ABSTRACTEighteenth-century events, replete with Dickensian dualities, brought two Enlightenment families to America. Pierre-Samuel du Pont and Joseph Priestley contemplated relocating their families decades before immigrating. After arriving, they discovered deficiencies in education and chemistry. Their experiences were indicative of the challenges in transmitting transatlantic chemistry. The Priestleys were primed to found an American chemical legacy. Science connected Priestley to British manufacturers, Continental chemists, and American statesmen. Priestley's marriage into the Wilkinson ironmaster dynasty, and Lunar Society membership, helped his sons apprentice, (...) and befriend manufacturer-chemist Thomas Cooper. However, ideological persecution forced them from England. Priestley's plans for his sons to inherit Wilkinson's ironworks evaporated; in America, efforts to establish manufactories, colonies, farms, and a college miscarried. Cooper taught college chemistry, but his materialism provoked dismissals. The Du Ponts were unlikely founders of an industrial-chemistry empire. Du Pont's philosophy promulgated that agriculture, not industry, produced wealth. Eleuthère-Irénée apprenticed in France's gunpowder administration, however, plans for his succession died and director Antoine Lavoisier, a family friend, was executed. E.-I. and Du Pont's arrest precipitated relocation to America. Du Pont's utopian colony and schemes proved unrealistic. Nevertheless, E.-I.'s gunpowder manufactory—utilizing transatlantic contacts and privileged knowledge of advanced French chemistry—succeeded through practical application. (shrink)

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Most documented extinctions of vertebrates in the last 400 years have been island endemics. In this paper, we focus on the need to develop a historical framework to establish conservation priorities for insular faunas and, in particular, to test the validity of nominal endemics. We use the example of the islands of the North Pacific Coast of North America, a region that includes approximately one-half of all mammals endemic to North American islands north of Mexico. Few of these endemics have (...) been re-evaluated since their original descriptions, although many of these islands have been heavily impacted by habitat conversion, species introductions, over-exploitation, and secondary ripple effects. Evidence from molecular genetics and paleontology suggests that many taxa arrived in the region since the last glacial advance. Some of these nominal endemics show minimal differentiation, while others comprise multiple evolutionary lineages. The NPC may also have played an important role in the in situ diversification of some taxa during the Pleistocene. Evidence, such as new fossil discoveries and numerous described endemics, lends support for refugia hypotheses. However, these ideas cannot be tested until a better understanding of geographic variation and the evolutionary relationships of the fauna and flora of the North Pacific Coast is developed. This framework would provide significant insight into the dynamic biogeographic history of the region and help prioritize conservation efforts. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself. This interdisciplinary book - the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk - aims to better (...) understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain. Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter. This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers. (shrink)

To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals' responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: (1) patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation (within the limited range of our sample population) and (2) a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

The practice around informed consent in clinical medicine is both inconsistent and inadequate. Indeed, in busy, contemporary health care settings, getting informed consent looks little like the formal process developed over the past sixty years and presented in medical textbooks, journal articles, and academic lectures. In this article, members of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Collaborative on Ethics and Humanities review the conventional process of informed consent and its limitations, explore complementary and alternative approaches to doctor‐patient interactions, (...) and propose a new model of consent that integrates these approaches with each other and with clinical practice. The model assigns medical interventions to a consent continuum defined by the discrete categories of traditional informed consent, assent, and nondissent. Narrative descriptions and clinical exemplars are offered for each category. The authors invite colleagues from other disciplines and from the academic ethics community to provide feedback and commentary. (shrink)

The basic issues which this paper will be concerned with are: how has history been defined, what has been asked about history, and what sort of answers have been found. These questions may also be stated as: what is the nature of historical theory and how do different theories affect what may “be done” with history.

Self-knowledge is the focus of considerable attention from philosophers: Knowing Our Own Minds gives a much-needed overview of current work on the subject, bringing together new essays by leading figures. Knowledge of one's own sensations, desires, intentions, thoughts, beliefs, and other attitudes is characteristically different from other kinds of knowledge: it has greater immediacy, authority, and salience. The contributors examine philosophical questions raised by the distinctive character of self-knowledge, relating it to knowledge of other minds, to rationality and agency, externalist (...) theories of psychological content, and knowledge of language. Together these original, stimulating, and closely interlinked essays demonstrate the special relevance of self-knowledge to a broad range of issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

A new comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities • Recasts psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness • Shows that we have consciousness for a reason; it is humanity’s unique contribution to the cosmos • Integrates the work of Freud, Jung, Gurdjieff, Tony Robbins, Rudolf Steiner, the Dalai Lama as well as ESP, the Kabbalah, tarot, dreams, and kundalini yoga The culmination of 30 years of research, Where Does Mind End? takes you (...) on an inward journey through the psyche­--exploring the highest states of consciousness; the insights and theories of ancient and modern philosophers, psychologists, and mystics; the power of dreams, chi energy, tarot, and kundalini yoga; and proof of telepathy and other facets of parapsychology--to explain the mystery of consciousness and construct a comprehensive model of mind and its nearly infinite possibilities. Starting with the ancients and early philosophers such as Zoroaster, Aristotle, Descartes, and Leibniz, the author examines models of mind that take into account divine and teleological components, the problem and goal of self-understanding, the mind/body conundrum, and holographic paradigms. Seifer then moves to modern times to explain the full range of Freud’s psychoanalytic model of mind, exploring such ideas as the ego, superego, and id; the unconscious; creativity; and self-actualization. Using Freud’s psychoanalytical model as framework, he reveals an overarching theory of mind and consciousness that incorporates such diverse concepts as Jung’s collective psyche; ESP; the Kabbalah; Gurdjieff’s ideas on behaviorism and the will; the philosophies of Wilhelm Reich, P. D. Ouspensky, and Nikola Tesla; the personality redevelopment strategies of Tony Robbins; and the Dalai Lama’s and Rudolf Steiner’s ideas on the highest states of consciousness. Recasting psychology as a vehicle not for mental health but for higher consciousness, he shows that by casting off the mechanical mental operation of day-to-day life, we naturally attain the self-integration to which traditional psychology has long aspired. By entering the true path to fulfillment of the soul’s will, we help the planet by transforming ourselves and raising our energy to a higher realm. (shrink)

An important function of the self is to identify external objects that are potentially personally relevant. We suggest that such objects may be identified through mere ownership. Extant research suggests that encoding information in a self-relevant context enhances memory , thus an experiment was designed to test the impact of ownership on memory performance. Participants either moved or observed the movement of picture cards into two baskets; one of which belonged to self and one which belonged to another participant. A (...) subsequent recognition test revealed that there was a significant memory advantage for objects that were owned by self. Acting on items had no impact on memory. Results are discussed with reference to the importance of self-object associations in cognition. (shrink)

A. J. Ayer was one of the foremost analytical philosophers of the twentieth century, and was known as a brilliant and engaging speaker. In essays based on his influential Dewey Lectures, Ayer addresses some of the most critical and controversial questions in epistemology and the philosophy of science, examining the nature of inductive reasoning and grappling with the issues that most concerned him as a philosopher. This edition contains revised and expanded versions of the lectures and two additional essays. Ayer (...) begins by considering Hume's formulation of the problem of induction and then explores the inferences on which we base our beliefs in factual matters. In other essays, he defines the three kinds of probability that inform inductive reasoning and examines the various criteria for verifiability and falsifiability. In his extensive introduction, Graham Macdonald discusses the arguments in _Probability and Evidence_, how they relate to Ayer's other works, and their influence in contemporary philosophy. He also provides a brief biographical sketch of Ayer, and includes a bibliography of works about and in response to _Probability and Evidence_. (shrink)

The international community has adopted and endorsed an ambitious global development agenda for the period 2015–2030 in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 2 seeks to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. This reflects a broad international consensus on the unacceptability of hunger articulated previously at the 1996 World Food Summit and reiterated at the 2008 High-Level Conference on World Food Security. In 2009, at their L’Aquila Summit, the G8 heads of state and government (...) pledged a significant expansion of aid to agriculture, in order to address the global food-price spike of the preceding year. However, serious global policy incoherence severely undermines this apparent political will to end hunger and boost developing-country agriculture. In particular, although official development assistance to agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (hunger’s center of gravity) doubled between 2003 and 2012, the share of total global aid going to agriculture, at just 5% in 2014, is well below the 20% share of the mid-1980s. In addition, donor-country agricultural trade and security policies often undercut support for agricultural development in the Global South. Furthermore, there is incoherence within donor policies on aid to agriculture, which tend to focus more on promoting commercialization and exports than on boosting smallholder productivity and the economic empowerment of women farmers. For their part, developing-country governments have not fulfilled pledges to increase their own agricultural development budgets (as seen in the African Union Declarations of Maputo and Malabo), and the bulk of those budgets go to recurrent expenditure rather than development investments. In Sub-Saharan Africa, military expenditures account for a greater share of public funds. This paper suggests that while policy makers in both the Global South and North treat food security and agricultural development as priorities, these remain in a relatively low position on policy agendas because other concerns respond to much stronger constituencies. (shrink)

The paper analyses the impact of the discovery of the division of infusoria on eighteenth century microscopical iconography. In Autumn 1765, when reproducing the antispontaneist experiments of Lazzaro Spallanzani, Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1740-1799) discovered a new method of generation of the animalcules of the infusions, namely their division. Drawing a dividing animalcule raised particular problems, notably the question of how to depict the time sequence of a microscopical creature. Although Saussure's journal of microscopical experiments remained unpublished, the discovery was soon (...) diffused and acknowledged by the European naturalists who began to repeat the observations and quickly faced iconographic problems similar to those experienced by Saussure. Indeed, linearity, used to picture time, is a construction, and, notably for public images, scholars had to contend with the conventions of drawers and engravers. The analysis of microscopical iconographic material of the period 1740-1786 shows that during this period, certain naturalists invented new solutions for depicting time, but diffusion of their innovations was not immediate. Nevertheless, in regards to the illustration of microscopical creatures, it is between 1765 and 1776 that the use of linearity was established as a solution enabling an audience to read an iconographic time process as a text. (shrink)

The first comprehensive treatment of the relationship between biblical interpretation and Christian ethics.

The increasing availability of brain data within and outside the biomedical field, combined with the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to brain data analysis, poses a challenge for ethics and governance. We identify distinctive ethical implications of brain data acquisition and processing, and outline a multi-level governance framework. This framework is aimed at maximizing the benefits of facilitated brain data collection and further processing for science and medicine whilst minimizing risks and preventing harmful use. The framework consists of four primary (...) areas of regulatory intervention: binding regulation, ethics and soft law, responsible innovation, and human rights. (shrink)

De 1950 à 1955, le psychologue et épistémologue suisse Jean Piaget s’attelle à la création d’un nouveau lieu de savoir à Genève, le Centre International d’Épistémologie Génétique. Ce Centre fait aboutir un projet de jeunesse de Piaget, dont les fondements théoriques sont donnés dans son ouvrage de 1950 en trois volumes, l’Introduction à l’épistémologie génétique. Mais il y a loin de la théorie à la réalisation pratique. Pour cela, pris dans un mouvement allant de Genève vers l’étranger, dès 1952, Piaget (...) voyage dans toute l’Europe tant pour y présenter ses travaux et son projet que pour se lier avec de nombreux savants de toutes disciplines. Lors de ces voyages, il explore de nombreux modèles de centres et de regroupements d’acteurs en philosophie des sciences, sciences humaines et épistémologie, à Paris, Zurich, Manchester, Milan, Oslo, Amsterdam, Bruxelles et ailleurs. Quatre axes géographiques vont devenir déterminants pour fournir les principaux contingents d’acteurs qui interviendront au Centre durant sa première décennie. Piaget a également pris soin de s’assurer le soutien financier de la Fondation Rockefeller à New York, d’une part pour ses premières explorations et d’autre part pour l’ouverture du Centre en octobre 1955. L’article examine ainsi les conditions de création d’un lieu du savoir durant les premiers temps de la guerre froide dans ses relations avec les circulations scientifiques, et la genèse d’une nouvelle centralité valide pour l’épistémologie mise en pratique comme discipline scientifique. (shrink)

De 1950 à 1955, le psychologue et épistémologue suisse Jean Piaget s’attelle à la création d’un nouveau lieu de savoir à Genève, le Centre International d’Épistémologie Génétique. Ce Centre fait aboutir un projet de jeunesse de Piaget, dont les fondements théoriques sont donnés dans son ouvrage de 1950 en trois volumes, l’Introduction à l’épistémologie génétique. Mais il y a loin de la théorie à la réalisation pratique. Pour cela, pris dans un mouvement allant de Genève vers l’étranger, dès 1952, Piaget (...) voyage dans toute l’Europe tant pour y présenter ses travaux et son projet que pour se lier avec de nombreux savants de toutes disciplines. Lors de ces voyages, il explore de nombreux modèles de centres et de regroupements d’acteurs en philosophie des sciences, sciences humaines et épistémologie, à Paris, Zurich, Manchester, Milan, Oslo, Amsterdam, Bruxelles et ailleurs. Quatre axes géographiques vont devenir déterminants (Paris, Manchester, Bruxelles, Amsterdam) pour fournir les principaux contingents d’acteurs qui interviendront au Centre durant sa première décennie. Piaget a également pris soin de s’assurer le soutien financier de la Fondation Rockefeller à New York, d’une part pour ses premières explorations et d’autre part pour l’ouverture du Centre en octobre 1955. L’article examine ainsi les conditions de création d’un lieu du savoir durant les premiers temps de la guerre froide dans ses relations avec les circulations scientifiques, et la genèse d’une nouvelle centralité valide pour l’épistémologie mise en pratique comme discipline scientifique. (shrink)

How do humans discover causal relations when the effect is not immediately observable? Previous experiments have uniformly demonstrated detrimental effects of outcome delays on causal induction. These findings seem to conflict with everyday causal cognition, where humans can apparently identify long-term causal relations with relative ease. Three experiments investigated whether the influence of delay on adult human causal judgements is mediated by experimentally induced assumptions about the timeframe of the causal relation in question, as suggested by Einhorn and Hogarth (1986). (...) Causal judgements generally decreased when a delay separated cause and effect. This decrease was less pronounced when the thematic context of the causal relation induced participants to expect a delay. Experiment 3 ruled out an alternative explanation of the effect based on variations of cue and outcome saliencies, and showed that detrimental effects of delay are reduced even more when instructions explicitly mentioned the timeframe of the causal relation in question. Knowledge thus mediates the impact of delay on human causal judgement. Implications for contemporary theories of human causal induction are discussed. (shrink)

"The philosophical works of A. J. Ayer": p. [334]-341. Bibliography: p. [343]-346. Includes indexes.