Subjects enrolled in studies testing high risk interventions for incurable or progressive brain diseases may be vulnerable to deficiencies in informed consent, such as the therapeutic misconception. However, the definition and measurement of the therapeutic misconception is a subject of continuing debate. Our qualitative pilot study of persons enrolled in a phase I trial of gene transfer for Parkinson disease suggests potential avenues for both measuring and preventing the therapeutic misconception. Building on earlier literature on the topic, we developed and (...) tested an interview guide that focuses on how the subjects decided to participate, emphasizing the integration of subjects’ various statements that are relevant to assessing the therapeutic misconception, rather than evaluating them as isolated statements. The results indicate that a subject’s understanding of the purpose of research is best explored in juxtaposition to the subject’s motivation for participating. (shrink)

Although informed consent is important in clinical research, questions persist regarding when it is necessary, what it requires, and how it should be obtained. The standard view in research ethics is that the function of informed consent is to respect individual autonomy. However, consent processes are multidimensional and serve other ethical functions as well. These functions deserve particular attention when barriers to consent exist. We argue that consent serves seven ethically important and conceptually distinct functions. The first four functions pertain (...) principally to individual participants: (1) providing transparency; (2) allowing control and authorization; (3) promoting concordance with participants' values; and (4) protecting and promoting welfare interests. Three other functions are systemic or policy focused: (5) promoting trust; (6) satisfying regulatory requirements; and (7) promoting integrity in research. Reframing consent around these functions can guide approaches to consent that are context sensitive and that maximize achievable goals. (shrink)

In 1960, E. P. Wigner, a joint winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics, published a paper titled On the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences [61]. This paper can be construed as an examination and affirmation of Galileo's tenet that “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”. To this effect, Wigner presented a large number of examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of mathematics in accurately describing physical phenomena. Wigner viewed these examples as (...) illustrations of what he called the empirical law of epistemology, which asserts that the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature is both appropriate and accurate, and that mathematics is actually the correct language for formulating the laws of nature. At the same time, Wigner pointed out that the reasons for the success of mathematics in the natural sciences are not completely understood; in fact, he went as far as asserting that “… the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”. (shrink)

Bioethicists have long been concerned that seriously ill patients entering early phase (‘phase I’) treatment trials are motivated by therapeutic benefit even though the likelihood of benefit is low. In spite of these concerns, consent forms for phase I studies involving seriously ill patients generally employ indeterminate benefit statements rather than unambiguous statements of unlikely benefit. This seeming mismatch between attitudes and actions suggests a need to better understand research ethics committee members’ attitudes toward communication of potential benefits and risks (...) of early phase studies to potential subjects. We surveyed the members of two U.S. research ethics committees using a phase I gene transfer study scenario, and compared the results to a previous survey of potential subjects’ perceptions and attitudes toward benefit and risk for the same protocol. The results show that there is indeed a gap between the subjects’ perceptions and the committee members’ views on what is appropriate to be communicated to research subjects. This discrepancy is the product of both the commonly assumed optimism of the subjects and to a “protective pessimism” of the research ethics committee members. We discuss this discrepancy using “frameworks of trust” and demonstrate the need to incorporate these frameworks into the existing model of informed consent. (shrink)

Monica Colvin-Adams,1 Nonyelum Harcourt,1 Robert LeDuc,2 Ganesh Raveendran,1 Yassir Sonbol,3 Robert Wilson,1 Daniel Duprez11Cardiovascular Division, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 2Division of Biostatistics University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; 3Cardiovascular Division, St Luke's Hospital System, Sugar Land, TX, USAObjective: Arterial elasticity is a functional biomarker that has predictive value for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in nontransplant populations. There is little information regarding arterial elasticity in heart transplant recipients. This study aimed to characterize small and large artery elasticity (...) in heart transplant recipients in comparison with an asymptomatic population free of overt cardiovascular disease. A second goal was to identify demographic and clinical factors associated with arterial elasticity in this unique population.Methods: Arterial pulse waveform was registered noninvasively at the radial artery in 71 heart transplant recipients between 2008 and 2010. SAEs and LAEs were derived from diastolic pulse contour analysis. Comparisons were made to a healthy cohort of 1,808 participants selected from our prevention clinic database. Multiple regression analyses were performed to evaluate associations between risk factors and SAE and LAE within the heart transplant recipients.Results: LAE and SAE were significantly lower in heart transplant recipients than in the normal cohort. Female sex and history of ischemic cardiomyopathy were significantly associated with reduced LAE and SAE. Older age and the presence of moderate cardiac allograft vasculopathy were also significantly associated with reduced SAE. Transplant duration was associated with increased SAE.Conclusion: Heart transplants are associated with peripheral endothelial dysfunction and arterial stiffness, as demonstrated by a significant reduction in SAE and LAE when compared with a healthy population. Furthermore, cardiac allograft vasculopathy is associated with a significant reduction in SAE, suggesting a potential use in screening heart transplant recipients at risk for developing this complication.Keywords: heart transplant, endothelial function, arterial elasticity, cardiac allograft vasculopathy. (shrink)

My task in this paper is to defend the legitimacy of historicist philosophy of science, defined as the philosophic study of science that takes seriously case studies drawn from the practice of science. Historicistphilosophy of science suffers from what I call the ’evidence problem’. The worry is that case studies cannot qualify as rigorous evidence for the adjudication of philosophic theories. I explore the reasons why one might deny to historical cases a probative value, then reply to these reasons on (...) behalf of historicism. The main proponents of the view I am criticizing are Pitt (2001) and Rasmussen (2001). (shrink)

Each title in the "Key Issues" series aims to set the work in its historical context. In this collection of contemporary responses to "Leviathan", attention is focused on its critics who attacked Hobbes's moral, political and religious ideas in a series of pamphlets and short books.

Let M be a smooth, compact manifold of dimension n ≥ 5 and sectional curvature | K | ≤ 1. Let Met (M) = Riem(M)/Diff(M) be the space of Riemannian metrics on M modulo isometries. Nabutovsky and Weinberger studied the connected components of sublevel sets (and local minima) for certain functions on Met (M) such as the diameter. They showed that for every Turing machine T e , e ∈ ω, there is a sequence (uniformly effective in e) of homology (...) n-spheres {P k e } k ∈ ω which are also hypersurfaces, such that P k e is diffeomorphic to the standard n-sphere S n (denoted P k e ≈ diff S n ) iff T e halts on input k, and in this case the connected sum N k e =M ♯ P k e ≈ diff M , so N k e ∈ Met(M), and N k e is associated with a local minimum of the diameter function on Met(M) whose depth is roughly equal to the settling time σ e (k) of T e on inputs y i } ∈ ω of c.e. sets so that for all i the settling time of the associated Turing machine for A i dominates that for A i + 1 , even when the latter is composed with an arbitrary computable function. From this, Nabutovsky and Weinberger showed that the basins exhibit a "fractal" like behavior with extremely big basins, and very much smaller basins coming off them, and so on. This reveals what Nabutovsky and Weinberger describe in their paper on fractals as "the astonishing richness of the space of Riemannian metrics on a smooth manifold, up to reparametrization." From the point of view of logic and computability, the Nabutovsky-Weinberger results are especially interesting because: (1) they use c.e. sets to prove structural complexity of the geometry and topology, not merely undecidability results as in the word problem for groups, Hilbert's Tenth Problem, or most other applications; (2) they use nontrivial information about c.e. sets, the Soare sequence {A i } i ∈ ω above, not merely G öodel's c.e. noncomputable set K of the 1930's; and (3) without using computability theory there is no known proof that local minima exist even for simple manifolds like the torus T 5 (see §). (shrink)

This volume presents, for the first time, an assemblage of contributions on the philosophical dimensions of the impersonal, the multiplicity of its linguistic, social, scientific, religious and artistic perspectives, as well as initial approaches to its unified definition. Linguistic and logical impersonality The “It" in K. Kraus “Impersonality” in the subject and in events The impersonal ontology of H. Rombach Levinas on the “Il y a” Organisation in non-egological consciousness The witness of consciousness in the Vedānta traditions Anonymous self-consciousness G. (...) Deleuzes figures of the impersonal The impersonal in G. Agamben's Philosophy Formal and collective thought in Spinoza Cusanus and the person as stake in the game of life Impersonal subjectivity and the comedy of solipsism Dimensions of the impersonal in T. Nagel, E. Husserl and H. Plessner On the figure of the impersonal in the Anthropocene Language and mask in F. Nietzsche Theodoros Terzopoulos on impersonality and theatre With contributions by Michael Astroh, Eric Ebner, Eric Eggert, Rolf Elberfeld, Katrin Felgenhauer, Ralf Gisinger, Annika Hand, Stefan Lang, Robert Lehmann, Enrico Müller, Daniel Neumann, Frank Raddatz, Christian Rößner, Thomas Schmaus, Fabian Strobel and Theodoros Terzopoulos. (shrink)

La filosofía de Wolff y Baumgarten ha sido tradicionalmente evaluada como nada más que una sistematización, carente de toda originalidad, de las doctrinas de Leibniz. El presente trabajo revisa esta opinión generaliza, concentrándose en el problema específico de la interacción de las sustancias naturales. Se muestra que Wolff y Baumgarten no siguen a Leibniz con el mismo grado de cercanía en relación a algunos de los principios centrales de la teoría armonía preestablecida y, con ello, se problematiza el uso de (...) la etiqueta “leibnizianismo” como referida a un cuerpo homogéneo e indiferenciado de doctrinas. (shrink)

Making data broadly accessible is essential to creating a medical information commons. Transparency about data-sharing practices can cultivate trust among prospective and existing MIC participants. We present an analysis of 34 initiatives sharing DNA-derived data based on public information. We describe data-sharing practices captured, including practices related to consent, privacy and security, data access, oversight, and participant engagement. Our results reveal that data-sharing initiatives have some distance to go in achieving transparency.

Advances in technologies and biomedical informatics have expanded capacity to generate and share biomedical data. With a lens on genomic data, we present a typology characterizing the data-sharing landscape in biomedical research to advance understanding of the key stakeholders and existing data-sharing practices. The typology highlights the diversity of data-sharing efforts and facilitators and reveals how novel data-sharing efforts are challenging existing norms regarding the role of individuals whom the data describe.

1. The present paper is a continuation of my “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” which began with a description of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick. I contended in that essay that the foundational claim of Nozick's philosophy is the thesis of self-ownership, which says that each person is the morally rightful owner of his own person and powers, and, consequently, that each is free to use those powers as he wishes, provided that he does not deploy them aggressively (...) against others. To be sure, he may not harm others, and he may, if necessary, be forced not to harm them, but he should never be forced to help them, as people are in fact forced to help others, according to Nozick, by redistributive taxation. (shrink)

Las filosofías de Wolff y Baumgarten han sido tradicionalmente evaluadas como una mera sistematización de las doctrinas de Leibniz, carente de toda originalidad. Se revisa esta opinión, concentrándose en el problema específico de la interacción de las sustancias naturales. Se muestra que ellos no siguen a Leibniz con el mismo grado de cercanía en algunos de los principios centrales de la teoría de la armonía preestablecida. Se problematiza así el uso de la etiqueta "leibnizianismo" como referida a un cuerpo homogéneo (...) e indiferenciado de doctrinas. The philosophies of Wolff and Baumgarten have been traditionally evaluated as mere systematizations of the doctrines of Leibniz, and, therefore, as lacking all originality. The paper revises that opinion, focusing on the specific problem of the interaction of natural substances, in order to show that they do not follow Leibniz as closely with respect to some of the central principles of pre-established harmony. It also questions the use of "Leibnizianism" as a label to refer to a homogeneous and undifferentiated body of doctrines. As filosofias de Wolff e Baumgarten têm sido tradicionalmente avaliadas como uma mera sistematização das doutrinas de Leibniz, carente de toda originalidade. Neste artigo, revisa-se essa opinião concentrando-se no problema específico da interação das substâncias naturais. Mostra-se que eles não seguem Leibniz com o mesmo grau de aproximação em alguns dos princípios centrais da teoria da harmonia preestabelecida. Problematiza-se, assim, o uso da etiqueta "leibnizianismo" como referência a um corpo homogêneo e indiferenciado de doutrinas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 80-97 [Access article in PDF] Literary Truth as Dreamlike Expression in Foucault's and Borges's "Chinese Encyclopedia" Robert Wicks ALTHOUGH THE TOPIC REMAINS MOSTLY unexplored, Michel Foucault had an aesthetic and intellectual attraction towards writers and artists in the Spanish-speaking tradition. For example, at the conclusion of his Histoire de la folie (Madness and Civilization, 1961)—a book which brought him extensive intellectual recognition in (...) France—Foucault drew his readers' attention to José de Goya y Lucientes's (1746-1828) well-known etching, El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters, Plate 43 of Los Caprichos, 1797). In Foucault's estimation, by revealing a "night which is doubtless that of classical unreason," Goya's work represented a socially removed condition within which people encounter "what is most solitary" and experience what is "deepest" within themselves. With his reference to Goya's imagery, Foucault illustrated a major theme of his history of madness, namely, how people referred to as "mentally ill" experienced a gradual, physical exclusion from participation in public society, and how they were eventually isolated in a more frightening way: within their physical confinement, they were subject to techniques of psychological and spiritual alienation that reduced them to a condition of utter solitude.In a comparable, if not more central manner, Foucault used as thematic motifs for the preface, first and second chapters of a book for which he is widely known, Les Mots et les choses (The Order of Things, 1966), the work of three major writers and artists from the Spanish-speaking world: Jorges Luis Borges (1899-1986), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). Among these references, the most popular is probably Foucault's discussion of [End Page 80] Velázquez's Las Meninas—a painting which captured Foucault's interest as a perfect exemplar of its time period—and which inspired him to devote the entire first chapter of his book to decoding the mechanics of its perspectival arrangement. And within the community of those who read, write and discuss the interrelationship between Foucault's thought, literary theory and the contemporary emphasis upon the multivocal quality of textual meaning, Foucault's citation of an excerpt from a short story by Borges—the subject of this essay—is also familiar. Foucault introduced his 1966 book, The Order of Things, with the following words: This book first arose out of a passage in Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a "certain Chinese encyclopedia" in which it is written that "animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies." In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. 1The short story from which Foucault extracted the above, quasi-cubistic, excerpt was published in Borges's 1952 collection, Otras Inquisiciones (Other Inquisitions), and is entitled, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins." Although this story's entirety is rarely surveyed in discussions of Foucault, appreciating its broader contents helps illuminate why Foucault began The Order of Things with this entertaining and bizarre segment. Borges's original... (shrink)

The conjecture that international system structure determines war propensity has met with mixed results in past theory in political science. This question is reexamined within the context of a dynamic model of inter-nation hostile behavior. System structure is defined in terms of the degrees of grievance, fear, etc., among nations and also in terms of the qualitative patterns of hostile behavior that are possible. Propensity for war is measured in terms of the likelihood of progress to war within a given (...) class of hostile behaviors. Then the dynamic model is used to analyze in detail and interpret the relationship between system structure and war propensity. (shrink)

This is a brief, clear, and vigorous reinterpretation of Bergson's philosophy. The author attempts to prove that, far from being an irrationalist, Bergson is a systematic metaphysician firmly committed to the concept of final cause.

The current study examined whether pigeons could learn to use abstract concepts as the basis for conditionally switching behavior as a function of time. Using a mid-session reversal task, experienced pigeons were trained to switch from matching-to-sample (MTS) to non-matching-to-sample (NMTS) conditional discriminations within a session. One group had prior training with MTS, while the other had prior training with NMTS. Over training, stimulus set size was progressively doubled from 3 to 6 to 12 stimuli to promote abstract concept development. (...) Prior experience had an effect on the initial learning at each of the set sizes but by the end of training there were no group differences, as both groups showed similar within-session linear matching functions. After acquiring the 12-item set, abstract-concept learning was tested by placing novel stimuli at the beginning and end of a test session. Prior matching and non-matching experience affected transfer behavior. The matching experienced group transferred to novel stimuli in both the matching and non-matching portion of the sessions using a matching rule. The non-matching experienced group transferred to novel stimuli in both portions of the session using a non-matching rule. The representations used as the basis for mid-session reversal of the conditional discrimination behaviors and subsequent transfer behavior appears to have different temporal sources. The implications for the flexibility and organization of complex behaviors are considered. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS El Primer Principia del Obrar Moral y las Normas Especificas en el Pensamiento de G. Grisez y!. Finnis. By AURELIO A.NSALDO. Roma: Pontificia Universita Lateranense, 1990. Pp. xiii+ 255. This unusually excellent and important doctoral dissertation was written in Rome at the Istituto Giovanni Paolo II per Studi su Matrimonio e Famiglia, a component of the Lateran University. The author currently teaches at the Ateneo Romano della (...) Santa Croce in Rome. The volume is of special importance for three reasons: (1) it provides a comprehensive, detailed, and accurate account of the moral theory developed by Germain Grisez and John Finnis over the past quarter century (Joseph Boyle has also made important contributions to this theory, and Ansaldo has noted these); (2) it defends Grisez and Finnis against many of the criticisms which have been unjustly leveled against their thought; and (3) it raises some critically import· ant issues by way of constructive criticism. In what follows I will briefly comment on the first and second features of Ansaldo's work and discuss more fully the third important component of his scholarly study. In the first part of his work (pp. 3-100), Ansaldo offers readers a splendid synthesis of the thought of Grisez and Finnis. He has carefully studied everything written by these authors from 1964 to 1988. He has included important material from Finnis that had escaped even my attention, and I have tried to study everything these authors have written. He has also succeeded in presenting their thought comprehensively and faithfully. He understands what they think, appreciates it, and presents it accurately. In short, he does justice to their thought. In this respect his study is quite superior to another doctoral dissertation, Russell Hittinger's A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory. Hittinger's work has been severely criticized, and rightly so, not only by Grisez but by others (e.g., Robert George and William Marshner) ; it seriously misrepresents the work of Grisez and Finnis. A criticism of this sort cannot be levelled against Ansaldo's work; it provides an accurate and very scholarly account of their thought. In the second part of his study (pp. 103-229) Ansaldo offers a critical assessment of the work of Grisez and Finnis. Here he first shows that many of the criticisms leveled against their thought are unjust and unfounded, particularly those offered by such writers as Veatch, Rittinger, Flicken, Bourke, et al. These writers charge that Grisez and Finnis fail to show how moral principles are rooted in metaphysics and anthropology, that they completely separate ethics from metaphysics, natural law from human nature, etc. Ansaldo, by a patient and thorough BOOK REVIEWS 888 examination of their thought and the thought of St. Thomas, defends Grisez and Finnis from these misguided criticisms. He shows, first of all,,that Grisez and Finnis are correct (and fully in accord with St. Thomas) in holding that our krwwledge of the primary principles of natural law is not derived from our knowledge of metaphysics or of human nature. By referring to appropriate texts of Grisez and Finnis, Ansaldo shows conclusively that these authors explicitly recognize the intimate rela· tionship between ethics and metaphysics, between natural law and human nature. They fully and explicitly recognize that, were our na· ture other than it is, namely, the nature of human beings, the goods pedective of us would be other than what they actually are. When these goods are grasped by practical reason, they serve as starting points or principles of purposeful human action. Nonetheless, our practical krwwledge of these goods, is not epistemologically derived from or dependent upon prior knowledge, speculative in character, of human nature. In short, in contrast to their critics and in conformity with St. Thomas, Grisez and Finnis are correct in holding that our practical understanding of the primary principles of natural law is not dependent upon our prior understanding of metaphysics or human nature. At the same time they explicitly acknowledge and defend the truth that onto· logically ethics is grounded in metaphysics and anthropology. "Our authors," Ansaldo writes, " have always sought not only to respect but even more to defend and explain the fact that the basis... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:482 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY disorder was reLigious men's tendency to find in the Scriptures and their consciences justifications for rebelling against their sovereign. The last half of Leviathan is designed to refute these claims in detail, and this refutation is not merely tacked onto the first parts but is a logical extension of them. The argument for escaping the state of nature is that only through obedience to a (...) common power can man escape the likelihood of an early death. Once that common power is established, and so long as it can carry out its protective function, obedience to it is obligatory. When a man enters civil society, the only right he retains is to defend himself against physical death, and consequently, the only time he is entitled to disobey the sovereign is when the sovereign directly threatens him. Thus excuses for rebellion are reduced to an absolute minimum. In McNeiily's formalization however, the concept of a man's death must be replaced by the formal concept of the frustration of all one's desires. And so "whatevvr [a man] regards as the complete frustration of all his desires... he will be entitled to resist, even if such resistance puts him at war with others, including lawful authority" (p. 193). Now the incredible range of things men have believed essential to avoiding the frustration of all their desires is amply testified to in the history of religious warfare. And clearly, under this formalized interpretation, men would be entitled to rebel over the form of baptism, church government, ministerial costume, prayer, or anything else if they are convinced it is essential to their salvation. It takes little knowledge of history to see that Hobbes's espousing of a theory with such consequences has a low degree of probability indeed. Hobbes complains in Leviathan of Scriptural exegetes who "by casting atoms of Scripture, as dust before men's eyes, make everything more obscure than it is." Rather, he claims, it is "not bare words, but the scope of the writer, that giveth the true light by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive nothing from them clearly'" (E. W., III, 602). This last would be too harsh to apply to McNeiity's work generally, for his "atoms" are for the most part of considerable worth in themselves. But with regard to our understanding of Hobbes's Leviathan he raises a lot of dust. PAUL J. JOHNSON CalifornM State College, San Bernardino The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. By Peter Gay. VoL I, The Rise ol Modern Paganism. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Pp. xviii+SSS+xv); VoL II, The Science ot Freedom. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Pp. xx+70S+xviii) Le grand int~rSt port~ aux ~tudcs du xvm* si~cle au cours des deux derni~res d6cades et la remise en question des principes critiques encore en vigueur it y a une dizaine d'ann~,s ont fray~ la voie h de nouveaux efforts de synth~se dent la derni~re en date, et non la moins int~ressante, est celle de Peter Gay. Ses deux substantiels volumes sent destines ~ servir de guides ~ une nouvelle g~n~ration d'~tudiants et de chercheurs, ne ffit-ce que pour la bibliographie tr~s d6taill~e et accompagn~ d'obserrations personneUes qui forme un supplement tr~s pr6cieux ~ la Bibliographie de D. C. Cabeen de 1951 et de 1968. Lo travail de Peter Gay inspire confianc~ par BOOK REVIEWS 483 Fampleur des lectures auxquelles il s'est astreint et. (shrink)

This book presents Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson.

This collection of essays on themes in the work of John Locke , George Berkeley , and David Hume , provides a deepened understanding of major issues raised in the Empiricist tradition. In exploring their shared belief in the experiential nature of mental constructs, The Empiricists illuminates the different methodologies of these great Enlightenment philosophers and introduces students to important metaphysical and epistemological issues including the theory of ideas, personal identity, and skepticism. It will be especially useful in courses devoted (...) to the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

In vertebrates it is often found that if one considers a group of genes clustered on a certain chromosome, then the homologues of those genes often form another cluster on a different chromosome. There are four explanations, not necessarily mutually exclusive, to explain how such homologous clusters appeared. Homologous clusters are expected at a low probability even if genes are distributed at random. The duplication of a subset of the genome might create homologous clusters, as would a duplication of the (...) entire genome. Alternatively, it may be adaptive for certain combinations of genes to cluster, although clearly the genes must have duplicated prior to rearrangement into clusters. Molecular phylogenetics provides a means to examine the origins of homologous clusters, although it is difficult to discriminate between the different explanations using current data. However, with more extensive sequencing and mapping of vertebrate genomes, especially those of the early diverging chordates, it should soon become possible to resolve the origins of homologous clusters. BioEssays 21:697–703, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Conventional rockets are not a suitable technology for interstellar missions. Chemical rockets require a very large weight of propellant, travel very slowly compared to light speed, and require significant energy to maintain operation over periods of years. For example, the 722 kg Voyager spacecraft required 13,600 kg of propellant to launch and would take about 80,000 years to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, about 4.3 light years away. There have been various attempts at developing ideas on which one might (...) base a spacecraft that would permit interstellar travel, such as spacewarps. In this paper we consider another suggestion from science fiction and explore how the quantum vacuum might be utilized in the creation of a novel spacecraft. The spacecraft is based on the dynamic Casimir effect, in which electromagnetic radiation is emitted when an uncharged mirror is properly accelerated in vacuum. The radiative reaction produces a dissipative force on the mirror that tends to resist the acceleration of the mirror. This force can be used to accelerate a spacecraft attached to the mirror. We also show that, in principle, one could obtain the power to operate the accelerated mirror in such a spacecraft using energy extracted from the quantum vacuum using the standard Casimir effect with a parallel plate geometry. Unfortunately the method as currently conceived generates a miniscule thrust, and is no more practical than a spacewarp, yet it does provide an interesting demonstration of our current understanding of the physics of the quantized electromagnetic field in vacuum. (shrink)

The eight papers in this collection, which were delivered at the Fourth Annual Conference in Philosophy at the University of Georgia in February, 1971, deal with a variety of topics related to the current controversy about man’s use of his environment. The contributors, Eugene P. Odum, William T. Blackstone, Joel Feinberg, Charles Hartshorne, Walter O’Briant, Nicholas Rescher, Robert G. Burton, and Pete A. Y. Gunter, discuss such issues as overpopulation, man’s relation to nature, man’s attitude toward his environment, and (...) the proper role of technology in industrialized societies. Two especially interesting papers are Rescher’s "The Environmental Crisis and the Quality of Life" and Feinberg’s "The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations." Rescher believes that Americans can avoid bitter disappointment only by realizing that no significant improvement in the quality of their environment is possible. He is aware that this realization will be painful because it involves surrendering the deeply held convictions that the quality of our life will continually improve and that our technology can overcome any physical obstacles. Feinberg discusses some of the complex issues involved in deciding whether people are obligated to leave a satisfactory environment for those who will come in the future. He contends that there is no obligation to add additional people; but, insofar as it is known that there will be future generations, we are obligated to consider their interests. The book has a helpful introduction by the editor which summarizes the position and arguments of each contributor.—M.G. (shrink)

Each contributor to this book has used personal experience as the basis from which to frame his individual sociological perspectives. Because they have personalized their work, their accounts are real, and recognizable as having come from 'real' persons, about 'real' experiences. There are no objectively-distanced disembodied third person entities in these accounts. These writers are actual people whose stories will make you laugh, cry, think, and want to know more.

From a simple idea to unite asset owners in their quest for responsible investment at its launch in April 2006, the United Nations supported Principles for Responsible Investment have grown in just one decade into an initiative with more than 1500 fee-paying signatories. Jointly, the PRI’s signatories hold assets worth more than $80 trillion, making it one of the more prevalent not-for-profit organizations worldwide. Furthermore, the PRI’s ambitious mission to transform the financial system at large into a more sustainable one (...) makes it a worthwhile subject of inquiry from an institutional perspective. We undertake an empirical investigation of the adoption of the PRI by asset owners during five crucial years of the association’s emergence: 2007–2011. Following a tripartite view of institutional theory proposed by Scott, we explore if regulative, normative, and cultural–cognitive factors influence an asset owner’s decision to subscribe to the PRI. Applying both parametric and non-parametric survival analysis, we find that asset owners are indeed significantly affected by normative, cultural–cognitive, and regulative aspects. In particular, public service employee and labor union pension funds from social backgrounds more culturally aligned with values represented by the RI movement with historically more voluntary legislation on environmental, social, and governance issues are most likely to sign the PRI. In contrast, institutional environments with a higher number of pre-existing mandatory ESG regulation decrease the likelihood of signing the PRI. Our results indicate that normative and cultural–cognitive factors were crucial contributors to the PRI’s growth. With respect to the regulative environments, our results imply that some asset owners may use the PRI as a collective industry initiative to substitute for mandatory legislation. Conversely, a high level of historical mandatory legislation may constrain organizational resources that could otherwise be dedicated to voluntary initiatives such as PRI. Our findings are robust to relevant controls and econometric concerns. (shrink)