Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Since the middle of the 20th century, suicidology, as a group of disciplines working to understand and prevent suicide, has reinforced the long-held view that suicide is caused first and foremost b...

In El Salvador from 1978 to 1988, contraceptive use among married women 15–44 years of age increased from 34% to 47%, and the total fertility rate declined from 6·3 to 4·6 children per woman. Most of this change took place from 1978 to 1985. Sterilization is the most prevalent method used, but nearly one-half of the women who are sterilized did not use any contraception before their operation. Few young couples use reversible methods of contraception to space births or delay (...) the start of childbearing. On average, women wait 8 years after marriage and have nearly three children before they use contraception. (shrink)

Summary Using the neurological syndrome kuru as a frame, Warwick Anderson examines the social dynamics and material culture of its medical investigation among the Fore people conducted by D. Carleton Gajdusek beginning at midcentury. The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into White Men uses a postcolonial framework to complicate dominant/subordinate binaries and diffusionist accounts of indigenous contacts with medical science. Anderson proposes that colonies are specific sites of production of medical knowledge. He draws a distinction between traditional and (...) advanced economies in regard to individual rights to make an argument in support of context-specific ethical regulation for medical research and suggests a role for historians of science in interrogating the process of globalisation. (shrink)

Summary Watters questions the universality of mental illness and warns of the harms that accompany the exportation of Western typologies to non-Western cultures. He is particularly concerned that these effects will be exacerbated by the upcoming revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Building on his examination of non-Western practices, Watters exposes the historical instability of mental health classifications in North America to question the validity of current DSM categories. Although Watters' warnings about the dangers of (...) the globalisation of the DSM are persuasive, they may be overreaching as our examination of the successful incorporation of Western created autism services, information, and interventions in the developing world suggests. (shrink)

James I. The Political Works of James I. Reprinted from the Edition of 1616. With an Introduction by Charles Howard McIlwain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918. cxi, 354 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Although sensorimotor contingencies may explain visual perception, it is difficult to extend this concept to speech perception. However, the basic concept of perception as active hypothesis testing using attention does extend well to speech perception. We propose that the concept of sensorimotor contingencies can be broadened to sensory-attentional contingencies, thereby accounting for speech perception as well as vision.

Employing the National Institute of Mental Health-funded Prevention of Suicide in Primary Care Elderly Collaborative Trial as a case study, we discuss 2 sets of ethical issues: obtaining informed consent for a clinic-based intervention study and using treatment as usual (TAU) as the control condition. We then address these ethical issues in the context of the debate about the quality improvement efforts of health care organizations. Our analysis reveals the tension between ethics and scientific integrity involved with using TAU as (...) a control condition and the difficulty in designing high-quality research in a community-based setting. (shrink)

Can we ever be fully practically justified in acting contrary to moral demands? My contention is that the answer is 'no'. I argue that by adopting a 'buck-passing' account of wrongness we can provide a philosophically satisfying answer to the familiar 'why should I be moral?'. In working my way toward the buck-passing account of wrongness, I outline the metaethical and 'metanormative' assumptions on which my theory stands. I also consider and reject the 'internalist' answer to 'why should I be (...) moral?'. The account I end up with is decidedly non-consequentialist and it is consistent with common-sense morality. It also provides a way of showing why moral considerations are overridingly normative in a way that is consistent with our best current understanding of what practical reason requires of us. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the implication from value to fittingness. I shall argue that those committed to this implication face a serious explanatory challenge. This argument is not intended as a knock-down argument against FA but it will, I think, show that those who endorse the theory incur a particular explanatory burden: to explain how counterfactual favouring of actual value is possible. After making two important preliminary points I briefly discuss an objection to FA made by Krister Bykvist a (...) few years ago. The point of discussing this objection is to enable me to more easily present my own, and I believe stronger, version of that objection. The overall argument takes the form of, simply, a counterexample which can be constructed on the back of of my two preliminary points. Throughout the paper I try to respond to various objections. (shrink)

Bernard Williams has famously argued that there are only “internal” reasons for action. Although Williams has produced several, slightly different versions of internalism over the years, one core idea has remained the same: the reasons a person has for acting must be essentially linked to, derived from, or in some other way connected to, that person’s “subjective motivational set”. I have two aims in this paper. First, after having cleared up some initial ambiguities, I try to show that Williams’s internalism (...) admits of two rather different interpretations. Second, I will argue that both these interpretations are inadequate. The first interpretation is incompatible with certain claims that supposedly provide the reasons why we should accept internalism in the first place. The second interpretation faces other problems: given the essential link between reasons and motivation, this interpretation cannot adequately deal with the phenomenon of accidie. Furthermore, those who subscribe to this interpretation of internalism are, on pain of inconsistency, forced to accept an implausible account of reasonable regret. (shrink)

Modes-of-being figure centrally in Heidegger's masterwork Being and Time. Testimony to this is Heidegger's characterisation of two of his most celebrated enquiries—the Existential analytic and the Zeug analysis—as investigations into the respective modes-of-being of the entities concerned. Yet despite the importance of this concept, commentators disagree widely about what a mode-of-being is. In this paper, I systematically outline and defend a novel and exegetically grounded interpretation of this concept. Strongly opposed to Kantian readings, such as those advocated by Taylor Carman (...) and Cristina Lafont, I interpret a mode-of-being as a universal that defines a district —that is, a natural class of entities that ought to be conceptualised in a special way. As such, every mode-of-being plays an important metaphysical and epistemic role: serving both to unify a natural class of a high degree of generality and as the interpretandum of an act yielding the basic-concepts pertaining to the entities therein. In explicating and arguing for this interpretation, I attribute a characteristically Aristotelian philosophical position to the early Heidegger, encompassing both metaphysical and epistemological realism and a conceptualist theory of universals. (shrink)

The paper takes off from the suggestion of Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen that Kuhn’s account of science may be understood in coherentist terms. There are coherentist themes in Kuhn’s philosophy of science. But one crucial element is lacking. Kuhn does not deny the existence of basic beliefs which have a non-doxastic source of justification. Nor does he assert that epistemic justification only derives from inferential relationships between non-basic beliefs. Despite this, the coherentist interpretation is promising and I develop it further in this (...) paper. I raise the question of whether Kuhn’s account of science can deal with the input objection to coherentism. I argue that the role played by problems in Kuhn’s theory of science ensures that there is input from the external world into scientists’ belief-systems. I follow Hoyningen-Huene in pointing to the causal role played by the external world in determining perceptual states. I next turn to the question of whether Kuhn’s rejection of foundationalism implies coherentism. I argue that Kuhn’s rejection of the one-to-one relation between object and experience is compatible with a foundationalist account of justification. Nor does Kuhn’s rejection of the given entail the same coherentist implications as Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given. (shrink)

As is well known, Putnam changed his philosophical position on a number of occasions throughout his career. In this paper, I reconsider the position of internal realism which Putnam defended from the mid-1970’s until around 1990. The paper opens with a discussion of the position that Putnam called “metaphysical realism”, since his internal realism emerged out of a critique of that position. The paper then briefly presents the internal realist view as one which involves an epistemic conception of truth, as (...) well as an anti-realist metaphysical outlook on which objects depend on conceptual scheme. The paper then provides a survey of the key objections to internal realism which emerged in the ensuing debate with defenders of realism. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the relevance of Putnam’s later adoption of a direct realist theory of perception with respect to the issue of realism. (shrink)

It was with some trepidation that I agreed to speak today, because of a strong doubt that I could say anything substantial not already to be found in the literature of the subject. I cannot say that this trepidation has been subsequently relieved: all I can claim to offer in this paper is a review of certain basic characteristics or themes in the quantum-mechanical situation (which by now should, I think, be thoroughly understood by everyone engaged with the matter), supplemented (...) by some rather general reflections on our philosophical predicament. In aid of these more general reflections, I shall indulge a proclivity for calling on historical matters—some fairly recent, some older, some ancient—which I hope may serve to place current issues in a useful perspective; and I ask your forgiveness for allowing myself to quote certain previous, but hitherto unpublished, remarks of my own. (shrink)

In I 7 Aristotle lays down criteria for what is to count as human happiness. Happiness for man is self-sufficient, complete without qualification, peculiar to humans, excellent, and best and most complete. Many interpreters agree that in X 6–8 Aristotle uses these along with other criteria to disqualify the life of amusement and rank one happy life above another.

In I 7 Aristotle lays down criteria for what is to count as human happiness. Happiness for man is self-sufficient , complete without qualification , peculiar to humans , excellent , and best and most complete . Many interpreters agree that in X 6–8 Aristotle uses these along with other criteria to disqualify the life of amusement and rank one happy life above another.

There is considerable evidence that the hippocampal system contributes both to (1) the temporary maintenance of memories and to (2) the processing of a particular type of memory representation. The findings on amnesia suggest that these two distinguishing features of hippocampal memory processing are orthogonal. Together with anatomical and physiological data, the neuropsychological findings support a model of cortico-hippocampal interactions in which the temporal and representational properties of hippocampal memory processing are mediated separately. We propose that neocortical association areas maintain (...) shortterm memories for specific items and events prior to hippocampal processing as well as providing the final repositories of long-term memory. The parahippocampal region supports intermediate-term storage of individual items, and the hippocampal formation itself mediates an organization of memories according to relevant relationships among items. Hippocampal-cortical interactions produce (i) strong and persistent memories for events, including their constituent elements and the relationships among them, and (ii) a capacity to express memories flexibly across a wide range of circumstances. (shrink)

In this chapter I defend a methodological view about how we should conduct substantive ethical inquiries in the fields of normative and practical ethics. I maintain that the direct plausibility and implausibility of general ethical principles – once fully clarified and understood – should be foundational in our substantive ethical reasoning. I argue that, in order to expose our ethical intuitions about particular cases to maximal critical scrutiny, we must determine whether they can be justified by directly plausible principles. To (...) expose apparently plausible principles to maximal critical scrutiny, we must determine whether their direct plausibility can survive careful clarification of what they are really saying. This means that intuitions about cases are useful only in (a) suggesting principles that must stand on their own two feet, and (b) illustrating or otherwise helping us clarify what a principle is really saying. We should not reject principles that seem most directly plausible after we have fully clarified their content simply because they conflict with our intuitions about cases, because to do so is to side with uncritical prejudices over the teachings of critical scrutiny. (shrink)

It is a standard feature of modern philosophy, at least from Locke, to tie together the questions of how we perceive the world and what we have reason to think the world is like in itself. This is a natural connection, because the questions of how we perceive it, and what kind of conception of it we can best form on the basis of that mode of perception, are obviously intimately linked. Part I of this volume defends the sense-datum theory (...) of perception against its opponents, and argues that the sense-datum theory is much closer to a form of direct realism than is normally thought: we directly perceive the world in the form that it naturally manifests itself to creatures like us. This leaves open the question of what it is like in itself, and Part II tries to show that a Berkeleian interpretation—that the world is a nomological structure in the mind of God—is the most plausible option. Arguments with roots in Berkeley, in modern philosophers such as John Foster, and in modern science, are drawn on to support this conclusion. (shrink)

The New Zealand philosopher, Robert Nola (1940-2022), has died. He was a kind man, a good friend, and a fine philosopher. Here is how I remember him.

Care is widely thought to be a role virtue for health care professionals (HCPs). It is thought that in their professional capacity, HCPs should not only take care of their patients, but should also care for their patients. I argue against this thesis. First I show that the character trait of care causes serious problems both for caring HCPs and for cared-for patients. Then I show that benevolence plus caring action causes fewer and less serious problems. My surprising conclusion is (...) that care is a vice rather than a virtue for HCPs. In their professional capacity HCPs should not care for their patients. Instead HCPs should be benevolent and act in a caring manner toward their patients. Keywords: care, ethics, virtue CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This paper provides an account of reparations in general and then presents briefly one explanation of why many present day African Americans believe they are entitled to reparations from the U.S. Government.This explanation should not be seen as a final justification, but only as an indication why the demand for reparations for AfricanAmericans might be seen a plausible. Next, if it is reasonable to assume that reparations to African Americans are plausible, I then go onto explain why reparations might be (...) necessary to fill the breech that is perceived to exist between many African Americans and their government. This explanation will involve an examination of the relationship between three concepts: forgiveness, reconciliation, and reparations. Then I explore why an apology or reparations for slavery and Jim Crow might be necessary for reconciliation between many African Americans and their government. Finally, I examine the contention that the legislative process can be used to obtain an apology or reparations from the government. (shrink)

The incommensurability thesis is the thesis that the content of some alternative scientific theories is incomparable due to translation failure between the vocabulary the theories employ. This paper presents an overview of the main issues which have arisen in the debate about incommensurability. It also briefly outlines a response to the thesis based on a modified causal theory of reference which allows change of reference subsequent to initial baptism, as well as a role to description in the determination of reference. (...) On such a view. the content of theories may be compared on the basis of shared reference, despite failure of translation. Two recent developments involving the incomnensurability thesis are also examined: (i) the taxonomic version of the incomensurability thesis found in Kuhn’s later writings. (ii) Hoyningen-Huenc’s neo-Kantian interpretation of Kuhn’s metaphysics. (shrink)

In “Divine Freedom,” I argue that morally significant incompatibilist freedom is a great good. So God possesses morally incompatibilist freedom. So, God can do wrong or at least can do worse than the best action He can do. So, God is not essentially morally perfect. After careful consideration of numerous objections, I conclude that this argument is undefeated.