The rediscovery of biblical and Talmudic notion of responsibility is an alternative in the context of theological reflection, in relation the shortcomings ethics of the philosophical project of modernity. In this context, the rescue of the uniqueness of this responsibility reveals a fruitful relationship between Jewish thought and moral theology. This article, in order to demonstrate this fecundity, evidences the force of ethical wisdom of Old Testament, from the perspective of the jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

This article encourages a rethinking of how rats are regarded within the laboratory research environment. The rat’s remarkable intellect and cognitive capacities are well known yet conveniently ignored. An understanding of the five domains of animal welfare and the telos of the rat necessitate that the rat’s circumstances, namely habitat accommodations, in the research arena be reassessed. The rat-ness of being a rat must be considered, celebrated, and elevated to significantly higher standards. We advocate for a new research paradigm if (...) one continues to “use” the extraordinary Rattus species. (shrink)

We appreciate the opportunity to respond to Schneiderman and colleagues’ opinions on the recent Multiorganization Policy Statement, “An Official ATS/AACN/ACCP/ESICM/SCCM Policy Statement: Responding to Requests for Potentially Inappropriate Treatments in Intensive Care Units”. We will first point out three areas in which Schneiderman and colleagues seem to perceive a disagreement where there is none, then we will respond to their main criticisms of the Multiorganization Policy Statement. In doing so, we will point out areas in which we believe Schneiderman and (...) colleagues have either misunderstood or misrepresented the statement. First, we agree with Schneiderman and... (shrink)

Late lung development comprises the formation of the terminal sac followed by the subdivision of the terminal sac by septa into alveoli and results in the formation of the gas‐exchange surface of the lung. This developmentally regulated process involves a complex epithelium–mesenchyme interaction via evolutionarily conserved molecular signaling pathways. In addition, there is a continuous process of vascular growth and development. Currently there are large gaps in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in the formation of the gas‐exchange surface. (...) In this review, we attempt to integrate and reconcile the morphologic features in late lung development with what is known about the molecular basis for these processes. We describe the formation of the terminal sac and the subsequent formation of the septa, which divide the terminal sac into alveoli, in terms of the classically described developmental stages of induction, morphogenesis and differentiation. We believe that evolutionarily conserved pathways regulate this process and that morphogen gradients are likely to be a central mechanism. In addition, we highlight the importance of the molecular mechanisms involved in the simultaneous development of the vascular bed and its importance in the late development of the lungs. BioEssays 24:1052–1059, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is an effective treatment for advanced Parkinson’s disease. However, identifying stimulation parameters, such as contact and current amplitudes, is time-consuming based on trial and error. Directional leads add more stimulation options and render this process more challenging with a higher workload for neurologists and more discomfort for patients. In this study, a sweet spot-guided algorithm was developed that automatically suggested stimulation parameters. These suggestions were retrospectively compared to clinical monopolar reviews. A cohort of 24 Parkinson’s disease (...) patients underwent bilateral DBS implantation in the subthalamic nucleus at our center. First, the DBS’ leads were reconstructed with the open-source toolbox Lead-DBS. Second, a sweet spot for rigidity reduction was set as the desired stimulation target for programming. This sweet spot and estimations of the volume of tissue activated were used to suggest (i) the best lead level, (ii) the best contact, and (iii) the effect thresholds for full therapeutic effect for each contact. To assess these sweet spot-guided suggestions, the clinical monopolar reviews were considered as ground truth. In addition, the sweet spot-guided suggestions for best lead level and best contact were compared against reconstruction-guided suggestions, which considered the lead location with respect to the subthalamic nucleus. Finally, a graphical user interface was developed as an add-on to Lead-DBS and is publicly available. With the interface, suggestions for all contacts of a lead can be generated in a few seconds. The accuracy for suggesting the best out of four lead levels was 56%. These sweet spot-guided suggestions were not significantly better than reconstruction-guided suggestions (p = 0.3). The accuracy for suggesting the best out of eight contacts was 41%. These sweet spot-guided suggestions were significantly better than reconstruction-guided suggestions (p < 0.001). The sweet spot-guided suggestions of each contact’s effect threshold had a mean error of 1.2 mA. On an individual lead level, the suggestions can vary more with mean errors ranging from 0.3 to 4.8 mA. Further analysis is warranted to improve the sweet spot-guided suggestions and to account for more symptoms and stimulation-induced side effects. (shrink)

Among the most egregious and discouraging problems of conservation is the rapidly escalating human‐caused species extinction rate. “De‐extinction” refers to the application of certain cutting‐edge techniques for the supposed recovery of lost species and gives the impression that scientists, enlightened and empowered by the miracles of technology, are coming to the rescue. “De‐extinction” is the latest example of a long play of language that has given conservation efforts a tragically false sense of accomplishment and has worsened the conservation crisis. De‐extinction (...) is the tip of an intellectual iceberg that sits atop of a host of profoundly questionable value systems, expectations, attitudes, and priorities that elude and bewitch critical reflection. It gives the impression that extinction is reversible and, thus, diminishes the gravity of the human annihilation of species. Here, we examine how the language of de‐extinction influences attitudes, shapes thoughts and imagination, and creates ethical blindness. The language developing around “de‐extinction” reveals what is in fact a profound intellectual crisis at the foundation of conservation. The underlying challenge is to find the language that will articulate and inspire the radical and indispensable change needed to come to grips with the value of nature. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: A Private Choice: Abortion in America in the Seventies. By John T. Noonan, Jr. Aborting America. By Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D., with Richard N. Ostling.

The Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award was established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies in 2014, in conjunction with Springer and Biosemiotics. It seeks to recognize papers published in the journal that present novel and potentially important contributions to biosemiotic research, its scientific impact and its future prospects. Here the winner of the Biosemiotic Achievement Award for 2020 is announced: The award goes to Filip Jaroš and Matěj Pudil for the article “Cognitive systems of human and (...) non-human animals: At the crossroads of phenomenology, ethology and biosemiotics”. (shrink)

Most conceptual models of the organization of the cardiovascular system begin with the premise that the nervous system regulates the metabolic and nonmetabolic reflex adjustments of the circulation. These models assume that all the neurally mediated responses of the circulation are reactive, i.e., reflexes elicited by adequate stimuli. This target article suggests that the responses of the circulation are conditional in three senses. First, as Sherrington argued, reflexes are conditional in that they never operate in a vacuum but in a (...) context together with other reflexes. Guided by functional utility, they interact rather than add. Second, as Pavlov argued, stimuli acquire meanings as a result of experience. This notion of stimulus effect plus the Sherringtonian notion of conditionality suggest that association is one of the ways stimuli eliciting cardiovascular reflexes acquire their meanings and thus their relative strengths. Finally, as Skinner and others have argued, operants are responses that act upon the environment to obtain consequences – that is, stimuli. As operants, cardiovascular responses fulfill a major biological need, functioning proactively. The cardiovascular response is an integral component of the animal's behavior regardless of whether it is an elicited reflex or the eliciting stimulus acquired its properties as a result of the genetic inheritance of the animal or through experience, or the cardiovascular response is emitted in anticipation of an environmental consequence. The main theses of this essay are: (1) behavior is an integrated set of responses and the circulation is one of the response systems comprising behavior; (2) behavior is, in part, determined by its functional significance within a context; (3) the contextual factors operative at the time of the behavior have a major role in determining which of the set of possible responses will determine the final act, that is, which behavior will be the effective response and which other behaviors will be concomitants. (shrink)

Clinical trials for acute conditions such as myocardial infarction and stroke pose challenges related to informed consent due to time limitations, stress, and severe illness. Consent processes shou...

Delusion is one of the most intriguing psychopathological phenomena and its conceptualization remains the subject of genuine debate. Claims that it is ill-defined, however, are typically grounded on essentialist expectations that a given definition should capture the core of every instance acknowledged as delusion in the clinical setting.

This book is a tribute to Kevin Kelly, who has been one of the most influential British theologians for a number of decades. On its own merits, however, it is groundbreaking collection of essays on key themes, issues and concepts in contemporary moral theology and Christian ethics. The focus is on perspectives to inform moral debate and discernment in the future. The main themes covered are shown in the list of contents below. Several of the of the contributors are from (...) the United States, three others live and work in Continental Europe and the rest are from various parts of the British Isles. Many of the authors are among the best known in their fields on both sides of the Atlantic. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page W12-W13.

In recent years, several strategies have been proposed to tackle social controversies about topics in which science is settled, among which one of the most influential is that of Elizabeth Anderson, who argues that any lay person with access to the Internet and basic education can reliably assess the acceptability of various claims involving expert knowledge. In particular, the author shows that this procedure can be successfully applied to the case of anthropogenic global warming. In this article we will try (...) to argue why, even if we concede that Anderson's proposal is satisfactory in that particular case, it fails to generalize when applied to other controversies. In this article, we illustrate it with the cases of flat-Eartherism and anti-vaxxerism. (shrink)

1. L'immense régression -- 2. La lec̨on de Greta Thunberg.

Nel corso del 2020 la missione congiunta franco-italiana, costituita dall’Università degli Studi di Milano e dall’Institut français d’archéologie orientale del Cairo (Ifao), ha effettuato la sua abituale campagna tra le rovine dell’antica Tebtynis dal 15 settembre al 7 novembre. Gli scavi sono stati estesi nel settore meridionale dell’insediamento, lungo la grande strada che nei papiri demotici è definita “dromos di Tefresudj(ty?)”. Due case-torri costruite nel II e nel I sec. a.C. sono state portate alla luce; parecchi edifici risalenti all’epoca tolemaica (...) e a quella romana sono stati scavati ed è stata localizzata una piazza. Benché l’area investigata si presentasse parzialmente sconvolta da interventi effettuati all’inizio del secolo scorso, una buona quantità di oggetti e di testi è stata raccolta. (shrink)

Einleitungsband. 1. T. Biographie -- 2. T. Bolzano-Bibliographie und Editionsprinzipien der Gesamtausgabe. (v. <1-2>). Supplement <1-2> -- Reihe I, Schriften -- Bd. 2. Erbauungsreden für Akademiker -- Bd. 6. Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft, Erster Teil. (2 v.) -- Bd. 7. Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft, Zweiter Teil. (2 v.) -- Bd. 8. Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft, Dritter Teil. (v. <1-4 >) -- Bd. 11. Wissenschaftslehre (3 v.) -- Bd. 12. Wissenschaftslehre. (3 v.) -- Bd. 13. Wissenschaftslehre. (3 v.) -- Bd. 14. Wissenschaftslehre. (v. <1-3>) (...) -- Bd. 16. Vermischte Schriften, 1839-1840. (2 v.) -- Bd. 18. Mathematisch-physikalische und philosophische Schriften, 1842-1843 -- Bd. 19. Über die Perfectibilität des Katholizismus. (2 v.) --. (shrink)

According to orthodox views of philosophical methodology, when philosophers appeal to intuitions, they treat them as evidence for their contents. Call this “descriptive evidentialism.” Descriptive evidentialism is assumed both by those who defend the epistemic status of intuitions and by those, including many experimental philosophers, who criticize it. This article shows, however, that the idea that philosophers treat intuitions as evidence struggles to account for the way philosophers treat intuitions in a variety of philosophical contexts. In particular, it cannot account (...) for philosophers' treatment of a priori intuitions, for nonpropositional uses of intuition, and for philosophers' failure to use intuition to exclude the counterintuitive. The article concludes that alternatives to descriptive evidentialism (some of which are sketched) must be developed, and that much of the recent debate between traditionalists and skeptics from, for example, experimental philosophy is probably based on a false presupposition. (shrink)

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic mineralization, diagenesis, metamorphism, and finally weathering and exhumation. Determining which tissues are preserved and how biases affect their preservation pathways is important for interpreting fossils in phylogenetic, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks. Although laboratory decay experiments reveal important aspects of fossilization, applying the results directly to the interpretation of exceptionally preserved fossils may overlook the impact of other key processes that (...) remove or preserve morphological information. Investigations of fossils preserving non-biomineralized tissues suggest that certain structures that are decay resistant are rarely preserved, and decay-prone structures can fossilize, albeit rarely. As we review here, decay resistance is an imperfect indicator of fossilization potential, and a suite of biological and geological processes account for the features preserved in exceptional fossils. Organisms decayed experimentally in seawater have been used as direct analogs for soft-bodied fossil taxa, with fossils representing a snapshot of a particular stage of decay. We argue that numerous geological and biological processes account for fossilization and that all of these should be considered when reconstructing extinct organisms. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)