Both Philip and Andrew are philosophy students whose interests converge around the philosophy of technology broadly understood. Philip's interest is specifically aimed toward the ethics of Transhumanism and depictions of Transhumanism in works of fiction. On the other hand, Andrew finds himself more focused on religious behavior in the technological world. While the two perspectives might not seem that close, there is certain to be an overlap in Andrew and Philip's shared understanding of how technological phenomena play (...) a crucial role concerning religion and society. (shrink)

As the Zika virus pandemic continues to bring worry and fear to health officials and medical scientists, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) have recommended that residents of the Zika-infected countries, e.g., Brazil, and those who have traveled to the area should delay having babies which may involve artificial contraceptive, particularly condom. This preventive policy, however, is seemingly at odds with the Roman Catholic Church’s position on the contraceptive. As least since the promulgation of (...) Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, the Church has explicitly condemned artificial birth control as intrinsic evil. However, the current pontiff, Pope Francis, during his recent visit to Latin America, remarked that the use of artificial contraception may not be in contradiction to the teaching of Humanae Vitae while drawing a parallel between the current Zika Crisis and the 1960’s Belgian Congo Nun Controversy. The pope mentioned that the traditional ethical principle of the lesser of two evils may be the doctrine that justified the exceptions. The authors of this paper attempt to expand the theological rationale of the pope’s suggestion. In so doing, the authors rely on casuistical reasoning as an analytic tool that compares the Belgian Congo Nun case and the given Zika case, and suggest that the former is highly similar to, if not the same as, the latter in terms of normative moral feature. That is, in both cases the use of artificial contraception is theologically justified in reference to the criteria that the doctrine of the lesser of two evils requires. The authors wish that the paper would provide a solid theological-ethical ground based on which condom-use as the most immediate and effective preventive measure can be recommended in numerous Catholic hospitals as well as among Catholic communities in the world, particularly the most Zika-affected and largest Catholic community in the world, Brazil – 123 million present Brazilian citizens are reported to be Roman Catholic. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the difficulty of distinguishing between science fiction and philosophy. The boundary between these genres is somewhat vague. There is a “neutral zone” separating the genres. But this neutral zone is often transgressed. One key distinction considered here is that between entertainment and edification. Another crucial element is found in the importance of the author’s apparent self-consciousness of these distinctions. Philosophy seeks to edify, and philosophers are often deliberately focused on thinking about the question of the (...) borders that distinguish genres. Science fiction is more interested in entertainment, and narrative authors tend to care less about policing the border. This distinction is a pragmatic one. And canonical authors often violate the boundary. I examine key authors to make this point, including Plato, Kant, and H.G. Wells. My discussion shows that these canonical authors wandered into the neutral zone in their own work, reminding us that the boundaries we draw around genres are arbitrary and subject to transgression. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

This article presents a critical reevaluation of the thesis—closely associated with H. L. A. Hart, and central to the views of most recent legal philosophers—that the idea of state coercion is not logically essential to the definition of law. The author argues that even laws governing contracts must ultimately be understood as “commands of the sovereign, backed by force.” This follows in part from recognition that the “sovereign,” defined rigorously, at the highest level of abstraction, is that person or entity (...) identified by reference to game theory and the philosophical idea of “convention” as the source of signals with which the subject population has become effectively locked, as a group, into conformity. (shrink)

Both short and long-term video-game play may result in superior performance on visual and attentional tasks. To further these findings, we compared the performance of experienced male video-game players (VGPs) and non-VGPs on a Simon-task. Experienced-VGPs began playing before the age of 10, had a minimum of 8 years of experience and a minimum play time of over 20 h per week over the past 6 months. Our results reveal a significantly reduced Simon-effect in experienced-VGPs relative to non-VGPs. However, this (...) was true only for the right-responses, which typically show a greater Simon-effect than left-responses. In addition, experienced-VGPs demonstrated significantly quicker reaction times and more balanced left-versus-right-hand performance than non-VGPs. Our results suggest that experienced-VGPs can resolve response-selection conflicts more rapidly for right-responses than non-VGPs, and this may in part be underpinned by improved bimanual motor control. (shrink)

A review of Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 336. H/b £40.23. and The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 320. P/b £20.21.

Putnam argues that reductionism, “the doctrine that the laws of such ‘higher level’ sciences as psychology and sociology are reducible to the laws of lower-level sciences - biology, chemistry, ultimately to the laws of elementary particle physics”, is wrong. In this note, I take issue with some of Putnam’s arguments.

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-H reviews Dr Andrew R. Gallimore's book, Alien Information Theory. -/- This was published on PsyPressUK on 13 June 2019.

Scrutiny (1932-1953) was one of the most important critical reviews of the last century. Its editors and contributors included F. R. Leavis, Q. D. Leavis, Denys Thompson, L. C. Knights, D. W. Harding, W. H. Mellers, H. A. Mason, among others. In recasting Scrutiny’s critique of mass culture by way of Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981), I hope to show that the Scrutiny project not only dramatizes the conflicts internal to what MacIntyre calls emotivist culture, but provides a new way (...) of looking at the group’s relation to the culture industry, its purported elitism, and its deep ties with a communitarian rather than socialist politics. (shrink)

Hoerl & McCormack posit two systems – the temporal updating system and the temporal reasoning system – and suggest that they explain an inherent contradiction in people's naïve theory of time. We suggest there is no contradiction. Something does, however, require explanation: the tension between certain sophisticated beliefs about time, and certain phenomenological states or beliefs about those phenomenological states. The temporal updating mechanism posited by H&M may contribute to this tension.

H´ector-Neri Casta˜neda-Calder´on (December 13, 1924–September 7, 1991) was born in San Vicente Zacapa, Guatemala. He attended the Normal School for Boys in Guatemala City, later called the Military Normal School for Boys, from which he was expelled for refusing to fight a bully; the dramatic story, worthy of being filmed, is told in the “De Re” section of his autobiography, “Self-Profile” (1986). He then attended a normal school in Costa Rica, followed by studies in philosophy at the University of San (...) Carlos, Guatemala. He won a scholarship to the University of Minnesota, where he received his B.A. (1950), M.A. (1952), and Ph.D. (1954), all in philosophy. His dissertation, “The Logical Structure of Moral Reasoning”, was written under the direction of Wilfrid Sellars. He returned to teach in Guatemala, and then received a scholarship to study at Oxford University (1955–1956), after which he took a sabbatical-replacement position in philosophy at Duke University (1956). His first full-time academic appointment was at Wayne State University (1957– 1969), where he founded the philosophy journal Noˆus (1967, a counter-offer made to him by Wayne State to encourage him to stay there rather than to take the chairmanship of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania). In 1969, he moved (along with several of his Wayne colleagues) to Indiana University, where he eventually became the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy and, later, its first Dean of Latino Affairs (1978–1981). He remained at Indiana until his death. He was also a visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin (1962–1963) and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1981–1982). He received grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (1967–1968), the T. Andrew Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. He was elected President of the American Philosophical Association Central Division (1979– 1980), named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1990), and received the Presidential Medal of Honor from the Government of Guatemala (1991). Casta˜neda’s philosophical interests spanned virtually the entire spectrum of philosophy, and his theories form a highly interconnected whole.. (shrink)

Do the laws of nature supervene on ordinary, non-nomic matters of fact? Lange's criticism of Humean supervenience (HS) plays a key role in his account of natural laws. Though we are sympathetic to his account, we remain unconvinced by his criticism. We focus on his thought experiment involving a world containing nothing but a lone proton and argue that it does not cast sufficient doubt on HS. In addition, we express some concern about locating the lawmakers in an ontology of (...) primitive subjunctive facts and suggest that a 'mixed' metaphysics to the lawmaker question might be attractive. (shrink)

Ebola is a deadly disease with no cure; there is no vaccine developed yet. Many died during the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, and many healthcare professionals went to the virus infected area to treat the patients while placing their lives in danger. Not every medical professional placed in the field is a fully trained specialist, and sometimes one or two under-trained doctors are in charge of the entire clinic with some nurses and operating technicians. When unexpected outbreaks of the (...) virus occur in the places, the doctor(s) would encounter medical and ethical dilemmas. Should they leave or stay? In fact, this dilemma is not confined to the Ebola pandemic but relevant to all similar cases. In this paper, three authors, a medical resident, a clinical bioethicist, and a theoretical bioethicist respond to the dilemma. (shrink)

Several scholars, including Martin Hengel, R. Alan Culpepper, and Richard Bauckham, have argued that Papias had knowledge of the Gospel of John on the grounds that Papias’s prologue lists six of Jesus’s disciples in the same order that they are named in the Gospel of John: Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, and John. In “A Note on Papias’s Knowledge of the Fourth Gospel” (JBL 129 [2010]: 793–794), Jake H. O’Connell presents a statistical analysis of this argument, according to which (...) the probability of this correspondence occurring by chance is lower than 1%. O’Connell concludes that it is more than 99% probable that this correspondence is the result of Papias copying John, rather than chance. I show that O’Connell’s analysis contains multiple mistakes, both substantive and mathematical: it ignores relevant evidence, overstates the correspondence between John and Papias, wrongly assumes that if Papias did not know John he ordered the disciples randomly, and conflates the probability of A given B with the probability of B given A. In discussing these errors, I aim to inform both Johannine scholarship and the use of probabilistic methods in historical reasoning. (shrink)

Stephen Cox writes of the complexities that guided this well-known columnist, literary critic, best-selling novelist, avid reader, and intellectual, Mary Isabel Bowler Patterson, better known as Isabel Paterson or “I.M.P.” This edited collection includes a well-chosen selection of her essays, reviews, and letters. Combining both formal and colloquial prose, Paterson’s writings incorporated quips about such people as Sinclair Lewis and Henry David Thoreau, as well as candid discussions of William F. Buckley, Jr., Buffalo Bill, and Cecil Rhodes. The more (...) than one hundred names mentioned in the collection included such diverse figures as Virginia Woolf, John Pierpont Morgan, H.G. Wells, Henry Hazlitt, and Jasper Elliot Crane. (shrink)

Trolley problems have been used in the development of moral theory and the psychological study of moral judgments and behavior. Most of this research has focused on people from the West, with implicit assumptions that moral intuitions should generalize and that moral psychology is universal. However, cultural differences may be associated with differences in moral judgments and behavior. We operationalized a trolley problem in the laboratory, with economic incentives and real-life consequences, and compared British and Chinese samples on moral behavior (...) and judgment. We found that Chinese participants were less willing to sacrifice one person to save five others, and less likely to consider such an action to be right. In a second study using three scenarios, including the standard scenario where lives are threatened by an on-coming train, fewer Chinese than British participants were willing to take action and sacrifice one to save five, and this cultural difference was more pronounced when the consequences were less severe than death. (shrink)

Lately in the past couple of years, there are an increasing in the normal rate of playing computer games or video games compared to the E-learning content that are introduced for the safety of our children, and the impact of the video game addictiveness that ranges from (Musculoskeletal issues, Vision problems and Obesity). Furthermore, this paper introduce an intelligent tutoring system for both parent and their children for enhancement the experience of gaming and tell us about the health problems and (...) how we can solve them, with an easy user interface that way can our children be happy and excited about the information and their health. (shrink)

Much academic work (in philosophy, economics, law, etc.), as well as common sense, assumes that ill health reduces well-being. It is bad for a person to become sick, injured, disabled, etc. Empirical research, however, shows that people living with health problems report surprisingly high levels of well-being - in some cases as high as the self-reported well-being of healthy people. In this chapter, I explore the relationship between health and well-being. I argue that although we have good reason to believe (...) that health problems causing pain and death typically do reduce well-being, health problems that limit capabilities probably don't reduce well-being nearly as much as most people suppose. I then briefly explore the consequences of this conclusion for political philosophy and ethics. If many health problems don't significantly reduce well-being, why should governments go to great expense to prevent or treat them? Why should parents be obliged to ensure the health of their children? (shrink)

Der berühmte Ameisenmann E.O. Wilson war schon immer einer meiner Helden - nicht nur ein hervorragender Biologe, sondern eine der winzigen und verschwindenden Minderheit von Intellektuellen, die es zumindest wagt, die Wahrheit über unsere Natur anzudeuten, die andere nicht verstehen oder, soweit sie es verstehen, aus politischen Gründen unermüdlich vermeiden. Leider beendet er seine lange Karriere auf äußerst schäbige Weise als Partei eines ignoranten und arroganten Angriffs auf die Wissenschaft, der zumindest teilweise durch die religiöse Inbrunst seiner Harvard-Kollegenmotiviertist. Es zeigt (...) die abscheulichen Folgen, wenn Universitäten Geld von religiösen Gruppen annehmen, Wissenschaftszeitschriften von großen Namen so bewundert sind, dass sie eine ordnungsgemäße Peer Review vermeiden und wenn Egos außer Kontrolle geraten dürfen. Es führt uns in die Natur der Evolution, die Grundlagen der wissenschaftlichen Methodik, wie Mathematik mit Wissenschaft zusammenhängt, was eine Theorie ausmacht, und sogar, welche Einstellungen zu Religion und Großzügigkeit angemessen sind, wenn wir uns unaufhaltsam dem Zusammenbruch der industriellen Zivilisation nähern. Ich fand Abschnitte in 'Conquest' mit dem üblichen prägnanten Kommentar (obwohl nichts wirklich Neues oder Interessantes, wenn man seine anderen Werke gelesen hat und auf biologie im Allgemeinen ist) in der oftgestylten Prosa, die sein Markenzeichen ist, aber war ziemlich überrascht, dass der Kern des Buches seine Ablehnung inklusiver Fitness (die seit über 50 Jahren ein Standbein der Evolutionsbiologie ist) zugunsten der Gruppenauswahl ist. Man nimmt an, dass von ihm kommen und mit den articles er bezieht sich auf veröffentlicht von sich selbst und Harvard Mathematik Kollege Nowak in großen Peer-Review-Zeitschriften wie Nature, muss es ein wesentlicher Fortschritt sein,, trotz der Tatsache, dass ich wusste, Gruppenauswahl wurde fast überall abgelehnt, da mit jeder großen Rolle in der Evolution. Ich habe zahlreiche Rezensionen im Netz gelesen und viele haben gute Kommentare, aber die, die ich am meisten sehen wollte, war, dass von renommierten Wissenschaftsautor und Evolutionsbiologe Richard Dawkins. Im Gegensatz zu den meisten von Fachleuten, die in Zeitschriften nur für diejenigen mit Zugang zu einer Universität zur Verfügung stehen, ist es leicht im Netz verfügbar, obwohlanscheinend, entschied er sich, es nicht in einer Zeitschrift zu veröffentlichen, da es angemessen abscheulich ist. Leider findet man eine vernichtende Ablehnung des Buches und den acerbic Kommentar über einen wissenschaftlichen Kollegen, den ich je von Dawkins gesehen habe -- über alles in seinem vielen Austausch mit dem verstorbenen und unbeklagten Demagogen und Pseudowissenschaftler Stephan Jay Gould. Obwohl Gould für seine persönlichen Angriffe auf seinen Harvard-Kollegen Wilson berüchtigt war, stellt Dawkins fest, dass ein Großteil von "Conquest" einen unbequem an Goulds häufige Verfehlungen in "bland, unfocussed ecumenicalis" erinnert. Dasselbe gilt mehr oder weniger für Wilsons populäres Schreiben, einschließlich seines jüngsten Buches "The Meaning of Human Existence" – eine weitere schamlose Eigenwerbung seiner diskreditierten Ideen zu Inklusiver Fitness (IF). Dawkins weist darauf hin, dass das berüchtigte 2010-Papier von Nowak, Tarnita und Wilson in Nature von über 140 Biologen, die einen Brief unterzeichnet haben, fast überall abgelehnt wurde und dass es in Wilsons Buch kein Wort darüber gibt. Auch in den folgenden 4 Jahren mit Artikeln, Vorträgen und mehreren Büchern haben sie dies nicht korrigiert. Es gibt keine andere Wahl, als Dawkins trenchant Kommentar zuzustimmen: "Für Wilson nicht zu zugeben, dass er für sich selbst gegen die große Mehrheit seiner professionellen Kollegen spricht - es schmerzt mich, dies von einem lebenslangen Helden zu sagen -- ein Akt mutwilligen Arroganz." Angesichts von Nowaks späterem Verhalten muss man ihn auch einbeziehen. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass einer der fassungslosen Menschen, die man im Fernsehen sieht, interviewt wird, nachdem der nette Mann von nebenan, der seit 30 Jahren alle Kinder babysitten, als Serienmörder entlarvt wird. Dawkins weist auch darauf hin (wie er und andere seit vielen Jahren), dass inklusive Fitness mit dem Neo-Darwinismus (d.h. logischerweise folgt) entsteht und nicht abgelehnt werden kann, ohne die Evolution selbst abzulehnen. Wilson erinnert uns erneut an Gould, der Kreationisten von der einen Seite seines Mundes anprangerte, während er ihnen Trost spendete, indem er endlosen ultraliberalen marxistisch gefärbten Kauderwelsch über Spandrels, unterbrochenes Gleichgewicht und Evolutionspsychologie von der anderen ausspeist. Die Unbestimmtheit und mathematische Opazität (für die meisten von uns) der Mathematik der Gruppen- oder Mehrebenenauswahl ist genau das, was die Sanftmütigen ihnen ermöglichen wollen, dem rationalen Denken in ihren endlosen antiwissenschaftlichen Gerüchten und (in der Wissenschaft) postmodernen Wortsalate zu entkommen. Schlimmer noch, Wilsons "Eroberung" ist ein schlecht durchdachtes und schlampig geschriebenes Durcheinander voller Nonsequiturs, vager Streifzüge, Verwirrungen und Inkohärenz. Eine gute Bewertung, die einige davon im Detail ist, dass von Absolvent Gerry Carter, die Sie im Netz finden können. Wilson hat auch nichts mit unserem gegenwärtigen Verständnis der Evolutionspsychologie (EP) zu tun (siehe z.B. die letzten 300 Seiten von Pinkers 'The Better Angels of our Nature'). Wenn Sie eine seriöse Buchlänge Bericht über die soziale Evolution und einige relevante EP von einem Experten wollen, siehe 'Principles of Social Evolution' von Andrew F.G. Bourke, oder ein nicht ganz so ernster und zugegebenermaßen fehlerhafter und irrender Bericht, aber ein Muss,das Robert Trivers dennoch lesen muss—'The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life' und ältere, aber immer noch aktuelle und durchdringende Werke wie 'The Evolutionof Cooperation':Revised Edition by Robert Axelrod and 'The Biology ofMoral Systems' von Richard Alexander. (shrink)

PUERPÉRIO EM BOVINOS -/- INTRODUÇÃO -/- O puerpério é definido como o período entre o parto e a apresentação do primeiro estro fértil. Dois processos ocorrem durante o puerpério: a involução uterina e o início da atividade ovariana pós-parto. Em vacas leiteiras, os cuidados médicos pós-parto são essenciais nos programas de manejo, uma vez que as patologias uterinas são diagnosticadas e tratadas nesse período para que a vaca esteja em ótimas condições para ser inseminada, uma vez terminado o período de (...) espera voluntário. -/- 4.1 Involução uterina -/- O útero após o parto sofre modificações macroscópicas e microscópicas, até atingir as características de um útero não gestante, o que leva de 30 a 45 dias. O peso e o tamanho pós-parto diminuem rapidamente como consequência da atrofia das fibras musculares; por necrose das carúnculas e por eliminação de líquidos. Ao mesmo tempo em que o útero diminui de tamanho, o endométrio passa por um processo regenerativo para poder hospedar uma nova gestação. -/- A involução é promovida pelas contrações uterinas, que facilitam a eliminação de fluidos e dejetos e reduzem o tamanho do útero. As contrações são causadas pela secreção contínua de PGF2α, de origem uterina, e pela ocitocina secretada durante a amamentação. A PGF2α é secretada durante as primeiras 3 semanas pós-parto e seu envolvimento é considerado necessário para que a involução uterina ocorra normalmente. -/- Durante a involução uterina, as secreções conhecidas como lóquios, que são formadas por restos de membranas, carúnculas, fluidos fetais e sangue, são derramadas pela vagina. Essas secreções variam da cor vermelha ao marrom, têm consistência viscosa e são inodoras. A maioria dos lóquios é descartada durante os primeiros 15 dias após o parto e, em seguida, praticamente desaparece, exceto em casos de involução uterina anormal, quando o útero continua a derramar fluidos de consistência, cor e odor diferentes (figura 1). -/- Figura 1: O útero após o parto sofre alterações macroscópicas e microscópicas, até atingir as características de um útero não grávido, o que leva de 30 a 45 dias. -/- Antes do parto, o útero é estéril, pois é protegido da contaminação bacteriana pelo colo do útero ou cérvix. Durante e após o parto, essa barreira física desaparece e o útero é invadido por bactérias que se encontram no meio ambiente, pele e fezes, ou que são introduzidas durante a assistência ao parto. Além disso, a capacidade funcional dos fagócitos uterinos é baixa após o parto, o que contribui para o estabelecimento de infecções. Cerca de 95% das vacas desenvolvem infecções uterinas durante a involução, e uma alta porcentagem de vacas as eliminam por meio de mecanismos naturais. -/- Os mecanismos de defesa uterinos são constituídos pelas barreiras anatômicas (vagina, vulva e cérvix); fatores fisiológicos (produção de muco na vagina e cérvix); fagocitose promovida por neutrófilos, que migram da circulação geral para o útero; pela produção de substâncias inespecíficas, que inibem o crescimento bacteriano e favorecem a eliminação de microrganismos. A capacidade de eliminar bactérias do útero é determinada pelos hormônios ovarianos (progesterona e estrogênios); durante o diestro, a progesterona reduz a migração de neutrófilos, suprime o sistema imunocompetente, fecha o colo do útero e causa atonia uterina, resultando em aumento da suscetibilidade à infecção. Ao contrário, durante a fase folicular do ciclo estral (proestro e estro), o estradiol promove a migração de neutrófilos, abre a cérvix e aumenta o tônus uterino, o que facilita a eliminação de agentes infecciosos. Além disso, a atividade dos neutrófilos é afetada pelas deficiências antioxidantes e pela profundidade do balanço energético negativo. -/- 4.2 Anormalidades do puerpério -/- Após o parto, ocorrem algumas patologias que retardam a involução uterina e, consequentemente, afetam o intervalo entre o parto e o primeiro serviço. -/- 4.2.1 Retenção da placenta -/- A placenta é eliminada dentro de 12 horas após o parto; a retenção da placenta por mais de 24 horas é considerada uma patologia. A retenção placentária (RP) é uma alteração frequente do puerpério, que deve ser considerada como um sinal clínico de várias condições que podem ter origem infecciosa (aborto), metabólica (hipocalcemia, cetose, síndrome do vaca gorda), deficiências nutricionais (selênio e vitamina E) e erros de manejo (demasiada intervenção no parto). -/- A incidência de RP varia de 5 a 15% e depende, em grande parte, do estado de saúde e do manejo do rebanho. A RP é o principal fator de risco para infecções uterinas (metrite puerperal, metrite, endometrite e endometrite subclínica); também causa atraso no período entre o parto e a concepção e está associada à redução do percentual de concepção no primeiro serviço. -/- Em termos econômicos, determinou-se que a RP causa perdas significativas principalmente devido aos custos de serviços médicos, aumento da taxa de eliminação e diminuição da fecundidade. Além disso, vacas com retenção placentária produzem 355 kg a menos de leite durante os primeiros 60 dias do que vacas que não apresentam esta patologia (figuras 2 e 3). -/- 4.2.2 Patogenia -/- A placenta está ligada ao endométrio pelas vilosidades coriônicas, que estão ligadas às carúnculas (junção carúncula-cotilédone). A união entre essas estruturas é favorecida por um fluido adesivo formado por colágeno e outras proteínas. Antes e durante o trabalho de parto, observa-se um aumento da atividade das enzimas proteolíticas (colagenase, talvez a mais importante), que são responsáveis por separar o cotilédone da carúncula. Posteriormente, a placenta é removida mecanicamente por contrações uterinas após o parto do feto. -/- A etiologia e patogênese da retenção placentária não são conhecidas. Uma explicação proposta é que isso se deve a uma falha dos mecanismos proteolíticos responsáveis pela separação do cotilédone da carúncula. Foi observado que a atividade da colagenase no cotilédone é maior em vacas que não retêm placenta do que naquelas que a retêm. Propõe-se que alguns fatores de risco para retenção placentária possam estar atuando na redução da atividade da colagenase. Por outro lado, as condições inflamatórias na junção carúncula-cotilédone de origem infecciosa também impedem a separação da placenta. -/- Figura 3: Vaca com retenção placentária. -/- Figura 2: Vaca com retenção placentária. Em rebanhos comerciais, 5 a 15% das vacas retêm a placenta. -/- 4.2.3 Tratamento -/- Existem vários tratamentos, como a remoção manual da placenta em combinação com a aplicação local de antibióticos (infusões intrauterinas) e a administração de produtos hormonais (ocitócicos e PGF2α). A eficácia desses tratamentos é discutível. -/- A remoção manual da placenta é o tratamento mais popular; entretanto, não é a melhor, pois causa danos ao endométrio, que variam de leve sangramento a hematomas, mesmo quando não há evidências externas. Além disso, a remoção manual diminui a capacidade fagocítica dos leucócitos uterinos, resultando em metrite mais grave, maior atraso na involução uterina e baixo desempenho reprodutivo. -/- Outro tratamento consiste em cortar a placenta ao nível da vulva. Posteriormente, quando a placenta se separa das carúnculas, devido ao processo de decomposição do tecido, uma leve tração da vulva é suficiente para retirá-la, sem consequências. Essas vacas devem ser observadas quanto à febre e imediatamente integradas ao programa de check-up pós-parto, pois certamente desenvolverão metrite ou endometrite. A administração de antibióticos, tanto nos casos de retirada manual como naqueles em que a placenta é cortada, depende do estado geral da vaca. Deve-se sempre ter em mente que a RP é o principal fator de risco para metrite, portanto as vacas devem ser observadas para detectar prontamente aquelas que apresentam febre. Os antibióticos devem ser considerados para inibir a putrefação das membranas fetais, o que pode atrasar sua expulsão. No caso de opção pela administração de antibióticos, deve-se optar pela via parenteral em vez da intrauterina, pois esta causa irritação do endométrio, que está associada à baixa fertilidade (figura 4). -/- Outros tratamentos são baseados na administração de hormônios que estimulam a mobilidade uterina (ocitocina, estrogênios e PGF2α); entretanto, não há evidências clínicas que demonstrem sua eficácia; além disso, a causa menos frequente de RP é a incapacidade mecânica do útero de expelir a placenta. -/- 4.2.4 Prevenção -/- As estratégias de prevenção dessa patologia devem ter como objetivo reduzir a influência dos fatores de risco para RP. Assim, a incidência de abortos deve ser reduzida por meio de programas eficazes de vacinação e biossegurança; deve-se evitar períodos de seca muito longos para que as vacas não cheguem obesas ao parto; intervir o mínimo possível nos partos, e se atendido, deve ser feito com medidas de higiene rígidas; oferecer sais minerais de boa qualidade e administrar antioxidantes antes do parto (vitamina E, selênio e betacarotenos; tabela 1). -/- Figura 4: A placenta não deve ser removida inserindo a mão na vagina. É aconselhável aguardar a autólise (48 horas) e removê-la por leve tração. -/- Tabela 1: Incidência de retenção na membrana fetal (RMF), metrite hemorrágica (HM), metrite purulenta (PM) e puerpério anormal (PA) em vacas leiteiras tratadas com selênio e vitamina E nos dias 60, 21 antes do parto e 30, 90 pós-parto (grupo pré-pós-parto) e 21 dias pré-parto (grupo pré-parto) e testemunhas. -/- Laterais diferentes na mesma coluna indicam diferença estatística (P < 0,05). Adaptado de RUIZ et al., 2008. -/- 4.3 Infecções uterinas -/- Cerca de 95% das vacas desenvolvem infecção uterina durante os primeiros dias pós-parto; no entanto, a maioria elimina infecções por meio de seus mecanismos de defesa e apenas 30 a 50% delas desenvolvem metrite ou endometrite nas primeiras três semanas. As bactérias mais frequentes encontradas em processos inflamatórios no útero são: Arcanobacterium pyogenes (antes Actinomyces pyogenes), Fusobacterium necrophorum e Escherichia coli. Essas três bactérias agem sinergicamente. -/- 4.3.1 Metrite puerperal -/- A metrite puerperal é comum em vacas com retenção placentária. Essa patologia é observada nas três primeiras semanas pós-parto e é caracterizada pela presença de secreções abundantes na luz uterina que são vermelhas ou marrons, aquosas, fétidas e com involução retardada. As vacas afetadas mostram sinais de doença sistêmica (toxemia e febre > 39,5 °C) e diminuição da produção de leite (figura 5). -/- Figura 5: Vaca com metrite puerperal; vacas afetadas apresentam sinais de doença sistêmica. -/- 4.3.2 Metrite clínica -/- Metrite é o processo inflamatório que envolve as diferentes camadas do útero (mucosa, muscular e serosa). Esta condição se apresenta nos primeiros 21 dias pós-parto e é caracterizada por atraso na involução uterina e secreção purulenta, e não há sinais de doença sistêmica (figura 6). -/- 4.3.3 Endometrite clínica -/- Endometrite se refere à inflamação do revestimento uterino; clinicamente, caracteriza-se por retardo na involução uterina e eliminação de exsudato purulento ou mucopurulento. Pode surgir nos primeiros 21 dias pós-parto ou mais, sem apresentar qualquer afetação no estado geral. -/- Figura 6: Vaca com exsudato mucopurulento. Na prática, é difícil estabelecer um diagnóstico diferencial entre endometrite e metrite. Uma vaca com essa secreção pode ser tratada com cefalosporinas intrauterinas ou, se ela já estiver em ciclo, a administração de PGF2a é eficaz. -/- 4.3.4 Endometrite subclínica -/- Apresenta-se entre 21 e 40 dias pós-parto, não apresenta sinais externos e só é diagnosticada pela citologia uterina. Essa condição afeta entre 20 e 30% das vacas. Os fatores de risco identificados são retenção placentária e metrite. -/- 4.4 Diagnóstico -/- O diagnóstico é baseado na avaliação uterina por palpação retal, na qual são verificados o grau de involução e as características das secreções. Além disso, é necessária uma avaliação clínica geral, uma vez que vacas com metrite nos primeiros 10 dias pós-parto desenvolvem febre. Outra forma de estabelecer o diagnóstico é avaliando as secreções uterinas sem palpação retal. Pode ser feito introduzindo a mão por via vaginal, após a limpeza da região; embora este método possa parecer arriscado, a experiência em campo indica que é um método seguro e rápido. Outra possibilidade é por meio da vaginoscopia, esse método permite a avaliação da cérvix e das secreções uterinas. Existe um instrumento (Metricheck) que é inserido pela vagina e possui uma campânula atraumática na extremidade que permite a coleta das secreções uterinas (figuras 7 e 8). -/- 4.5 Impacto das infecções uterinas na reprodução e produção -/- As infecções uterinas (metrite e endometrite) prolongam o período do parto até a concepção; diminuem a porcentagem de concepção no primeiro serviço; a porcentagem de resíduos aumenta; a taxa de vacas inseminadas diminui e a produção diminui (300 kg a menos que vacas não afetadas). Além disso, eles afetam o período do parto à primeira ovulação; em vacas com puerpério anormal, os folículos dominantes são menores em diâmetro e produzem menos estradiol do que vacas saudáveis. Também uma proporção menor dos folículos da primeira onda ovula em comparação com as vacas com puerpério anormal. -/- A endometrite subclínica diminui a taxa de concepção no primeiro serviço e aumenta os dias abertos. Além disso, a metrite ou endometrite pode afetar os ovidutos e causar inchaço, obstrução e aderências (esse processo é mais frequente em vacas que recebem injeções de estrogênio). -/- Figura 8: Outra forma de diagnosticar infecções uterinas é por meio da introdução de um instrumento que possui em sua extremidade uma campânula atraumática que permite a coleta de secreções uterinas (Metricheck). -/- Figura 7: O diagnóstico de infecções uterinas pode ser estabelecido com a introdução da mão por via vaginal, após limpeza da região. -/- 4.6 Tratamentos -/- Para evitar o efeito negativo das infecções uterinas na eficiência reprodutiva, é necessário um diagnóstico e tratamento oportunos. Existem diversos tratamentos para a metrite ou endometrite, como o uso de antibióticos sistêmicos ou intrauterinos, infusões intrauterinas de antissépticos e a administração de hormônios. -/- 4.6.1 Antibióticos -/- Os tratamentos com antibióticos intrauterinos são usados há muitos anos e são uma opção, desde que alguns aspectos sejam considerados: que o útero é um ambiente anaeróbio; que há a presença de exsudatos e tecidos em decomposição e a existência de uma grande diversidade de bactérias, algumas das quais até produzem enzimas que inativam alguns antibióticos. -/- Como o útero é um ambiente anaeróbio, os antibióticos do grupo dos aminoglicosídeos não são ativos, pois precisam de oxigênio. Por outro lado, o acúmulo de exsudato purulento e restos de tecido no útero inibe a atividade das sulfonamidas. Os nitrofuranos são eficazes contra A pyogenes, somente quando doses extremamente altas são usadas; as doses usuais nunca atingem a concentração inibitória mínima no endométrio; além disso, não são ativos na presença de sangue ou exsudato purulento, são irritantes e estão associados a problemas de fertilidade. -/- A penicilina intrauterina ou parenteral é eficaz na cura de infecções entre os dias 25 e 30 após o parto; ou seja, quando for observada uma diminuição na diversidade de espécies bacterianas (menor probabilidade de que algumas bactérias produzam penicilinase) e predomina A pyogenes, que é sensível a este antibiótico. As formulações intrauterinas de cefalosporinas (cefapirina benzatina) são eficazes em vacas com endometrite entre os dias 15-20 pós-parto e não é necessário retirar o leite do mercado. -/- A tetraciclina é o antibiótico mais utilizado devido ao seu amplo espectro e por manter sua atividade nas condições do útero pós-parto; porém, a probabilidade de resistência bacteriana é alta devido ao seu uso contínuo por muitos anos, também causa danos ao endométrio e reduz a fertilidade (figura 9). -/- Em testes de campo, a administração de uma única infusão intrauterina de cefapirina benzatina, em vacas com endometrite entre os dias 15 a 20 pós-parto, produz uma maior taxa de recuperação e não afeta a fertilidade, em comparação com aquelas que foram tratadas com infusões de oxitetraciclina. -/- O problema mais importante na terapia com antibióticos é estabelecer um critério de quais animais realmente precisam. Nos casos de metrite puerperal não há dúvida, essas vacas precisam de tratamento com antibióticos por via sistêmica e intrauterina. Porém, em casos de metrite e endometrite a decisão é difícil, pois muitas vacas se curam sem nenhum tratamento. Na prática, antes que os antibióticos sejam administrados às vacas, deve-se considerar alguns dos fatores: características das secreções uterinas, dias após o parto, início da atividade ovariana, presença de febre e condição corporal. -/- Figura 9: As infusões de oxitetraciclina causam irritação do endométrio e diminuem a fertilidade. -/- 4.6.2 Tratamento com infusões de substâncias antissépticas -/- Tratamentos baseados na administração intrauterina de substâncias antissépticas também são usados. O tratamento mais frequente consiste na infusão de soluções de iodo; no entanto, os resultados com esta terapia não são positivos e estão associados a uma diminuição subsequente da fertilidade. Deve-se ter cautela no uso de antissépticos intrauterinos, pois todos causam irritação, afetam os mecanismos de defesa do útero e, em alguns casos, chegam a causar necrose do endométrio. -/- 4.6.3 Tratamentos hormonais -/- Na prática, a administração de estrogênio é comum em casos de metrite, principalmente quando o útero retém muito líquido. Sabe-se que os estrógenos em condições fisiológicas favorecem a contratilidade uterina e auxiliam na eliminação de infecções, porém, em doses farmacológicas o efeito é negativo. A administração de estrogênios pode contribuir para infecções que ascendem aos ovidutos e causam salpingite, aderências ovarianas e infertilidade. -/- A PGF2α desempenha um papel importante no parto e durante a involução uterina. Em vacas com puerpério normal, a duração dos níveis elevados de PGF2α está negativamente correlacionada com o tempo de involução uterina; portanto, quanto mais tempo duram os níveis elevados de PGF2α, menor é o tempo de involução uterina. Além disso, a administração de PGF2α a cada 12 horas, dos dias 3 a 10 pós-parto, encurta o período de involução uterina. Ao contrário, em vacas com puerpério anormal, foi observada uma correlação positiva entre as concentrações de PGF2α e o tempo de involução uterina; portanto, vacas com retenção placentária ou endometrite apresentam níveis mais elevados de PGF2α. -/- Algumas evidências envolvem a PGF2α como parte do mecanismo de eliminação da placenta; ou seja, foi observado que as vacas que normalmente eliminam a placenta apresentaram maiores concentrações de PGF2α na placenta, em comparação com as vacas com retenção placentária. Foi proposto que a falha do processo que leva à separação do cotilédone da carúncula está associada a uma alteração no metabolismo da prostaglandina, resultando em uma diminuição na PGF2α e um aumento na PGE2. Por outro lado, a inibição da síntese de PGF2α após o parto, por meio da injeção de ácido acetilsalicílico (aspirina), causa retenção da placenta. Esse conhecimento motivou estudos nos quais o tratamento com PGF2α após o parto foi avaliado para prevenir a retenção placentária ou reduzir o tempo de involução em vacas com retenção placentária ou metrite. Em alguns estudos, uma única injeção de PGF2α foi administrada nas primeiras horas após o parto com resultados conflitantes. Em outros estudos, a injeção de PGF2α entre os dias 20 a 30 pós-parto foi avaliada e não foi observado um efeito favorável na involução uterina. Porém, a injeção sistemática de PGF2α, a cada 14 dias a partir do 25º dia pós-parto, aumenta a proporção de vacas inseminadas, o que aumenta a taxa de prenhez. A PGF2α causa contrações uterinas e favorece a eliminação de secreções; entretanto, um efeito favorável da PGF2α na involução uterina, sem envolver um corpo lúteo, é questionável. -/- Na prática, um programa é usado com base na administração sistemática de PGF2α a todas as vacas a cada 14 dias, do 25º ao 30º dia pós-parto. Esse tratamento é baseado no encurtamento das fases lúteas, o que favorece a eliminação das infecções. Deve-se observar que cerca de 30% das vacas desenvolvem corpos lúteos longevos (21 a 50 dias) nos primeiros ciclos pós-parto, nessas condições a injeção de PGF2α, a cada 14 dias, encurta o ciclo estral e diminui o risco de persistência de infecções uterinas. -/- 4.7 Piometra -/- Esta patologia se desenvolve em vacas que ovulam nos primeiros 20 dias pós-parto e, concomitantemente, sofrem de infecção uterina. Nessas condições, a progesterona promove a proliferação bacteriana e fecha o colo do útero, causando acúmulo de exsudato purulento no útero. As alterações causadas no endométrio alteram a secreção de PGF2α, resultando na persistência do corpo lúteo e anestro. Vacas com piometra respondem muito bem ao tratamento com PGF2α; uma segunda injeção desse hormônio, 14 dias depois, encurta o período de recuperação (figura 10). -/- Figura 10: A piometra é caracterizada pelo acúmulo de exsudato purulento no útero, colo uterino fechado e presença de corpo lúteo. O diagnóstico é feito por palpação retal e tratado com PGF2α. -/- 4.8 Vaginite em fêmeas gestantes -/- A vaginite em fêmeas grávidas ocorre com baixa frequência; porém, quando há um caso, causa alarme porque é confundido com um aborto. Nesses casos, o veterinário deve fazer um exame retal para determinar se o produto está vivo e se a cérvix está aberta. O diagnóstico é concluído com o exame vaginal com vaginoscópio ou diretamente à mão com luva limpa. -/- No caso de um aborto, o produto geralmente está morto e a cérvix está aberta; nestes casos, o produto deve ser extraído. Ao contrário, se a cérvix estiver fechada e o feto estiver vivo, o prognóstico é favorável e o problema diminui com o tratamento com antibióticos sistêmicos. -/- RESUMO -/- < >O útero após o parto pesa 13 kg e no dia 21 pós-parto, 1 kg. A regeneração do epitélio uterino leva 25 dias. A regeneração das camadas profundas do endométrio leva 42 a 56 dias. 95% das vacas desenvolvem alguma infecção uterina. 30 a 50% das vacas desenvolvem metrite nas primeiras duas semanas após o parto. 15 a 20% persistem como endometrite clínica > 3 semanas após o parto. 18 a 20% têm metrite com efeitos sistêmicos. 20 a 30% das vacas têm endometrite subclínica. 5 a 15% das vacas retêm a placenta. 355 kg de leite são perdidos em vacas com retenção placentária. Em vacas que sofrem de puerpério anormal, a proporção de vacas prenhes é reduzida em 10 por cento no 90º dia pós-parto. No Reino Unido, 192 euros são gastos por cada vaca que tem um puerpério anormal. REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS -/- ANDREWS, Anthony H. et al. (Ed.). Bovine medicine: diseases and husbandry of cattle. John Wiley & Sons, 2008. -/- AZAWI, O. I. Postpartum uterine infection in cattle. Animal reproduction science, v. 105, n. 3-4, p. 187-208, 2008. -/- BEARDEN, Henry Joe et al. Applied animal reproduction. Reston Publishing Company, Inc., 1984. -/- HOLY, Lubos; MARTÍNEZ JÚSTIZ, G. Colab. Biología de la reproducción bovina. Havana: Revolucionária, 1975. -/- HOPPER, Richard M. (Ed.). Bovine reproduction. John Wiley & Sons, 2014. -/- HORTA, António Eduardo Monteiro. Fisiologia do puerpério na vaca. Jornada Internales de Reproductión Animal, v. 8, p. 73-84, 1995. -/- KOZICKI, Luiz Ernandes. Aspectos fisiológicos e patológicos do puerpério em bovinos. Archives of Veterinary Science, v. 3, n. 1, 1998. -/- LEBLANC, S. J. et al. Defining and diagnosing postpartum clinical endometritis and its impact on reproductive performance in dairy cows. Journal of dairy science, v. 85, n. 9, p. 2223-2236, 2002. -/- LEBLANC, S. J. et al. The effect of treatment of clinical endometritis on reproductive performance in dairy cows. Journal of dairy science, v. 85, n. 9, p. 2237-2249, 2002. -/- MARTINS, T. M.; BORGES, A. M. Avaliação uterina em vacas durante o puerpério. Rev. Bras. Reprod. Anim, Belo Horizonte, v. 35, n. 4, p. 433-443, 2011. -/- RADOSTITS, Otto M. et al. Clínica Veterinária: um tratado de doenças dos bovinos, ovinos, suínos, caprinos e eqüinos. Rio de Janeiro: Guanabara Koogan, 2002. -/- RISCO, CARLOS A.; YOUNGQUIST, ROBERT S.; SHORE, M. DAWN. Postpartum uterine infections. In: Current therapy in large animal theriogenology. WB Saunders, 2007. p. 339-344. -/- SHELDON, I. M. et al. Influence of uterine bacterial contamination after parturition on ovarian dominant follicle selection and follicle growth and function in cattle. REPRODUCTION-CAMBRIDGE-, v. 123, n. 6, p. 837-845, 2002. -/- SHELDON, I. M. et al. Mechanisms of infertility associated with clinical and subclinical endometritis in high producing dairy cattle. Reproduction in domestic animals, v. 44, p. 1-9, 2009. -/- SHELDON, I. Martin et al. Uterine diseases in cattle after parturition. The Veterinary Journal, v. 176, n. 1, p. 115-121, 2008. -/- TIXI, C. et al. Factores que afectan el porcentaje de vacas gestantes en el día 90 posparto. In: Memorias del XXXIII Congreso Nacional de Buiatría. Tuxtla Gutiérrez Chiapas. México. pp. 2009. (shrink)

This book examines the legal and moral theory behind the law of evidence and proof, arguing that only by exploring the nature of responsibility in fact-finding can the role and purpose of much of the law be fully understood. Ho argues that the court must not only find the truth to do justice, it must do justice in finding the truth.

Population axiology concerns how to evaluate populations in terms of their moral goodness, that is, how to order populations by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. The task has been to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, the quality of their lives, and their identities may vary. So far, this field has largely ignored issues about uncertainty and the conditions that have been discussed mostly pertain (...) to the ranking of risk-free outcomes. Most public policy choices, however, are decisions under uncertainty, including policy choices that affect the size of a population. Here, we shall address the question of how to rank population prospects—that is, alternatives that contain uncertainty as to which population they will bring about—by the relations “is better than” and “is as good as”. We start by illustrating how well-known population axiologies can be extended to population prospect axiologies. And we show that new problems arise when extending population axiologies to prospects. In particular, traditional population axiologies lead to prospect-versions of the problems that they praised for avoiding in the risk-free settings. Finally, we identify an intuitive adequacy condition that, we contend, should be satisfied by any population prospect axiology, and show how given this condition, the impossibility theorems in population axiology can be extended to (non-trivial) impossibility theorems for population prospect axiology. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.

In this paper we sketch a new version of aesthetic expressivism. We argue that one advantage of this view is that it explains various putative norms on the formation and revision of aesthetic judgement. We begin by setting out our proposed explananda and a sense in which they can be understood as governing the correct response to putative higher-order evidence in aesthetics. We then summarise some existing discussions of expressivist attempts to explain these norms, and objections raised to them. This (...) will allow us to identify the pitfalls that a good expressivist explanation needs to avoid. Finally, we sketch our preferred version of aesthetic expressivism which includes as a crucial part a hypothesis concerning the distinctive expressive function of aesthetic practice. We then consider how this theory can explain the putative aesthetic norms whilst avoiding the previous objections. (shrink)

Abstract: A corn crop typically refers to a large-scale cultivation of corn (also known as maize) for commercial purposes such as food production, animal feed, and industrial uses. Corn is one of the most widely grown crops in the world, and it is a major staple food for many cultures. Corn crops are grown in various regions of the world with different climates, soil types, and farming practices. In the United States, for example, the Midwest is known as the "Corn (...) Belt" due to its extensive corn production. Corn crops can be grown using a variety of methods, including conventional tillage, no-till farming, and the use of genetically modified crops. Due to its importance, there is a need for discovering the corn diseases and treating them. The aim of this study is to propose a deep learning model for the classification of corn leaf diseases based on Convolutional Neural Network. A model for classifying maize diseases was developed using a dataset for classifying Corn diseases that contains 4 classes of disease. The dataset was collected from Keggel website. The proposed model was trained, validated, and tested. The F1-score (99.83%), Recall (99.83%), precision (99.83%), Accuracy (99.83%). (shrink)

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood in this way it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ where the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according to which Christ (...) is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. According to the proposed account, which draws upon Searle’s discussion of “social ontology” in The Construction of Social Reality and The Making of the Social World, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an institutional fact. I argue that such an account satisfies the requirements for a real presence doctrine. (shrink)

Plagiarism detection is the process of finding similarities on electronic based documents. Recently, this process is highly required because of the large number of available documents on the internet and the ability to copy and paste the text of relevant documents with simply Control+C and Control+V commands. The proposed solution is to investigate and develop an easy, fast, and multi-language support plagiarism detector with the easy of one click to detect the document plagiarism. This process will be done with the (...) support of intelligent system that can learn, change and adapt to the input document and make a cross-fast search for the content on the local repository and the online repository and link the content of the file with the matching content everywhere found. Furthermore, the supported document type that we will use is word, text and in some cases, the pdf files –where is the text can be extracting from them- and this made possible by using the DLL file from Word application that Microsoft provided on OS. The using of DLL will let us to not constrain on how to get the text from files; and will help us to apply the file on our Delphi project and walk throw our methodology and read the file word by word to grantee the best working scenarios for the calculation. In the result, this process will help in the uprising the documents quality and enhance the writer experience related to his work and will save the copyrights for the official writer of the documents by providing a new alternative tool for plagiarism detection problem for easy and fast use to the concerned Institutions for free. (shrink)

Extremism is a perennial problem in our civilisation. It has constantly impeded our progress by leading to unnecessary wars, conflicts, enmity and hatred. Understanding the middle way between these two extremes helps us to clarify what extremism is and how it arises. Such an understanding can be made part of the education system so that children are taught from an early age to detect extremist tendencies in their own thinking and to control them for their own good and the good (...) of society. This paper extends the views expressed in my book, The Promise of Dualism (Almostic Publications) and other papers on the subject of extremism. It is focused on the following table which shows how the middle way stands between the extremes of too much power and too much belief. After the introduction, the rest of this paper explicates this table’s contents in considerable detail – line by line and word by word – in explanatory notes. (shrink)

In “The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism,” Neil Sinclair and James Chamberlain present a novel answer that quasi-realists can pro-vide to a version of the reliability challenge in ethics—which asks for an explanation of why our moral beliefs are generally true—and in so doing, they examine whether evolutionary arguments can debunk quasi-realism. Although reliability challenges differ from EDAs in several respects, there may well be a connection between them. For the explanatory premise of an EDA may state that a particular (...) theory of beliefs of a certain kind does not, or cannot, provide a plausible account of why those beliefs might be generally true, and its epistemic premise may state that, if that is the case, then the beliefs in question have a negative epistemic status or the theory is false inasmuch as, if it were true, it would lead to those beliefs having such a negative epistemic status. The quasi-realist can answer the reli-ability challenge by claiming that, when we form our moral beliefs through a process of well-informed impartial reflection, we form them in response to the non-moral features of things on which depend the moral features they have. Hence, when we form beliefs by means of such a process, we are most likely forming true moral beliefs. (shrink)

The unity thesis is the thesis that epistemic norms and zetetic norms comprise a unified normative domain. We argue against the unity thesis by presenting cases where the zetetic norms issue requirements to adopt doxastic attitudes (essential to the inquiry) which are forbidden by nearly platitudinous epistemic norms. After arguing that our cases are an improvement upon extant cases in the literature, we canvas a range of responses unity theorists might offer to resist our conclusion and argue that they either (...) do not dissolve the conflict between the epistemic and zetetic norms or introduce unmotivated restrictions on the space of permissible inquiries. (shrink)

According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarded as too simple on the grounds that there are adverse conditions, such as (...) massive confusion, in which desires are irrationally possessed or acquired, thereby failing to provide reasons for action.2. (shrink)

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather (...) to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

This book is a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Utrecht. It was prepared under the supervision of Prof. Dr. H. Schultink. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his criticisms of earlier versions which led to many improvements, in particular with respect to the exposition of the argument. To my co-referent Dirk van Dalen, reader in the Department of Philo sophy (,Centrale Interfaculteit') of the University of Utrecht, I am greatly indebted (...) for his valuable and fruitful suggestions about problems relevant to both linguistics and logic. Several ideas developed in this study owe their present concrete form to our many discussions. This thesis originates in syntactic research into the Aspects carried out in 1967 under the supervision of Albert Kraak, professor at the University of Nijmegen, who ever since gave much attention to my work in progress. I am very grateful to him for his careful and stimulating criticism as well as for the continuous support he gave me during these years. The present study closely relates to the work of my colleague Wim Klooster with regard to both its theoretical framework and its subject matter. Our joint work on the measurement of duration in Dutch is an integral part of the argument. I have greatly profited from the numerous discussions we have had. (shrink)

Designer babies are often presented in the popular media as a kind of apocalyptical spectre of things to come in a brave new world where reproduction is the province of white coated scientists and potential parents in pursuit of trophy children. In this realm physical, intellectual, and social perfection is sought through the manipulation of genes and selection of favoured traits and attributes to the detriment of individuals who cannot compete and of society more generally through the loss of natural (...) selection. It is therefore a pleasure to discover a short readable book that sets out the discussion and its many nuances in concise and accurate terms that will be accessible to all and should help to dispel some of these science fiction myths through scholarly debate.This volume is part of a collection of books under the title Debating Matters that sprang out of a series of public debates organised by the Institute of Ideas. The conferences were intended to reinvigorate debate and the contestation of ideas and contemporary issues the Institute regards as “too frequently sidelined”. The arguments are presented by an authoritative who’s who of commentators who offer their own insightful readings of various aspects of the debate. Each essayist confirms the fact that the term “ designer babies ” is an inaccurate reflection of the current ability of science to actively fashion children with selected characteristics, and as a result …. (shrink)

This paper explores connections between theories of morality and theories of properties. It argues that (1) moral realism is in tension with predicate, class and mereological nominalism; (2) moral non-naturalism is incompatible with standard versions of resemblance nominalism, immanent realism and trope theory; and (3) the standard semantic arguments for property realism do not support moral realism. I also raise doubts about trope-theoretic explanations of moral supervenience and argue against one version of the principle that we should accept theories that (...) maintain neutrality. (shrink)

The Knowledge Based System for Diagnosing Breast Cancer is used to assist medical students to improve their education on diagnosis and counseling the process of analyzing the biopsy image of the microscope, determining the type of tumor and the treatment method for each case and identifying the disease related questions. According to the Ministry of Health in its annual report in Gaza, between 2009 and 2014 there are 7069 cases of breast cancer, and in 2014 there are 1502 cases of (...) breast cancer . We are now in the age of visual information where 65% of the populations are visual learners; the Knowledge Based System is the easiest way to ensure students remember the information in the long term, using visual and textual information. The Knowledge Based System has an easy-to-use interface to help students diagnose the disease and enhance their information about the disease; the system can be used on smart phones. This Knowledge Based System can be divided into three main parts: The first part is specific questions for the patient, to help student to know questions type. The second part is the process of analyzing the biopsy sample image, to see if the biopsy image is intact or infected. The last part is the video shows ways to treat breast cancer in the form of animation. (shrink)

The book is an “introductory” reconstruction of Davidson on interpretation —a claim to be taken with a grain of salt. Writing introductory books has become an idol of the tribe. This is a concise book and reflects much study. It has many virtues along with some flaws. Ramberg assembles themes and puzzles from Davidson into a more or less coherent viewpoint. A special virtue is the innovative treatment of incommensurability and of the relation of Davidson’s work to hermeneutic themes. The (...) weakness comes in a certain unevenness. While generally convincing and well written, the book has low points which may leave the reader confused or unconvinced. Davidson is the hero in this book, and our hero is sometimes over idealized. (shrink)

This paper examines Santayana on imagination, and related themes, chiefly as these are expressed in his early work, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900). My hypothesis is that Santayana under-estimates, in this book, the force and significance of the prevalent distinction between imagination and fancy, as this was originally put forward by Coleridge and later developed in Emerson’s late essays. I will focus on some of those aspects of Santayana’s book which appear to react to or to engage with Emerson’s (...) views and aim to bring Santayana’s treatment of the theme of imagination into relation with Emerson. Understanding the differences in greater detail we stand a better chance of reasoned evaluation of alternative conceptions of imagination. I will argue that the Coleridge-Emersonian conception of the distinction between imagination and fancy is a crucial element of the background of Peircean abduction, and in this fashion, contributes to the continuity of Emerson’s writings with the pragmatist tradition. (shrink)

This is the Introduction to my translation of Quine's Kant Lectures. Part of my interpretation is that an "esoteric doctrine" in involved in Quine's distinctive semantic claims: his skepticism of the credulity of non-expert evaluation of discourse and theory.

I argue on utilitarian grounds that while traditional constraints on heterosexual activity, including the prohibition of pre-marital sex and divorce may be justified by appeal to purely secular principles, no comparable prohibitions are justified as regards homosexual activity. Homosexuality is in this respect.

Résumé Si l’absence de moralité des psychopathes a été largement étudiée, il existe peu de recherches sur leurs capacités esthétiques. Pourtant, beaucoup d’études cliniques de cas montrent qu’ils présentent un grave déficit dans ce domaine. Cet article se propose d’en chercher les causes. Il analyse les forces et les limites de l’hypothèse d’un manque d’empathie pour expliquer ces carences esthétiques, et montre pourquoi l’hypothèse d’un manque de distance psychique se révèle plus féconde. Celle-ci permet en outre de comprendre le lien (...) de l’esthétique et de l’éthique par leur filiation commune : elles ont pour socle commun la capacité à prendre de la distance par rapport à des intérêts étroitement égoïstes. (shrink)

Much problem solving and learning research in math and science has focused on formal representations. Recently researchers have documented the use of unschooled strategies for solving daily problems -- informal strategies which can be as effective, and sometimes as sophisticated, as school-taught formalisms. Our research focuses on how formal and informal strategies interact in the process of doing and learning mathematics. We found that combining informal and formal strategies is more effective than single strategies. We provide a theoretical account of (...) this multiple strategy effect and have begun to formulate this theory in an ACT-R computer model. We show why students may reach common impasses in the use of written algebra, and how subsequent or concurrent use of informal strategies leads to better problem-solving performance. Formal strategies facilitate computation because of their abstract and syntactic nature; however, abstraction can lead to nonsensical interpretations and conceptual errors. Reapplying the formal strategy will not repair such errors; switching to an informal one may. We explain the multiple strategy effect as a complementary relationship between the computational efficiency of formal strategies and the sense-making function of informal strategies. (shrink)

This paper approaches "multiculturalism" obliquely via conceptions of social and political pluralism in the pragmatist tradition. As a matter of social analysis, the advent of multiculturalism implies some loss of confidence in our prior conceptions of accommodating ethnic, social, and religious diversity: the conversion of traditional American cultural diversity into a war of political interest groups. This, and the corresponding tendency toward cultural relativism and "anything goes," is fundamentally a product of over-centralization and cultural-political exhaustion in the wake of the (...) long ordeal of the Cold War. An over-emphasis on the political, and national centralization, has pressured our cultural variety toward more political forms, and "multiculturalism" is both product and backlash.<br><br> Many issues connected with the general theme of multiculturalism parallel philosophical debates on objectivity and the diversity of cultural perspectives. Successful treatments of these themes, drawing on the pragmatist tradition, need to be developed and applied to contemporary problems. The general approach here emphasizes a relative autonomy of religious, ethnic, and cultural-racial groups, the need to be wary of both exclusion and self-insulation, and the roles of individuals in mediating group differences. In the concluding section, specific issues relating religious pluralism and secularism will be addressed.<br><br>. (shrink)