The Many Faces of Objectivity

In this paper I present a positive progressive picture of Putnam's philosophy. According to this way of seeing things, Putnam is a normative cartographer of our linguistic practices who has over time refined his understanding of the concepts of truth and verification and their complex relationship from discourse to discourse. Looked at in this way Putnam is primarily a philosopher of objective normativity, who explores the various conceptions of objectivity with which we operate as well as resisting the excesses of both metaphysics and skepticism which do violence to our ordinary and scientific practices. However, Putnam sees himself as a philosopher of ‘reality’ focused on “the realism issue”, a metaphysically inflationary way of thinking that, I argue, stands in the way of his deepest insightsEn este artículo, presento una imagen positiva y progresiva de la filosodfía de Putnam. De acuerdo con este enfoque, Putnam es un cartógrafo normativo de nuestras prácticas lingüísticas que, a lo largo del tiempo, ha refinado su comprensión de los conceptos de verdad y verificación y sus relaciones complejas de un discurso a otro. Así contemplado, Putnam es principalmente un filósofo de la normatividad objetiva que explora las diversas concepciones de la objetividad con las que operamos, además de resistir los excesos de la metafísica y el escepticismo que estropean nuestras prácticas normales y científicas. No obstante, Putnam se ve a sí mismo como un filósofo de la “realidad” que se centra en el “problema del realismo”, una modo metafísicamente inflacionista de pensar que, defiendo, obstaculiza sus ideas más profundas

Reflections on Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Architecture

Two recent collections on architectural theory and practice invoke the name of pragmatism as marking the hope of a new more intimate alignment of theory and practice after a period of what I call ‘philosophical vampirism’.  This paper examines what role the philosophical tradition of pragmatism might play in relation to architecture. I argue that pragmatism is best understood as a method of overcoming intellectualist and metaphysical obstacles to clear thinking as opposed to a philosophical ideology of some kind. Against Rem Koolhaas’s argument for post-criticality I show that we are always already critical. Pragmatism’s task is to make criticism better. I end by invoking the craft ethos as articulated by Richard Sennett in his book The Craftsman (2008), as perhaps the best model of what a pragmatist architecture might look like

Between Philosophy and Art

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction

Does Rorty have a Blindspot about Truth?

Criticisms of Rorty’s view of truth are so frequent and from such sagacious sources that it is reasonable to suspect that there must be some truth in them. But what? In this paper I consider perhaps the strongest form of such criticism, Huw Price’s claim that without a distinct norm of truth Rorty is unable to make sense of how someone, justified by her own lights (say, local communal standards), could improve her commitments by reference to another better informed community. My aim in the present paper is twofold: In the first place, I shall argue that Price’s criticism is off-target missing the perfectionist character of the justificatory norms that are criterial for truth on Rorty’s account. Secondly, I argue that Rorty’s actual blindspot concerns the way in which truth figures in internal reflection upon a system of beliefs, e.g., 1st-person reflection upon one’s own beliefs. But this blindspot should not blind us to the lasting insight in Rorty’s resistance to Price’s attempt to instrumentalize truth as if it were an isolable tool of our linguistic practices

Putnam, Pragmatism and the Fate of Metaphysics

Putnam has called for a renewal of philosophy by invoking the names of Wittgenstein and Dewey, both strong critics of traditional metaphysics. In the light of his own attacks on various forms of metaphysics (e.g. metaphysical realism, the fact/ value distinction), one question that arises is this: what is the fate of metaphysics in Putnam’s vision of philosophy? The present paper explores this question by reading Putnam as committed to a broadly pragmatist approach to metaphysics exemplified in different ways by James and Dewey. I end by providing several different ways of understanding Putnam’s claim that “there is a sense in which it is the task of philosophy to overcome metaphysics and a sense in which its task is to continue metaphysical discussion”

Development and Characterization of STAT3 Y705H Mutated Breast Cancer Cell Lines for Genetic Validation of the Mechanism of Action of STAT3 Inhibitor TTI-101

https://openworks.mdanderson.org/sumexp21/1225/thumbnail.jp

Chandra X-Ray Spectroscopy Of The Very Early O Supergiant HD 93129A: Constraints On Wind Shocks And The Mass-Loss Rate

We present an analysis of both the resolved X-ray emission-line profiles and the broad-band X-ray spectrum of the O-2 If* star HD 93129A, measured with the Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer ( HETGS). This star is among the earliest and most massive stars in the Galaxy, and provides a test of the embedded wind-shock scenario in a very dense and powerful wind. A major new result is that continuum absorption by the dense wind is the primary cause of the hardness of the observed X-ray spectrum, while intrinsically hard emission from colliding wind shocks contributes less than 10 per cent of the X-ray flux. We find results consistent with the predictions of numerical simulations of the line-driving instability, including line broadening indicating an onset radius of X-ray emission of several tenths of R-*. Helium-like forbidden-to-intercombination line ratios are consistent with this onset radius, and inconsistent with being formed in a wind-collision interface with the star\u27s closest visual companion at a distance of 100 au. The broad-band X-ray spectrum is fitted with a dominant emission temperature of just kT = 0.6 keV along with significant wind absorption. The broad-band wind absorption and the line profiles provide two independent measurements of the wind mass-loss rate:. M = 5.2(-1.5)(+1.8) x 10(-6) and 6.8(-2.2)(+2.8) x 10(-6) M-circle dot yr(-1), respectively. This is the first consistent modelling of the X-ray line-profile shapes and broad-band X-ray spectral energy distribution in a massive star, and represents a reduction of a factor of 3-4 compared to the standard H alpha mass-loss rate that assumes a smooth wind

Stages of development and injury: an epidemiological survey of young children presenting to an emergency department

<p><b>Background:</b> The aim of our study was to use a local (Glasgow, west of Scotland) version of a Canadian injury surveillance programme (CHIRPP) to investigate the relationship between the developmental stage of young (pre-school) children, using age as a proxy, and the occurrence (incidence, nature, mechanism and location) of injuries presenting to a Scottish hospital emergency department, in an attempt to replicate the findings of a recent study in Kingston, Canada.</p> <p><b>Methods:</b> We used the Glasgow CHIRPP data to perform two types of analyses. First, we calculated injury rates for that part of the hospital catchment area for which reasonably accurate population denominators were available. Second, we examined detailed injury patterns, in terms of the circumstances, mechanisms, location and types of injury. We compared our findings with those of the Kingston researchers.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> A total of 17,793 injury records for children aged up to 7 years were identified over the period 1997–99. For 1997–2001, 6,188 were used to calculate rates in the west of the city only. Average annual age specific rates per 1000 children were highest in both males and females aged 12–35 months. Apart from the higher rates in Glasgow, the pattern of injuries, in terms of breakdown factors, mechanism, location, context, and nature of injury, were similar in Glasgow and Kingston.</p> <p><b>Conclusion:</b> We replicated in Glasgow, UK, the findings of a Canadian study demonstrating a correlation between the pattern of childhood injuries and developmental stage. Future research should take account of the need to enhance statistical power and explore the interaction between age and potential confounding variables such as socio-economic deprivation. Our findings highlight the importance of designing injury prevention interventions that are appropriate for specific stages of development in children.</p&gt