With the diversification of philosophy, and the dismantling of stark divides in philosophical methodology in the West, the character of philosophy appears more indeterminate than ever—and demands fresh investigations not only into the character of philosophy, but also the concept of indeterminacy itself. The over-arching aim of this collection, which brings together a wide range of philosophical and inter-disciplinary perspectives, is to bring into focus the prominence and significance of indeterminacy as a common thread in recent Asian philosophy, continental thought, (...) and other philosophical approaches. The theme of indeterminacy can be traced throughout the history of both Western and Asian philosophy. Among the pre-Socratics, Anaximander stands out as recognizing (though not fully clarifying) its significance in his famous formulation of the first principle of philosophy as the apeiron—the indeterminate. In modern philosophy, indeterminacy appears time and again as a recurrent theme in post-Kantian idealism, phenomenology, and continental philosophy. This volume shines a spotlight on the way indeterminacy arises as an important theme for relatively neglected thinkers in the Western tradition, such as F.W.J. Schelling, and it offers fresh perspectives on the significance of indeterminacy for well-read thinkers such as Husserl and Hegel. What is more, this volume includes chapters that bring out the presence and importance of indeterminacy in the various schools of Chinese and Japanese philosophy (among others), such as in various forms of Daoist thinking and the Kyoto school, which cannot be underestimated. By bringing these schools of thought into dialogue with each other, we hope that the volume will enrich the thinking of all traditions, East, West, and beyond. (shrink)

H. G. Liddell & R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. and aug. by Sir H. S. Jones. with the ass. of R. McKenzie, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940. ῥυθμός , Ion. ῥυσμός (v. infr. 111, IV), ὁ : (ῥέω) :— A. any regular recurring motion (“πᾶς ῥ. ὡρισμένῃ μετρεῖται κινήσει” Arist.Pr.882b2) : I. measured motion, time, whether in sound or motion, Democr.15c ; = ἡ τῆς κινήσεως τάξις, Pl.Lg.665a, cf. 672e ; “ὁ ῥ. ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος (...) - Études grecques (...) et latines. (shrink)

Drawing on a landscape analysis of existing data-sharing initiatives, in-depth interviews with expert stakeholders, and public deliberations with community advisory panels across the U.S., we describe features of the evolving medical information commons. We identify participant-centricity and trustworthiness as the most important features of an MIC and discuss the implications for those seeking to create a sustainable, useful, and widely available collection of linked resources for research and other purposes.

William James has traditionally been seen as a critic of evidentialism, with his claim that “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds” being understood as saying that in certain cases we have the right to believe beyond what is certified by the evidence. However, there is an alternate, “expansive”, reading of James (defended most recently by Cheryl Misak, (...) Robert Talisse, and Scott Aikin) that portrays him not as criticizing evidentialism itself, but only as trying to expand our conception what we should count as evidence. There are two main strategies for defending this ‘expansive’ reading. The first approach relies on showing that the logic of James’s argument itself relies on highlighting a new type of evidence rather than rather than undermining the need for our beliefs to be grounded in evidence, while the second approach appeals to aspects of James’s biography to show that he always intended something closer to the expansive reading. It is argued here that neither approach is persuasive, and that the anti-evidentialist reading of James remains the most probable. (shrink)

Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends (...) in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution, an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

It is widely thought that what finally characterizes American literary narratives is a preoccupation with Americanness. If the "great theme" of European fiction has been "man's life in society," Walter Allen writes in The Modern Novel, "the great theme of American fiction has been the exploration of what it means to be an American." The best American film narratives also seem to bear out this proposition, especially those of the great American naturals like Griffith and Ford and Hawks, and most (...) especially Orson Welles' Citizen Kane , regarded by many as the greatest American film. Welles' film belongs to that category of narratives which take a prominent figure from contemporary American life and use him to stand for what are conceived to be representative traits of the collective American character. Understandably, then, there are many general resemblances in the film to other well-known stories of American entrepreneurs, magnates, and tycoons. Long before the flourishing of tycoon biographies in the American sound film, well before F. Scott Fitzgerald or Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser, before even Henry James, certain conventions and associations had become well established in stories of this type. The up-and-coming young American was shrewd and practical, an image of compulsive energy, a man with his eye always on the future. His Americanness also consisted of such traits as enterprise, indomitable idealism, a certain naturalness and openness to experience, and a relentless will to succeed. His geographical origin could be made to carry moral force, and he or another character who equated American commercial noblesse oblige with universal morality could be a useful thematic touchstone. Robert L. Carringer is an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches and writes on film, American literature, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature. This study is the first in a series of essays in progress on American films and American narrative tradition. He has also contributed "The Scripts of Citizen Kane" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Historically, philosophers of biology have tended to sidestep the problem of development by focusing primarily on evolutionary biology and, more recently, on molecular biology and genetics. Quite often too, development has been misunderstood as simply, or even primarily, a matter of gene activation and regulation. Nowadays a growing number of philosophers of science are focusing their analyses on the complexities of development, and in Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution Jason Scott Robert explores the nature of development against current trends (...) in biological theory and practice and looks at the interrelations between development and evolution , an area of resurgent biological interest. Clearly written, this book should be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the biology of species identity and the morality of crossing species boundaries in the context of emerging research that involves combining human and nonhuman animals at the genetic or cellular level. We begin with the notion of species identity, particularly focusing on the ostensible fixity of species boundaries, and we explore the general biological and philosophical problem of defining species. Against this backdrop, we survey and criticize earlier attempts to forbid crossing species boundaries in the creation (...) of novel beings. We do not attempt to establish the immorality of crossing species boundaries, but we conclude with some thoughts about such crossings, alluding to the notion of moral confusion regarding social and ethical obligations to novel interspecies beings. (shrink)

This work defines its course in reference to Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Chapter Outline of Byzantine history: the political context This chapter goes no further than an attempt at a sketch of the history of the Byzantine ...

Many scientists and philosophers of science are troubled by the relative isolation of developmental from evolutionary biology. Reconciling the science of development with the science of heredity preoccupied a minority of biologists for much of the twentieth century, but these efforts were not corporately successful. Mainly in the past fifteen years, however, these previously dispersed integrating programmes have been themselves synthesized and so reinvigorated. Two of these more recent synthesizing endeavours are evolutionary developmental biology and developmental systems theory. While the (...) former is a bourgeoning and scientifically well-respected biological discipline, the same cannot be said of DST, which is virtually unknown among biologists. In this review, we provide overviews of DST and EDB, summarize their key tenets, examine how they relate to one another and to the study of epigenetics, and survey the impact that DST and EDB have had on biological theory and practice. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offers both an account of developmental processes and also new integrative frameworks for analyzing interactions between development and evolution. Biologists and philosophers are keen on evo-devo in part because it appears to offer a comfort zone between, on the one hand, what some take to be the relative inability of mainstream evolutionary biology to integrate a developmental perspective; and, on the other hand, what some take to be more intractable syntheses of development and evolution. In this (...) article, I outline core concerns of evo-devo, distinguish theoretical and practical variants, and counter Sterelny's recent argument that evo-devo's attention to development, while important, offers no significant challenge to evolutionary theory as we know it. (shrink)

The complexities of modern science are not adequately reflected in many bioethical discussions. This is especially problematic in highly contested cases where there is significant pressure to generate clinical applications fast, as in stem cell research. In those cases a more integrated approach to bioethics, which we call systems bioethics, can provide a useful framework to address ethical and policy issues. Much as systems biology brings together different experimental and methodological approaches in an integrative way, systems bioethics integrates aspects of (...) the history and philosophy of science, social and political theory, and normative analysis with the science in question. In this paper we outline how a careful analysis of the science of stem cell research can help to refocus the discussions related to the clinical applications of stem cells. We show how inaccurate or inadequate scientific assumptions help to create a set of unrealistic expectations and badly inform ethical deliberations and policy development. Systems bioethics offers resources for moving beyond the current impasse. (shrink)

Neuroethics to date has tended to focus on social and ethical implications of developments in brain science, especially in functional neuroimaging. Within clinical neuroethics, the emphasis has been on ethical issues in clinical neuroscience practice, including informed consent to neuroimaging; the development of ethical research protocols for functional magnetic resonance imaging especially, and especially in children; and the ethical clinical management of incidental findings. Within normative neuroethics, we have witnessed the more philosophical and/or social scientific study of the meanings of (...) developments in neuroscience, including concerns about the impact of neuroimaging on privacy, freedom of thought, moral culpability, and sense of self. In this piece, I argue for an expansion of neuroethical attention to the interface of neuroscience and psychiatry, where brain science meets the clinical sciences of the mind. My particular focus is the development of psychiatric classification systems. (shrink)

I begin by examining how genetics drivesschizophrenia research, and raise both familiar andrelatively novel criticisms of the evidence putativelysupporting the genetic basis of schizophrenia. Inparticular, I call attention to a set of concernsabout the effects of placentation on concordance ratesof schizophrenia in monozygotic twins, which furtherweakens the case for schizophrenia''s so-called stronggenetic component. I then underscore two criticalpoints. First, I emphasize the importance of takingseriously considerations about the complexity of bothontogenesis and the development of hereditarydiseases. The recognition of developmentalconstraints and (...) supports is crucial, for attention todevelopment exposes the naivete of too many models ofgene action in the aetiology of disease. Secondly, Iattend to those schizophreniologists who ignoremethodological criticisms and thus presume a geneticbasis for schizophrenia, and then seek the schizophrenic genotype lacking an adequatephenotype. In response I attempt to demonstrate thenecessity of a sustained effort at characterizing thephenotype of schizophrenia as an enabling conditionfor the whole enterprise of psychiatric genetics – andfor psychiatry itself. Without the organism-levelphenotype, research at the level of genes will remainunproductive – assuming of course that research at thegenetic level is appropriate at all. (shrink)

The authors identify and offer an analysis of a new form of the Straw Man fallacy, and then explore the implications of the prevalence of this fallacy for contemporary political discourse.

Calls for the “translation” of research from bench to bedside are increasingly demanding. What is translation, and why does it matter? We sketch the recent history of outcome-oriented translational research in the United States, with a particular focus on the Roadmap Initiative of the National Institutes of Health. Our main example of contemporary translational research is stem cell research, which has superseded genomics as the translational object of choice. We explore the nature of and obstacles to translational research and assess (...) the ethical and biomedical challenges of embracing a translational ethos. (shrink)

We outline a number of ethical objections to genetic technologies aimed at enhancing human capacities and traits. We then argue that, despite the persuasiveness of some of these objections, they are insufficient to stop the development and use of genetic enhancement technologies. We contend that the inevitability of the technologies results from a particular guiding worldview of humans as masters of the human evolutionary future, and conclude that recognising this worldview points to new directions for ethical thinking about genetic enhancement (...) technologies. (shrink)

It has been argued that bioethicists too often tend to represent the interests of scientists and not of the broader polity. Indeed, bioethicists seem predisposed to discard the voices and viewpoints of all but the cognoscenti. Focusing particularly on human pluripotent stem cell research, this commentary explores a variety of characterizations of bioethics and bioethicists in relation to forbidding science. Rather than proselytizing or prohibiting, bioethicists should work in partnership with scientists and publics to craft scientifically well-informed and morally sophisticated (...) debates about forbidding science. (shrink)

It has been argued that bioethicists too often tend to represent the interests of scientists and not of the broader polity. Indeed, bioethicists seem predisposed to discard the voices and viewpoints of all but the cognoscenti . Focusing particularly on human pluripotent stem cell research, this commentary explores a variety of characterizations of bioethics and bioethicists in relation to forbidding science. Rather than proselytizing or prohibiting, bioethicists should work in partnership with scientists and publics to craft scientifically well-informed and morally (...) sophisticated debates about forbidding science. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the biology of species identity and the morality of crossing species boundaries in the context of emerging research that involves combining human and nonhuman animals at the genetic or cellular level. We begin with the notion of species identity, particularly focusing on the ostensible fixity of species boundaries, and we explore the general biological and philosophical problem of defining species. Against this backdrop, we survey and criticize earlier attempts to forbid crossing species boundaries in the creation (...) of novel beings. We do not attempt to establish the immorality of crossing species boundaries, but we conclude with some thoughts about such crossings, alluding to the notion of moral confusion regarding social and ethical obligations to novel interspecies beings. (shrink)

This is a critical notice of Evolution's Eye by Susan Oyama, focusing on developmental systems theory primarily in relation to the nature-nurture debates and the explanation of behaviour.