A comparison of six alternative definitions of the term 'cellular pathway' against the background of ontological realism.

Introduction: Purpose of this essay is to draw attention to some points which are relevant to the underlying philosophy of modern statistics, but which the writer feels have been largely overlooked both by the defenders and the opponents of the classic conceptions of Laplace. There is no quarrel with methodologies as such which have found their introduction under the heads of “maximum likelihood”, “fiducial limits”, etc. But the writer cannot accept arguments ) which would make of such procedures an absolute (...) sine qua non for all decisions based on evidence, and which would relegate human judgment and all considerations of the intended use of a decision to the rubbish heap of outmoded conceptions. To assume that two rational minds, having different backgrounds and different objectives, must necessarily find themselves in agreement in their appraisal of a given objective situation, is simply absurd; yet this is the basis which underlies, so far as I can make out, all the “criticisms” of Laplace and Bayes which constitute the excuses put forward for attempting to displace those procedures in Statistics which involve “inverse probability”. Also the so-called “paradoxes” which have been invented by many writers in order to assail Laplace, contradict only this one assumption; without it they are not paradoxes. (shrink)

Independently of whether an object of experience becomes a candidate for being a part of the self or a part of the external world, it is always given to us as just an object of experience. The observer-observed relation can be seen as a type of relation with many instances, both between the self and different objects of experience and between any given object of experience and different selves. The self is situated in a spatial grid, where the latter can (...) be characterised as an array of relations, of which the relata include both observers and observed. The world, understood as independent existence, including the self, is empty. However, Paolo Bozzi’s method for identifying the self and delimiting its independent existence from the external world has taught us just the opposite lesson. Bozzi’s project is to teach us how to use them, and to recognise that they allow a self to be situated in a world of objects. (shrink)

This volume presents fourteen original essays which explore the philosophy of Simon Blackburn, and his lifetime pursuit of a distinctive projectivist and anti-realist research program. The essays document the range and influence of Blackburn's work and reveal, among other things, the resourcefulness of his brand of philosophical pragmatism.

The ethics of tax evasion has been discussed sporadically in the theological and philosophical literature for at least 500 years. Martin Crowe wrote a doctoral thesis that reviewed much of that literature in 1944. The debate revolved around about 15 issues. Over the centuries, three main views evolved on the topic. But the business ethics literature has paid scant attention to this issue, perhaps because of the belief that tax evasion is always unethical. This paper reports the results of an (...) empirical study of opinion in Utah and Florida. A survey of accounting students was conducted to determine the extent of their agreement or disagreement with the 15 main issues that Crowe (1944) identified plus three more recent issues. The arguments that have been made over the centuries to justify tax evasion were ranked to determine which arguments are strongest and which are weakest. Scores were compared between samples to determine whether the responses were significantly different. (shrink)

The ethics of tax evasion has been discussed sporadically in the theological and philosophical literature for at least 500 years. Martin Crowe wrote a doctoral thesis that reviewed much of that literature in 1944. The debate revolved around about 15 issues. Over the centuries, three main views evolved on the topic. But the business ethics literature has paid scant attention to this issue, perhaps because of the belief that tax evasion is always unethical. This paper reports the results of an (...) empirical study of opinion in Utah and New Jersey. A survey of business students was conducted to determine the extent of their agreement or disagreement with the 15 main issues that Crowe (1944) identified plus three more recent issues. The arguments that have been made over the centuries to justify tax evasion were ranked to determine which arguments are strongest and which are weakest. Scores were compared between samples to determine whether the responses were significantly different. (shrink)

Deleuze and Time is a multi-disciplinary analysis of Deleuze’s theory of temporality -/- In this collection, leading international scholars elaborate on Deleuze’s modification of the thought of historical figures, from the ancients - Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Lucretius - through to the moderns – Spinoza Kant, Husserl, Nietzsche, Bergson, Simondon, Negri - as well as his use of scientific fields such as complexity theory and thermodynamics. -/- The book shows that the philosophy of time was central to the development of Deleuze’s (...) work. In addition to discussing how time is conceptualized in Difference and Repetition and The Logic of Sense, this collection stands out for its elucidation of Deleuze’s modification of the concept in his two books on cinema. (shrink)

Lockheed Martin Corp. has funded research to generate a framework and methodology for developing semantic reasoning applications to support the discipline oflntelligence Analysis. This chapter outlines that framework, discusses how it may be used to advance the information sharing and integrated analytic needs of the Intelligence Community, and suggests a system I software architecture for such applications.

We review Potts' influential book on the semantics of conventional implicature , offering an explication of his technical apparatus and drawing out the proposal's implications, focusing on the class of CIs he calls supplements. While we applaud many facets of this work, we argue that careful considerations of the pragmatics of CIs will be required in order to yield an empirically and explanatorily adequate account.

Clinical ethics consultation is largely outside the scope of regulation and oversight, despite its importance. For decades, the bioethics community has been unable to reach a consensus on whether there should be accountability in this work, as there is for other clinical activities that influence the care of patients. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the primary society of bioethicists and scholars in the medical humanities and the organizational home for individuals who perform CEC in the United States, has (...) initiated a two‐step quality attestation process as a means to assess clinical ethics consultants and help identify individuals who are qualified to perform this role. This article describes the process. (shrink)

For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that is objective and scientific. Scientists and clinicians have tended to (...) endorse the objectivist position, with some notable exceptions. (shrink)

Although clinical ethics consultation is a high-stakes endeavor with an increasing prominence in health care systems, progress in developing standards for quality is challenging. In this article, we describe the results of a pilot project utilizing portfolios as an evaluation tool. We found that this approach is feasible and resulted in a reasonably wide distribution of scores among the 23 submitted portfolios that we evaluated. We discuss limitations and implications of these results, and suggest that this is a significant step (...) on the pathway to an eventual certification process for clinical ethics consultants. (shrink)

Sober (1992) has recently evaluated Brandon's (1982, 1990; see also 1985, 1988) use of Salmon's (1971) concept of screening-off in the philosophy of biology. He critiques three particular issues, each of which will be considered in this discussion.

In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that is of (...) particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)

This study examines Australian tax agents' perceptions of the ethical environment in which they practice, within the context of an income tax system based on self-assessment principles. The research identifies and ranks an inventory of ethical issues in terms of perceived frequency of occurrence and importance to Western Australian tax agents. In addition, the extent and influence of ethical concerns in the profession are evaluated.The study has determined that the most frequently cited ethical issue is the failure to make reasonable (...) enquiries where information or documentation provided by a client appears to be inaccurate or incomplete. The most important ethical problem is a failure to ensure confidentiality with regard to privileged client information. When the frequency of occurrence and importance means are compared, inadequate technical competence, failure to make reasonable enquiries/conduct research, continuing to act for a client where there is incorrect information, and conflicts in distinguishing between tax planning and tax avoidance emerge as the high frequency/high importance issues. Although acknowledging the potential for unethical actions in tax practice, Western Australian tax agents consider that they carry out their professional activities within an ethical environment. (shrink)

This paper accepts as given that business students want to get ahead. It criticizes business schools for their failure to reduce the incongruence between doing what is right and doing what it takes to get ahead. Because of this failure business school graduates carry negative ideas, attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis social responsibility from business schools into the business world. Recommendations are made for increasing the social responsibility of business schools.

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

Numerous research groups are now utilizing Basic Formal Ontology as an upper-level framework to assist in the organization and integration of biomedical information. This paper provides elucidation of the three existing BFO subcategories of realizable entity, namely function, role, and disposition. It proposes one further sub-category of tendency, and considers the merits of recognizing two sub-categories of function for domain ontologies, namely, artifactual and biological function. The motivation is to help advance the coherent ontological treatment of functions, roles, and dispositions, (...) to help provide the potential for more detailed classification, and to shed light on BFO’s general make-up and use. (shrink)

Violence can be physical and psychological. It can characterize personal actions, forms of group activity, and abiding social and political policy. This book includes all of these aspects within its focus on institutional forms of violence. Institution is also a broad category, ranging from formal arrangements such as the military, the criminal code, the death penalty and prison system, to more amorphous but systemic situations indicated by parenting, poverty, sexism, work, and racism. Violence is as complex as the human beings (...) who resort to it; its institutional forms pervade our relational lives. We are all participants in it as victims and perpetrators. The chapters in this book were written in the hope that violence can be explicated, even if not fully understood, and that such clarification can help us in devising less violent forms of living, even if it does not lead to its total abolition. The studies bring new aspects of violence to light and offer a number of suggestions for its remedy. (shrink)

A simple Weberian agglomeration is developed and then extended as an innovative fixed-charged, colocation model over a large set of locational possibilities. The model is applied to cases in which external economies (EE) arise due to colocation alone and also cases in which EE arise due to city size. Solutions to the model are interpreted in the context of contemporary equilibrium analysis, which allows Weberian agglomeration to be interpreted in a more general way than in previous analyses. Within that context, (...) the Nash points and Pareto efficient points in the location patterns derived in the model are shown to rarely coincide. The applications consider agglomeration from two perspectives: one is the colocation behavior of producers as the agents of agglomeration and the other is the interaction between government and those agents in the interest of agglomeration policy. Extending the analysis to games, potential Pareto efficiency and Hicks optimality are considered with respect to side payments between producers and with respect to appropriate government incentives toward agglomeration. (shrink)

Both the theory that traumatic childhood memories can be repressed, and the reliability of the techniques used to retrieve these memories are challenged in this paper. Questions are raised about the robustness of the theory and the literature that purports to provide scientific evidence for it. Evidence to this end is provided by the demographic and qualitative results of a research study conducted by the authors which surveyed New Zealand families in which one member had accused another (or others) of (...) sexual abuse on the basis of recovered memories. It is shown that a number of these allegations involve very low probability events. Since memory repression theory is not currently scientifically substantiated it is argued that care needs to be taken in the mental health, legal and insurance compensation arenas. Memories recalled during therapy may be treated as metaphorical but, in the absence of corroborative evidence, should not be considered factually true. Clinicians who wish to use memory recovery techniques should inform patients of their experimental and controversial nature, point out potential adverse effects, and obtain consent before proceeding. (shrink)