Genome‐wide identification of transcription factor binding sites with the ChIP‐seq method is an extremely important scientific endeavor − one that should ideally be performed for every transcription factor in as many cell types as possible. A major hurdle on the way to this goal is the necessity for a specific, ChIP‐grade antibody for each transcription factor of interest, which is often not available. Here, we describe CETCh‐seq, a recently published method utilizing genome engineering with the CRISPR/Cas9 system to circumvent the (...) need for a specific antibody. Using the CETCh‐seq method, targeted genomic editing results in an epitope‐tagged transcription factor, which is recognized by a well‐characterized, standard antibody, efficacious for ChIP‐seq. We have used CETCh‐seq in human cancer cell lines as well as mouse embryonic stem cells. We find that roughly 60% of transcription factors tagged using CETCh‐seq produce a high quality ChIP‐seq map, a significant improvement over traditional antibody‐based methods. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that interdisciplinarity (ID) is very diverse. Our contribution is a demonstration that considerable diversity exists also on the level of understandings of ID that researchers working in the same ID field express. Specifically, we analyse qualitatively, building on the method of culture contrast, six interviews with researchers working in computational linguistics and language technology in Estonia. We identify six understandings of ID expressed by the interviewees: centred on an ID method; a disciplinary method in an ID (...) field; an ID way of seeing and thinking; ID education; ID interests; one’s field as naturally ID. We show how understandings of ID are significant for analysing research practice, since they are involved in how researchers form a positive picture of themselves and their colleagues. We also show how an awareness of different understandings of ID is useful for discussing the significance of integration in ID. (shrink)

This essay looks at Norplant qua technology and uses analytic frameworks from the social construction of technology to explain the trajectory of its brief history. The author contend that there were multiple uses of Norplant, in terms of rhetorical strategies, symbolic representations, and contraceptive intentions, constructed by reproductive scientists, population control advocates, pharmaceutical manufacturers, doctors, birth control clinic staffers, government regulators, legislators, judges, women’s health activists, potential users, and actual users. However, while relevant social groups shaped the discourse surrounding Norplant (...) in the 1990s, its ultimate fate was determined by choices made by potential users. At the ‘‘consumption junction’’ of the late twentieth-century contraceptive marketplace, American women ignored the meanings constructed for Norplant by developers, producers, providers, and policy makers and made their decisions based on what Norplant meant to them. Individuals’ decisions to choose other methods of preventing pregnancy coalesced into a collective rejection of this contraceptive technology. (shrink)

Conceived as the sequel to Alan Badiou's Being and Event, Logics of Worlds stands as one of the most important texts in contemporary thought. As a complex theory of worlds, the text has, for the most part, been misunderstood. Yet, through William Watkin's diligent and critical close--reading, he guides the reader through the Badiouan text, whilst demonstrating how Logics of Worlds is the essential book for anyone interested in existence, meaning and the potential for radical change.

As guidelines for neonatal resuscitation evolve from a growing evidence base, clinicians must ensure that practice is closely aligned with the available evidence, based on methodologically sound and ethically conducted research. This paper reviews ethical, legal and risk-management issues arising during the design of a quality-assurance project to make video recordings of neonatal resuscitations after high-risk deliveries. The issues, which affect patients, researchers, staff and the hospital at large, include the following: 1) Informed consent for research involving emergency procedures is (...) often not possible, for lack of time to provide sufficient information. The mental capacity of the subject or parent may be compromised by the impending emergency, and freedom of choice is threatened by the time pressure to consent. 2) Video recording of the inevitable medical errors raises issues of whether participating staff may be identifiable and accountable, affecting their willingness to participate in such research. The approach to staff participation and identification is reviewed. 3) The use of video data for education threatens the privacy of research subjects. The ethics of maintaining privacy is balanced with the ethics of using the data to improve practice of resuscitation. 4) The research subjects (patients, or the staff whose performance is being monitored) must be defined. 5) There are legal and ethical aspects of management and ownership of data. 6) The role of the Human Research Ethics Committee in protecting the research subject and possibly the medicolegal interests of the hospital is discussed. This paper reviews the literature and discusses the issues. (shrink)

In Rediscovering Colors: A Study in Pollyanna Realism, Michael Watkins endorses the Moorean view that colors are simple, non-reducible, properties of objects. Consequently, Watkins breaks from what has become the received view that either colors are reducible to certain properties of interest to science, or else nothing is really colored. What is novel about the work is that Watkins, unlike other Mooreans, takes seriously the metaphysics of colors. Consequently, Watkins provides an account of what colors are, (...) how they are related to the physical properties on which they supervene, and how colors can be causally efficacious without the threat of causal overdetermination. Along the way, he provides novel accounts of normal conditions and non-human color properties. The book will be of interest to any metaphysician and philosopher of mind interested in colors and color perception. (shrink)

Object of this reply. A chap like myself, who struggles along with an amateur's box of logical tools, is bound to feel uneasy when his arguments are probed by the kind of logical precision-instruments which Professor Hempel manipulates so effortlessly. Yet after painstakingly working over his technical arguments, and after appealing for expert assistance on matters outside my competence,1 I have reached the surprising and agreeable conclusion that my argument stands intact and that Professor Hempel's criticisms reveal once more the (...) hopelessness of the position he defends—or rather, of the position he now defends. (shrink)

This research examined choice behaviour and probability judgement in a counterintuitive reasoning problem called the Monty Hall problem (MHP). In Experiments 1 and 2 we examined whether learning from a simulated card game similar to the MHP affected how people solved the MHP. Results indicated that the experience with the card game affected participants' choice behaviour, in that participants selected to switch in the MHP. However, it did not affect their understanding of the objective probabilities. This suggests that there is (...) dissociation between implicit knowledge gained from the task and the explicit understanding as to why switching was the best strategy. In Experiment 3, the number of prizes and doors were manipulated to examine how participants construed the problem space of the MHP. Results revealed that participants partition the probability judgement to reflect the number of prizes over the number of unopened doors. (shrink)

By treating colours as sui generis intrinsic properties of objects we can maintain that (1) colours are causally responsible for colour experiences (and so agree with the physicalist) and (2) colours, along with the similarity and difference relations that colours bear to one another, are presented to us by casual observation (and so agree with the dispositionalist). The major obstacle for such a view is the causal overdetermination of colour experience. Borrowing and expanding on the works of Sydney Shoemaker and (...) Stephen Yablo, the paper offers a solution. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have paid close attention to climate simulations as means of projecting the severity and effects of climate change, but have neglected the full diversity of methods in climate science. This paper shows the philosophical richness of another method in climate science: the practice of using paleoclimate analogues to inform our climate projections. First, I argue that the use of paleoclimate analogues can offer important insights to philosophers of the historical sciences. Rather than using the present as a (...) guide to the past, as is common in the historical sciences, paleoclimate analogues involve using the past as a guide to the future. I thereby distinguish different methods in the historical sciences and argue that these distinctions bear on debates over whether the historical sciences can produce generalizations or predictions. Second, I suggest that paleoclimate analogues might actually be considered a type of climate model, and, as such, their use expands on common characterizations of models to include those that are full-scale, naturally occurring, and non-manipulable. (shrink)

The plays written about AIDS in the past dozen years form a radical canon establishing gay men as the locus for public attention. These plays have been all but silent in their representation of women with AIDS. This article examines the marginalized women in early plays such as The Normal Heart and As Is, and the women more central to later plays such as The Baltimore Waltz, Before It Hits Home, and Patient A. It foregrounds some of the most problematic (...) issues surrounding the AIDS virus: the perception of women as vectors of disease for men and unborn children, the insistent representation of women as mothers and caregivers, and the denial of patterns of abuse, sexual exploitation, and poverty which contribute to the marginalization of woman and people of color. (shrink)

One of the most serious pre-occupations of post-medieval philosophy has been to distinguish those kinds of assertion which are either true or false from those which are neither true nor false. A solution to this problem would be of the highest importance. It would indicate in what areas rational inquiry has some hope of success and in what areas it is doomed to frustration. It would tell us, for example, whether it is worth trying to think about the possible mistakenness (...) of our moral principles, or whether such thinking is bound to be ineffective since no truth or falsity attaches to them. (shrink)

In his book The Retreat to Commitment Professor Bartley raised an important problem: can rationalism can rationalism be held in a rational way, that is, in a way that complies with its own requirements? Or is there bound to be something irrational in the rationalist's position? Briefly, Hartley's answer was that an element of irrationalism is involved in extant versions of rationalism; however, Bartley proposed a new version of rationalism that can, he claimed, be held in a way that is (...) rational according to its own account of rationality. Bartley called this ‘Comprehensively Critical Rationalism’. (shrink)

This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This (...) innovative conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume. (shrink)

: This paper argues that Kant's model of causality cannot consist in one temporally determinate event causing another, as Hume had thought, since such a model is inconsistent with mutual interaction, to which Kant is committed in the Third Analogy. Rather causality occurs when one substance actively exercises its causal powers according to the unchanging grounds that constitute its nature so as to determine a change of state of another substance. Because this model invokes unchanging grounds, one can understand how (...) Kant could have thought that causal laws could be justified. Further, because this model, along with the broader ontology it presupposes, is radically different from Hume's, Kant's Second Analogy cannot be understood as a refutation of Hume's position on Hume's own terms; instead, Kant must be proposing an alternative view that competes against Hume's thoroughgoing empiricist account. (shrink)

I analyse an empirically informed argument in philosophy of science to show that it faces several varieties of risk commonly discussed as inductive risk. I argue that this is so even though the type of reasoning used in this argument differs from the reasoning in some of the arguments usually discussed in connection with inductive risk. To capture the variety of risks involved, I use the more general notion of epistemic risk proposed by Justin Biddle and Quill Kukla. I show (...) how the argument in question faces several of the epistemic risks already described in connection with empirical reasoning. Importantly, I also argue that the subtype of inductive reasoning used in the argument merits a separate discussion. To analyse it, I recommend using the model of colligation, or reasoning through offering synthesising expressions. I then argue that it is desirable to recognise the risk in colligating inductive reasoning as a distinct type of epistemic risk that is relevant for understanding risk in other fields as well. Thus, I suggest that philosophy of science is one of the fields subject to non-trivial epistemic risk; I characterise several of these risks on the example of a specific argument; and I describe epistemic risk that accompanies colligation – colligating inductive risk. (shrink)

This paper describes Kant’s complex position on extension, showing how it emerges from the various ways in which he reacts to the views of Descartes, Locke, Newton, and Leibniz. Specifically, the paper argues that Kant’s views are closer to Leibniz’s than they are to those of Descartes, Locke, and Newton, insofar as Kant and Leibniz both reject the view that extension is a fundamental property, holding instead that it is explicable (at least in part) on the basis of more fundamental (...) forces. Kant disagrees with Leibniz, however, insofar as he rejects Leibniz’s distinctive commitments to certain metaphysical doctrines (such as pre-established harmony) and to active and passive primitive and derivative forces, opting, instead, for a Newtonian inspired conception of attractive and repulsive forces. In this way, the Critical Kant develops a hybrid position that attempts to make good use of aspects of both Leibniz’s and Newton’s accounts as he articulates his own distinctive position. (shrink)

Recent criticisms of non-reductive accounts of color assume that the only arguments for such accounts are a priori arguments. I put forward a posteriori arguments for a non-reductive account of colors which avoids those criticisms.

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 105 Heft: 4 Seiten: 471-490.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.1 (2002) 127-128 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Kant: A Biography Manfred Kuehn. Kant: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xxii + 544. Cloth, $34.95. Kuehn's biography of Kant is an extraordinary scholarly and literary accomplishment. In nine masterful chapters (along with a prologue), Kuehn draws on an incredibly comprehensive and varied repository of historical evidence in painting a (...) detailed, yet also widely accessible picture of the successive stages of Kant's life and of how his major and minor writings emerge from them, a picture that is both more accurate and more informative than what could ever be pieced together from existing biographies, even those written in German or at a time much closer to Kant's own.What is distinctive about Kuehn's methodology--and part, but only part, of what makes his work superior to other Kant biographies--is the way in which he focuses on Kant's intellectual context. For Kuehn, to understand Kant requires understanding him not just in the global context of modern European philosophy or even German philosophy, but also in his local context of Prussia and Königsberg. Accordingly, in the first chapter Kuehn does not merely list the biographical details of Kant's family and the name of the school he attended, but rather explains what it would have meant for Kant's father to be a member of a guild in eighteenth-century Prussia, what values that guild incorporated, what consequences his parents' Pietism would have for him, and what the intellectual and social life of the Collegium Fridericianum was like. Kuehn's proper emphasis on figures and events in Königsberg runs throughout the book. Thus in the second chapter, Kuehn describes the various faculty members Kant would have encountered as a student, what philosophical [End Page 127] views they held, how Kant's own activities as a student deviated from those of the "typical" student, what religious movements became influential at what time in the university, and what political consequences they would have had on a student's intellectual life. In the third chapter (devoted to 1755-64), Kuehn reveals how Kant, forming a wide circle of friends that would include Hamann, Herder, Hippel, and the family of Count Keyserlingk, "became a person of elegance during this period, someone who shone at social events with his intelligence and wit" (115). In chapter 4 (1764-69), Kuehn describes how Kant developed a close friendship with Green that would radically change his life. In fact, Kuehn claims that it was at the age of forty and due to the influence of Green that Kant underwent a conversion or rebirth by coming to understand the centrality of character and the role that maxims play in it. Moreover, in describing the radical changes of position initiated in his inaugural dissertation and completed in the three Critiques, Kuehn connects biography and philosophy by positing that Kant saw these works as providing "his newfound character with a philosophical justification and defense" (187).While one might think that chapter 5, which covers the 1770s, would have to be very short, given Kant's sparse publications during this period, Kuehn describes at length the rich set of interactions that Kant had with Mendelssohn, Herz, Lambert, Kraus, Herder, and Hamann, exchanges that would be crucial in the final articulation of his mature view. Kuehn devotes chapters 6 and 7 to the period during which Kant published his mature theoretical and practical works, most notably the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and it is here that Kuehn's contextualism has perhaps its greatest philosophical payoff. For the close attention Kuehn has paid to Kant's interactions with his immediate contemporaries reveals that he did not understand Hume's position as we might today, namely as advocating global skepticism about knowledge of the external world. Rather, Kant saw Hume's skepticism as being local and methodological in combating rationalism and dogmatism. As a result, Kant saw Hume mainly as an ally, not an adversary. Kuehn... (shrink)

Taxonomies of the passions have long claimed to serve a quest for self-knowledge, by specifying conditions under which certain passions arise, formal objects they possess, and qualities essential to their particular feelings. I argue that David Hume's theory of the passions provides resources for a different kind of self-knowledge – a sceptical self-knowledge depending on our ability to articulate how the passions feel rather than always identifying our passions as tokens of an identifiable passion-type. These resources are distinctions between four (...) qualitative aspects that passions may possess – pleasantness or painfulness, calmness or violence, invigoration or softening, and directedness or lack thereof towards specific actions. Reflection on these aspects produces a more accurate understanding of the nature of our emotions and chastens our judgmental tendencies in ways that benefit both self and others. (shrink)

This book focuses on the unity, diversity, and centrality of the notion of law as it is employed in Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy. Eric Watkins argues that, by thinking through a number of issues in various historical, scientific, and philosophical contexts over several decades, Kant is able to develop a univocal concept of law that can nonetheless be applied to a wide range of particular cases, despite the diverse demands that these contexts give rise to. In addition, (...) class='Hi'>Watkins shows how Kant comes to view both the generic conception of law which he develops and its different particular instances as crucial components of his systematic philosophy as a whole. This volume's new and unified account of a major current running through Kant's work will be important for scholars interested in numerous aspects of his philosophy, from the theoretical and abstract to the practical and empirical. (shrink)

At the seventh international congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, held at Salzburg in 1983, I was talking with John Searle when I glanced at my watch and exclaimed, I must run. I'm due to solve the problem of induction at 2.15. ‘Yes,’ he replied, I must go too; I'm due to solve the mind-body problem. I don't know how seriously he meant his remark, but I did actually believe that I had cracked this old problem in the (...) Epilogue of my Science and Scepticism,1 the manuscript of which was then with the publisher. In that book I drew a sharp distinction between the problem which faces a theoretical scientist trying to select, out of several competing theories, the one that best fulfils the aim of science, and the pragmatic problem which faces an applied scientist or practical decision-maker trying to select, out of several competing hypotheses, the one that offers the best guidance. I had what I still regard as a viable solution to the theoreticians problem. It aid that theoreticians should prefer that theory, if there is one, that is the best corroborated; for on a certain non-trivial but uncontroversial assumption about what kinds of test have been made, the best corroborated theory will best satisfy what I claimed to be the optimum aim for science: it will be deeper and wider than its rivals and, moreover, possibly true, given all the reported outcomes of tests in its field. For present purposes we can forget the explications I offered for ‘deeper’ and ‘wider’. As to ‘possibly true’: this reflects the abandonment of hopes that science can arrive at theories that are certainly true, or at least have a high probability of being true, or at the very least have had their probability raised by the experimental evidence. (shrink)

Under the influence of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, the theme of absolute alterity still dominates the thinking of the ethical in Continental philosophy. This article examines an alternative ethical démarche, Jean-Luc Nancy's ‘singular plurality’, which refuses to start with the opposition of same and other, arguing instead for a primacy of relation, the ‘in-common’ and the ‘with’. The article first distinguishes Nancy's ‘singular plural’ from other recent attempts to disengage ethical thinking from the Levinasian framework, before showing how Nancy (...) proceeds otherwise than in terms of sameness and alterity while still maintaining an ethical impetus. Foregrounding what is politically and philosophically at stake in the difference between Nancy and the Levinasian/Derridean model, the article concludes by considering how Nancy can be defended against critics who mistakenly argue that he discounts alterity. (shrink)

Baldwin Effect, in which there has been a revival of interest in recent years, is disentangled from certain other ideas which, while resembling it in some ways, also differ importantly from it. Baldwin's original idea was that a 'voluntarily' adopted practice which is adaptive can foster, in some non-Lamarckian way, 'coincident variations' that render the practice instinctive and heritable. It is argued that this idea involves a surreptitious slide back to Lamarckism.

Baldwin Effect, in which there has been a revival of interest in recent years, is disentangled from certain other ideas which, while resembling it in some ways, also differ importantly from it. Baldwin's original idea was that a 'voluntarily' adopted practice which is adaptive can foster, in some non-Lamarckian way, 'coincident variations' that render the practice instinctive and heritable. It is argued that this idea involves a surreptitious slide back to Lamarckism.

Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we (...) first (I) investigate Kant’s explicit characterizations of the nature of cognition. As it turns out, he introduces several different notions that must be carefully distinguished before identifying the one that is central to his project in the first Critique. We then (II) consider the basic features of Kant’s conception of knowledge, indicating both how it involves assent and objective justification and how it relates to our contemporary conception. Next (III), we compare and contrast Kant’s understanding of cognition and his conception of knowledge in a way that allows us to present their fundamental differences and connections. We argue that while cognition, in the most relevant sense, is a species of representation that differs from other representations in that it involves the conceptual determination of a sensibly given object, knowledge (for Kant) is a kind of assent to a judgment that requires consciousness of a sufficient epistemic ground. Finally (IV), by appreciating the differences between cognition and knowledge, we explain several of the implications this conception of cognition has for some of Kant’s main claims in the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole. Among other things, we show how Kant can deny cognition of specific things in themselves while allowing philosophical knowledge about things in themselves in general (e.g. that they exist, are not in space and time, etc.). (shrink)

Michel Serres is a major twentieth-century thinker who has made decisive contributions to major debates across disciplines ranging from the history of science to literary studies and philosophy. This is the first monograph to offer a comprehensive assessment of Serres’ thought from his early work on Leibniz to his final publications in 2019. The first three chapters carefully explore Serres’ ‘global intuition’, how he understands and engages with the world, and his characteristic ‘figures of thought’, the repeated intellectual moves that (...) characterize his unique approach. Chapters Four to Six explore in detail Serres’ revolutionary contributions to three key areas: language, objects, and ecology. (shrink)

Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna on 18 July 1902. He enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1918 and at the Pedagogic Institute in Vienna in 1925. He was a secondary schoolteacher for several years from 1930 on. His Logik der Forschung was published in 1934. It was brought to Einstein's attention by Frieda Busch, wife of the founder of the Busch Quartet, at the suggestion of her son‐in‐law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, who was a good friend of (...) Popper's. Einstein told Popper that, purified of certain errors he had noted, the book “will be really splendid”; a considerable correspondence ensued between them. The book also brought Popper invitations to England, where he spent much of 1935–6, meeting Susan Stebbing, Ayer, Berlin, Russell, Ryle, Schrödinger, Woodger, and, at the London School of Economics, Hayek and Robbins. In 1937 he took up a lectureship in philosophy at Canterbury University College, in Christchurch, New Zealand. There he wrote “The poverty of historicism” (1944–5) and The Open Society and its Enemies (1945); he called the latter his “war work.” Both these works contain interesting ideas about the special problems and methods of the social sciences. Later works, including an autobiography (1976), are listed at the end of the chapter. (shrink)

It is often claimed (most recently by Michael Friedman) that Kant intended to justify Newton’s most fundamental claims expressed in the Principia, such as his laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation. In this article, I argue that the differences between Newton’s laws of motion and Kant’s laws of mechanics are not superficial or merely apparent. Rather, they reflect fundamental differences in their respective projects. This point can be seen especially clearly by considering the nature of the various (...) projects undertaken in Germany prior to Kant that discuss the laws of motion. Wolff and his followers qua metaphysicians were especially interested in providing nonempirical justifications of their laws of motion as well as an intelligible account of the fundamental properties of bodies in terms of substance, accident, and force. Maupertuis and Euler, despite often being seen as Newtonians, both drew on traditions other than Newton’s. Physics textbooks (by figures such as Erxleben, Karsten, ‘s Gravesande, and Musschenbroek) vary considerably in their aims, but in none of these cases is Newton’s main argument of the Principia presented. In light of the fact that these projects are distinct in significant ways from Newton’s project, the differences between Newton’s laws of motion and Kant’s laws of mechanics are most likely not merely apparent but reflect the fact that Kant, too, was pursuing a project fundamentally distinct from Newton’s. (shrink)

kant’s critique of pure reason undertakes a systematic investigation of the possibility of synthetic cognition a priori so as to determine whether this kind of cognition is possible in the case of traditional metaphysics.1 While much scholarly attention has been devoted to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments as well as to that between the a priori and the a posteriori, less attention has been devoted to understanding exactly what cognition is for Kant. In particular, it is often insufficiently (...) clear what kind of mental state cognition is, what the exact nature of the conditions on cognition is, and how they are satisfied in the case of human beings. To bring greater clarity to... (shrink)

The A to Z of Kierkegaard's Philosophy provides a contextual introduction to Kierkegaard's 19th century world of Copenhagen, a chronology of events and key figures in his life, as well as definitions of the key systems of his thought-theology, existentialism, literature, and psychology. The extensive bibliographical section covers secondary literature and electronic materials of help to researchers. The appendix includes detailed information on his writings, along with a list of his pseudonyms.