with their conscious knowledge concerning value congruence with the other member. Supervisor ratings and employee self-ratings concerning employee job performance, citizenship, climate fit, working relationship (LMX), and other issues, were correlated with supervisor terminal value congruence estimates and employee work value congruence estimates respectively. For supervisors, only one significant finding was noted, indicating a positive relationship between the supervisors' awareness of terminal value congruence with the employee and the supervisors' estimate of the employee's potential for future promotion. For employees, seven hypotheses received support demonstrating relationships between the employees' awareness of supervisor/employee work value congruence and self-ratings of work behaviours, citizenship behaviours, volunteerism behaviours, work climate behaviours, work climate attitudes, work climate organizational-wide attitudes, and the supervisor/employee working relationship. Implications for management and future research are discussed. (shrink)

The evidence of ancient books points to the surprising conclusion that in texts of drama or prose dialogue changes of speaker were not usually marked by the name of the new speaker. Instead the ancient reader had a colon, sometimes combined with a paragraphus or stroke in the margin, to guide him. The inconvenience of this practice and the muddle it caused need no emphasis. The facts have been assembled for the text of Plato and Lucian by J. Andrieu, and (...) for Aristophanes by J. C. B. Lowe, 27–42). As far as prose dialogues are concerned confirmation can be found in an unexpected source: the prologue to the dialogue Eranistes by the fifth-century church father Theodoret. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Matter and Spirit in the Age of Animal MagnetismEric G. WilsonDuring the Romantic period, writers on both sides of the Atlantic explored the sleepwalker as a merger of holiness and horror. Emerging when scientific thinkers for the first time were connecting spirit to electricity and magnetism, the somnambulist became to certain Romantics a disclosure of the difficulty of harmonizing unseen and seen, agency and necessity. This problem prominently arose (...) in Anton Mesmer's late eighteenth-century experiments in animal magnetism, in which the sleepwalker proved a paradox: an opaque revelation of transparent currents and an unconscious vehicle of sophisticated thought. Romantics such as Coleridge embraced the somnambulist as an embodiment of these troubles involved in relating motion and meaning. Coleridge and those who responded to him saw in the hypnotized human this sobering possibility: the invisible requires the visible to make itself manifest while the visible needs the invisible to become significant. 1 This is sublime and sinister: to elevate a material form to spiritual power is transcendence; to sink the boundless into a body is grotesque.Here I explore the philosophical implications of animal magnetism, the place of the sleepwalker in the history of ideas, and the role of the hypnotized human in Romantic writers, especially Coleridge. I also meditate on relationships between matter and spirit, machine and human, word and thing. Along the way, I place the history of ideas and the works of Romantic writers in mutually illuminating dialogues. The literary texts shed fresh light on philosophical problems while the ideas reveal hidden literary elements.The somnambulistic trance had been around long before Mesmer's magnetic sleeps. For centuries, shamans had used auto-hypnosis to sound [End Page 329] their souls and other-hypnosis to cure their tribe-members' ailments. However, somnambulism could not become a scientific phenomenon until Europeans in laboratories began to study electricity and magnetism. In the early modern period, Paracelsus argued that a vital fluid courses through the cosmos. The human being draws this flow like a magnet attracts force. When the body pulls to itself evil effluvia, it falls ill. To return patients to health, Paracelsus placed magnets on painful areas. He hoped to extract the unwanted current and return it to the cosmic swirl. 2 In "magnetizing" spirit, Paracelsus opened a door for empirical inquiry into the invisible world. In 1600, William Gilbert claimed that magnets correspond to the earth: both are animated by universal attraction and repulsion. 3 By the end of the seventeenth-century, Newton proposed that things are impelled by a force that draws and repels. Newton's theory of gravity inspired natural philosophers of the next centuries to search for a principle of which the magnet and the spark are manifestations. 4During the second half of the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, natural philosophers explored electricity and magnetism with unprecedented precision. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin revealed the mystery of lightning and perhaps the spark of life. 5 Inspired by Franklin, F. C. Oetinger, J. L. Fricker, and Prokop Divisch developed a theology of electricity, based on the belief that God is the electrical current. 6 Later in the century, Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta debated over whether the galvanic flow might be the origin and principle of life itself. 7 A few years before Franklin harvested lightning, John Michell argued that the magnetic force is not constrained to lodestones but is possibly pervasive. Some years later, Franz Aepinus suggested that magnetism and electricity manifest a deep energy. Soon after, C. A. de Coulomb discovered the mathematical law by which electrical and magnetic forces operate (Whittaker, pp. 50–59).These findings led to the breakthroughs of the nineteenth century. 8 In 1807, Humphry Davy hypothesized that chemical elements interact through electromagnetic affinity or repulsion. 9 In 1820, H. C. Oersted demonstrated the correspondence between electricity and magnetism. The same year, A. M. Ampere formulated the laws by which electrical and magnetic currents interact (Whittaker, pp. 81–86). Michael Faraday in 1831 revealed electromagnetic induction and thus inaugurated a second Copernican revolution: he showed that matter is not solid and discrete but a field of electromagnetic energy. 10 The dreams of [End... (shrink)

The evidence of ancient books points to the surprising conclusion that in texts of drama or prose dialogue changes of speaker were not usually marked by the name of the new speaker. Instead the ancient reader had a colon, sometimes combined with a paragraphus or stroke in the margin, to guide him. The inconvenience of this practice and the muddle it caused need no emphasis. The facts have been assembled for the text of Plato and Lucian by J. Andrieu , (...) and for Aristophanes by J. C. B. Lowe , 27–42). As far as prose dialogues are concerned confirmation can be found in an unexpected source: the prologue to the dialogue Eranistes by the fifth-century church father Theodoret. (shrink)

Leibniz entertained the idea that, as a set of “striving possibles” competes for existence, the largest and most perfect world comes into being. The paper proposes 8 criteria for a Leibniz-world. It argues that a) there is no algorithm e.g., one involving pairwise compossibility-testing that can produce even possible Leibniz-worlds; b) individual substances presuppose completed worlds; c) the uniqueness of the actual world is a matter of theological preference, not an outcome of the assembly-process; and d) Goedel’s theorem implies that (...) there can be no algorithm for producing optimal worlds, assuming an optimal world contains truth-discerning creatures, though this is not to say that such worlds cannot arise naturally. (shrink)

Leibniz entertained the idea that, as a set of “striving possibles” competes for existence, the largest and most perfect world comes into being. The paper proposes 8 criteria for a Leibniz-world. It argues that a) there is no algorithm e.g., one involving pairwise compossibility-testing that can produce even possible Leibniz-worlds; b) individual substances presuppose completed worlds; c) the uniqueness of the actual world is a matter of theological preference, not an outcome of the assembly-process; and d) Goedel’s theorem implies that (...) there can be no algorithm for producing optimal worlds, assuming an optimal world contains truth-discerning creatures, though this is not to say that such worlds cannot arise naturally. (shrink)

C. Henry, J. Drew, N. Anwar, D. Benoit‐Asselman and G. Campbell, EVA Project Report of the Ethics and Values Audit, Preston: University of Central Lancashire, 1992, pp. iii + 131, pb, £12.

The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and (...) causal explanations that involve no deductions from laws. The aim of the present essay is to defend the traditional identities, and to show that the more recent attempts at invalidating them fail in their object. More specifically, this essay argues that a Humean version of the deductive-nomological model of explanation can be defended as the correct account of scientific explanation of individual facts and processes, and as the correct account of causal explanations of individual facts and processes. The deductive-nomological model holds that to explain an event E, say that a is G, one must find some initial conditions C, say that a is F, and a law or theory T such that T and C jointly entail E, and both are essential to the deduction. (shrink)

I would like to record my thanks to Paul Thompson for useful conver sations over the years, and also to several generations of students who have helped me develop my ideas on biological theory and on Darwin. My wife has, as usual, been more than helpful; in particular she typed a good portion of the manuscript while I was on leave a few years ago, more now than I like to remember. My parents were both looking forward to holding a (...) final copy of this book. I only regret that my mother did not live long enough to see its completion. I must also thank the publishers and their staff. They have been re markably patient about meeting deadlines - promises were repeatedly made and then, owing to family situations, had to be broken - and for this I am considerably in their debt. I would further like to thank the following authors and publishers for permission to use their work: R. C. Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Figure 1, p. 14; © 1964 Columbia University Press; reprinted here by kind permission of the author and publisher. F. Wilson, 'Goudge's Contribution to the Philosophy of Science', in L. W. Sumner, J. G. Slater, and F. Wilson (eds.), Pragmatism and Purpose: Essays in Honour of T. A. Goudge; © 1964 University of Toronto Press; reproduced here in part by kind permission of all the editors and the publisher. (shrink)

Group selection is increasingly being viewed as an important force in human evolution. This paper examines the views of R.D. Alexander, one of the most influential thinkers about human behavior from an evolutionary perspective, on the subject of group selection. Alexander's general conception of evolution is based on the gene-centered approach of G.C. Williams, but he has also emphasized a potential role for group selection in the evolution of individual genomes and in human evolution. Alexander's views are internally inconsistent and (...) underestimate the importance of group selection. Specific themes that Alexander has developed in his account of human evolution are important but are best understood within the framework of multilevel selection theory. From this perspective, Alexander's views on moral systems are not the radical departure from conventional views that he claims, but remain radical in another way more compatible with conventional views. (shrink)

Several philosophers (e.g., Ehring (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 30:461–480, 1996 ); Funkhouser (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 40:548–569, 2006 ); Walter (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:217–244, 2007 ) have argued that there are metaphysical differences between the determinable-determinate relation and the realization relation between mental and physical properties. Others have challenged this claim (e.g., Wilson (Philosophical Studies, 2009 ). In this paper, I argue that there are indeed such differences and propose a “mechanistic” account of realization that elucidates why these differences hold. (...) This account of realization incorporates two distinct roles that mechanisms play in the realization of mental (and other special science) properties which are implicit, but undeveloped, in the literature—what I call “constitutive” and “integrative” mechanisms. I then use these two notions of mechanism to clarify some debates about the relations between realization, multiple realizability, and irreducibility. (shrink)

C. Henry, J. Drew, N. Anwar, D. Benoit‐Asselman and G. Campbell, EVA Project Report of the Ethics and Values Audit, Preston: University of Central Lancashire, 1992, pp. iii + 131, pb, £12.

Broad, C. D. Leibniz's predicate-in-notion principle and some of its alleged consequences.--Couturat, L. On Leibniz's metaphysics.--Friedrich, C. J. Philosophical reflections of Leibniz on law, politics, and the state.--Curley, E. M. The root of contingency. Furth, M. Monadology.--Hacking, I. Individual substance.--Hintikka, J. Leibniz on plenitude, relations, and the "reign of law."--Ishiguro, H. Leibniz's theory of the ideality of relations.--Kneale, M. Leibniz and Spinoza on activity.--Koyré, A. Leibniz and Newton.--Lovejoy, A. O. Plenitude and sufficient reason in Leibniz and Spinoza.--Mates, B. Leibniz on (...) possible worlds.--Russell, B. Recent work on the philosophy of Leibniz.--Wilson, M. D. On Leibniz's explication of "necessary truth.". (shrink)

A study of the analogies between alchemy, Christian dogma, and psychological symbolism. Revised translation, with new bibliography and index.

The American idealist movement started in St. Louis, Missouri in 1858, becoming more influential as women joined and influenced its development. Susan Elizabeth Blow was well known as an educator and pedagogical theorist who founded the first public kindergarten program in America (1873-1884). Anna C. Brackett was a feminist and pedagogical theorist and the first female principal of a secondary school (St. Louis Normal School, 1863-72). Grace C. Bibb was a feminist literary critic and the first female dean at the (...) University of Missouri, Columbia (1878-84). American idealism took on a new form in the 1880s with the founding of the Concord School of Philosophy in Massachusetts. Ellen M. Mitchell participated in the movement in both St. Louis and Concord. She was one of the first women to teach philosophy at a co-educational college (University of Denver, 1890-92). Lucia Ames Mead, Marietta Kies, and Eliza Sunderland joined the movement in Concord. Lucia Ames Mead became a chief pacifist theorist in the early twentieth century. Kies and Sunderland were among the first women to earn the Ph.D. in philosophy (University of Michigan, 1891, 1892). Kies wrote on political altruism and shared with Mitchell the distinction of teaching at a coeducational institution (Butler College, 1896-99). These were the first American women as a group to plunge into philosophy proper, bridging those years between the amateur, paraprofessional and professional academic philosopher. Dorothy Rogers's new book at last gives them the attention they deserve. America's First Women Philosophers is indexed in H.W. Wilson's Essay and General Literature Index. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experiential Avoidance and Superstition: Considering Concepts in ContextRoger Vilardaga (bio) and Steven C. Hayes (bio)Keywordsacceptance, contextualism, influence, therapyThe target article (García-Montes et al. 2008) explores the application of the concept of superstition, examined from a Sartrian perspective, to psychopathology such as obsessive–compulsive disorder and psychosis. They compare their analysis to two different technical terms taken from current research programs in psychology, which are the notions of Thought–Action Fusion and (...) Experiential Avoidance (EA). We have been asked to respond because our work in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 1999) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche 2001) are part of the foundational work in EA, and thus in this short commentary we comment on the article from the point of view of our research program.The article notes several areas of overlap between the ACT/RFT work on EA and their Sartrian perspective on superstition, such as the holistic and contextualistic nature of the analysis, but also several differences which the authors feel advantage their own view.It is difficult to compare the two lines of work without appreciating their context and purpose. Sartre was not a scientific psychologist; ACT/RFT are part of a specific effort at scientific system building, which we term here “contextual behavioral science” (AKA, post-Skinnerian behavior analysis).Contextual behavioral science is a social enterprise that has as its purpose the development of increasingly organized statements of relations among events that allow actions embedded in their historical and situational context to be predicted and influenced with precision, scope, and depth. “Precision” means that a limited set of analytic constructs apply to any one event; “scope” means that a limited set of constructs are needed to analyze a broad range of events; and “depth” means that constructs should cohere across different levels of analysis.Although a real world (or at least the one world) is assumed, the partitioning of the world is thought to be the result of our continuous interactions in and with it. These partitions are not ontological constructions from the perspective of contextual behavioral science because they, too, are actions that are purposive and embedded in their historical and situational contexts. The [End Page 269] deliberate attempt to analyze the world scientifically does not contradict the holistic standpoint of contextualism. When analytic goals are accomplished, constructs are “true,” but multiple truths are possible given multiple goals and historical and situational contexts. Conversely, all forms of contextualism become dogmatic and self-contradictory if their goals are not stated. It is common for contextualists of all varieties to state and defend the ultimate apprehension of reality as a whole, for example, without realizing that any statement about the world including such a defense is a form of breaking down this whole into parts. As we will try to show, the target article seems to fall into this usual contextualistic trap by arguing for what is better, without stating clearly “better for what, assessed how” and without viewing concepts with relevance to their purpose.Prediction and influence with precision, scope, and depth is a purpose, stated naked and in the wind. It is not defended, justified, or given ontological status. To generate powerful ways of speaking as measured against that purpose, contextual behavioral science has embraced a wide variety of methodologies, including laboratory research designed to refine behavioral principles with high levels of precision and scope, and applied research such as randomized controlled trials, analog research, and measure development that test the scope of the principles and theories that result (e.g., Hayes et al. 2006). Whether concepts like EA are helpful is a matter to be considered relevant to the goals of the analysis.As example of the kind of problems the authors create for themselves, consider the following quote from the target article:Although the post-Skinnerians who proposed the EA concept call themselves “contextualists,” they pay no more than lip service to the role of the “social/verbal community” and the cultural context. Their research focuses almost exclusively on laboratory experiments, and does not consider the important role of particular social practices and contexts, such as modernity.(García... (shrink)

Leibniz's predicate-in-notion principle and some of its alleged consequences, by C. D. Broad.--On Leibniz's metaphysics, by L. Couturat.--Philosophical reflections of Leibniz on law, politics, and the state, by C. J. Friedrich.--The root of contingency, by E. M. Curley.--Monadology, by M. Furth.--Individual substance, by I. Hacking.--Leibniz on plenitude, relations, and the "reign of the law," by J. Hintikka.--Leibniz's theory of the ideality of relations, by H. Ishiguro.--Leibniz and Spinoza on activity, by M. Kneale.--Leibniz and Newton, by A. Koyré.--Plenitude and sufficient reason (...) in Leibniz and Spinoza, by A. O. Lovejoy.--Leibniz on possible worlds, by B. Mates.--Recent work on the philosophy of Leibniz, by B. Russell.--On Leibniz's explication of "necessary truth," by M. D. Wilson.--Bibliography (p. [421]-425). (shrink)

This book is parapsychological study of the meaningful coincidence of events, extrasensory perception, and similar phenomena.