Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, Page 74-93, February 2022. This study seeks to investigate aspects of the relationship between the core academic activities of teaching and research in higher education, through a theoretically enriched discussion of the design of an innovative popular music module on Adele’s 25 album and its delivery to first-year undergraduates on a general-purpose music degree during the academic years 2015–21. Drawing on autoethnographic approaches, it contemplates the challenges associated with the execution (...) of a module on genuinely contemporary topics, outlining the case for the importance of ensuring that university curricula remain up-to-the-minute as well as exploring strategies by which to realise this aspiration in the absence of a body of academic literature that might ordinarily have provided strong foundations for the content of such teaching. These lines of inquiry lead to consideration of broader questions concerning the evolving relationship between teaching and research in light of the substantial changes that have taken place within the UK higher education sector in recent years, as well as the possibilities for teaching-led research, developed exclusively for and in the academic classroom, as an alternative to the more traditional research-led teaching. (shrink)

This paper offers an approach to support the development of reflective teaching practice among university academics that can be used to promote dialogue about quality enhancement and the student experience. Pedagogic frailty has been proposed as a unifying concept that may help to integrate institutional efforts to enhance teaching within universities by helping to maintain a simultaneous focus on key areas that are thought to impede development of pedagogy. These areas and the links that have been proposed to connect them (...) are interrogated here through the dialogic analysis of a framed autoethnographic narrative produced by a community ‘insider’ who has considerable experience of teaching within the arts and humanities. This person-centred methodology acknowledges the subjective nature of teaching and gives voice to important stories that otherwise might not be heard formally, and allows an academic to rehearse this voice individually before comparing it with others in the institution. (shrink)

Advances in molecular, genetic, and cell biological techniques have allowed neuroscientists to delve into the cellular machinery of learning and memory. The calcium and calmodulin-dependent kinase type II (CaMKII) is one of the best candidates for being a molecular component of the learning and memory machinery in the mammalian brain. It is present in abundance at synapses and its enzymatic properties and responsiveness to intracellular Ca2+ fit a model whereby Ca2+ currents activate the kinase and lead to changes in synaptic (...) efficacy. Indeed, such plastic properties of synapses are thought to be important for memory formation. Genetic analysis of the alpha isoform of CaMKII in mice support the hypothesis that CaMKII signaling is required to initiate the formation of new spatial memories in the hippocampus. CaMKII is also required for the correct induction of long-term potentiation (LTP) in the hippocampus, consistent with the widely held belief that LTP is a mechanism for learning and memory. Recent cell biological, genetic, and physiological analyses suggest that one of the cellular explanations for LTP and CaMKII function might be the trafficking of AMPA-type receptors to synapses in response to neural activity. BioEssays 24:223–233, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.; DOI 10.1002/bies.10057. (shrink)

Ectopeptidases are transmembrane proteins present in a wide variety of tissues and cell types. Dysregulated expression of certain ectopeptidases in human malignancies suggests their value as clinical markers. Ectopeptidase interaction with agonistic antibodies or their inhibitors has revealed that these ectoenzymes are able to modulate bioactive peptide responses and to influence growth, apoptosis and differentiation, as well as adhesion and motility, all functions involved in normal and tumoral processes. There is evidence that ectopeptidase-mediated signal transduction frequently involves tyrosine phosphorylation. Combined (...) analyses of gene organization and regulation of ectopeptidases by various physiological factors have provided insights into their structure–function relationships. Understanding the roles of ectopeptidases in pathophysiology may have implications in considering them as therapeutic targets. BioEssays 23:251–260, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Arguments for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity are weakened by the lack of an unambiguous definition of complexity. Such definitions abound for both dynamical systems and biological organisms, but have drawbacks of either a conceptual or a practical nature. Physical complexity, a measure based on automata theory and information theory, is a simple and intuitive measure of the amount of information that an organism stores, in its genome, about the environment in which it evolves. It is (...) argued that physical complexity must increase in molecular evolution of asexual organisms in a single niche if the environment does not change, due to natural selection. It is possible that complexity decreases in co‐evolving systems as well as at high mutation rates, in sexual populations, and in time‐dependent landscapes. However, it is reasoned that these factors usually help, rather than hinder, the evolution of complexity, and that a theory of physical complexity for co‐evolving species will reveal an overall trend towards higher complexity in biological evolution. BioEssays 24:1085–1094, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Climate model projections are used to inform policy decisions and constitute a major focus of climate research. Confidence in climate projections relies on the adequacy of climate models for those projections. The question of how to argue for the adequacy of models for climate projections has not gotten sufficient attention in the climate modelling community. The most common way to evaluate a climate model is to assess in a quantitative way degrees of “model fit”; i.e., how well model results fit (...) observation-based data (empirical accuracy) and agree with other models or model versions (robustness). However, such assessments are largely silent about what those degrees of fit imply for a model’s adequacy for projecting future climate. We provide a conceptual framework for discussing the evaluation of the adequacy of models for climate projections. Drawing on literature from philosophy of science and climate science, we discuss the potential and limits of inferences from model fit. We suggest that support of a model by background knowledge is an additional consideration that can be appealed to in arguments for a model’s adequacy for long-term projections, and that this should explicitly be spelled out. Empirical accuracy, robustness and support by background knowledge neither individually nor collectively constitute sufficient conditions in a strict sense for a model’s adequacy for long-term projections. However, they provide reasons that can be strengthened by additional information and thus contribute to a complex non-deductive argument for the adequacy of a climate model or a family of models for long-term climate projections. (shrink)

Understanding how complex sexual reproduction arose, and why sexual organisms have been more successful than otherwise similar asexual organisms, is a longstanding problem in evolutionary biology. Within this problem, the potential role of endosymbionts or intracellular pathogens in mediating primitive genetic transfers is a continuing theme. In recent years, several remarkable activities of mitochondria have been observed in the germline cells of complex eukaryotes, and it has been found that bacterial endosymbionts related to mitochondria are capable of manipulating diverse aspects (...) of metazoan gametogenesis. An attempt is made here to rationalize these observations with an endosymbiotic model for the evolutionary origins of sex. It is hypothesized that the contemporary life cycle of germline cells has descended from the life cycle of the endosymbiotic ancestor of the mitochondrion. Through an actin‐based motility that drove it from one cell to another, the rickettsial ancestor of mitochondria may have functioned as a primitive transducing particle, the evolutionary progenitor of sperm. BioEssays 26:558–566, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

A fascinating property of germ cells is their ability to maintain totipotency throughout development. At fertilization, this totipotency is unleashed and the egg generates all the cell types needed to make a brand new organism. Occasionally, germ cells differentiate precociously in the embryo or in the gonads and form teratomas, tumors containing many differentiated somatic cell types. Until recently, the genetic basis for teratoma formation was not known. The unexpected discovery of a teratoma in a C. elegans double mutant points (...) to translational control as a key mechanism to maintain totipotency in developing germ cells. BioEssays 28: 865–867, 2006. © 2006 Wiley periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Thanks to genetic and biochemical advances on the molecular mechanism of circadian rhythms in Drosophila, theoretical models closely related to experimental observations can be considered for the regulatory mechanism of the circadian clock in this organism. Modeling is based on the autoregulatory negative feedback exerted by a complex between PER and TIM proteins on the expression of per and tim genes. The model predicts the occurrence of sustained circadian oscillations in continuous darkness. When incorporating light‐induced TIM degradation, the model accounts (...) for damping of oscillations in constant light, entrainment of the rhythm by light‐dark cycles of varying period or photoperiod, and phase shifting by light pulses. The model further provides a molecular dynamical explanation for the permanent or transient suppression of circadian rhythmicity triggered in a variety of organisms by a critical pulse of light. Finally, the model shows that to produce a robust rhythm the various clock genes must be expressed at the appropriate levels since sustained oscillations only occur in a precise range of parameter values. BioEssays 22:84–93, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation is an immediate DNA‐damage‐dependent post‐translational modification of histones and other nuclear proteins that contributes to the survival of injured proliferating cells. Poly(ADP‐ribose) polymerases (PARPs) now constitute a large family of 18 proteins, encoded by different genes and displaying a conserved catalytic domain in which PARP‐1 (113 kDa), the founding member, and PARP‐2 (62 kDa) are so far the sole enzymes whose catalytic activity has been shown to be immediately stimulated by DNA strand breaks. A large repertoire of sequences encoding (...) novel PARPs now extends considerably the field of poly(ADP‐ribosyl)ation reactions to various aspects of the cell biology including cell proliferation and cell death. Some of these new members interact with each other, share common partners and common subcellular localizations suggesting possible fine tuning in the regulation of this post‐translational modification of proteins. This review summarizes our present knowledge of this emerging superfamily, which might ultimately improve pharmacological strategies to enhance both antitumor efficacy and the treatment of a number of inflammatory and neurodegenerative disorders. A provisional nomenclature is proposed. BioEssays 26:882–893, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

It has been proposed that somatic mutations make major contributions to aging. The first paper, based on a gene knock‐in mouse, supports a contributory role for mutation in mtDNA1 in aging, but does not support a damaged‐mtDNA‐producing‐more‐damaged‐mtDNA hypothesis.1 The second paper2 indicates some GC‐rich sequences in the nuclear DNA are more sensitive to oxidative damage than mtDNA. As a result, key genes involved in brain function and mitochondrial function are progressively inactivated with age. Failure in these nucleus‐encoded mitochondrial genes may (...) be a primary reason for mitochondrial failure in old age. BioEssays 26:1160–1163, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The hypothalamus is a specialized area in the brain that integrates the control of energy homeostasis. More than 70 years ago, it was proposed that the central nervous system sensed circulating levels of metabolites such as glucose, lipids and amino acids and modified feeding according to the levels of those molecules. This led to the formulation of the Glucostatic, Lipostatic and Aminostatic Hypotheses. It has taken almost that much time to demonstrate that circulating long‐chain fatty acids act as signals of (...) nutrient surplus in the hypothalamus. Moreover, pharmacological and/or genetic inhibition of fatty acid synthase, AMP‐activated protein kinase and carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 results in profound decrease in feeding and body weight in rodents. The molecular mechanism behind these actions depends on changes in the cellular pool of malonyl‐CoA and fatty acyl‐CoAs. Current evidence also suggests that this pathway may play a major role in the physiological regulation of feeding, by integrating hormonal and nutrient‐derived signals in the hypothalamus. Here, we summarize what is known about hypothalamic fatty acid metabolism and feeding control and provide future directions for research. Understanding these molecular mechanisms could provide new targets for the treatment of obesity and related disorders. BioEssays 29: 248–261, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Extensive progress has been made recently in understanding the mechanism by which cells move and extend protrusions using site‐directed polymerization of actin in response to signalling. Insights into the molecular mechanism of production of force and movement by actin polymerization have been provided by a crosstalk between several disciplines, including biochemistry, biomimetic approaches and computational studies. This review focuses on the biochemical properties of the proteins involved in actin‐based motility and shows how these properties are used to generate models of (...) force production, how the predictions of different theoretical models are tested using a biochemically controlled reconstituted motility assay and how the changes in motility resulting from changes to the concentrations of components of the assay can help understand diverse aspects of the motile behavior of living cells. BioEssays 25:336–345, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Neurofilaments are one of the major components of the neuronal cytoskeleton and are responsible for maintaining the calibre of axons. They are modified by post‐translational changes that are regulated in complex fashions including by the interaction with neighbouring glial cells. Neurofilament accumulations are seen in several neurological diseases and neurofilament mutations have now been associated with Charcot‐Marie‐Tooth disease, Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In this review, we discuss the structure, normal function and molecular pathology of neurofilaments. BioEssays 25:346–355, 2003. (...) © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Based on genetic and biochemical advances on the molecular mechanism of circadian rhythms, a computational model for the mammalian circadian clock is used to examine the dynamical bases of circadian‐clock‐related physiological disorders in humans. Entrainment by the light–dark cycle with a phase advance or a phase delay is associated with the Familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) or the Delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS), respectively. Lack of entrainment corresponding to the occurrence of quasiperiodic oscillations with or without phase jump can (...) be associated with the non‐24 h sleep–wake syndrome. In the close vicinity of the entrainment domain, the model uncovers the possibility of infradian oscillations of very long period. Perturbation in the form of chronic jet lag, as used in mice, prevents entrainment of the circadian clock and results in chaotic or quasiperiodic oscillations. It is important to clarify the conditions for entrainment and for its failure because dysfunctions of the circadian clock may lead to physiological disorders, which pertain not only to the sleep–wake cycle but also to mood and cancer. BioEssays 30:590–600, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Three decades ago Gilbert posited that novel proteins arise by re‐shuffling genomic sequences encoding polypeptide domains. Today, with numerous genomes and countless genes sequenced, it is well established that recombination of sequences encoding polypeptide domains plays a major role in protein evolution. There is, however, less evidence to suggest how the novel polypeptide domains, themselves, arise. Recent comparisons of genomes from closely related species have revealed numerous species‐specific exons, supporting models of domain origin based on “exonization” of intron sequences. Also, (...) a mechanism for the origin of novel polypeptide domains has been proposed based on analyses of insertion‐based polymorphisms between orthologous genes across broad phylogenetic spectra and between allelic variants of genes within species. This review discusses these processes and how each might participate in the evolutionary emergence of novel polypeptide domains. BioEssays 29: 262–270, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Coronins constitute an evolutionarily conserved family of WD‐repeat actin‐binding proteins, which can be clearly classified into two distinct groups based on their structural features. All coronins possess a conserved basic N‐terminal motif and three to ten WD repeats clustered in one or two core domains. Dictyostelium and mammalian coronins are important regulators of the actin cytoskeleton, while the fly Dpod1 and the yeast coronin proteins crosslink both actin and microtubules. Apart from that, several coronins have been shown to be involved (...) in vesicular transport. C. elegans POD‐1 and Drosophila coro regulate the actin cytoskeleton, but also govern vesicular trafficking as indicated by mutant phenotypes. In both organisms, defects in cytoskeleton and trafficking lead to severe developmental defects ranging from abnormal cell division to aberrant formation of morphogen gradients. Finally, mammalian coronin 7 appears not to execute any cytoskeleton‐related functions, but rather participates in regulating Golgi trafficking. Here, we review recent data providing more insight into molecular mechanisms underlying the regulation of F‐actin structures, cytoskeletal rearrangements and intracellular membrane transport by coronin proteins and the way that they might link cytoskeleton with trafficking in development and disease. BioEssays 27:625–632, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The feasibility of reversing human aging within a matter of decades has traditionally been dismissed by all professional biogerontologists, on the grounds that not only is aging still poorly understood, but also many of those aspects that we do understand are not reversible by any current or foreseeable therapeutic regimen. This broad consensus has recently been challenged by the publication, by five respected experimentalists in diverse subfields of biogerontology together with three of the present authors, of an article (Ann NY (...) Acad Sci 959, 452–462) whose conclusion was that all the key components of mammalian aging are indeed amenable to substantial reversal (not merely retardation) in mice, with technology that has a reasonable prospect of being developed within about a decade. Translation of that panel of interventions to humans who are already alive, within a few decades thereafter, was deemed potentially feasible (though it was not claimed to be likely). If the prospect of controlling human aging within the foreseeable future cannot be categorically rejected, then it becomes a matter of personal significance to most people presently alive. Consequently, we suggest that serious public debate on this subject is now warranted, and we survey here several of the biological, social and political issues relating to it. BioEssays 24:667–676, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Perlecan is a ubiquitous proteoglycan of basement membrane and vascularized tissues but is also present in articular cartilage, meniscus and intervertebral disc, which are devoid of basement membrane and predominantly avascular. It is a prominent pericellular proteoglycan in the transitory matrix of the cartilaginous rudiments that develop into components of diarthrodial joints and the axial skeleton, and it forms intricate perichondrial vessel networks that define the presumptive articulating surfaces of developing joints and line the cartilage canals in cartilaginous rudiments. Such (...) vessels have roles in the nutrition of the expanding cell numbers in the developing joint. Perlecan sequesters a number of growth factors pericellularly (FGFs, PDGF, VEGF and CTGF) and through these promotes cell signalling, cell proliferation and differentiation. Perlecan also interacts with a diverse range of extracellular matrix proteins, stabilising and organising the ECM, and promoting collagen fibrillogenesis. Perlecan is a prominent pericellular component of mesenchymal cells from their earliest developmental stages through to maturation, forming cell–cell and cell–ECM interconnections that are suggestive of a role in mechanosensory processes important to tissue homeostasis. BioEssays 30:457–469, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article considers the role of the adult epithelial stem cell, with particular reference to the intestinal epithelial stem cell. Although the potential of adult stem cells has been revealed in a number of recent publications, the organization and control of the stem cell hierarchy in epithelial tissues is still not fully understood. The intestinal epithelium is an excellent model in which to study such hierarchies, having a distinctive polarity and high rate of cell proliferation and migration. Studies on the (...) small intestinal crypt provide insight into the characteristics of the stem cells in normal and regenerating circumstances and demonstrate why a thorough understanding of these cells is an essential pre‐requisite for stem cell based therapeutic approaches. BioEssays 24:91–98, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Many bacteria conditionally express proteinaceous organelles referred to here as microcompartments (Fig. 1). These microcompartments are thought to be involved in a least seven different metabolic processes and the number is growing. Microcompartments are very large and structurally sophisticated. They are usually about 100–150 nm in cross section and consist of 10,000–20,000 polypeptides of 10–20 types. Their unifying feature is a solid shell constructed from proteins having bacterial microcompartment (BMC) domains. In the examples that have been studied, the microcompartment shell (...) encases sequentially acting metabolic enzymes that catalyze a reaction sequence having a toxic or volatile intermediate product. It is thought that the shell of the microcompartment confines such intermediates, thereby enhancing metabolic efficiency and/or protecting cytoplasmic components. Mechanistically, however, this creates a paradox. How do microcompartments allow enzyme substrates, products and cofactors to pass while confining metabolic intermediates in the absence of a selectively permeable membrane? We suggest that the answer to this paradox may have broad implications with respect to our understanding of the fundamental properties of biological protein sheets including microcompartment shells, S‐layers and viral capsids. BioEssays 30:1084–1095, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of studies of themes from the work of the great American philosopher and pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1913). These themes center on the question of how we are to investigate the world rationally. Hookway shows how Peirce's ideas about this continue to play an important role in contemporary philosophy.

In The Struggle for Democracy, Christopher Meckstroth looks at history and context in the development of democratic theory to provide a principled way of sorting out deep conflicts over who has the right to speak for the democratic people. He tests this theory by applying it to contemporary debates over same-sex marriage, military intervention, and gun control.

In recent years, there has been a philosophical cottage industry producing arguments that our concept of causation is not univocal: that there are in fact two concepts of causation, corresponding to distinct species of causal relation. Papers written in this tradition have borne titles like “Two Concepts of Cause” and “Two Concepts of Causation”. With due apologies to Charles Dickens, I hereby make my own contribution to this genre.

ABSTRACTAn essential and yet often neglected motivation of Bernard Suits’ elevation of gameplay to the ideal of human existence is his account of capacities along perfectionist lines and the function of games in eliciting them. In his work Suits treats the expression of these capacities as implicitly good and the purest expression of the human telos. Although it is a possible interpretation to take Suits’ utopian vision to mean that gameplay in his future utopia must consist of the logically inevitable (...) replaying of activities we conduct in the present for instrumental reasons, because gameplay for Suits is identical with the expression of sets of capacities specifically elicited by game rules, it is much more likely that he intends utopian gameplay to be an endless series of carefully crafted opportunities for the elicitation of special capacities, and thus embody his ideal of existence. This article therefore provides a new lens for understanding both... (shrink)

This paper describes a system for extracting typed dependency parses of English sentences from phrase structure parses. In order to capture inherent relations occurring in corpus texts that can be critical in real-world applications, many NP relations are included in the set of grammatical relations used. We provide a comparison of our system with Minipar and the Link parser. The typed dependency extraction facility described here is integrated in the Stanford Parser, available for download.

Hope is important in Thomas Aquinas’s account of the emotions: it is one of the four primary emotions and the first of the irascible emotions. Yet his account of hope as a movement of the sensory appetite toward a future possible good that is arduous to attain appears to be overly restrictive, for people often hope for things that are not cognized as arduous. This paper examines Aquinas’s reasons for limiting hope to arduous goods.

On the Edge of Anarchy completes A. John Simmons's exploration and development of Lockean moral and political philosophy, a project begun in The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, 1992). In this new book, Simmons discusses the Lockean view of the nature of, grounds for, and limits on political relations between persons. Locke's ideas on this topic are probably the most influential in the history of political thought, but their philosophical virtues and implications have remained largely unappreciated. Here Simmons remedies this (...) situation by treating Locke as a philosopher, rather than as a theologian or an activist writing rhetorical political tracts. Locke's works emerge not as episodes in the history of ideas but as bodies of arguments addressing the same questions as contemporary philosophy. This book pursues the issues Locke raises far beyond the boundaries of his own texts and theories. By criticizing, streamlining, and developing Locke's views, Simmons elaborates a powerful Lockean political philosophy with strongly anarchistic implications. On the Edge of Anarchy will interest not only Locke specialists and political philosophers, but also students and professionals in philosophy, government, and law - and all others who are interested in the foundational political principles embraced and celebrated by Anglo-American societies. (shrink)

Despite the emphasis on moral intuition in the research literature, little attention has been given to the ways in which moral intuition can be educated within management settings. In this paper, I discuss an experiential learning approach that links Robin Hogarth’s work on the learning of intuition with Mary Gentile’s educational program on values-based leadership, Giving Voice To Values. Building on Hogarth’s proposal that intuitions are primarily acquired and thus shaped by our experiences, GVV offers a pedagogical framework for reflective, (...) experiential learning. Specific attention is given to the themes of learning environments, how these structures shape intuitions, and how students can identify these structures using the GVV emphasis on examination of past experiences. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s account of norms provides that a norm requiring an agent to φ is a reason to φ protected by an exclusionary reason not to act on some other reasons. I present a dilemma concerning the determination of the contents of this set of excluded reasons. The question is whether or not the set includes reasons that count in favour of φing. If the answer is yes, the account is committed to a picture of norms that seems inconsistent with (...) the phenomenology, in that it rules out acting on the very reasons on which the norm is based. If the answer is no, the account licenses a problematic form of double counting of reasons. I conclude that Raz’s protected reasons account of norms must be rejected, and tentatively suggest a solution to the problem posed by the dilemma. (shrink)

Explanations of three different aspects of the rainbow are considered. The highly mathematical character of these explanations poses some interpretative questions concerning what the success of these explanations tells us about rainbows. I develop a proposal according to which mathematical explanations can highlight what is relevant about a given phenomenon while also indicating what is irrelevant to that phenomenon. This proposal is related to the extensive work by Batterman on asymptotic explanation with special reference to Batterman’s own discussion of the (...) rainbow. (shrink)

Karen Ng's Hegel's Concept of Life tackles one of the hardest problems – the placement and status of the category of life within treatises on epistemology and logic—within what are already two of the most difficult texts in the history of philosophy—Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic. It does so with good attention to contemporary debates surrounding Hegel's logic and metaphysics, and manages to integrate concerns that have been more typically expressed in continental scholarship—such as the influence of (...) Schelling and Hölderlin—with concerns that have come out of the more recent analytic conversation – such as the status of universals and the attributability of inferentialism to Hegel's thought. Ng argues for a distinctive kind of post‐Kantian reading of Hegel, one which emphasizes Hegel's interests in Kant's thoughts about judgment and teleology in the third Critique rather than the categories and dialectic of the first Critique. In the first section, I want to trace a tension in Ng's thought between inflationary and deflationary understandings of ‘life’ and its associated terms. Here I will try to make out the relevant concept of life that makes the living object the promising form of a richer object of judgment for a self‐conscious subject. In the following section, I try to tease out the relation of life to two very closely related notions, namely the notion of an organism and the notion of a purpose. (shrink)

David Milner and Melvyn Goodale, and the many psychologists and philosophers who have been influenced by their work, claim that ‘the visual system that gives us our visual experience of the world is not the same system that guides our movements in the world’. The arguments that have been offered for this surprising claim place considerable weight on two sources of evidence — visual form agnosia and the reaching behaviour of normal subjects when picking up objects that induce visual illusions. (...) The present article shows that, if we are careful to consider the possibility that a demonstrative gesture can contribute content to a conscious experience, then neither source of evidence is compelling. (shrink)

Advertising and other forms of promotional activity have proliferated to such an extent that they may constitute a form of social pollution (Kitchen, 1994). The quantity and tone of communications to which consumers are exposed may have a subtle but pervasive effect on the social ecology of the developed world. Not only are Marketing Communications delivered in unprecedented quantities (Kitchen, 1994); but their tone is increasingly difficult to categorise in the Postmodern Marketing era (Brown, 1994). Notably, there has been very (...) little research conducted on this seeming "Leviathan" (Kitchen, 1994, after Hobbes, 1651) effect. Ethical concerns of professional marketing bodies such as the MRS and CIM are focussed on the conduct of professionals with regard to law and notions of moral decency in human exchange relationships (see MRS code of conduct, ASA and IBA guidelines). There is less emphasis on the ethical implications for society of the totality of Marketing Communication activities. This paper examines the distinctively Postmodern concept of the Communications Leviathan and discusses contemporary ethical issues, drawing perspectives where possible from Postmodern critical theory, Enlightenment philosophy, cognitive psychology and classical ethical works of Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

This paper defends Kant’s ‘Antinomy of Practical Reason’ (APR) against the objection that it fails to meet the standards of a strict Kantian antinomy. Critics claim that the APR cannot be a true antinomy because its thesis and antithesis do not contradict each other logically, unlike the ‘Antinomies of Theoretical Reason’ (ATRs). In response to this objection, it is argued that the theses and antitheses of the ATRs do not contradict each other logically either; they only contradict each other relatively. (...) It is then shown that the thesis and antithesis of the APR, properly understood, also contradict each other relatively, thus satisfying the same standard as the ATRs. This paper offers broader insights into the structure of antinomical conflict within Kant’s Critical philosophy. (shrink)

This essay aims to identify several related themes that regularly appear in posthumanist scholarship but which have not been theorized sufficiently, including the rhetoric of temporal and historical rupture, the logic of dialectical reversal, the effacement of human/animal difference, and above all the critical ascendancy of the term “posthumanism” itself. If one of the aims of posthumanism is to render the face of the human unknowable to itself, then to what extent does the human that re-names itself “posthuman” do so (...) in order to lay claim once again to a dubious self-knowledge? The rhetoric of posthumanism, moreover, implies a progressive narrative that ironically mirrors the Enlightenment principles of perfectibility that it would oppose. Drawing from Derrida’s notion of the “democracy to come,” I argue that the advent of the posthuman must always remain deferred. Just as the promise of democracy remains unfulfilled, the posthuman must infinitely postdate its arrival in any present. (shrink)

Lynch et al. propose an extremely useful framework to assess microbiome research. By utilising advances in the causation literature, they argue that many of the claims in microbiome research are ‘weak or misleading’ as these claims lack stability, specificity, or proportionality. In the final paragraph before the conclusion they entertain and rapidly dismiss the ‘ecological version’ of microbiomes, in which microbiome properties are emergent from their constituent populations and can fulfil Koch’s postulates. I assess the possibility of microbiomes having emergent (...) causal efficacy on host health and suggest they can. (shrink)