The State of Israel

This chapter studies the emergence of judicial review in Israel, which is a rights from wrongs reaction to the Holocaust, Nazism, and Fascism. Israeli judicial review did not arise to fulfill a need for a federalism or separation of powers umpire, since Israel is a unitary nation-state without a separation of powers system. Israeli judicial review emerged in weakened form as a consequence of the Zionist mass mobilization, which led to the creation of Israel and to the issuance of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, as is explained by Professor Ackerman. Israeli adoption of written constitutionalism and of judicial review was probably, in part, a function of borrowing. I consider, and reject, Professor Ran Hirschl’s argument that Israeli judicial review originated as a power grab by a fading Ashkenazi Israeli elite. I think that proportional representation has resulted in so many political parties holding seats in the Knesset that the Supreme Court has much more power relative to the legislature than is the case in a G-20 nation with a parliamentary, unitary with an electoral system like Japan’s. I also think Israel’s common law heritage contributed to its adoption of judicial review.

Cyrenaics and the Period of Early Hellenism

It is established that in the philosophy of cyrenaics in the period of early Hellenism there were two tendencies: the alienation of the individual from society and the preservation of the connection between the Polis and the individual. The first tendency was most pronounced in the philosophy of Hegesias and Theodorus. The second tendency was manifested in the philosophy of Anniceris. It is shown that the prevailing tendency was the alienation of the individual from society and this was associated with the crisis of the values of the polis. At the same time, the tendency to preserve the connection between the Polis and the individual reflected the influence of the values of the Polis, which were preserved in a weakened form in the period of early Hellenism.

The First Barriers in the Human Genetic Engineering Debate

This chapter begins with a brief history of the eugenics debates up until the 1950s, when the human genetic engineering debate emerged. Midcentury genetic scientists wanted to make distinctions between themselves and the now vilified eugenicists, so they created two barriers: the somatic/germline and the disease/enhancement barrier. Above both was “somatic gene therapy,” which became ethically acceptable, and the subject of medical research. The chapter continues by showing how these barriers were weakened over the decades by both a change in our scientific knowledge and the dominant values used in the debate. By the end of the 20th century they remained standing on the slope, albeit in weakened form.

The Development and Consequences of Moral Essentialism

Children report that many natural kinds, social groups, and psychological characteristics arise from an innate, internal “essence” that is rooted in biology and remains stable over time. These perceptions persist into adulthood, albeit often in weakened form. This paper argues that in addition to the domains previously examined in the essentialism literature, children—and to some extent adults—also view moral characteristics in essentialist terms. This form of essentialism has important social consequences, including in the area of pro-social behavior and in the legal domain. The body of evidence reviewed here suggests that children’s and adults’ moral judgments depend not just on what people do but also on perceptions of who those people are, i.e., whether they are people of good or bad moral character.

LOGIC AND TOPOLOGY FOR KNOWLEDGE, KNOWABILITY, AND BELIEF

In recent work, Stalnaker proposes a logical framework in which belief is realized as a weakened form of knowledge 35. Building on Stalnaker’s core insights, and using frameworks developed in 11 and 3, we employ topological tools to refine and, we argue, improve on this analysis. The structure of topological subset spaces allows for a natural distinction between what is known and (roughly speaking) what is knowable; we argue that the foundational axioms of Stalnaker’s system rely intuitively on both of these notions. More precisely, we argue that the plausibility of the principles Stalnaker proposes relating knowledge and belief relies on a subtle equivocation between an “evidence-in-hand” conception of knowledge and a weaker “evidence-out-there” notion of what could come to be known. Our analysis leads to a trimodal logic of knowledge, knowability, and belief interpreted in topological subset spaces in which belief is definable in terms of knowledge and knowability. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization for this logic as well as its uni-modal belief fragment. We then consider weaker logics that preserve suitable translations of Stalnaker’s postulates, yet do not allow for any reduction of belief. We propose novel topological semantics for these irreducible notions of belief, generalizing our previous semantics, and provide sound and complete axiomatizations for the corresponding logics.

MutYH-associated polyposis

MutYH-associated polyposis is the only polyposis syndrome with an autosomal recessive type of inheritance, often phenotypically similar to a weakened form of familial adenomatous polyposis. For the development of the disease mutations in both alleles of the gene are required, but an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer in carriers of monoallelic mutations is noted. The diagnosis of MutYH-associated polyposis should be suspected in a patient with colorectal cancer over 45 years old on the background of polyps in the colon. The review presents modern algorithms for diagnostic and treatment of the disease.

The Bodily Texture of Phantasy

SummaryIn opposition to the traditional empiricist understanding of phantasy as a copy of perception and therefore as a weakened form of experience, this paper interprets phantasy as an independent and creative modus of consciousness that is responsible for the individuation of the subject. The article reconstructs Husserl’s approach to phantasy as a specific kind of intentional operation as well as its relationship with mood-intentionality, bodily-kinesthetic expressivity and with hyletic anticipation as a structure of sensibility. In this way, the bi-valence of human experiential orders is claimed and the concept of bodily phantasy is pointed out. This leads the phenomenological analysis closer to the psychoanalytical approach to fantasy. The latter is investigated with reference to Freud’s concept of primary processual thinking and Gaddini’s understanding of bodily phantasy as a specific individuation factor within the personal history of bonding

The complexity of liao ‘finish’ and its weakened form le in the Shangshui Dialect of Central Plains Mandarin, Henan Province

In the Shangshui dialect, a sub-branch of Central Plains Mandarin, the functional words liao55 /liao0and le0, both derived from the verb liao55 ‘finish’, yet present very complex functions, and both of them only partially correspond to le0 in Standard Mandarin in function. It is found that liao55 and its weakened form liao0 take on diverse functions as a verb, a resultative complement, a completive marker, a perfect, or a conditional marker, and le0 shows a neat correspondence between its syntactic position and its grammatical meaning: the one directly attached to the main verb (M-le0) is a past perfective marker, and the other at the sentence final position (F-le0) is a marker indicating the change of a state, as in standard Mandarin. The co-occurrence of liao55, M-le0 and F-le0 doesn’t represent the simple composition of the grammatical meanings of those elements, while liao55…F-le0 and M-le0…F-le0 can be regarded as fixed constructions whose meanings are not completely transparent. Liao55 and its weakened form liao0 and le0 constitute a semantic cluster centralized on the ‘finishing’ meaning. The superimposition of meanings is commonly presented in the usage of liao55, liao0, le0 and their combinational forms, which means each of them can take on several grammatical meanings simultaneously when they occur in a particular context, and it is the superimposing of meanings that motivates the development of liao55 from one function to others. Liao55 and le0 only partly overlap with the corresponding forms in other dialects or languages, which specify the phenomenon of trans-category correspondence proposed by Liu (2013).

Star Versus Two Stripes Ramsey Numbers and a Conjecture of Schelp

R. H. Schelp conjectured that if G is a graph with |V(G)| = R(Pn, Pn) such that δ(G) > $$\frac{3|V(G)|}{ 4}$, then in every 2-colouring of the edges of G there is a monochromatic Pn. In other words, the Ramsey number of a path does not change if the graph to be coloured is not complete but has large minimum degree.Here we prove Ramsey-type results that imply the conjecture in a weakened form, first replacing the path by a matching, showing that the star-matching–matching Ramsey number satisfying R(Sn, nK2, nK2) = 3n − 1. This extends R(nK2, nK2) = 3n − 1, an old result of Cockayne and Lorimer. Then we extend this further from matchings to connected matchings, and outline how this implies Schelp's conjecture in an asymptotic sense through a standard application of the Regularity Lemma.It is sad that we are unable to hear Dick Schelp's reaction to our work generated by his conjecture.

The Ozone Hole of 2002 as Measured by TOMS

Since its discovery in 1985, the ozone hole has been regularly mapped using the data from Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instruments on several satellites. The current TOMS, on the Earth Probe satellite, has been taking measurements since 1996. The ozone hole first appeared during the 1980s. Since 1990, the hole has consistently developed during each Antarctic spring over a broad area with the minimum total ozone value reaching about 100 Dobson units (DU; 1 DU = 2.69 × 1016 molecules cm−2) in late September or early October. The year 2002 was markedly different from the past 12 years. A series of strong wave events weakened the South Polar vortex. In late September, a major stratospheric warming took place, reversing the direction of the polar flow and the latitudinal temperature gradient. This warming resulted in a division of the ozone hole into two pieces, one that migrated to lower latitudes and disappeared and one that reformed over the Pole in a weakened form. The development of this year’s unusual ozone hole is shown here and is contrasted to a climatology of the years since 1990. Minimum daily values of total ozone barely reached 150 DU in contrast to values nearer to 100. The area of the ozone hole briefly reached 18 × 106 km2, then dropped rapidly to only 2 × 106 km2, and finally recovered to about 8 × 106 km2 before disappearing in early November. The positive anomaly compared with the last 12 yr near the Pole was accompanied by a smaller negative anomaly north of 45°S.