IntroductionThere is a paucity of clinical guidelines for the routine assessment of maladaptive reproductive grief reactions in outpatient primary care and OB-GYN settings in the United States. Because of the disenfranchised nature of perinatal grief reactions, many clinicians may be apt to miss or dismiss a grief reaction that was not identified in the perinatal period. A significant number of those experiencing a reproductive loss exhibit signs of anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Reproductive losses are typically screened for and (...) recorded numerically as part of a woman’s well-visit intake, yet this process often fails to identify patients emotionally troubled by a prior pregnancy loss.Materials and MethodsA summative content analysis of 164 recent website blogs from female participants who self-reported having experienced a miscarriage or abortion in their lifetime was conducted. The narratives were reviewed for details regarding the time span between the pregnancy loss and the composition of the blog post. The stories were analyzed for subsequent relationship problems and detrimental mental health conditions. Maladaptive reactions were contrasted for those that indicated a greater than 12 months’ time-lapse and those who had not.ResultsMore than a third of the women reported in the narrative that at least one year or more had passed since experiencing the miscarriage or abortion. For those women, the median time span between the loss and composing the blog was 4 years with a range of 47 years. Mental health conditions attributed to the reproductive loss by those who reported longer bereavement times included subsequent relationship problems, substance misuse, depression, suicidal ideation, and PTSD. The percent of reported maladaptive issues was more than double for those who reported that a year or more had passed since the loss of the pregnancy.DiscussionGrief reactions following the loss of a pregnancy may be prolonged or delayed for several months which can contribute to adverse biopsychosocial outcomes. Recognition and treatment of maladaptive grief reactions following a pregnancy loss are critical. Screening methods should be enhanced for clinicians in medical office settings to help identify and expedite the appropriate mental health assistance. (shrink)

Sensorimotor learning refers to improvements that occur through practice in the performance of sensory-guided motor behaviors. Leveraging novel technical capabilities of an immersive virtual environment, we probed the component kinematic processes that mediate sensorimotor learning. Twenty naïve subjects performed a simulated marksmanship task modeled after Olympic Trap Shooting standards. We measured movement kinematics and shooting performance as participants practiced 350 trials while receiving trial-by-trial feedback about shooting success. Spatiotemporal analysis of motion tracking elucidated the ballistic and refinement phases of hand (...) movements. We found systematic changes in movement kinematics that accompanied improvements in shot accuracy during training, though reaction and response times did not change over blocks. In particular, we observed longer, slower, and more precise ballistic movements that replaced effort spent on corrections and refinement. Collectively, these results leverage developments in immersive virtual reality technology to quantify and compare the kinematics of movement during early learning of full-body sensorimotor orienting. (shrink)

In the emergent field of creative practice higher degrees by research, first generation supervisors have developed new models of supervision for an unprecedented form of research, which combines creative practice and a written thesis. In a national research project, entitled ‘Effective supervision of creative practice higher research degrees’, we set out to capture and share early supervisors’ insights, strategies and approaches to supporting their creative practice PhD students. From the insights we gained during the early interview process, we (...) expanded our research methods in line with a distributed leadership model and developed a dialogic framework. This led us to unanticipated conclusions and unexpected recommendations. In this study, we primarily draw on philosopher and literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogics to explain how giving precedence to the voices of supervisors not only facilitated the articulation of dispersed tacit knowledge, but also led to other discoveries. These include the nature of supervisors’ resistance to prescribed models, policies and central academic development programmes; the importance of polyvocality and responsive dialogue in enabling continued innovation in the field; the benefits to supervisors of reflecting, discussing and sharing practices with colleagues; and the value of distributed leadership and dialogue to academic development and supervision capacity building in research education. (shrink)

Although it is well documented that language plays an important role in cognitive development, there are different views concerning the mechanisms underlying these effects. Some argue that even early in development, effects of words stem from top‐down knowledge, whereas others argue that these effects stem from auditory input affecting attention allocated to visual input. Previous research (e.g., Robinson & Sloutsky, 2004a) demonstrated that non‐speech sounds attenuate processing of corresponding visual input at 8, 12, and 16 months of age, whereas (...) the current study demonstrates that words attenuate visual processing at 10 months but not at 16 months (Experiment 1). Furthermore, prefamiliarization with non‐speech sounds (Experiment 2) resulted in able processing of visual input by 16‐month‐olds. These findings suggest that some effects of labels found early in development may stem from familiarity with human speech. The possibility of general‐auditory factors underlying the effects of words on cognitive development is discussed. (shrink)

This article provides a critical comparative analysis of the substantive and procedural values and ethical concepts articulated in guidelines for allocating scarce resources in the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified 21 local and national guidelines written in English, Spanish, German and French; applicable to specific and identifiable jurisdictions; and providing guidance to clinicians for decision making when allocating critical care resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. US guidelines were not included, as these had recently been reviewed elsewhere. Information was extracted from each (...) guideline on: 1) the development process; 2) the presence and nature of ethical, medical and social criteria for allocating critical care resources; and 3) the membership of and decision-making procedure of any triage committees. Results of our analysis show the majority appealed primarily to consequentialist reasoning in making allocation decisions, tempered by a largely pluralistic approach to other substantive and procedural values and ethical concepts. Medical and social criteria included medical need, co-morbidities, prognosis, age, disability and other factors, with a focus on seemingly objective medical criteria. There was little or no guidance on how to reconcile competing criteria, and little attention to internal contradictions within individual guidelines. Our analysis reveals the challenges in developing sound ethical guidance for allocating scarce medical resources, highlighting problems in operationalising ethical concepts and principles, divergence between guidelines, unresolved contradictions within the same guideline, and use of naïve objectivism in employing widely used medical criteria for allocating ICU resources. (shrink)

Two opposing accounts of early language evolution, the compositional and the holistic, have become the subject of lively debate. It has been argued that an evolving compositional protolanguage would not be useful for communication until it reached a certain level of grammatical complexity. This paper offers a new, discourse-oriented perspective on the debate. It argues that discourse should be viewed, not as a level of language structure ‘beyond the sentence’, but as sequenced communicative behaviour, typically but not uniquely involving (...) language. This provides for continuity from exchanges making use of simple communicative resources such as single words and gestures to those making use of complex grammatical conventions. Supporting evidence comes from child language and from original experiments with adults using constrained language systems. The paper shows that the utility of emerging compositional language is not dependent on some critical level of complexity, and so defends the compositional account. (shrink)

In early policy work, climate engineering is often described as a global public good. This paper argues that the paradigm example of geoengineering—stratospheric sulfate injection (hereafter ‘SSI’)—does not fit the canonical technical definition of a global public good, and that more relaxed versions are unhelpful. More importantly, it claims that, regardless of the technicalities, the public good framing is seriously misleading, in part because it arbitrarily marginalizes ethical concerns. Both points suggest that more clarity is needed about the aims (...) of geoengineering policy—and especially governance—and that this requires special attention to ethics. (shrink)

Ever since Mary Astell was introduced as the “First English Feminist” in 1986, scholars have been perplexed by her dual commitments to natural equality and social, political, and ecclesiastical hierarchy. But any supposed “paradox” in her thought is the product of a modernist conceit that treats equality and hierarchy as antonyms, assuming the former must be prior, normative, and hostile to the latter. Seeing this, two other crucial features of Astell’s thought emerge: her ethics of ascent and her psychology of (...) superiority. These, in turn, illuminate her lifelong fascination with ambition as a feminine virtue, as well as her curious embrace of Machiavelli. Astell’s politics and ethics are thus doubly worthy of recovery, both as the product of a singularly brilliant early modern mind and as a fascinating but forgotten vision of “equality before egalitarianism” that sheds light on the persistent complexities of equality and hierarchy to this day. (shrink)

Alvin Goldman's early work in action theory and theory of knowledge was a major influence on my own thinking and writing about emotions. For that reason and others, it was a very happy moment in my professional life when I learned, in 1988, that in his presidential address to the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Goldman endorsed and defended the “simulation” theory I had put forward in a 1986 article. I discovered afterward that we share a strong conviction that (...) empirical evidence is relevant to a full assessment of the theory. We both find the burgeoning evidence from cognitive neuroscience to be of particular interest, I believe, in part because it makes possible a major departure for the philosophy of mind: turning its attention from " the neural basis of mental states, " to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sexual Difference as Model: An Ethics for the Global FutureGail SchwabIn Éthique de la différence sexuelle (1984), Luce Irigaray targeted language and love—for her, inseparable from each other—as the two areas of focus for the elaboration of an ethics of sexual difference. The heterosexual couple seemed to have taken on a new, and somehow inappropriately central, importance in Irigaray’s thought in the early eighties; however, the projected mutations (...) in language and love theorized in Éthique did not exclusively concern the heterosexual relationship, even though many readers of Irigaray expressed just such reservations about the book. Éthique foregrounded the couple in the love relationship in order to rethink the philosophical basis of ethics in general, to develop new paradigms, beyond or outside of Western totalizing phallo- and logocentrism, for human relations—not only relations between women and men, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, relations among women and relations among men. Irigaray carried on this project in subsequent works, in Sexes et parentés (1987), which as the title explicitly indicates, opens up the ethical debate to familial and genealogical issues and broadens her focus to include children and the ethical basis of their relationships to parents and more generally to adults of both sexes, and in Sexes et genres à travers les langues (1990), a cross-cultural report on her empirical studies of gender differences in language usage, which sheds new light on the linguistic and communicational issues she had presented in Éthique and even before, in several seldom read and even more rarely analyzed works of the late seventies and early eighties. J’aime à toi (I Love to You) (1992) returns specifically to the more traditionally philosophical approach to the problems of language and love and their intertwining, and carries on the work projected in Éthique, but it goes much further in both the theoretical and the practical development of the concept of sexual difference as the foundation for a new ethics, a new culture of universal validity. J’aime à toi can be read as a follow-up to Éthique and as a founding text for the construction of an ethics of difference modeled on sexual difference, an ethics for the future of humanity in all of its diversity.Western Feminism and the Global FutureIrigaray is very much aware of the limits of the various Western political and academic feminisms, of the need to broaden their scope, both horizontally across cultures and vertically within specific cultures, before they can serve as the basis for a new ethics. Irigaray expresses the concern that Western feminists, rather than represent the exploited women of the world, may exploit them ideologically for their own personal or political purposes, at the risk of preventing them from coming to a feminism of their own making, appropriate to their own cultures and historical moments. “Certain women do implement power strategies—including the power of the media—but not solely for the benefit of the exploited women they use as an alibi. They thus run the risk of clouding the issues and [End Page 76] preventing their consciousness from being raised” [Irigaray, J’aime à toi 15]. 1 Irigaray calls this “egological” feminism (Dare I invent a new term here? Now we have “egofeminists” as well as “ecofeminists”...) and demonstrates its totally undemocratic orientation, despite its representative claims.Certain militants..., practicing direct democracy or an egological feminism, based on their own real, or imagined, needs and desires, rather than on those of all women, leave women subject to existing legislation. Indifferent to the rights necessary for all women—including the little girls of the present and the future, and the women of other cultures—they make decisions that perpetuate, and even aggravate, through unnecessary misunderstandings, the injustices done the female gender.[J’aime à toi 13]As a feminist, in general, it always pains me to read criticisms of feminism, even cogent and theoretically valid criticisms, and I am even now painfully aware of the political dangers of criticizing feminism myself in a public forum such as this one. However, if I have managed to learn anything from the works of Western feminists of color and from Third World feminists, it is... (shrink)

Abstract. The concept of human uniqueness has long played a central role within key interpretations of the hominid fossil record and within numerous theological understandings of the imago Dei. More recently, the status of humans as evolutionarily unique has come under strong criticism owing to the discovery of certain nonhuman hominids who, as language and culture-bearing beings, lived as contemporaries with early anatomically modern humans. Nevertheless, many scholars, including those in the field of religion and science, continue to interpret (...) the remains of these other hominids in light of empirically ungrounded implicit assumptions about human uniqueness, which the author calls “anthropocentrism of the gaps.” This paper argues that “anthropocentrism of the gaps” is philosophically unwarranted and thus should not be assumed by scholars in religion and science when evaluating contemporary findings in paleoanthropology. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies has been and continues to be enormously influential in the physiology, psychology, and philosophy of perception. In simple terms, the Doctrine states that we directly perceive in the first instance the activity of our nerves, rather than properties in the external world. The canonical early statement of the Doctrine by the physiologist Johannes Peter Müller had profound influence on both the phi- losophy and psychology of the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially (...) as reformulated and transmitted by Müller’s student Helmholtz. A common assumption of historical and ongoing debate about the Doctrine has been its supposedly idealist or skeptical implications. What is not commonly recognized is that Müller himself ad- vanced a realist interpretation along lines that would be recognized today as a form of epistemic structural realism. This paper analyzes Müller’s structuralist epistemology in detail and reconstructs his articulation and defense of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies in its canonical form. Part II argues for the continued im- portance of the Doctrine and its structuralist interpretation for contemporary psychology, philosophy of per- ception, and history of philosophy of science. (shrink)

An article by F. Ochieng'-Odhiambo asserted that Prof. H. Odera Oruka's work on "philosophic sagacity" in Kenya could be divided into three periods, beginning with an early period denouncing ethnophilosophy and ending with a later period which embraced and engaged in ethnophilosophy. This article says that such a characterization is inaccurate, because Odera Oruka continued to distinguish sage philosophy from ethnophilosophy in several key ways, even in his later work. While pointing out Odera Oruka's changing positions is a service (...) to scholars, Ochieng'-Odhiambo implicitly champions the early work at the expense of the latter. This article argues that folk sages were added to the later stages of the sage philosophy project with good reason, and that the project as it developed provided insights on ethical and socio-political issues as well as identity issues facing Kenyans. (shrink)

AI has become the poster child for a certain kind of thinking which holds that some technologies can become objective, independent and emergent entities which can evolve beyond the control of their creators. This thinking is not new however. It is a product of certain philosophical ideas such as materialism, a common-sense world of objective and independent objects, a correspondence theory of truth, and so forth, which are centered around the pre-eminence of science, epistemology, and logical reasoning, among others, as (...) the supremely valid modes of engaging experience. This paper aims to critically examine the synthesis of the development program for AI to be found in the writings of computer scientist John McCarthy (1927–2011). McCarthy has been called one of the founding fathers of AI. First, some of the main themes which recur in his writings from as early as the mid nineteen fifties in the Dartmouth proposal, up to his late writings, are considered. A discussion of the goals that such a program implies, follows, in terms of society’s relation with AI based technology and the nature and purpose of AI itself. These implications are arguably related to social control and are also moral. Ultimately, McCarthy’s idea that AI is and can be built upon a paradigm of reasoning and logic so as to simulate a perfectly rational abstraction of human thinking is shown to be motivated by his view that AI systems should be controlled, as servants. This understanding of human thinking is questionable, however, given current research on human irrationality, as well as on the argumentative role of reasoning. And yet, the process of development toward the unachievable goal of controllable, rational, logical AI systems, has handily come to serve as a blind for increasing techno-corporate control of society, with techno-corporate interests displacing blame for devaluations and harms caused by their push to develop the technology to AI systems which they can conveniently ‘lose control of.’. (shrink)

We examine the interdependence between individual and group behavior surrounding a somewhat arbitrary, real‐world decision: selecting a name for one’s child. Using a historical database of the names given to children over the last century in the United States, we find that naming choices are influenced by both the frequency of a name in the general population, and by its ‘‘momentum’’ in the recent past in the sense that names which are growing in popularity are preferentially chosen. This bias toward (...) rising names is a recent phenomena: In the early part of the 20th century, increasing popularity of a name from one time period to the next correlated with a decrease in future popularity. However, more recently this trend has reversed. We evaluate a number of formal models that detail how individual decision‐making strategies, played out in a large population of interacting agents, can explain these empirical observations. We argue that cognitive capacities for change detection, the encoding of frequency in memory, and biases toward novel or incongruous stimuli may interact with the behavior of other decision makers to determine the distribution and dynamics of cultural tokens such as names. (shrink)

Is it possible for children with autism to live a good life, to flourish? Surprisingly, the answer is yes, given a particular understanding of flourishing. Our project is to explain the conception of flourishing that we have in mind and explain how children with autism may come to flourish.Instead of constructing an account of a good life from the ground up for this project, Aristotle’s conception of a good life, of human flourishing, will be used. Using Aristotle’s paradigm of a (...) good life, the initial prognosis for children with autism flourishing is very poor. But this prognosis is made in the absence of children with autism receiving early intensive behavioral intervention using the science... (shrink)

Although the first human embryonic stem cells were produced in 1998, the direction of U.S. policy on stem cell research was set nearly 20 years earlier when the recommendations of a congressionally established Ethics Advisory Board were ignored by the Reagan administration. Thus began an unprecedented and unparalleled 30-year-long history of political intrusions in an area of scientific and biomedical research that has measurable impacts on the health of Americans. Driving these intrusions were religiously informed public policy positions that have (...) usually escaped critical ethical analysis. Here I record my own encounters with this history of intrusions and the thinking behind them.My most abrupt encounter with the politics of stem cell research occurred on September 6, 2006, at a hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Related Agencies, chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. Just a week before, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, a small Massachusetts biotech company, had published a paper in the journal Nature in which they described a method for extracting stem cells from early human embryos while leaving the embryos intact and viable. As head of ACT’s Ethics Advisory Board, I had supported this research. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to our understanding of scientific theory pursuit by providing a detailed case study on the development of early quantum theory, from roughly 1900 to 1916. I first elaborate on why this case should be considered an instance of piecemeal pursuit by presenting the historical quantum conjectures that were being used in different contexts. These conjectures gave varied interpretations of quantization. By comparing these conjectures, I identify a general quantum postulate that captures (...) the underlying assumption common to all the cases. I argue that it is possible to consider a general postulate about quantization even when its proper application is ambiguous in a given context, and that the postulate can be separated from different elements of the framework being used to investigate it. I show that the quantum postulate can be deemed promising by analysing the support it gains using a Bayesian framework. I first defend the use of such a framework by considering the purported inconsistencies in Planck's introduction of his quantum conjecture and how we should handle these. I then explicate two cases of support for the postulate. First, I show how we can use a particular solution to the Bayesian problem of old evidence to interpret the support the quantum postulate received by accounting for phenomena that had no previous explanation. Finally, I show that the quantum postulate is also supported by a unification argument, where unification is interpreted as informational relevance between the different domains of inquiry. (shrink)

Successful preimplantation genetic diagnosis to avoid creating a child affected by a genetically-based disorder was reported in 1989. Since then PGD has been used to biopsy and analyze embryos created through in viuo fertilization to avoid transferring to the mother’s uterus an embryo affected by a mutation or chromosomal abnormality associated with serious illness. PGD to avoid serious and early-onset illness in the child-to-be is widely accepted. PGD prevents gestation of an affected embryo and reduces the chance that the (...) parents will be faced with a difficult decision of whether to terminate the pregnancy. More controversial have been PGD to select the sex of the child-to-be for “family balancing”, PGD for mere susceptibility to disease and for late-onset disorders such as Alzheimer diseas, and most controversially, PGD to create a donor child who is Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA-matched with a preexisting sibling in need of stem cell transplant. (shrink)

The first brief description is given of a project aimed at searching for the neural correlates of consciousness through computer simulation. The underlying model is based on the known circuitry of the mammalian nervous system, the neuronal groups of which are approximated as binary composite units. The simulated nervous system includes just two senses - hearing and touch - and it drives a set of muscles that serve vocalisation, feeding and bladder control. These functions were chosen because of their relevance (...) to the earliest stages of human life, and the simulation has been given the name CyberChild. The system's pain receptors respond to a sufficiently low milk level in the stomach, if there is simultaneously a low level of blood sugar, and also to a full bladder and an unchanged diaper. It is believed that it may be possible to infer the presence of consciousness in the simulation through observations of CyberChild's behaviour, and from the monitoring of its ability to ontogenetically acquire novel reflexes. The author has suggested that this ability is the crucial evolutionary advantage of possessing consciousness. The project is still in its very early stages, and although no suggestion of consciousness has yet emerged, there appears to be no fundamental reason why consciousness could not ultimately develop and be observed. (shrink)

This essay, the last in a series, focuses on the relationship between Nietzsche’s mental illness and his philosophical art. It is predicated upon my original diagnosis of his mental condition as bipolar affective disorder, which began in early adulthood and continued throughout his creative life. The kaleidoscopic mood shifts allowed him to see things from different perspectives and may have imbued his writings with passion rarely encountered in philosophical texts. At times hovering on the verge of psychosis, Nietzsche was (...) able to gain access to unconscious images and the music of language, usually inhibited by the conscious mind. He reached many of his linguistic, psychological and philosophical insights by willing suspension of the rational. None of these, however, could have been communicated had he not tamed the subterranean psychic forces with his impressive discipline and hard work. (shrink)

Although there has been consistent interest in Marx and Marxism there has been little sustained interest in the origins of Marx’s ethical thought and his relation to the German philosophical tradition as a whole. Work has been done linking Marx to Fichte, and a great deal more linking him to Hegel. However, the fundamental concept joining them all is recognition, or interpersonal relations in general. In this regard, none of the German thinkers can be understood withoutfirst grasping their understanding of (...) the human person as one among many. This article begins this process for Marx. Although some literature has been devotedto the explication of Marx’s notion of species-being it is sparse and dated. In this article I proceed to reiterate how important species-being is as the foundationto Marx’s ethical philosophy. However, my main focus is on simply how to understand the concept itself. I, therefore, devote the majority of the article to ananalysis of Marx’s use of the concept in his early work as well as his critique of Ludwig Feuerbach’s use of it. This account provides the basis for understandingMarx’s concept of human essence and is the beginning of a project of rephrasing Marxian ethics around the concept of recognition thus reconnecting him to theGerman philosophical tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Visions of Damietta:St. Francis, Robert Grosseteste, and the Crusades, 1219–1253Rosamund M. Gammie (bio)A peculiar and under-explored event in Robert Grosseteste's (d. 1253) life is that of his supposed dream-vision in 1249, reported posthumously and in only one source, the Lanercost chronicle.1 The vision foreshadows the loss of Damietta in Egypt the following year, during the Seventh Crusade (1249–54) under the leadership of Louis IX. The parallels to St. Francis's (...) vision at Damietta in 1219 during the Fifth Crusade (1215–21) are immediately noticeable yet the vision has remained largely dismissed as an afterthought in the scholarship of Grosseteste. Considering that Grosseteste wrote, in 1236, what has been described by Michael Lower as "surely the best defence of the cross petition a crusader ever had," in addition to his association with the Franciscans and his relationship with Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III and nephew of celebrated crusader Richard I and a (if not the) principal leader of the Baron's Crusade, it is surprising that there is no fuller account of his support for the movement; rather there are piecemeal references to certain acts of interference such as that noted by Lower.2 This paper seeks to establish Grosseteste's position on the crusades, in light of a thoroughly Franciscan influence, beginning with Damietta. [End Page 141]Robert Grosseteste and the FranciscansMuch has been written about the relationship between Robert Grosseteste and the early Franciscan movement in England.3 As Giles Gasper writes in a recent study of Grosseteste and the Franciscan school at Oxford, "Robert Grosseteste is well-known for his support for the Franciscan order, and his warm relations with many brothers of the English province."4 James McEvoy concludes in his examination of Grosseteste's affinity with the nascent movement that "there can be no doubt that Grosseteste was well acquainted with the personality and ideals of St. Francis, the circumstance of the Franciscans' foundation, and the nature of their vocation."5 Grosseteste's Letters are full of admiration for the Franciscans and involvement in their affairs, so much so that a clear and uncompromisingly affectionate relationship can be traced during the bishop's lifetime. Indeed, Grosseteste, in Letter 41, ca. 13 March, 1236, declares to Elias of Cortona, third minister of the Franciscan Order, that "there are no assistants I know of … so effective as your friars."6 The Friars themselves reciprocated their love for Grosseteste; the same letter states, "your sons, the Friars Minor in England, out of kindness in a special way embrace me tightly with arms of love." A letter from 1238 (Letter 58) to Pope Gregory IX asks for help in preserving the reputation of the Brothers, who "illuminate our whole land with the brilliant light of their preaching and teaching" with the warning that "the glory of such an important religious order will vanish and the masses will be scandalized in them."7 [End Page 142]The Dominican Brother Hubert perhaps best expresses the affection between the religious orders and Grosseteste, writing the celebratory Life of Grosseteste shortly after the bishop's death in 1253.8 According to Brother Hubert, Grosseteste was the "father and guardian" of both orders, whose presence "pleased him, as did their / Arrival, their multitude, and frequent conversation," and that just "as a mother to her new-born, he fostered, loved / Protected, fed, and valued them."9 Gasper continues, "English Franciscan historiography leaves no doubt as to the high esteem in which the order held Grosseteste from the mid-13th century onwards, honored in particular for his teaching and learning."10 Chosen personally by Agnellus of Pisa to teach the first Franciscans at Oxford, his influence cannot be underestimated. Indeed, there were Franciscan (and Dominican) contributions to the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to canonize the bishop; a ten-lined letter from Nicholas, guardian of the Greyfriars at Lincoln, penned on 26 June, 1289, extolls the exemplary actions of the bishop.11The relationship between Grosseteste and this first generation of Franciscans was one of mutual respect and love. What is harder to trace is Grosseteste's appreciation of St. Francis himself. When Servus Gieben asks... (shrink)

A vital step to successfully orienting Deleuze with biosemiotics (and theories of biological complexity overall) is to discover a coherent scientific throughline in his work that also accounts for the aesthetic/creative dimension of his philosophy. This requires the heterodox move (from a Deleuzean point of view) of giving priority to the organism. I argue that Deleuze’s treatment of the organism does more than signal a superficial relation to biological complexity theory that, as a result of his nuanced take on the (...) matter, undermines the value of the organic body to his system. Instead, we can recognize a working theory of autopoiesis in the early Deleuze that scaffolds as well as substantiates his later ethological and biosemiotic observations and reveals a definite, albeit minimal, notion of subjectivity in his work. Most importantly, reorienting his logic of sense as a logic of sense-making, or the context-dependent signification between system and environment (Thompson, 2007), allows us to begin the work of mining a scientific throughline in Deleuze’s work akin to biological complexity theory that is of value to both Deleuze studies and biosemiotics. (shrink)

Introduction: Early recognition of prediabetes may prevent progression to diabetes, yet not all adults are aware of their prediabetes risk. To reach all adults unaware of their risk, additional risk assessment strategies are warranted. Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential scope of benefit from prediabetes risk assessment in the dental care setting and to identify characteristics of dental patients likely to unknowingly have prediabetes or diabetes. Methods: Data from 10,472 adults in the National Health (...) and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2013 to 2014 and 2015 to 2016 were analyzed for associations among prediabetes/diabetes risk factors, health care use, and hemoglobin A1C levels according to chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression. Results: A total of 7.73% of US adults had seen a dentist but not a medical provider in the past 12 mo. The composition of this subpopulation was significantly different from that who saw a medical provider, in ways that might affect their diabetes risk. In addition, 31.27% of this subpopulation would be identified as being at high risk for prediabetes according to the CDC Prediabetes Screening Test, and 15.83% had hemoglobin A1C levels indicative of undiagnosed prediabetes or diabetes. Screening in a dental setting would have the highest odds of identifying someone unaware of his or her diabetes risk among those who were non-White, obese, or ≥45 y old. Conclusion: Extrapolation from this analysis indicates that screening for prediabetes at dental visits has the potential to alert an estimated 22.36 million adults of their risk for prediabetes or diabetes. Incorporating prediabetes or diabetes risk assessment into routine dental visits may enable 1) those with prediabetes to take action to decrease their risk of developing diabetes and 2) those with diabetes to engage in treatment to decrease their risk of diabetes-related complications. Knowledge Transfer Statement: Screening for prediabetes and diabetes during dental visits has the potential to raise patients’ awareness of diabetes risk and prevent prediabetes from progressing to diabetes. For some patients, the dental visit may be the only point of contact with the health care system, which heightens the importance of including diabetes risk assessment for patient well-being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imagined Apotheoses: Drake, Harriot, and Ralegh in the AmericasWilliam M. HamlinPerhaps the two best known stories of Europeans being taken for gods by non-European peoples are those of Hernan Cortés in Mexico and Captain James Cook in Hawaii. Separated by two hundred sixty years, five thousand miles, and vast differences in cultural and linguistic context, these two incidents nonetheless share many traits in the conventional telling. Cortés and Cook (...) were both strong leaders, for instance, both capable of inspiring devotion among their subordinates. Both men became amateur ethnographers during their lengthy sojourns away from Europe, both sought to promote an image of respectful rather than rapacious foreign incursion, and both are said to have been taken for returning gods by the native peoples among whom they landed: Cortés for the Toltec culture-hero and demigod Quetzalcoatl, Cook for the Hawaiian deity Lono. Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 1.“The Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson. Courtesy of Chronicle Features, San Francisco.Recent scholarly studies and debates—among them the rather strident dispute between Gananath Obeyesekere and Marshall Sahlins over the alleged deification of Cook by eighteenth-century Hawaiians—have opened up these returning-god theories to skeptical critique and detailed justification; but such discussions have had little, if any, impact on popular imagination. 1 [End Page 405] Indeed, the idea that redoubtable European explorers can be (and often are) perceived as supernatural beings by non-European “primitives” has been uncritically perpetuated to this day by filmmakers, fantasists, writers of popular history, and purveyors of cultural literacy. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., for instance, informs our children that Caribbean islanders encountered by Columbus “asked if he had come from heaven”—the implication being, of course, that they took him for a god. 2 And in the recent film, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, we hear the indefatigable Admiral (played by Gerard Depardieu) claim that “on every island the natives welcome us with great generosity and trust.... Because of our appearance, we have been mistaken for gods, and are treated accordingly.” 3 Fortunately, we also have a “Far Side” parody of the cultural conceit on which such ideas in part rely, but the cartoon serves as well to demonstrate just how thoroughly the conceit has permeated our collective awareness (see figure 1). 4 Click for larger view View full resolutionFigure 2.“It’s against my programming to impersonate a deity.” From The Return of the Jedi, dir. Richard Marquand, Lucasfilm, Ltd., 1983. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Lucasfilm, Ltd.Let me offer just one other example. Near the end of the popular 1983 film The Return of the Jedi, the forest-dwelling Ewoks begin to chant and salaam upon first glimpsing the golden robot C-3PO, who in turn tells his captured comrades, “I do believe they think I am some sort of god.” When Han Solo sarcastically asks the robot to use his “divine influence” to help extricate them from their predicament, C-3PO replies that such an action would be improper: “It’s against my programming to impersonate a deity.” Here we see, embedded within a film romance, both the classic trope of the apotheosized foreigner and the related motif of the foreigner’s reluctance to [End Page 406] play the god-role (see figure 2). It is worth noting, however, that while C-3PO may be unwilling to exploit the Ewoks’ misperception, Luke Skywalker is not; he uses the “Force” to convince the Ewoks of the robot’s magical prowess and, more to the point, to perpetuate their misapprehension. 5What I wish to suggest in this essay is that certain habitual Western assumptions or conceits regarding cross-cultural encounters—assumptions which have been usefully termed “myth models” inasmuch as they condition human perception and find frequent discursive expression—coexist easily but in fact disjunctively with certain other ideological structures in many early modern travel narratives and colonial accounts. Obeyesekere, in his provocative book on the supposed deification of Captain Cook in Hawaii, has linked such myth models to the conceptual structures of the longue durée as characterized by Fernand Braudel, and it is possible that they may also be... (shrink)

This paper originated in a conference presentation with my colleague Michael Tooley, at which we were both asked to re-evaluate articles about abortion that each of us had written over twenty years earlier. While Tooley and I both contended that abortion should be legally unrestricted, there were striking differences in the style and content of our respective arguments. Contemplating these differences has reinforced my own belief in the importance of emphasizing the centrality of gender when discussing abortion. Since gender as (...) we know it is a system of dominance as well as difference , I take this to mean that contemporary discussions of abortion must address the relationship between abortion access and the social status of women. My early article addressed this relationship to some extent, but the present paper will raise a number of additional gender issues that the early article did not mention. (shrink)

The medical humanities were organized, beginning in the late 1960s, by a small group of people who shared a critique of medical education and a commitment to vigorous action to change it. They proposed to create several demonstration programs in humanities education at American schools. Although the group began with a religious orientation, it soon acquired a broader, more secular mission. As a result of shrewd political organizing, the group attracted members from within medicine, and was awarded a grant to (...) promote the medical humanities. This paper describes these events and sets them in the context of the social and medical history of the 1960s and early 1970s. (shrink)

ObjectiveOverweight and obesity [body mass index ≥ 25 kg/m2] are associated with poorer prognosis among women with breast cancer, and weight gain is common during treatment. Symptoms of depression and anxiety are also highly prevalent in women with breast cancer and may be exacerbated by post-diagnosis weight gain. Altered brain function may underlie psychological distress. Thus, this secondary analysis examined the relationship between BMI, psychological health, and resting state functional connectivity among women with breast cancer.MethodsThe sample included 34 post-menopausal women (...) newly diagnosed with Stage 0-IIa breast cancer who were enrolled in a 6-month randomized controlled trial of aerobic exercise vs. usual care. At baseline prior to randomization, whole-brain analyses were conducted to evaluate the relationship between BMI and seed-to-voxel rsFC of the hippocampus and amygdala. Connectivity values from significant clusters were then extracted and examined as predictors of self-reported depression and anxiety.ResultsMean BMI was in the obese range. For both seeds examined, higher BMI was associated with lower rsFC with regions of prefrontal cortex, including ventrolateral PFC, dorsolateral PFC, and superior frontal gyrus. Hippocampal connectivity with the vlPFC was negatively correlated with self-reported anxiety.ConclusionHigher BMI was associated with lower hippocampal and amygdala connectivity to regions of PFC implicated in cognitive control and emotion regulation. BMI-related differences in hippocampal and amygdala connectivity following a recent breast cancer diagnosis may relate to future worsening of psychological functioning during treatment and remission. Additional longitudinal research exploring this hypothesis is warranted. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary group of authors featured in this focus issue contribute to conversations at the intersection of anthropology and ethics by exploring ethical self‐making and moral experimentation among faith‐based actors in a range of humanitarian settings. Kari Henquinet describes the genealogies of American evangelical humanitarianism by focusing on the ethical self‐formation of early World Vision leaders. Rachel Schneider and Sara Williams each explore practices by which relatively privileged individuals seek to cultivate virtue by engaging with those on the margins, (...) in poor, urban neighborhoods in South Africa, and through packaged tours in Israel/palestine, respectively. Sarah Tobin describes projects of Islamic self‐making among displaced refugee women in Jordan. Although they examine a wide range of subjects and settings, they explore a common set of themes, two of which I discuss here: moral experimentation, and engagements with suffering, poverty, and inequality. (shrink)

We report the identification of a recurrent, 520-kb 16p12.1 microdeletion associated with childhood developmental delay. The microdeletion was detected in 20 of 11,873 cases compared with 2 of 8,540 controls and replicated in a second series of 22 of 9,254 cases compared with 6 of 6,299 controls. Most deletions were inherited, with carrier parents likely to manifest neuropsychiatric phenotypes compared to non-carrier parents. Probands were more likely to carry an additional large copy-number variant when compared to matched controls. The clinical (...) features of individuals with two mutations were distinct from and/or more severe than those of individuals carrying only the co-occurring mutation. Our data support a two-hit model in which the 16p12.1 microdeletion both predisposes to neuropsychiatric phenotypes as a single event and exacerbates neurodevelopmental phenotypes in association with other large deletions or duplications. Analysis of other microdeletions with variable expressivity indicates that this two-hit model might be more generally applicable to neuropsychiatric disease. © 2010 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

My first personal encounter with John Rawls was nearly thirthy years ago, in the early spring of 1974. I say “personal encounter” because of course, by then, we had all been reading A Theory of Justice, even undergraduate philosophy majors at the University of Illinois. I was a senior that year, and applying for graduate school. Jack was chair, and so it fell to his lot to telephone the students who had been accepted by Harvard, to tell us the (...) good news and ask if we had any questions. But in those days Jack stuttered, and he was worried that his stutter might make him difficult to understand over the phone. I mention that, because it explains how it came about that one day the telephone in my dorm room rang, and I answered it, only to hear the world’s greatest living moral philosopher say “This is John Rawls. That’s R-A-W-L-S.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes’s Demon and the Madness of Don QuixoteSteven NadlerDescartes’s “malicious demon” (genius malignus, le mauvais génie)—the evil deceiver of the Meditations on First Philosophy whose hypothetical existence threatens to undermine radically Descartes’s confidence in his cognitive f aculties—is an artful philosophical and literary device. There is considerable debate over the significance of this powerful and malevolent being within Descartes’s argumentative strategy. Some insist that its role is a substantive (...) one, with Descartes in troducing the deceiver in order to deepen yet further the skeptical doubts of the First Meditation, doubts from which he hopes, by the grace of a benevolent God, eventually to rescue himself. 1 Others claim that its role is merely a rhetorical one, with the demon meant simply to reinforce already philosophically well-established skeptical doubts that, in the face of everyday habit, are difficult to sustain. 2 Either way, there is no underestimating the force of the hypothesis as an epistemological tool for subverting our faith in our reasoning and sensory powers. [End Page 41]It is useful to place the “evil genius” in the context of seventeenth-century intellectual culture 3 not just for our understanding of what may have been the historical origins of this most extreme and “metaphysical” 4 of all skeptical doubts but also for broadening our appreciation of its significance beyond epistemology alone. When we grasp the various practical (moral, legal, and social) problems and the literary and artistic possibilities raised by the demon hypoth esis, we can see why such an improbably hyper-skeptical thesis is nonetheless deserving of general interest. To take just one example, Richard Popkin, in his seminal work on the history of skepticism in early modern thought, describes the knotty problems that are generated in the legal context of a trial when the issue of the demonic is raised (as in the case of someone on trial for witchcraft). 5In the service of this contextualizing project I compare Descartes’s meditator (with his self-assumed skeptical pose) with a near-contemporary literary character of particular fame and importance. What is especially striking—and instructive—in this comp arison are the parallels and resonances between the kind of general, systematic, philosophically-generated hyperbolic doubt that Descartes introduces by way of his deceptor potentissimus et malignus and the initially more particular (but perhaps eq ually systematic) distrust of the faculties that is suggested by Don Quixote’s own “rationalization” of his illusions. 6 In fact precisely the same philosophical problem is raised both in the first major work of modern philosophy and in the first modern novel: in the face of the possibility of ongoing deception by some powerful and malicious being, how can we possibly trus t our sensory and rational faculties to provide us with true and reliable knowledge? Descartes’s philosophical work can even provide us with a key to understanding part of the nature of Don Quixote’s madness, to systematizing it in its epistemological dim ensions. Reciprocally, it may be that Cervantes’s hero gives us a concrete picture of what it would be like to try to live in the radically deceptive world of the skepticism of the First Meditation. [End Page 42]Did Cervantes’s novel have a direct influence on Descartes’s philosophical reflections? The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1604; the second part, written after several pirated editions of Part I had been circulating for a number of year s, appeared in 1614, the year before Cervantes’s death. The novel was immediately and enormously popular and was quickly translated into a number of other languages. The first French translation of Part I (by César Oudin) was published in 1614. In 1618, François de Rosset translated Part II, and these two translations were published together in one volume in 1639, 1646, and 1665. 7 We can be confident that Descartes knew about Cervantes’s works; and while we cannot say with certainty that he read Don Quixote, given his education, social status, interest in novels of chivalry, and the intellectual circles in which he traveled, it would be surprising if he did not. He... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:This volume collects seven articles of Carlo Paolazzi, O.F.M., previously published in journals and congress proceedings between 1996 and 2004, each of them dealing with the Writings of Francis. The essays are not arranged chronologically but move from more general to more specific studies on the Writings of Francis of Assisi. The titles of the essays included are: 1) The Birth of the Writings and Constitution of the Canon (...) ; 2) Francis, Theology and the Letter to brother Anthony ; 3) Anthony cites Francis: the Epilogue of the Sunday Sermons and the Early Rule XVI ; 4) The Writings between Francis and his secretaries: a Knot to be Untied ; 5) Concerning the Autographs of brother Francis: Doubts, Verifications and Confirmations ; 6) Concerning the Authenticity of the Writings of Francis to the "Poor Ladies" ; 7) The Lesser Brothers and Books: Concerning the Exegesis of "the books necessary to fulfill their office" and "Those who do not know how to read" . Each of the essays displays a careful methodology and appreciation for the evangelical content of the texts.The first essay deals with the establishment of the "canon" of Francis's writings in which the author demonstrates that the writings are born and develop from Francis's relationship with the Word of God. In this context, "writing" takes on the character of an "essential moment" in Francis's relationship with the Word , with God and with the brotherhood. This explains for Paolazzi, the passion with which Francis recommends the writings to those to whom they are addressed.The second and third essays are related to Anthony of Padua and the writings. The second essay deals with the content and authenticity of the Letter to Anthony, included by Kajetan Esser in the canon of Francis's writings. Paolazzi argues that the expression, "Brother Anthony my bishop" goes back to Francis himself. He suggests that Anthony's request for permission to teach reflects the concern of the novice who had permission from his minister to have a breviary, but was uncomfortable and needed Francis's explicit permission , a characteristic of the tension in the brotherhood upon Francis's return from Egypt in 1220. The conditions Francis places on the teaching of Anthony reflect Francis's concern that the Word of God not be approached purely from an intellectual perspective, but rather as a Word which must transform life. The third essay attempts to demonstrate that the Epilogue to Anthony's Sunday Sermons integrates sections of chapter 17 of the Early Rule. Paolazzi concludes this careful lexical study with the affirmation that Anthony had the Early Rule's exhortation to preachers in chapter 17 before his eyes as he concluded his Opus Evangeliorum .In the fourth essay Paolazzi tackles the question of the role played by secretaries in the production of the Writings of Francis. Scholars, including Esser, have suggested that because of his health and/or because of his status as "illiterate," Francis depended on secretaries to put his thoughts on paper. Paolazzi approaches the question by citing a saying attributed to Francis from the Mirror of Perfection . That this saying goes back to the historical Francis Paolazzi concludes based on both the content and the fact that it reflects Francis's literal approach to the Gospel. The saying states that Francis wanted no one to call him good, father or master because of the teaching of Christ in the Gospel who said that only God should be addressed with these titles . He then studies the usage and appearance of these three terms in the Writings of Francis, which confirm a consistent usage in accord with this saying. This demonstrates that the Writings reflect the "speech" of Francis and not simply his conceptual thought. Paolazzi considers that "in the Writings religious thought and the verbal lexicon of evangelical inspiration respond one to.. (shrink)

The Science Museum, London, has recently acquired four fragments of a portable sundial with associated calendrical gearing. All the fragments are made of low zinc brass of substantially the same composition. The sundial is of a type known in other examples, some the products of recent archaeological excavations and all dated to the Late Antique or Early Byzantine period. Dating by the place names included in the latitude table, by the style of the heads of the planetary gods used (...) to identify the days of the week, and by the style of the script, all indicate that the instrument dates from the late fifth century of the Christian era or the first half of the sixth.The gearing, of which two arbors survive, carrying four toothed wheels and one ratchet, seems to have resembled that of a calendrical device described by al-Bīrūnī in about AD 1000. Like al-Bīrūnī's device and the geared calendar associated with a Persian astrolabe of AD 1221/2 now in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, the Byzantine instrument displayed the shape of the Moon and its age in days. Probably the calendar further resembled its Islamic counterparts in also displaying the positions of Sun and Moon in the Zodiac.The emergence of Byzantine mathematical gearing indicates that the Hellenistic tradition attested by the Antikythera machine continued to be active in the Byzantine period, and suggests that it may have influenced the Islamic tradition. Once again an artefact has shown up the inadequacy of the evidence derived from literary sources. (shrink)

Bulang He,1,2 Jeffrey M Hamdorf2 1Liver and Kidney Transplant Unit, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth, WA, Australia; 2School of Surgery, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia Aims: The aim of this paper was to review the current status of laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant and evaluate its feasibility and safety in comparison with conventional standard "open" kidney transplant. Methods: An electronic search of PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane library database was performed to identify the papers between January 1980 and June (...) 2013 that reported on laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplantation. The terms "laparoscopic kidney/renal transplant" and "robotic kidney/renal transplant " were used. Cross-referencing was also used to find the further publications. Only English language reports were selected and accepted for descriptive analysis. Results: A total of 17 papers and abstracts were retrieved. There were two case-control studies of small volume. High-level evidence comparing the safety and efficacy of laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant with conventional open kidney transplant was not available at the time of this review. Conclusion: The limited published data have suggested that laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant may offer the advantages of less pain, better cosmesis, possible shorter hospital stay, and fewer wound complications, without compromising graft function. Accordingly, some immunosuppressive agents, such as sirolimus, might be able to be commenced earlier, after laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant. The techniques are various at this early stage. A uniformed operative technique may be established in the near future. With refinement of laparoscopic devices, this technique may be widely employed. Further studies will be needed to demonstrate the advantages of laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant over the conventional open kidney transplant. Keywords: laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery. (shrink)

Current theories of breast cancer progression have been greatly influenced by the development and refinement of mouse transgenic and gene targeting technologies. Early transgenic mouse models confirmed the involvement of oncogenes, previously implicated in human breast cancer, by establishing a causal relationship between overexpression or activation of these genes and mammary tumorigenesis. More recently, the importance of genes located at sites of loss of heterozygosity in human breast cancer have been examined in mice by their targeted disruption via homologous (...) recombination. The union of these two approaches allows the generation of complex animal models that more accurately reflect the multistep nature of human breast cancer. This review will examine how the study of transgenic mice has increased our understanding of the molecular events responsible for oncogenic transformation of the mammary gland. BioEssays 22:554–563, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In Stoic philosophy, the writing of the Early Church Fathers, and in its allegorical interpretations in medieval and renaissance mythologies, Sisyphus is the archetypal model of human perfectibility. The Myth of Sisyphus investigates this archetype as a principal theme in renaissance theories of astral magic; in humanist theories of eugenic education; and in utopian thought.

In this classic analysis, Leo Strauss pinpoints what is original and innovative in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. He argues that Hobbes's ideas arose not from tradition or science but from his own deep knowledge and experience of human nature. Tracing the development of Hobbes's moral doctrine from his early writings to his major work _The Leviathan,_ Strauss explains contradictions in the body of Hobbes's work and discovers startling connections between Hobbes and the thought of Plato, Thucydides, Aristotle, (...) Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel. (shrink)

From the end of the XX century academic community has been extensively discussing globalization issues affecting economy, politics and culture. First and foremost there grew anticipations of an ecological disaster on a global scale associated with environmental pollution. Solution of these problems on a global scale is based on a sustainable development strategy. The sustainable development is a balance between natural environment (biosphere) and artificial environment (technosphere). Russian thinkers of the early XX century introduced a notion of noosphere. One (...) of the landmarks of sustainable developmentmust become ecosophy. Asian civilization has been developing in the spirit of ecosophy. It shows that one can live in equilibrium with natural surroundings and scientific progress, preserving spiritual culture and maintaining high spiritual standard. Extending of culture dialogue became more essential in XXI century. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à LeibnizSteven NadlerVincent Carraud. Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à Leibniz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002. Pp. 573. € 42,00.Over the last two decades, there has been a good deal of outstanding work on the problem of causation in early modern philosophy. Some of it has been devoted to first-order questions: (...) for example, on whether this or that thinker allows for real causal activity among finite substances (and which ones). Other studies, by contrast, have focused on second-order questions, especially the proper formulation of the causal principle itself. Vincent Carraud's book is primarily concerned with second-order questions, although it does have something to say with respect to first-order questions as well. But the depth and breadth of this study makes it much more than just another entry in the ongoing discussion over who thought what about causality among the early moderns. Carraud has a large and complex story to tell: the development of the principle of sufficient reason in the seventeenth century. In particular, he wants to know which philosophers can truly be said to have adopted that principle in its most rigorous formulation. It is both a philosophical and a historical story, and it appears in what is surely one of the most important and interesting books in early modern philosophy in recent years.Carraud directs our attention to a particular phrase that originates with Descartes but then seems to reappear (in various forms) throughout the period: causa sive ratio, "cause or reason." Every term in the phrase is subject to interpretation, of course—'cause,' 'reason' and especially 'or'—and the thesis it embodies (and a philosopher's attitude toward it) is a function of how those terms are to be understood. Carraud's interest is in what this phrase can tell us about how a select group of philosophers (primarily Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche and Leibniz) regard the relationship between causality and intelligibility.The story begins with Suarez, the late sixteenth-century Scholastic. Suarez's contribution to the rise of the principle of sufficient reason is modest but crucial. He privileges efficient causation over all of the other Aristotelian varieties. While he still grants some explanatory role for formal, material and final causes, they have lost their status as "true" causes for Suarez; in fact, they qualify as causes only by analogy with efficient causation. As Carraud reads Suarez, the ratio causae belongs properly only to the efficient cause, since it alone can provide the reason for the existence and being of a thing.It is Descartes, however, who occupies the central role—both historically and philosophically—in Carraud's story. For it is he who truly effects the ultimate reduction (or, as Carraud puts it, unicité) of causality. In the Cartesian scheme, all but efficient causes are banished. Moreover, the efficient cause of an effect is now defined as the sufficient cause, one that explains why the effect is as it is. "La primauté et l'absoluité de la cause lui viennent de ce qu'elle rend raison de l'effet... Les causes sont d'abord les raisons (suffisantes) des effets, en quoi elles les expliquent" (199-200). Moreover, with Descartes we find a universal application of the principle of causality to all things, even to those that previously either were not regarded as sufficiently real to need a cause (the objective reality of ideas) or were regarded as standing outside the domain of causality altogether (God). It is not that God is a caused being for Descartes. Rather, the important thing is that God is, like all existing things, subject to the causal question. That is, it is legitimate to ask why God does not need a cause. And, in Carraud's account, this is where ratio comes in to its own. God is not a caused being, but there is a reason (in God's immense power) why God does not require a cause. Moreover, the only analogy we have for thinking of the way in which God's immensity forestalls God needing a cause is in terms of efficient causality itself... (shrink)

A considerable number of the thirteenth and early fourteenth-century manuscripts of Michael Scot's Arabic-Latin translation of Aristotle's De animalibus display a system of guiding marginal glosses. These glosses are usually added by a later hand with respect to the hand that had written the text. The manuscripts were not only annotated for personal use, but also so as to allow for a better use in compiling commentaries, encyclopaedias and compendia. We can say that the marginalia form the main, if (...) not only, key to our understanding today of the use that readers made of the text. Apart from offering a mere explanation of the contents, we can see that their interest in the text was chiefly related to biblical exegesis and to scientific and medical knowledge. The approach to the text was often allegorical and moralizing in character. Some remarks reflect the reader's own experience and associations in relation to the text. (shrink)

Although it has become a common place to refer to the ׳sixth problem׳ of Hilbert׳s (1900) Paris lecture as the starting point for modern axiomatized probability theory, his own views on probability have received comparatively little explicit attention. The central aim of this paper is to provide a detailed account of this topic in light of the central observation that the development of Hilbert׳s project of the axiomatization of physics went hand-in-hand with a redefinition of the status of probability theory (...) and the meaning of probability. Where Hilbert first regarded the theory as a mathematizable physical discipline and later approached it as a ׳vague׳ mathematical application in physics, he eventually understood probability, first, as a feature of human thought and, then, as an implicitly defined concept without a fixed physical interpretation. It thus becomes possible to suggest that Hilbert came to question, from the early 1920s on, the very possibility of achieving the goal of the axiomatization of probability as described in the ׳sixth problem׳ of 1900. (shrink)