The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions like ‘cowboy’ and ‘coat hanger’. They don't semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. What distinguishes 'kraut' and 'German' is metadata rather than meaning: the former is the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity, in the same way 'mad' is the conventional expression that some teenagers use as an intensifier when they’re emphasizing (...) that social identity. That is, racists don’t use slurs because they’re derogatory; slurs are derogatory because they’re the words that racists use. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner (or Levinson’s M-Principle) to signal one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the slur’s referent. This account is sufficient to explain all the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms. It also explains some features of slurs that are rarely if ever explored; for example the variation in tone and strength among the different slurs for a particular group, the existence of words we count as slurs, such as 'redskin', which almost all of their users consider to be respectful, and the curious absence in Standard English of any commonly used slurs—by which I mean words used to express a negative attitude toward an entire group—for Muslims and women. (shrink)

“Moral imagination” is the capacity to register that one’s perspective on a decision-making situation is limited, and to imagine alternative perspectives that reveal new considerations or approaches. We have developed a Moral Imagination approach that aims to drive a culture of responsible innovation, ethical awareness, deliberation, decision-making, and commitment in organizations developing new technologies. We here present a case study that illustrates one key aspect of our approach – the technomoral scenario – as we have applied it in our work (...) with product and engineering teams. Technomoral scenarios are fictional narratives that raise ethical issues surrounding the interaction between emerging technologies and society. Through facilitated role-playing and discussion, participants are prompted to examine their own intentions, articulate justifications for actions, and consider the impact of decisions on various stakeholders. This process helps developers to re-envision their choices and responsibilities, ultimately contributing to a culture of responsible innovation. (shrink)

Contextualism in epistemology has traditionally been understood as the view that “know” functions semantically like an indexical term, encoding different contents in contexts with different epistemic standards. But the indexical hypothesis about “know” faces a range of objections. This article explores an alternative version of contextualism on which “know” is a semantically stable term, and the truth-conditional variability in knowledge claims is a matter of pragmatic enrichment. The central idea is that in contexts with stringent epistemic standards, knowledge claims are (...) narrowed: “know” is used in such contexts to make assertions about particularly demanding types of knowledge. The resulting picture captures all of the intuitive data that motivate contextualism while sidestepping the controversial linguistic thesis at its heart. After developing the view, the article shows in detail how it avoids one influential linguistic objection to traditional contextualism concerning indirect speech reports, and then answers an objection concerning the unavailability of certain types of clarification speeches. (shrink)

Even if our justified beliefs are closed under known entailment, there may still be instances of transmission failure. Transmission failure occurs when P entails Q, but a subject cannot acquire a justified belief that Q by deducing it from P. Paradigm cases of transmission failure involve inferences from mundane beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is red) to the denials of skeptical hypotheses relative to those beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is not white (...) and lit by red lights). According to the Bayesian explanation, transmission failure occurs when (i) the subject’s belief that P is based on E, and (ii) P(Q|E) P(Q). No modifications of the Bayesian explanation are capable of accommodating such cases, so the explanation must be rejected as inadequate. Alternative explanations employing simple subjunctive conditionals are fully capable of capturing all of the paradigm cases, as well as those missed by the Bayesian explanation. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has argued that evolutionary naturalism (the idea that God does not tinker with evolution) undermines its own rationality. Natural selection is concerned with survival and reproduction, and false beliefs conjoined with complementary motivational drives could serve the same aims as true beliefs. Thus, argues Plantinga, if we believe we evolved naturally, we should not think our beliefs are, on average, likely to be true, including our beliefs in evolution and naturalism. I argue herein that our cognitive faculties are (...) less reliable than we often take them to be, that it is theism which has difficulty explaining the nature of our cognition, that much of our knowledge is not passed through biological evolution but learned and transferred through culture, and that the unreliability of our cognition helps explain the usefulness of science. (shrink)

Whether it seems that you know something depends in part upon practical factors. When the stakes are low, it can seem to you that you know that p, but when the stakes go up it'll seem to you that you don't. The apparent sensitivity of knowledge to stakes presents a serious challenge to epistemologists who endorse a stable semantics for knowledge attributions and reject the idea that whether you know something depends on how much is at stake. After arguing that (...) previous attempts to meet this challenge fall short, I offer a new solution: theunassertability account. The account starts with the observation that high stakes subjects aren't in an epistemic position to assert. We generally presuppose that knowing is sufficient for epistemically proper assertion, but this presupposition only stands up to scrutiny if we draw a distinction between two notions of epistemic propriety, and we shouldn't expect ordinary speakers to draw it. A subject in a high stakes situation who fails to draw the distinction will be led by the sufficiency claim to treat anything she isn't in a position to assert as something she isn't in a position to know. The sensitivity of epistemically proper assertion to practical factors explains the merely apparent sensitivity of knowledge to stakes. (shrink)

This paper presents a dilemma for the additive model of reasons. Either the model accommodates disjunctive cases in which one ought to perform some act $$\phi $$ just in case at least one of two factors obtains, or it accommodates conjunctive cases in which one ought to $$\phi $$ just in case both of two factors obtains. The dilemma also arises in a revised additive model that accommodates imprecisely weighted reasons. There exist disjunctive and conjunctive cases. Hence the additive model (...) is extensionally inadequate. The upshot of the dilemma is that one of the most influential accounts of how reasons accrue to determine what we ought to do is flawed. (shrink)

We propose a ‘Moral Imagination’ methodology to facilitate a culture of responsible innovation for engineering and product teams in technology companies. Our approach has been operationalized over the past two years at Google, where we have conducted over 50 workshops with teams from across the organization. We argue that our approach is a crucial complement to existing formal and informal initiatives for fostering a culture of ethical awareness, deliberation, and decision-making in technology design such as company principles, ethics and privacy (...) review procedures, and compliance controls. We characterize some distinctive benefits of our methodology for the technology sector in particular. (shrink)

Epistemologists have proposed various norms of assertion to explain when a speaker is in an epistemic position to assert a proposition. In this article I propose a distinct necessary condition on assertibility: that a speaker should assert only what she sensitively believes, where a subject's belief is sensitive just in case the subject would not hold it if it were false. I argue that the Sensitivity Rule underwrites simple explanations for three key features of assertibility that pose explanatory challenges to (...) other prominent proposals: the fact that assertibility is open under known entailment, the general impropriety of assertions that a lottery ticket has lost made purely on the basis of the speaker's knowledge of the odds, and the fact that assertibility varies widely with features of the conversational context. I close by considering three distinct roles the Sensitivity Rule might play in the overall theory of assertibility. (shrink)

Narratologists commonly draw a distinction between the story and those things that tell the story- the tellings, as I will call them here. Here is an example intended to highlight that distinction. The Parable of the Sower is a parable found in the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. Though the relevant pieces of text in the Gospels are remarkably similar, no two of the four are identical. The verses in Matthew, (...) Mark and Luke, have been translated and paraphrased, along with the rest of the Bible, into literally thousands of different languages and versions, all of which include the The Parable of the Sower. (shrink)

Lake et al. propose three criteria which, they argue, will bring artificial intelligence (AI) systems closer to human cognitive abilities. In this paper, we explore the application of these criteria to a particular domain of human cognition: our capacity for moral reasoning. In doing so, we explore a set of considerations relevant to the development of AI moral decision-making. Our main focus is on the relation between dual-process accounts of moral reasoning and model-free/model-based forms of machine learning. We also discuss (...) how work in embodied and situated cognition could provide a valu- able perspective on future research. (shrink)

The application of machine-learning technologies to medical practice promises to enhance the capabilities of healthcare professionals in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment, of medical conditions. However, there is growing concern that algorithmic bias may perpetuate or exacerbate existing health inequalities. Hence, it matters that we make precise the different respects in which algorithmic bias can arise in medicine, and also make clear the normative relevance of these different kinds of algorithmic bias for broader questions about justice and fairness in healthcare. (...) In this paper, we provide the building blocks for an account of algorithmic bias and its normative relevance in medicine. (shrink)

Whether Albert Camus’s “existentialist” thought expresses an “ethics” is a subject of disagreement among commentators. Yet, there can be no reading of Camus’s philosophical and literary works without recognizing that he was engaged in the post-WW2 period with two basic questions: How must we think? What must we do? If his thought presents us with an ethics, even if not systematic, it seems to be present in his ideas of “remaking” both man and world that are central to his The (...) Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. Curiously, however, this apparent recommendation is ambiguous for the fact that while Camus proposes as much he does so “comme si,” i.e., form a perspective of “as if.” A clarification of this qualification is presented here in the light of the fact that Camus rejects any nihilist project that countenances either suicide or murder. Thereby one may argue that Camus indeed has an ethics that remains pertinent to today. (shrink)

When political philosopher Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of ‘banality of evil’ she did so in reference to the actions of Germans who appropriated the doctrines of National Socialism “thoughtlessly” and without obvious intentions to do evil. But, Arendt’s description of this phenomenon entails that such banality can be found even in a democracy such as the USA. The relation of law and morality must therefore be unambiguous to defend the rule of law against the rule of men. However, a (...) legal philosophy other than positivism is essential to safeguard the Republic against the overreach of executive power. And, where the psychopathology of Donald Trump is at the core of America’s electoral discontent in 2020, as mental health professionals have argued, there is all the more reason to take Arendt’s counsel especially seriously today. It is in this context that it is argued here that the American public must beware Trump’s inducement of America’s banality of evil. (shrink)

How can one be authentic, except with reference to some dogma? An answer to this query is philosophically important in light of the significance that individuals attach to traditions of thought and practice and to epistemic commitments articulated in the context of the political, which are characterized as ideological appeals. Here the thinking of Martin Heidegger is engaged as a way of evaluating the concept of dogma and the seemingly moral and political relevance of the concept of authenticity. The point (...) of the analysis is to conclude otherwise than is presupposed by the question, i.e., to conclude that one can be authentic without reference to some dogma. (shrink)

Philosopher Martin Heidegger’s writing on the essence of technology has often been seen as too abstract even though he illustrated his concerns with reference to technological developments of his day. While most in the immediate post-World War 2 period judged thermonuclear weaponry to be the most obvious technological threat to the future of humanity, Heidegger instead considered developments in the biological sciences to be more so. In the discussion presented here, Heidegger’s thinking is related to developments in biotechnology, specifically assisted (...) reproductive technology. The task here is (1) to illustrate how Heidegger’s disquiet is manifested in such technologies and (2) to emphasize the significance of his call for a “step back” from the calculative thinking dominant in the natural sciences to what he called, alternately, “essential,” “meditative,” or “commemorative” thinking. Only through this latter mode of thinking can we expect to enter into a “free” relationship to technology. (shrink)

Bayesian models of legal arguments generally aim to produce a single integrated model, combining each of the legal arguments under consideration. This combined approach implicitly assumes that variables and their relationships can be represented without any contradiction or misalignment, and in a way that makes sense with respect to the competing argument narratives. This paper describes a novel approach to compare and ‘average’ Bayesian models of legal arguments that have been built independently and with no attempt to make them consistent (...) in terms of variables, causal assumptions or parameterization. The approach involves assessing whether competing models of legal arguments are explained or predict facts uncovered before or during the trial process. Those models that are more heavily disconfirmed by the facts are given lower weight, as model plausibility measures, in the Bayesian model comparison and averaging framework adopted. In this way a plurality of arguments is allowed yet a single judgement based on all arguments is possible and rational. (shrink)

Bioethics tends to be dominated by discourses concerned with the ethical dimension of medical practice, the organization of medical care, and the integrity of biomedical research involving human subjects and animal testing. Jacques Derrida has explored the fundamental question of the “limit” that identifies and differentiates the human animal from the nonhuman animal. However, to date his work has not received any reception in the field of biomedical ethics. In this paper, I examine what Derrida’s thought about this limit might (...) mean for the use/misuse/abuse of animals in contemporary biomedical research. For this, I review Derrida’s analysis and examine what it implies for scientific responsibility, introducing what I have coined the “Incompleteness Theorem of Bioethics.”. (shrink)

Contemporary Islam presents Europe in particular with a political and moral challenge: Moderate-progressive Muslims and radical fundamentalist Muslims present differing visions of the relation of politics and religion and, consequently, differing interpretations of freedom of expression. There is evident public concern about Western “political correctness,” when law or policy accommodates censorship of speech allegedly violating religious sensibilities. Referring to the thought of philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and accounting for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, (...) and various empirical studies on the religious convictions of Muslims, it is argued here that: (1) sovereign European state powers should be especially cautious of legal censorship of speech allegedly violating Muslim religious sensibilities; and (2) instead of legal moves to censorship, European states should defer to the principle of separation of religion and state (political authority). Further, a reasonable interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence allows that matters of religious difference may be engaged and resolved by appeal to private conscience and ethical judgment, rather than by appeal to public law per se. In so far as they are 1 representative of contemporary scholarship, the interpretative positions of Ziad Elmarsafy, Jacques Derrida, and Nasr Abū Zayd are presented in illustration of this latter point. (shrink)

This book is an attempt "to give a systematic account of the development of plato's theory of knowledge" (page vii). thus it focuses on the dialogues in which epistemological issues come to the fore. these dialogues are "meno", "phaedo", "symposium", "republic", "cratylus", "theastetus", "phaedrus", "timaeus", "sophist", "politicus", "philebus", and "laws". issues discusssed include the theory of recollection, perception, the difference between belief and knowledge, and mathematical knowledge. (staff).

Introduction In 2013, Dr. J. Muizelaar and Dr. R. Schrot, two neurosurgeons at the University of California Davis Medical Center (UCDMC), were found guilty of research misconduct due to failure to comply with institutional policies as well as Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations governing human subjects research. At issue here, however, is the difference between research and innovative therapy in the clinical setting of patient care where clinical judgment is reasonably to be privileged. Methods The UCDMC investigative document is (...) reviewed along with standard literature on clinical ethics and clinical data about glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cancer. Results In this paper I argue that, by tendentiously focusing on policies, regulations, and procedures governing human subjects research, the UCDMC investigation failed to account for the centrality of clinical judgment and clinical ethics pertinent to judicious review of this matter, especially given the unique clinical context of terminally ill patients having exhausted standard care treatment options for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cancer. Conclusions The UCDMC investigation raises serious problems for clinicians who are engaged in innovative therapy in the clinical setting, requiring a regulatory framework separate from the normal Institutional Review Board (IRB) process. (shrink)

The scope and reach of information, driven by the explosive growth of information technologies and content types, has expanded dramatically over the past 30 years. The consequences of these changes to records and information management (RIM) professionals are profound, necessitating not only specialized knowledge but added responsibilities. RIM professionals require a professional ethics to guide them in their daily practice and to form a basis for developing and implementing organizational policies, and Mooradian’s new book provides a rigorous outline of such (...) an ethics. Taking an authoritative principles/rules based approach to the subject, this book comprehensively addresses •the structure of ethics, outlining principles, moral rules, judgements, and exceptions; •ethical reasoning, from meaning and logic to dilemmas and decision methods; •the ethical core of RIM, discussing key topics such as organizational context, the positive value of accountability, conflicts of interest, and confidentiality; •important ethical concerns like copyright and intellectual property, whistleblowing, information leaks, disclosure, and privacy; and •the relationship between RIM ethics and information governance. -/- An essential handbook for information professionals who manage records, archives, data, and other content, this book is also an ideal teaching text for students of information ethics . (shrink)

In this essay, by example of the physician-patient relationship and drawing on the work of D.W. Winnicott, I explore what may be possible together in relationships, and in the pursuit of health and flourishing, at understanding what we need, and getting ourselves and the other “right”—what we are afraid of and how we get each other wrong, and the distance or gap between “what has been” and “what might be.” In pursuit of these questions, I consider what both physicians and (...) patients might endeavor to do together to address this distance: to recognize and respond to each other, and to identify and address common needs and felt distances. And, how, along the way, we may be able to better identify and understand fundamental challenges to all relationships. Finally, I ask the reader to imagine a physician-patient encounter (and all relationships) as vulnerable possibilities. And I suggest a method for a way forward. While we may not always get what we want in a relationship, perhaps our earnest effort at knowing together will open a potential space for us to get what we need. This is where I imagine that the physician-patient relationship begins: where all relationships begin. (shrink)

What process ought to guide decision making for pediatric patients? The prevailing view is that decision making should be informed and guided by the best interest of the child. A widely discussed structural model proposed by Buchanan and Brock focuses on parents as surrogate decision makers and examines best interests as guiding and/or intervention principles. Working from two recent articles by Ross on “constrained parental autonomy” in pediatric decision making (which is grounded in the Buchanan and Brock model), I discuss (...) (supportively) features of Ross’s effort visa-vis the best interest standard. I argue that any pediatric decision-making model that brackets or formally limits an engagement with the child patient assumes too much. Further, any model that under appreciates the place of parents and their autonomy, and the dynamic parent-child relationship, misses an opportunity to broaden the clinical encounter by considering questions of justice for the child (Rawls) and within a family (Ross). In this context, I focus on the child’s emerging and ongoing emotional and intellectual development and autonomy—their capabilities and identifying primary goods. (shrink)

Schopenhauer is famously abusive toward his philosophical contemporary and rival, Friedrich William Joseph von Schelling. This chapter examines the motivations for Schopenhauer’s immoderate attitude and the substance behind the insults. It looks carefully at both the nature of the insults and substantive critical objections Schopenhauer had to Schelling’s philosophy, both to Schelling’s metaphysical description of the thing-in-itself and Schelling’s epistemic mechanism of intellectual intuition. It concludes that Schopenhauer’s substantive criticism is reasonable and that Schopenhauer does in fact avoid Schelling’s errors: (...) still, the vehemence of the abuse is best perhaps explained by the proximity of their philosophies, not the distance. Indeed, both are developing metaphysics of will with full and conflicted awareness of the Kantian epistemic strictures against metaphysics. In view of this, Schopenhauer is particularly concerned to mark his own project as legitimate by highlighting the manner in which he avoids Schelling’s errors. (shrink)

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) is often thought of as a “philosopher’s philosopher,” with a specialist rather than generalist appeal. One reason for Schelling’s lack of popularity is that he is something of a problem case for traditional narratives about the history of philosophy. Although he is often slotted in as a stepping stone on the intellectual journey from Kant to Hegel, any attention to his ideas will show that he does not fit this role very well. His later (...) philosophy suggests a materialism and empiricism that puts him outside of idealism proper; his connection with the romantic movement suggests an aestheticism that challenges traditional philosophy as such; and his mysticism allies him with medieval, pre-critical philosophies considered antiquated by the 19th century. And if Schelling was not entirely at home with his contemporaries, he seems, on the face of it, to have fared little better with his future: there has been no Schelling school, he has had no followers. No historical trajectory announces Schelling as its point of departure. -/- And yet Schelling’s influence has been an extraordinary one. He has inspired physicists, physicians, theologians, historians and poets. A wildly diverse set of philosophers have claimed that their ideas have resonance with his. Perhaps the question of Schelling’s influence can be approached by looking at what Kant says about works of genius -- that they should give rise to inspiration, not imitation. Paradoxically, to imitate genius is not to produce an imitation but a new creative work. Whether or not Schelling should be strictly viewed as a genius, Kant’s notion suggests a sense in which Schelling should be understood as a “philosopher’s philosopher”; he inspired creativity, not repetition. In this perspective, the lack of a “Schelling school” is a sign of strength; Schelling is continually being rediscovered, and his works have retained a fresh and untimely character. If Schelling does not have any obvious historical successors, it is because his influence cannot be charted by the usual methods. New philosophical tools are needed in order to understand his philosophical significance, his impact on contemporary thought and relevance for contemporary concerns. (shrink)

As biological and biomedical research increasingly reference the environmental context of the biological entities under study, the need for formalisation and standardisation of environment descriptors is growing. The Environment Ontology (ENVO) is a community-led, open project which seeks to provide an ontology for specifying a wide range of environments relevant to multiple life science disciplines and, through an open participation model, to accommodate the terminological requirements of all those needing to annotate data using ontology classes. This paper summarises ENVO’s motivation, (...) content, structure, adoption, and governance approach. (shrink)

‘Romanticism’ is one of the more hotly contested terms in the history of ideas. There is a singular lack of consensus as to its meaning, unity, and historical extension, and many attempts to fix the category of romanticism very quickly become blurry. As a result, the great historian of ideas, Arthur Lovejoy, famously concludes that: ‘the word ‘romantic’ has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing. It has ceased to perform the function of a verbal (...) sign’ But his pessimistic advice has not stopped scholars from trying to define romanticism. If anything, it has brought renewed vigour to the determination with which critics try to pinpoint the term. There are several approaches to take, for those who attempt to do so. One class of critics tries to enumerate the features shared by the authors and texts generally considered romantic. An alternative approach would try to identify the fundamental unity that informs romanticism and gives rise to the empirical commonalities. But what would this essential feature be? Both of these approaches take an external perspective on romanticism, seeing it as the object of inquiry. An alternative approach, which we will pursue, looks at romantic subjects, and romanticism as a self-constituting category, rather than merely as an externally imposed one. In other words, we will take as basic neither an (empirical) array of candidate properties constituting romanticism, nor a supposed underlying (rationalist) essence from which properties can be derived, but rather we will focus on how the romantics themselves took up the idea of romanticism and transformed it into a self-conscious movement. We will treat the question of romanticism with respect to England, but above all Germany. Although romantic movements arose and flourished elsewhere in Europe (and in France in particular), German and English romanticism were uniquely theoretically sophisticated and philosophically nuanced. (shrink)

Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver is widely considered a cinematic masterpiece. Existing scholarly deconstructions focus on prevalent themes of masculinity, violence, and exploitation. This work reinterprets the central narrative as a revenge story in three parts, using cinematic context; the occurrences and actions of the protagonist – the eponymous taxi driver Travis Bickle - to answer the question of whether revenge is ever morally justifiable.

This paper examines the experiences of a group of values education teachers who are studying in a customized scholarship and online graduate program under the Linking Standards and Quality Practice (LiSQuP) project in the Philippines. It aimed to explore the attitudes, benefits, and challenges encountered by the values education teachers by participating in the LiSQuP program. Embedded single case study research design was used, and qualitative content analysis was utilized for analyzing and interpreting the data. Recorded focus group interview, online (...) survey documents, observations, and participatory contact were used to obtain the data from the 30 participants who are LiSQuP scholars and teachers of values education in the public schools of the Philippines. Based on the findings of the study, the following results were drawn: 1) The participants exhibited adaptive and positive attitude towards the LiSQuP program; 2) The participants benefited from the program in terms of professional and personal development; and 3) The participants struggled with various factors related to time, program design, and personal traits. The rewarding and challenging experiences of the participants in this study May inform the project management team and other higher education institutions with similar online programs to enhance opportunities for a more responsive and collaborative online learning community for diverse graduate distance learners. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) concept is a knowledge assembly and communication tool to facilitate the transparent translation of mechanistic information into outcomes meaningful to the regulatory assessment of chemicals. The AOP framework and associated knowledgebases (KBs) have received significant attention and use in the regulatory toxicology community. However, it is increasingly apparent that the potential stakeholder community for the AOP concept and AOP KBs is broader than scientists and regulators directly involved in chemical safety assessment. In this paper we (...) identify and describe those stakeholders who currently—or in the future—could benefit from the application of the AOP framework and knowledge to specific problems. We also summarize the challenges faced in implementing pathway-based approaches such as the AOP framework in biological sciences, and provide a series of recommendations to meet critical needs to ensure further progression of the framework as a useful, sustainable and dependable tool supporting assessments of both human health and the environment. Although the AOP concept has the potential to significantly impact the organization and interpretation of biological information in a variety of disciplines/applications, this promise can only be fully realized through the active engagement of, and input from multiple stakeholders, requiring multi-pronged substantive long-term planning and strategies. (shrink)

Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...) questions, ideas, and investigations should the OoL research community address in the near and long term? How can this community better organize itself and prioritize its efforts? What roles can particular subfields play, and what can ELSI and EON do to facilitate research progress? (See also Appendix II.) The present document is a product of that workshop; a white paper that serves as a record of the discussion that took place and a guide and stimulus to the solution of the most urgent and important issues in the study of the OoL. This paper is not intended to be comprehensive or a balanced representation of the opinions of the entire OoL research community. It is intended to present a number of important position statements that contain many aspirational goals and suggestions as to how progress can be made in understanding the OoL. The key role played in the field by current societies and recurring meetings over the past many decades is fully acknowledged, including the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL) and its official journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, as well as the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL). (shrink)

This report by the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage addresses how countries can make fair progress towards the goal of universal coverage. It explains the relevant tradeoffs between different desirable ends and offers guidance on how to make these tradeoffs.

The goal of this pilot study is to investigate expressions of the collective disquiet of people in the first months of Covid-19 pandemic, and to try to understand how they manage covert risk, especially with religion and magic. Four co-authors living in early hot spots of the pandemic speculate on the roles of science, religion, and magic, in the latest global catastrophe. They delve into the consolidation that should be occurring worldwide because of a common, viral enemy, but find little (...) evidence for it. They draw parallels to biblical works, finding evidence of a connection between plague and “social strife.” They explore changes in the purviews of science, religion, and magic, and how and why they have changed, as three systems of covert risk management. They speculate on the coming wave of grief when the world populations finally decide that too many people have died, and they envision cultural changes on the other side of the pandemic, to lifestyles, travel, reverse urbanization, and living and working in smaller communities. Using an unusual approach named “crowd-sourced ethnography”, they conduct un-traditional ethnography and speculate on management of covert risk in their native countries. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

La cobertura universal de salud está en el centro de la acción actual para fortalecer los sistemas de salud y mejorar el nivel y la distribución de la salud y los servicios de salud. Este documento es el informe fi nal del Grupo Consultivo de la OMS sobre la Equidad y Cobertura Universal de Salud. Aquí se abordan los temas clave de la justicia (fairness) y la equidad que surgen en el camino hacia la cobertura universal de salud. Por lo (...) tanto, el informe es pertinente para cada agente que infl uye en ese camino y en particular para los gobiernos, ya que se encargan de supervisar y guiar el progreso hacia la cobertura universal de salud. (shrink)

This report from the WHO Consultative Group on Equity and Universal Health Coverage offers advice on how to make progress fairly towards universal health coverage.

This article examines the thoughts and works of Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain and evangelical philosopher Norman Geisler in light of their understanding of Thomas Aquinas’s view of faith and reason.

In “The Meaning of Rights,” Norman Wilde offers an original account of rights, still of interest. Rights, he contends, are possessed by an individual by virtue of the social function she fulfills. It is because individuals belong to a common social order, in which each has her part to play, that they are “entitled to the conditions necessary for playing it” [288]. This approach allows for a nuanced view, according to which rights are neither absolutely inherent to the individual (...) nor entirely dependent on social conventions. But is such a function-based justification of rights plausible? (shrink)

This article is the introductory chapter to a festschrift in honour of Geoff Hodgson. In work spanning four decades, Geoff Hodgson has made many path-breaking contributions to institutional economics, evolutionary economics, economic methodology, the history of economic thought and social theory more broadly. Hodgson’s reputation as a prolific and important writer, whose work transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, is matched by his credentials as an academic entrepreneur, whose involvement in the formation of two international scholarly societies and the foundation (...) of the Journal of Institutional Economics has expanded the opportunities for constructive dialogue among social scientists. To celebrate Hodgon’s fantastic career, this volume brings together 19 original contributions by world-leading scholars in specific areas that have played a significant role in influencing Hodgson’s thinking or represent key debates to which he has contributed. The chapter introduces these contributions, and summarizes a conversation with Hodgson that is also included in the volume. (shrink)

As someone who wishes Escape from Leviathan (EfL) to succeed, I am grateful for a review with such high praise from a well-known classical liberal. As a critical rationalist who also wishes to learn from his mistakes, I am also grateful for Norman Barry’s criticisms. The only way that I can hope to try to repay these and appreciate their full force is by doing my best to reply to them.