Graphical AbstractThe third annual meeting of the EpiGeneSys network brought together epigenetics and systems biologists to report on collaborative projects that apply quantitative approaches to understanding complex epigenetic processes. The figure shown represents one meeting highlight, which was the unexpected emergence of genotype versus epigenotype in control of cell state.

This book is designed to remedy that lack.

The chief concepts involved are those of piety and impiety, and after a thorough analysis of the philosophical texts Mikalson offers a refined definition of ...

A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, is widely regarded as the most important twentieth-century work of Anglo-American political philosophy. It transformed the field by offering a compelling alternative to the dominant utilitarian conception of social justice. The argument for this alternative is, however, complicated and often confusing. In this book Jon Mandle carefully reconstructs Rawls's argument, showing that the most common interpretations of it are often mistaken. For example, Rawls does not endorse welfare-state capitalism, and he is not a (...) "luck egalitarian" as is widely believed.Mandle also explores the relationship between A Theory of Justice and the developments in Rawls's later work, Political Liberalism, as well as discussing some of the most influential criticisms in the secondary literature. His book will be an invaluable guide for anyone seeking to engage with this ground-breaking philosophical work"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

The increasing application of artificial intelligence (AI) to healthcare raises both hope and ethical concerns. Some advanced machine learning methods provide accurate clinical predictions at the expense of a significant lack of explainability. Alex John London has defended that accuracy is a more important value than explainability in AI medicine. In this article, we locate the trade-off between accurate performance and explainable algorithms in the context of distributive justice. We acknowledge that accuracy is cardinal from outcome-oriented justice because it helps (...) to maximize patients’ benefits and optimizes limited resources. However, we claim that the opaqueness of the algorithmic black box and its absence of explainability threatens core commitments of procedural fairness such as accountability, avoidance of bias, and transparency. To illustrate this, we discuss liver transplantation as a case of critical medical resources in which the lack of explainability in AI-based allocation algorithms is procedurally unfair. Finally, we provide a number of ethical recommendations for when considering the use of unexplainable algorithms in the distribution of health-related resources. (shrink)

I systematically defend a novel account of the grounds for identity and distinctness facts: they are all uniquely zero‐grounded. First, this Null Account is shown to avoid a range of problems facing other accounts: a relation satisfying the Null Account would be an excellent candidate for being the identity relation. Second, a plenitudinist view of relations suggests that there is such a relation. To flesh out this plenitudinist view I sketch a novel framework for expressing real definitions, use this framework (...) to give a definition of identity, and show how the central features of the identity relation can be deduced from this definition. (shrink)

In recent years, poetry and videogames have begun talking to one another in earnest. Poets have found inspiration in digital-interactive landscapes, while game developers now look to poetry as a source of textual enrichment. This book examines the p.

The semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce is irreducibly triadic, positing that a sign mediates between the object that determines it and the interpretant that it determines. He eventually holds that each sign has two objects and three interpretants, standardizing quickly on immediate and dynamical for the objects but experimenting with a variety of names for the interpretants. The two most prominent terminologies are immediate/dynamical/final and emotional/energetic/logical, and scholars have long debated how they are related to each other. This paper seeks (...) to shed new light on the matter by reviewing the numerous manuscript drafts where Peirce develops the latter nomenclature while attempting to introduce his pragmatism to a general audience. It then goes on to examine an additional set of interpretants, intentional/effectual/communicational, and shows that the three different trichotomies can be understood as complementary, rather than redundant or conflicting. (shrink)

This chapter presents an overview of the major interpretations of probability followed by an outline of the objective Bayesian interpretation and a discussion of the key challenges it faces. I discuss the ramifications of interpretations of probability and objective Bayesianism for the philosophy of mathematics in general.

Tired of all the confusion about truth? Join us on a journey to discover your truth lens. Through the River is a challenging and fascinating book that takes the reader on a poignant journey through River Town, providing an eye-opening view on how people can live in close proximity while having radically contrasting perspectives. River Town 's three communities live and act so differently because each group is using a distinct set of assumptions about truth (truth lens). This journey exposes (...) the eternal consequences of how our truth lens influences whether we tell others what we know, insist that others accept what we know or be resigned to keep what we know to ourselves. Today the confusion about truth is great but the stakes are even greater. Our understanding of the different ways people view truth is crucial to building and maintaining constructive relationships. Through the River explores the tools God has given us to engage people who have different assumptions thereby enabling us to communicate Christ to a lost and damaged world. CONTENTS Chapter 1: Three Communities along the River Chapter 2: The River Town Story: How History Affects Truth Lenses Chapter 3: Positivism: Settling on the Rocky Shore Chapter 4: Instrumentalism: Into the River Chapter 5: Critical Realism Chapter 6: Experiencing Truth in Love Chapter 7: Holding Truth Lenses Up to the Bible Chapter 8: The Great Disturbance Chapter 9: Truth Lenses and Relationships Chapter 10: Interacting with Others on the Journey Chapter 11: The World through Your Truth Lens Chapter 12: Journeys through the River. (shrink)

Originally published in 1933, this book was written to provide the younger reader with a guide to the basic elements of economics, preparing them with the tools to earn a living and spend money in a responsible fashion. The text was based on a series of lessons 'given to pupils of ordinary ability during their last two terms in a reorganized senior school'. Illustrative figures are included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in economics and (...) the history of education. (shrink)

The remarkable lectures that Hegel gave in Berlin in the 1820s generated an exciting intellectual atmosphere which lasted for decades. From the 1830s, many students flocked to Berlin to study with people who had studied with Hegel, and both his original students, such as Feuerbach and Bauer, and later arrivals including Kierkegaard, Engels, Bakunin, and Marx, evolved into leading nineteenth-century thinkers. Jon Stewart's panoramic study of Hegel's deep influence upon the nineteenth century in turn reveals what that century contributed to (...) the wider history of philosophy. It shows how Hegel's notions of 'alienation' and 'recognition' became the central motifs for the era's thinking; how these concepts spilled over into other fields – like religion, politics, literature, and drama; and how they created a cultural phenomenon so rich and pervasive that it can truly be called 'Hegel's century.' This book is required reading for historians of ideas as well as of philosophy. (shrink)

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- How to use this book -- Answering examination questions -- Timeline -- Part I Philosophy of religion -- Ancient philosophical influences -- 1 Plato -- 2 Aristotle -- 3 Soul, mind and body -- The existence of God -- 4 Arguments based on observation -- 5 Arguments based on reason: the ontological argument -- God and the world -- 6 Religious experience -- 7 The problem of evil -- Part II (...) Religious ethics -- 8 What is ethics? -- 9 Moral absolutism and moral relativism -- Normative ethical theories: religious approaches -- 10 Natural moral law -- 11 Situation ethics -- Normative ethical theories -- 12 Kantian ethics -- 13 Utilitarianism -- Applied ethics -- 14 Euthanasia -- 15 Business ethics -- Part III Developments in Christian thought -- 16 Introduction -- Insight -- 17 Augustine's teaching on human nature -- 18 Death and the afterlife -- Foundations -- 19 Knowledge of God's existence -- 20 The person of Jesus Christ -- Living -- 21 Christian moral principles -- 22 Christian moral action -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

A new perspective on the interaction of science, religion and politics in Restoration England, based on discussion of Cumberland's De legibus naturae.

The key to understanding what is problematic about The Man's behavior lies in considering his inflexible attitude toward following a particular kind of rule: the construction instructions accompanying his various LEGO sets. The Man treats the LEGO instructions he is following—which clearly have, at best, the status of conventional, rather than moral, rules—in a manner fitting only for moral requirements. To understand the severity of The Man's mistake, people need only contrast his attitude with that of Emmet Brickowoski at the (...) start of The LEGO Movie. Emmet is largely to be pitied rather than blamed for his inflexible rule‐following behavior. By contrast, there is no indication that The Man's rule‐following behavior is in any way aimed, even unsuccessfully, at attaining some genuine good. Rather, The Man follows the rules merely because they are, well, the rules. (shrink)

In this paper, we reply to Eric Moore’s argument that Lance Armstrong did not cheat, at least according to one, standard account of cheating. If that is the case, we argue, so much the worse for th...

Although maxims are central to Kant’s ethical theory, his account of them remains obscure. We can make progress towards understanding Kantian maxims by examining not only their role as the object of moral judgement but also their connection to freedom of the will and causality. This requires understanding maxims as causal laws that explain the actions that we impute to agents. In this way, they are analogous to causal laws of nature, but they are limited in scope to the agents (...) who are responsible for them. Understanding maxims in this way explains our limited epistemic access to them and helps to clarify Kant’s account of virtue and character as well as how they mediate the relationship between practical and theoretical reason. (shrink)

Value change is a phenomenon that is gaining increasing attention in ethical analyses of technologies. However, a comprehensive study of how reprogenetic technologies and values coevolve is lacking. To remedy this gap, in this overview article, I address the relationship between reprogenetics and value change. This contribution thus argues for the importance of investigating the phenomenon of value change in relation to the technological controversies discussed in bioethics. To meet this goal, I begin by clarifying, first, how technologies shape reproductive (...) choice. I then clarify what “values” and “moral values” are, how reprogenetic technologies are value laden, and what values are often discussed in reprogenetics debates. Next, I show five types of value changes that have occurred in advance in reproductive and genetic technologies. Finally, I argue for the bioethical relevance of discussing future techno-value change, pointing out the descriptive and normative challenges of this philosophical endeavor. (shrink)

While some authors have published excellent essays on various chapters and aspects of the book, few authors have successfully tackled the whole.In The Unity of ...

¿Puede la inteligencia artificial (IA) hacernos más morales o ayudarnos a tomar decisiones más éticas? El libro Más (que) humanos. Biotecnología, inteligencia artificial y ética de la mejora, editado por Francisco Lara y Julian Savulescu (2021), puede inspirarnos filosóficamente sobre este debate contemporáneo. En esta nota crítica, contextualizo la aportación general del volumen y analizo los dos últimos capítulos de Monasterio-Astobiza y de Lara y Deckers, quienes argumentan a favor del uso de la IA para hacernos mejores agentes morales. El (...) objetivo es ampliar y matizar críticamente algunas cuestiones clave sobre cómo la IA puede asistirnos para tomar decisiones más éticas. (shrink)

A biographical overview introduces the work and provides a context for the theoretical issues taken up in the articles, and an extensive bibliography suggests ...

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioral and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen, institutional analysis has developed into an important alternative to more individualistic approaches to theory and analysis. This body of theory has developed in a number of ways, and perhaps the most commonly applied version in political science is historical institutionalism that stresses the importance of path dependency in shaping institutional behaviour. The (...) fundamental question addressed in this book is whether institutionalism is useful for the various sub-disciplines within political science to which it has been applied, and to what extent the assumptions inherent to institutional analysis can be useful for understanding the range of behavior of individuals and structures in the public sector. The volume will also examine the relative utility of different forms of institutionalism within the various sub-disciplines. The book consists of a set of strong essays by noted international scholars from a range of sub-disciplines within the field of political science, each analyzing their area of research from an institutionalist perspective and assessing what contributions this form of theorizing has made, and can make, to that research. The result is a balanced and nuanced account of the role of institutions in contemporary political science, and a set of suggestions for the further development of institutional theory. (shrink)

The hope is that this collection will encourage students and scholars to further explore the different dimensions of Heiberg's thought, both on its own terms ...

This book offers a bold and controversial new thesis regarding the nature of prejudice. The authors' central claim is that prejudice is not simply learned, rather it is predisposed in all human beings and is thus the foundation for ethical valuation. They aim to destroy the illusion that prejudice is merely the result of learned beliefs, socially conditioned attitudes, or pathological states of development. Contrary to traditional accounts, prejudice itself is not a negative attribute of human nature, rather it is (...) the necessary precondition for the self and civilization to emerge. Defined as the preferential self-expression of valuation, prejudice gives rise to greater existential complexities and novelties that elevate selfhood and society to higher states of ethical realization. Rather than offer another contribution that highlights the destructive nature of prejudice, Mills and Polanowski address the ontological, psychological, and dialectical origins of prejudice as it manifests itself in the process of selfhood and culture. They provide an original conceptualization of the phenomenology of prejudice and its dialectical instantiation in the ontology of the individual, worldhood, and the very structures of subjectivity. As a unique synthesis of psychoanalysis, Hegelian idealism, Heideggerian existential ontology, and Whiteheadian process philosophy, prejudice is the indispensable ground for humanity to actualize its highest potentiality-for-Being. The striking result is (1) a revolutionary theory of human nature, (2) a new ethical system, and (3) the elevation of dialectical ethics to the domain of metaphysics. (shrink)

This book advocates a return to the spirit of the Greek notion of_ paideia_, emphasizing a pedagogy of becoming. The authors offer a holistic approach to education that aspires toward the inclusion, promotion, and nurturance of virtue and valuation. Topics range from the purely conceptual to applied methodology. Several key issues and contemporary trends in education are addressed philosophically, including the values of wisdom, morality, compassion, empathy, interdependence, authenticity, and self-understanding.

From the fundamental issues of philosophical thought to the latest theories in the philosophy of mind, An Introduction to Philosophy provides clear and incisive ...

Michel Foucault's involvement with politics, both as an individual and a writer, has been much commented upon but until now has not been systematically reviewed. This is the first major introductory study of Michel Foucault as a political thinker. Jonathon Simons explores the importance of the political in all areas of Foucault's work and life, including important material only recently made available and the implications of various revelations about his private life. Simons relates Foucault's work both to contemporary political thinkers (...) such as Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor and Jurgen Habermas, and to those challenging conventional political categories, especially people who write on feminist and gay theory, such as Judith Butler. Students of Foucault and of political and social theory, as well as those working in lesbian and gay theory, and feminist studies, will find this book essential. (shrink)

The nineteenth century was a dynamic time of philosophical development. This volume explores the rich tradition of nineteenth-century Continental philosophy, highlighting the importance of this tradition for the leading streams of thought of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel argues that the development of the religions of the world leads up to and culminates in Christianity, which is the one true religion. One key element which separates Christianity from the other religions, according to Hegel, concerns the issue of alienation. He argues that the previous religions all contain some form of alienation, which can be found in their conceptions of the divine. In this paper, I wish to examine Hegel’s view (...) that Christianity alone overcomes religious alienation. What is it that makes Christianity so special in this regard? This is a particularly important issue given that the question of alienation is so central in the post-Hegelian thinkers such as Feuerbach, Bauer, and Marx, who all insist that, far from overcoming alienation, Christianity is guilty of causing it. I wish to argue that this issue provides new insight into the old criticism of Hegel as a thinker of abstraction. (shrink)

The Problem of Iterated Ground is to explain what grounds truths about ground: if Γ grounds φ, what grounds that Γ grounds φ? This paper develops a novel solution to this problem. The basic idea is to connect ground to explanatory arguments. By developing a rigorous account of explanatory arguments we can equip operators for factive and non-factive ground with natural introduction and elimination rules. A satisfactory account of iterated ground falls directly out of the resulting logic: non- factive grounding (...) claims, if true, are zero-grounded in the sense of Fine. (shrink)

Nearly all research in neurofeedback since the 1960s has focused on training voluntary control over EEG constructs. By contrast, EEG state discrimination training focuses on awareness of subjective correlates of EEG states. This study presents the first successful replication of EEG alpha state discrimination first reported by Kamiya . A 150-s baseline was recorded in 106 participants. During the task, low triggered a prompt. Participants indicated “high” or “low” with a keypress response and received immediate feedback. Seventy-five percent of participants (...) achieved significant discrimination within nine sessions, with a significant learning curve effect. Performance was significantly related to physical properties of the EEG signal, including magnitude, duration, and absolute vs. relative amplitude. These results are consistent with a conceptualization of EEG state discrimination as a sensory modality, although it is also intricately related to voluntary control of these states. (shrink)

Modern philosophy recognizes two major ethical theories: deontology, which encourages adherence to rules and fulfillment of duties or obligations; and consequentialism, which evaluates morally significant actions strictly on the basis of their actual or anticipated outcomes. Both involve the systematic application of universal abstract principles, reflecting the culturally dominant paradigm of technical rationality. Professional societies promulgate codes of ethics with which engineers are expected to comply, while courts and the public generally assign liability to engineers primarily in accordance with the (...) results of their work, whether intended or unintended. A third option, prominent in ancient philosophy, has reemerged recently: virtue ethics, which recognizes that sensitivity to context and practical judgment are indispensable in particular concrete situations, and therefore rightly focuses on the person who acts, rather than the action itself. Beneficial character traits—i.e., virtues—are identified within a specific social practice in light of the internal goods that are unique to it. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for implementing virtue ethics within engineering. (shrink)

Hegel is known for coining the word “phenomenology” as a description of the methodological approach that he pursues in the famous work that bears this title. It has long been an open question the degree to which the later philosophical school of phenomenology in fact follows the actual method developed by Hegel or if it merely co-opted the name and applied the term in a new context. While Husserl was dismissive of Hegel, the French phenomenologists were generally receptive to Hegel’s (...) conception of phenomenology. This chapter argues that there are in fact some important points of continuity and that the French phenomenological school’s understanding of Hegel as a forerunner of their movement is quite legitimate. (shrink)

I discuss three recent counterexamples to the transitivity of grounding due to Jonathan Schaffer. I argue that the counterexamples don’t work and draw some conclusions about the relationship between grounding and explanation.

It is frequently claimed that we can learn very little, if anything, about the aesthetic character of an artwork on the basis of testimony. Such disparaging assessments of the epistemic value of aesthetic testimony contrast markedly with our acceptance of testimony as an important source of knowledge in many other areas. There have, however, been a number of challenges to this orthodoxy of late; from those who seek to deny that such a contrast exists as well as attempts by those (...) who accept the distinction to provide an explanation and defence of the contrast. In Section I, I outline a little of the nature and history of the debate over aesthetic testimony. Section II, focuses on the opposing positions on aesthetic testimony, optimism and pessimism, and takes steps to clarify what exactly is at issue between them. In Section III, I survey considerations which have been adduced in favour of pessimism ranging from brute appeal to intuition to complex argumentation before turning in Section IV, to look at motivations for optimism. Finally, in Section V, I consider some alternative views which claim that, for a variety of reasons, it is a mistake to construe the debate over aesthetic testimony as concerned with the epistemic standing of aesthetic beliefs formed on the basis of testimony. (shrink)

In this new book, Jon Mandle explores the meaning of global justice and provides students with an accessible introduction to the core concepts and debates in the field. Global justice, he explains, requires universal respect for basic human rights. These rights belong to each and every one of us, and they can be used to guide policy-making in areas such as humanitarian intervention, global poverty, and secession. Emphasizing the importance of legitimate political institutions for protecting basic rights and ensuring self-determination, (...) Mandle sets out concrete reforms which would protect core human rights internationally."--Jacket. (shrink)

Most authors on metaphysical grounding have taken full grounding to be an internal relation in the sense that it's necessary that if the grounds and the grounded both obtain, then the grounds ground the grounded. The negative part of this essay exploits empirical and provably nonparadoxical self-reference to prove conclusively that even immediate full grounding isn't an internal relation in this sense. The positive, second part of this essay uses the notion of a “completely satisfactory explanation” to shed light on (...) the logic of ground in the presence of self-reference. This allows us to develop a satisfactory logic of ground and recover a sense in which grounding is still an internal relation. (shrink)

How do we form aesthetic judgements? And how should we do so? According to a very prominent tradition in aesthetics it would be wrong to form our aesthetic judgements about a particular object on the basis of anything other than first-hand acquaintance with the object itself (or some very close surrogate) and, in particular, it would be wrong to form such judgements merely on the basis of testimony. Further this tradition presupposes that our actual practice of forming aesthetic judgements typically (...) meets, or at least approximates, this ideal. In this paper I target this descriptive claim and argue—by appeal to some empirical work concerning belief polarization and echo chambers in aesthetics—that our actual practice of forming aesthetic judgements is heavily dependent on social sources such as testimony. I then briefly consider what normative implications this descriptive claim may have. (shrink)

Peirce is best known as the founder of pragmatism, but his dissatisfaction with how others understood and appropriated it prompted him to rename his own doctrine “pragmaticism” and to compose several variants of his original maxim defining it, as well as numerous restatements and elaborations. This paper presents an extensive selection of such formulations, followed by analysis and commentary demonstrating that for Peirce the ultimate meaning of an intellectual concept is properly expressed as a conditional proposition about the deliberate, self-controlled (...) conduct of its interpreters, not the law-governed behavior of its object. (shrink)

That believing truly as a matter of luck does not generally constitute knowing has become epistemic commonplace. Accounts of knowledge incorporating this anti-luck idea frequently rely on one or another of a safety or sensitivity condition. Sensitivity-based accounts of knowledge have a well-known problem with necessary truths, to wit, that any believed necessary truth trivially counts as knowledge on such accounts. In this paper, we argue that safety-based accounts similarly trivialize knowledge of necessary truths and that two ways of responding (...) to this problem for safety, issuing from work by Williamson and Pritchard, are of dubious success. (shrink)