Specificities associated with chromosomal linearity are not restricted to telomeres. Here, recent results obtained on fission and budding yeast are summarized and an attempt is made to define subtelomeres using chromatin features extending beyond the heterochromatin emanating from telomeres. Subtelomeres, the chromosome domains adjacent to telomeres, differ from the rest of the genome by their gene content, rapid evolution, and chromatin features that together contribute to organism adaptation. However, current definitions of subtelomeres are generally based on synteny and are largely (...) gene‐centered. Taking into consideration both the peculiar gene content and dynamics as well as the chromatin properties of those domains, it is discussed how chromatin features can contribute to subtelomeric properties and functions, and play a pivotal role in the emergence of subtelomeres. (shrink)

Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Imagerie Ce´re´brale (LENA), Hoˆpital de La Salpeˆtrie`re, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

in Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness edited by Zelazo P., Moscovitch M. and Thompson E. (2007).

The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to-trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether the ability to sustain attention and its underlying brain circuitry are transformable through training. Here, we show, with dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography, that training (...) attention, as cultivated by meditation, can improve the ability to sustain atten- tion. Three months of intensive meditation training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, as indicated by both enhanced theta-band phase consistency of oscillatory neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Furthermore, those individuals who showed the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behav- ioral response variability. Notably, we also observed reduced variability in neural processing, in particular in low-frequency bands, regardless of whether the deviant tone was attended or unattended. Focused attention meditation may thus affect both distracter and target processing, perhaps by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms, a mechanism important for controlling the content of attention. These novel findings highlight the mechanisms underlying focused attention meditation and support the notion that mental training can significantly affect attention and brain function. (shrink)

Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole were philosophers and theologians associated with Port-Royal Abbey, a centre of the Catholic Jansenist movement in seventeenth-century France. Their enormously influential Logic or the Art of Thinking, which went through five editions in their lifetimes, treats topics in logic, language, theory of knowledge and metaphysics, and also articulates the response of 'heretical' Jansenist Catholicism to orthodox Catholic and Protestant views on grace, free will and the sacraments. In attempting to combine the categorical theory of (...) the proposition with a Cartesian account of knowledge, their Logic represents the classical view of judgment which inspired the modern transformation in logic and semantic theory by Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and recent philosophers. This edition presents a new translation of the text, together with a historical introduction and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:According to a common caricature, Nietzsche cuts the figure of an anti-Buddha who advocates a type of life affirmation that is the contrary of Buddhist or Schopenhauerian life negation. In this paper, I seek to demonstrate, through a rigorous study of some of his later works—most notably Beyond Good and Evil (1886), The Antichrist (1905[1888]), and Ecce Homo (1908[1888])—that Nietzsche does not at all present himself as an anti-Buddha stricto sensu, or as a figure whose teaching is diametrically opposed to (...) that of the Indian master. The late Nietzsche, more precisely, does not conceive of amor fati and nirvāṇa as opposed ethical poles—or negatives of one another. On the contrary, certain texts in Ecce Homo and The Antichrist make it clear that there are significant affinities between amor fati and nirvāṇa as Nietzsche understands it, with respect to both the relationship to the self (seeing oneself "as a fatum") and to the other (overcoming ressentiment) that it implies. This, I conclude, lends credence to Nietzsche's infamous hypothesis according to which, contrary to appearances, all ethical ideals might in fact be "insidiously consanguine, linked up, knotted with that bad thing which seems to be their contrary" (Beyond Good and Evil, §2, KSA 5:17). (shrink)

Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure of resting interoceptive awareness. We compared two groups of meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) to an age- and body mass index-matched group of nonmeditators. Contrary to our prediction, (...) we found no evidence that meditators were superior to nonmeditators in the heartbeat detection task, across several sessions and respiratory modulation conditions. Compared to nonmeditators, however, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as superior and the difficulty of the task as easier. These results provide evidence against the notion that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, enhances the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest. (shrink)

Les temporalités journalistiques connaissent-elles des ordres et des crises? Le cas de l’Unité populaire au Chili montre que les routines pratiques et les habitudes discursives du journalisme sont historiquement situées et connaissent des métamorphoses. Ces transformations s’appuient sur les normes en vigueur, mais font émerger une autre logique temporelle qui prend peu à peu le dessus. Dans le cas chilien, la temporalité de la mise à l’agenda et la figure du gatekeeper sont de plus en plus contestées par l’événementialisation politique (...) et l’urgence médiatique. La sélection et la hiérarchisation des nouvelles ne disparaissent pas, mais elles s’opèrent dans un autre but. Elles laissent la place à la temporalité de la fluidité, par laquelle les journalistes doivent nourrir un flux de nouvelles plus étendu et accéléré. La réactivité se redéfinit alors. L’Unité populaire, ce sont donc les temps agités où se métamorphose, au Chili, la temporalité de la mise à l’agenda. Et tout l’intérêt de ce cas réside dans le décalage historique entre ces métamorphoses journalistiques et la succession des régimes politiques puisque la temporalité de la fluidité émerge durant le gouvernement démocratique d’Allende et se consolide sous le régime autoritaire de Pinochet. (shrink)

NOTES: Based on the book Socrates on trial written by Andrew Irvine and published by the University of Toronto Press. Performed at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, May 31-June 7, 2008. CONTENTS: Trailer, Who was Socrates?, Selected scenes, The production, Credits. UBC Library Catalogue Permanent URL: http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=3956307.

»Anhänglichkeiten« gehören nicht zum Vokabular der Handlungstheorie. Sie sind zugleich unbestimmte und fesselnde Fäden in Bünden, die alle irgendetwas bewirken, aber als einzelne nicht selbstgenügsam, nicht unabhängig sind. Anstatt eindeutig zwischen bestimmenden und abhängigen Dingen zu unterscheiden, geht der Beitrag zu einer weniger scharfen, aber unendlich produktiveren Ansatz über, der bestimmende Handlungen als ein in Netzwerken disseminiertes faire faire ([jemanden etwas] tun machen) auffasst. Wesentlich wäre dann nicht, sich von »Anhänglichkeiten« zu befreien, sondern die guten von den schlechten zu trennen, (...) nicht indem man auf großartige Prinzipien zurückgreift, sondern indem man sich der immanenten Gerechtigkeit der Dinge überlässt. Aber wie wäre die Qualität einer »Anhänglichkeit« zu beurteilen? Der Beitrag sucht anhand von Beispiel-fällen von Sportlern, Drogensüchtigen und Musikliebhabern eine Art »anhänglicher« Moral zu entwickeln, die aus dem Gewebe unhintergehbarer Bindungen gemacht wäre. »Attachments« do not belong to the vocabulary of action. Incommensurable and situational, they are at once constraining and indeterminate, deployed in bonds that all do something, but among which none is independent for itself. Instead of distinguishing clearly between dependent and determining things, the paper passes to a less trenchant but infinitely more productive approach to distributed action, conceived as a (make [someone] do [something]) disseminated in networks. The essential, then, is not to liberate oneself from the attachments, but to sort the good ones from the bad, by leaning not on grand overarching principles but on the immanent justice in things. But how can we judge the quality of an »attachment«? Drawing on cases of sportsmen, drug addicts, and music lovers, this contribution aims to clarify what an »attached« morality could look like, a morality which would be made of the fabric of uncircumventable ties. (shrink)

Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated insula and anterior cingulate cortices in the empathic response to another’s pain. However, virtually nothing is known about the impact of the voluntary generation of compassion on this network. To investigate these questions we assessed brain activity using fMRI while novice and expert meditation practitioners generated a loving-kindness-compassion meditation state. To probe affective reactivity, we presented emotional and neutral sounds during the meditation and comparison periods. Our main hypothesis (...) was that the concern for others cultivated during this form of meditation enhances affective processing, in particular in response to sounds of distress, and that this response to emotional sounds is modulated by the degree of meditation training. The presentation of the emotional sounds was associated with increased pupil diameter and activation of limbic regions (insula and cingulate cortices) during meditation (versus rest). During meditation, activation in insula was greater during presentation of negative sounds than positive or neutral sounds in expert than it was in novice meditators. The strength of activation in insula was also associated with self-reported intensity of the meditation for both groups. These results support the role of the limbic circuitry in emotion sharing. The comparison between meditation vs. rest states between experts and novices also showed increased activation in amygdala, right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) in response to all sounds, suggesting, greater detection of the emotional sounds, and enhanced mentation in response to emotional human vocalizations for experts than novices during meditation. Together these data indicate that the mental expertise to cultivate positive emotion alters the activation of circuitries previously linked to empathy and theory of mind in response to emotional stimuli.. (shrink)

Nietzsche once proclaimed himself the 'Buddha of Europe', and throughout his life Buddhism held enormous interest for him. While he followed Buddhist thinking in demolishing what he regarded as the two-headed delusion of Being and Self, he saw himself as advocating a response to the ensuing nihilist crisis that was diametrically opposed to that of his Indian counterpart. In this book Antoine Panaïoti explores the deep and complex relations between Nietzsche's views and Buddhist philosophy. He discusses the psychological models (...) and theories which underlie their supposedly opposing ethics of 'great health' and explodes the apparent dichotomy between Nietzsche's Dionysian life-affirmation and Buddhist life-negation, arguing for a novel, hybrid response to the challenge of formulating a tenable post-nihilist ethics. His book will interest students and scholars of Nietzsche's philosophy, Buddhist thought and the metaphysical, existential and ethical issues that emerge with the demise of theism. (shrink)

La pandémie COVID-19, les migrations climatiques et la perte de biodiversité sont des exemples de crises contemporaines qui, comme le suggère Van Rensselaer Potter, bénéficieraient dun rapprochement entre le Bio et l’Éthique pour en mitiger les dommages. Les futur(e)s bioéthicien(ne)s devront poursuivre cette quête potterienne en ouvrant le champ de la bioéthique vers de nouvelles collaborations interdisciplinaires et thèmes d’étude, dépassant les technologies biomédicales et les sciences de la vie, dont les affaires, les entreprises, la finance, le marché ainsi que (...) la consommation, la production et la démographie humaines… toutes ayant des influences notables sur l’allocation locale des soins et sur l’avenir global des écosystèmes. (shrink)

C'est une vieille évidence qu'il n'est rien sujet à plus de continuelle agitation que les lois. Et en effet, l'ordre juridique est toujours instable. Il traduit un point d'équilibre momentané, qui n'était pas le seul possible, ni le seul prévisible. Le meilleur des Codes n'a jamais pu le fixer. Son contenu évolue sans cesse. Car, à l'image de la vie, le champ du droit est un espace ouvert, où s'affrontent un chaos de forces en perpétuel mouvement. Ni Providence, ni Progrès (...) n'y apparaissent avec certitude, l'esprit souffle apparemment où il veut et nul ne sait où il va. La preuve en est que la meilleure des règles en un temps donné finit toujours par avoir des effets pervers et qu'il est peu de lois vicieuses qui n'aient parfois d'heureux effets. Dans ces conditions, il ne faut pas attendre de l'enseignement du droit qu'il fournisse un catalogue de recettes pratiques, stables et sûres. Son seul but devrait être d'apprendre à poser les bonnes questions, qui sont presque toujours les mêmes, pour parvenir un jour à trouver de bonnes réponses, toujours provisoires. Or, aucune démarche n'est plus propice à la réalisation d'un tel but que la méthode historique. Elle révèle qu'il n'y a jamais de solution bonne et durable et que chaque civilisation, chaque génération doit trouver elle même ses propres réponses, avec une étroite marge de manœuvre. Pour trouver sa voie, explique l'auteur, ni la science, ni la philosophie ne livrent de clé. Si l'une peut l'éclairer et l'autre le guider, le droit n'est ni assimilable à une science, ni réductible à une philosophie. C'est un art subtil, qui nécessite de se plier à une discipline spécifique, mais dont la parfaite maîtrise dépasse celle des règles techniques qui lui sont indispensables. Elle suppose la sagesse d'admettre les pesanteurs, la complexité et la relativité de la vie, ainsi que la sérénité d'accepter ce qui ne peut être changé, le courage de modifier ce qui peut l'être et le désir de chercher à distinguer l'un de l'autre sans parti-pris. Ceci requiert une tournure d'esprit et une culture à laquelle il ne paraît pas concevable d'accéder sans le secours de l'expérience et le recours à l'histoire. (shrink)

La position de Nietzsche quant à la métaphysique est trouble : il la critique, veut la détruire, mais en même temps il dit lui-même que La Naissance de la tragédie est une métaphysique d’artiste. Nombreux d’ailleurs sont les auteurs qui voient Nietzsche comme un métaphysicien, à commencer bien sûr par Heidegger, pour qui Nietzsche « achève » la métaphysique : il la pousse à son extrémité, épuise ses possibilités, l’accomplit (voir notamment Achèvement de la métaphysique et poésie et Nietzsche...

Deux décennies après les premières vagues de démocratisation en Afrique, le temps n'est-il pas venu d'instruire le " procès " de la démocratie ?

La question des rapports entre sciences et techniques commence à se poser de manière nouvelle à partir de la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle. En même temps que se précisent des possibilités inédites d’application des sciences aux techniques, les élites éclairées, encyclopédistes, ingénieurs, Idéologues, réfléchissent à la place que doivent occuper les savoirs techniques au sein de l’organisation générale des connaissances. La réflexion s’approfondit au cours des premières décennies du XIXe siècle. Certains caressent le projet d’une science des techniques, d’une (...) « technologie », qui permettrait d’ordonner la masse des savoirs et des savoir-faire. D’autres se contentent de grouper les techniques en fonction de leurs applications. Ce qui se fait jour en définitive au travers de ces différentes tentatives, c’est le statut moderne d’une technique omniprésente en même temps qu’elle échappe à toute mise en ordre globale. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Malebranchian Reception of Pascal’s Anthropology. The Question of the Transmission of Original Sin. The comparison between the theoretical positions of Pascal and Malebranche on the opportunity to shed light rationally on the ways of original sin proves to be highly instructive from three perspectives. On the one hand, it enlightens us on the strategy adopted in each of these apologetic projects towards the mobilization of physiological arguments with strong materialistic undertones. In return, it injects a little dynamism into their (...) thwarted reception, especially at the time of the Enlightenment. Finally, this comparison establishes a subtle link between two authors who have been dealt with very sparsely by traditional commentaries, concerning their conception of the use of skepticism in epistemology. Thus, through the problem of the ways of sin transmission, this is not a rethinking of the relationships between reason and faith, but is, rather, a particular use of reason and of Descartes’ analyses. (shrink)

Résumé Quand les mots et les manières de voir font face à la peinture, on entrevoit qu’un discours rabattu a envahi son mode de perception et peut-être même sa pratique. Comment le repérer? Comment en faire la description? Comment dresser l’inventaire de ses codes et de leurs usages dans la pratique picturale? Sans doute en interrogeant le visible, et en l’interrogeant sur son attribut le plus visible qui s’est toujours joué des mots : la couleur.

En 1743-1744, Jean-Jacques Rousseau servit comme secrétaire de l’ambassadeur de France à Venise. Le récit qu’il donne de ce séjour dans les Confessions mentionne les « célèbres amusements de cette ville », mais ces descriptions ne doivent pas cacher l’essentiel : « on était en guerre ». De son bureau de la Sérénissime République, Rousseau perçoit les échos des batailles et des négociations de la Guerre de Succession d’Autriche. Touchant aux questions des formes de gouvernement et des relations internationales, les (...) Dépêches de Venise peuvent se lire comme une initiation à l’art politique. (shrink)

In Corneille’s Horace the hero is brought to trial for having defended Rome’s integrity by killing his own sister. The fifth act of the play is devoted to this trial, but should also be read like an allegorical re-enactment of the Querelle du Cid, during which Corneille himself was put to a kind of a ”trial’’ by colleagues and critics scandalized by the moral and ideological audacity of this first play dedicated to a criminal hero. Our paper tries to point (...) out in detail the analogies that authorize such a reading. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

In the present article I attribute to the common topic in the Rhetoric a two-fold suggestive function and a guarantee function. These three functions are possible because this type of topic, while often quite abstract, nevertheless contains thought-steering, substantial terms, and formulates a generally empirical or normative endoxon. Assuming that according to Aristotle an enthymeme has at least two premises, it would appear that a common topic is the abstract principle behind the often implicit major premise. This means that the (...) topic may be regarded as the – generalizing – if-then statement in a modern argumentation scheme. Therefore it should be possible to see the enthymemes of Rhetoric 2.23 as a combination of a logical argument form (which can usually be reconstructed as modus ponens) and an argumentation scheme – even though we may not attribute this idea to Aristotle himself. (shrink)

Publie en 1683 comme un preambule a la refutation du Traite de la nature et de la grace de Nicolas Malebranche, l'ouvrage Vraies et fausses idees d'Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) a connu un etonnant destin. Cette defense tres argumentee de la conception cartesienne des idees est peu a peu devenue un texte incontournable dans les debats de philosophie de la connaissance, cite et commente aussi bien par les auteurs classiques que dans les debats anglosaxons contemporains. Ce volume en propose la (...) premiere edition critique annotee en francais. Des annexes apportent en outre quelques outils pour se reperer dans l'important corpus de textes de philosophie de la connaissance rediges par Arnauld. (shrink)

This paper analyzes an explicit instantiation of the program of neurophenomenology in a neuroscientific protocol. Neurophenomenology takes seriously the importance of linking the scientific study of consciousness to the careful examination of experience with a specific first-person methodology. My first claim is that such strategy is a fruitful heuristic because it produces new data and illuminates their relation to subjective experience. My second claim is that the approach could open the door to a natural account of the structure of human (...) experience as it is mobilized in itself in such methodology. In this view, generative passages define the type of circulation which explicitly roots the active and disciplined insight the subject has about his/her experience in a biological emergent process. (shrink)

For Van Rensselaer Potter (1911–2001), Global Bio-Ethics is about building on the legacy of Aldo Leopold (1887–1948), one of the most notable forest managers of the twentieth century who brought to light the importance of pragmatism in the sciences and showed us a new way to proceed with environmental ethics. Following Richard Huxtable and Jonathan Ives's methodological 'Framework for Empirical Bioethics Research Projects' called 'Mapping, framing, shaping,' published in BMC Medicine Ethics (2019)), we propose operationalizing a framework for Global Bio-Ethics (...) by hybridizing approaches in empirical bioethics and ecosystem management. We explain this framework using the metaphor of forest management. This mixed approach is articulated through three phases: (1) mapping the “landscape” to build a working theory, (2) framing the “scene” to prepare the fieldwork, and (3) shaping bioethics “tools” to stimulate cooperation. Applying this methodology, an adaptive management cycle is outlined to help ensure that political processes are sustainable and socially acceptable, still based on strategic and ethical thinking, but also capable of reshaping failing policies. (shrink)