A través de la lectura de David McNally y utilizando de apoyo diferentes expresiones artísticas, hacemos un mapeo de los imaginarios resultantes de entender al capital en su monstruosidad, tal y como expuso Marx en sus textos. A partir de esas premisas recorremos el concepto de «marxismo gótico» y abordamos la problemática de la violencia representada visualmente, desde las lecciones de anatomía hasta la noción de «lo gore».

The medical profession is observing a rising number of calls to action considering the threat that climate change poses to global human health. Theory-led bioethical analyses of the scope and weight of physicians’ normative duty towards climate protection and its conflict with individual patient care are currently scarce. This article offers an analysis of the normative issues at stake by using Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian moral account of practical identities. We begin by showing the case of physicians’ duty to climate protection, before (...) we succinctly introduce Korsgaard’s account. We subsequently show how the duty to climate protection can follow from physicians’ identity of being a healthcare professional. We structure conflicts between individual patient care and climate protection, and show how a transformation in physicians’ professional ethos is possible and what mechanisms could be used for doing so. An important limit of our analysis is that we mainly address the level of individual physicians and their practical identities, leaving out important measures to respond to climate change at the mesolevels and macrolevels of healthcare institutions and systems, respectively. (shrink)

Individual choices are commonly taken to manifest personal preferences. The present study investigated whether social and statistical cues influence young children's inferences about the generalizability of preferences. Preschoolers were exposed to either 1 or 2 demonstrators’ selections of objects. The selected objects constituted 18%, 50%, or 100% of all available objects. We found that children took a single demonstrator's choices as indicative only of his or her personal preference. However, when 2 demonstrators made the same selection, then children inferred that (...) it generalized to other agents of the same kind as the original demonstrator's, but not to agents of a different kind. Lastly, only when both demonstrators blatantly violated random selection (i.e., in the 18% condition) did children generalize the preference even to an agent of a different kind. Thus, from a young age, social and statistical cues inform children's naïve sociology. (shrink)

In addressing the creation and regulation of biobanks in different countries, a short descriptive introduction to the social and cultural backgrounds of each country is mandatory. The State of Israel is relatively young, and can be characterized as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society, somewhat similar to the American melting pot. The current population is 8.3 million, a sharp rise resulting from a 1.2 million influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Seventyfive percent are Jewish, 20% Arabs, (...) and several other minorities. The birth rate is 3.8 per family, the highest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (shrink)

_Blood_, according to Gil Anidjar, maps the singular history of Christianity. As a category for historical analysis, blood can be seen through its literal and metaphorical uses as determining, sometimes even defining Western culture, politics, and social practices and their wide-ranging incarnations in nationalism, capitalism, and law. Engaging with a variety of sources, Anidjar explores the presence and the absence, the making and unmaking of blood in philosophy and medicine, law and literature, and economic and political thought from ancient Greece (...) to medieval Spain, from the Bible to Shakespeare and Melville. The prevalence of blood in the social, juridical, and political organization of the modern West signals that we do not live in a secular age into which religion could return. Flowing across multiple boundaries, infusing them with violent precepts that we must address, blood undoes the presumed oppositions between religion and politics, economy and theology, and kinship and race. It demonstrates that what we think of as modern is in fact imbued with Christianity. Christianity, Blood fiercely argues, must be reconsidered beyond the boundaries of religion alone. (shrink)

Physicians frequently encounter situations in which their professional practice is intermingled with moral affordances stemming from other domains of the physician’s lifeworld, such as family and friends, or from general morality pertaining to all humans. This article offers a typology of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ as well as a new theoretical framework for dealing with them. We start out by arguing that established theories of professional ethics do not offer sufficient guidance in situations where professional ethics overlaps (...) with moral duties of other origins. Therefore, we introduce the moral theory developed by Christine M. Korsgaard, that centres around the concept of practical identity. We show how Korsgaard’s account offers a framework for interpreting different types of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ to provide either orientation for solving the conflict or an explanation for the emotional and moral burden involved in moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Tarski characterized logical notions as invariant under permutations of the domain. The outcome, according to Tarski, is that our logic, which is commonly said to be a logic of extension rather than intension, is not even a logic of extension—it is a logic of cardinality. In this paper, I make this idea precise. We look at a scale inspired by Ruth Barcan Marcus of various levels of meaning: extensions, intensions and hyperintensions. On this scale, the lower the level of meaning, (...) the more coarse-grained and less “intensional” it is. I propose to extend this scale to accommodate a level of meaning appropriate for logic. Thus, below the level of extension, we will have a more coarse-grained level of form. I employ a semantic conception of form, adopted from Sher, where forms are features of things “in the world”. Each expression in the language embodies a form, and by the definition we give, forms will be invariant under permutations and thus Tarskian logical notions. I then define the logical terms of a language as those terms whose extension can be determined by their form. Logicality will be shown to be a lower level analogue of rigidity. Using Barcan Marcus’s principles of explicit and implicit extensionality, we are able to characterize purely logical languages as “sub-extensional”, namely, as concerned only with form, and we thus obtain a wider perspective on both logicality and extensionality. (shrink)

To advance current knowledge on ethical decision-making in organizations, we integrate two perspectives that have thus far developed independently: the organizational identification perspective and the ethical climate perspective. We illustrate the interaction between these perspectives in two studies, in which we presented participants with moral business dilemmas. Specifically, we found that organizational identification increased moral decision-making only when the organization’s climate was perceived to be ethical. In addition, we disentangle this effect in Study 2 from participants’ moral identity. We argue (...) that the interactive influence of organizational identification and ethical climate, rather than the independent influence of either of these perspectives, is crucial for understanding moral decision-making in organizations. (shrink)

An emotion-based lengthening effect on the perception of durations of emotional pictures has been assumed to result from an arousal-based mechanism, involving the activation of an internal clock system. The aim of this study was to systematically examine the arousal effect on time perception when different discrete emotions were considered. The participants were asked to verbally estimate the duration of emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The pictures varied either in arousal level, i.e., high/low-arousal, for the same (...) discrete emotion (disgust or sadness) or in the depicted emotion, e.g., disgust/fear for pictures matched for arousal (high-arousal). The results systematically revealed a lengthening effect on the perception of the duration of the emotional compared to the neutral pictures and indicated that the magnitude of this effect increased with arousal level. Nevertheless, variations in time perception were observed for one and the same arousal level, with the duration of disgust-inducing pictures (e.g., body mutilation) being judged longer than that of fear-inducing pictures (e.g., snake). These results suggest that arousal is a fundamental mechanism mediating the effect of emotion on time perception. However, the effect cannot be reduced to arousal, since the impact of the content of pictures also plays a critical role. (shrink)

The essay discusses a recurrent criticism of the isomorphism-invariance criterion for logical terms, according to which the criterion pertains only to the extension of logical terms, and neglects the meaning, or the way the extension is fixed. A term, so claim the critics, can be invariant under isomorphisms and yet involve a contingent or a posteriori component in its meaning, thus compromising the necessity or apriority of logical truth and logical consequence. This essay shows that the arguments underlying the criticism (...) are flawed since they rely on an invalid inference from the modal or epistemic status of statements in the metalanguage to that of statements in the object-language. The essay focuses on McCarthy’s version of the argument, but refers to Hanson and McGee’s versions as well. (shrink)

The starting point of this essay is that there is a contradiction at the heart of our current and hyperbolic understandings of life. To be more precise, on the one hand there is the historical novelty of biology as a modern science and set of technologies. On the other hand, life is simultaneously understood according to biological protocols that seem void of history.

Available corpora for Argument Mining differ along several axes, and one of the key differences is the presence (or absence) of discourse markers to signal argumentative content. Exploring effective ways to use discourse markers has received wide attention in various discourse parsing tasks, from which it is well-known that discourse markers are strong indicators of discourse relations. To improve the robustness of Argument Mining systems across different genres, we propose to automatically augment a given text with discourse markers such that (...) all relations are explicitly signaled. Our analysis unveils that popular language models taken out-of-the-box fail on this task; however, when fine-tuned on a new heterogeneous dataset that we construct (including synthetic and real examples), they perform considerably better. We demonstrate the impact of our approach on an Argument Mining downstream task, evaluated on different corpora, showing that language models can be trained to automatically fill in discourse markers across different corpora, improving the performance of a downstream model in some, but not all, cases. Our proposed approach can further be employed as an assistant tool for better discourse understanding. (shrink)

A lo largo de los siglos XVII y XVIII se desarrollaron sucesivas reformulaciones del contrato social a partir de la propuesta hobbesiana, categorizadas hoy en día bajo el rótulo de contractualismo clásico. Dentro de tales propuestas se sostiene que fue con Rousseau con quien el contrato social alcanzó su momento de plena madurez, racionalizándose y profundizándose sus consecuencias democráticas. Así pues, el contrato social es —dentro de la filosofía política— el elemento más significativo para sustentar la teoría del Estado moderno. (...) Sin embargo, una importante consecuencia de dicha teorización es el hecho de que el naciente Estado moderno detente para sí el monopolio de la violencia. Así pues, es posible que un obscuro trasfondo de violencia se oculte tras la formulación contractualista. El artículo que sigue pretende desarrollar un análisis de la teoría del contrato social, particularmente en la formulación de Rousseau, a partir de la teoría mimética de René Girard, con el objetivo de encontrar en su obra más representativa El contrato social, rastros de la violencia mimética y el mecanismo de chivo expiatorio planteados en la teoría girardiana. (shrink)

A qualitative difference between Rules and Similarity in categorization can be described in terms of “commitment”: Rules entail it, Similarity does not. Commitment derives from people's knowledge of a domain, and it is what justifies people's inferences, selective attention, and dismissal of irrelevant information. Studies show that when children have knowledge, they manifest these aspects of commitment, thus overcoming Similarity.

Traditionism and the Critique of Israeli Secularism.

Start-up organisations are small companies that experience a high level of growth and considerable risk to their very survival until they evolve into stable, established companies. This situation presents a particular set of challenges in terms of corporate governance, yet research on the governance of start-ups is limited. This research paper examines and comments on the governance of start-up organisations in New Zealand. The study replicates and extends previous New Zealand-based research of boards of established companies. From the data gathered (...) from the two surveys, conclusions can be drawn as to the role and focus of boards in start-ups versus established companies. The results are consistent with a model of active ownership which identifies key differences from established companies that could improve the governance of start-ups. The results also highlight the dependence of what might constitute effective corporate governance for a start-up on the strategic context of the company and its life cycle stage. (shrink)

In this article I address the issue of the ontological conditions of possibility for a naturalistic notion of emergence, trying to determine its fundamental differences from the atomist, vitalist, preformationist and potentialist alternatives. I will argue that a naturalistic notion of ontological emergence can only succeed if we explicitly refuse the atomistic fundamental ontological postulate that asserts that every entity is endowed with a set of absolutely intrinsic properties, being qualitatively immutable through its extrinsic relations. Furthermore, it will be shown (...) that, ironically enough, this metaphysical assumption is implicitly shared by all the above mentioned alternatives to Emergentism. The current article concludes that the notion of organization by itself is not enough, and that ontological emergence can only be justified by assuming a relational ontological perspective that, in opposition both to atomism and holism, defends that the existence-conditions, the identity and the causal behavior of any emergent systemic property can only be conceived, and explained, as constructed by and through specific networks of qualitatively transformative relational processes that occur between the system’s components and between the system and its environment. Additionally, I try to explain how one can make sense of the idea that an emergent phenomenon is both dependent on, and autonomous from, its emergence base. (shrink)

Often institutions or individuals are faced with decisions where not all claims can be satisfied. Sometimes, these claims will be of differing strength. In such cases, it must be decided whether or not weaker claims can be aggregated in order to collectively defeat stronger claims. Many are attracted to a view, which this chapter calls Limited Aggregation, where this is sometimes acceptable and sometimes not. A new version of this view, Local Relevance, has recently emerged. This chapter seeks to explore (...) and evaluate this view. In order to do so, the chapter offers a more precise interpretation of this basic approach, calling it ‘Sequential Claims-Matching’. The chapter shows how Sequential Claims-Matching avoids problems that dog other Limited Aggregation views but suffers from difficulties and ambiguities of its own. In particular, the chapter shows that it is hard to accommodate some core Limited Aggregation intuitions around tie-break cases within the Local Relevance view. (shrink)

This qualitative research examines the influence of animosity on physicians during clinical encounters and its ethical implications. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Israeli-Jewish physicians: four treated Syrians and six treated Palestinian terrorists/Hezbollah militants or Palestinian civilians. An interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to uncover main themes in these interviews. Whereas the majority of physicians stated they are obligated to treat any patient, physicians who treated Syrians exhibited stronger emotional expression and implicit empathy, while less referring to the presence of (...) the Israeli-Arab conflict. In contrast, physicians who treated enemy combatants or Palestinian civilians showed the exact opposite. Linking these results to the “Implicit Bias” theory, the role of empathy and the beneficence principle in medical ethics, we argue that: the unconscious decreased emotional involvement among the latter group of physicians is a deficiency that needs to be recognized; and this deficiency undermines the principle of beneficence, thereby possibly influencing the fulfillment of the commitment to treat patients. Acknowledging and addressing the potential emotional and ethical deficiencies entailed in encounters with the so-called enemy-patients are of importance to the global medical community, since such encounters are increasingly an integral part of the current political realities faced by both the developed and developing worlds. (shrink)

Physicians frequently encounter situations in which their professional practice is intermingled with moral affordances stemming from other domains of the physician’s lifeworld, such as family and friends, or from general morality pertaining to all humans. This article offers a typology of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ as well as a new theoretical framework for dealing with them. We start out by arguing that established theories of professional ethics do not offer sufficient guidance in situations where professional ethics overlaps (...) with moral duties of other origins. Therefore, we introduce the moral theory developed by Christine M. Korsgaard, that centres around the concept of practical identity. We show how Korsgaard’s account offers a framework for interpreting different types of moral conflicts ‘at the margins of professionalism’ to provide either orientation for solving the conflict or an explanation for the emotional and moral burden involved in moral dilemmas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE VINE AND BRANCHES DISCOURSE: THE GOSPEL'S PSYCHOLOGICAL APOCALYPSE Gil Bailie Florilegio Institute Man is after something that cannot be possessed.... Man cannot "have" being, though he absolutely needs it for living. (Roel Kaptein) The anthropological reading of biblical literature which Girard's mimetic theory makes possible sheds new light on many otherwise inscrutable texts. Prominent among these, due to its centrality as well as its elusiveness, is the prologue (...) to the Gospel ofJohn. For the author of this gospel, the "Word" who was "in the beginning," was "the light" without which humanity remained in darkness—whether it be the darkness ofpre-human existence or the moral and mythic darkness of the sacred violence that accompanied hominization. Girard's work helps us realize that humanity generated its own crude forms of illumination precisely by periodically expelling this light. (A vivid symbolic expression ofthis is the reference to the "lanterns, torches, and weapons" with which the Roman cohort arrested Jesus later in John's Gospel.) The Johannine Prologue conveys its message in an elusively universal yet specifiable idiom: The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what Gil Bailie121 was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who did accept him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or ofthe will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. (1 : 9-13) The ontological theme of these verses deserves attention. If, as Raymond Brown has observed, these verses constitute a "description of the history of salvation in hymnic form," they also contain an anthropological summary of the two, and only two, ontologizing circumstances: the identification, respectively, with the victimizing crowd and with the victim. However occluded the illuminating Logos might have been prior to revelation ofthe Cross, the Johannine prologue tells us that it was present from the beginning. How? The most pertinent scriptural clue seems to be the reference to Christ in the Book of Revelation as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," the innocent One whose victimization finally broke open the seals on the scroll of human iniquity and, in the process, unfettered that iniquity from its ancient restraints. One of the great values of Girard's work is that it makes anthropologically explicit what is poetically implicit in these scriptural innuendoes, namely, the link between the Crucified One and all victims slain "from the foundation of the world." Inasmuch as "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" was what made the old humanity possible and, in Christ, what brought the new humanity into being, the third verse of the prologue of John's Gospel becomes anthropologically intelligible: All things came into being through him, not one thing had its being except through him. (1:3) Here the explicit claim that all things came to be through him needs to be read in light of the verses that follow in the prologue, but which I have quoted above. Doing so, we are led to consider the radical difference between the crude and fallacious ontology the ancient sacrificial system was able to underwrite by causing its beneficiaries to identify with the victimizing crowd and the ontological renewal born of an identification with the innocent victim—referred to in the New Testament as a dying with Christ and ritualized in baptism. With equal subtlety, this verse alludes as well to the ineradicable homology between these two forms of 122Vine andBranches ontological sustenance. "All culture is sacrificial," writes Eric Gans, adding: Culture covers a lot of ground, from bear-baiting to attending a performance of Saint Matthew's Passion, but whether we savagely revel in the victim's sufferings or identify with them in the depths of our soul, culture is the founded on them. And so is the being of those involved in these two fundamental forms of identification. Corresponding to the moral difference between the ritual experiences to which Gans refers is an ontological difference... (shrink)

This article brings a historical perspective to explain the recent dissemination of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the new “gold standard” method to assess international development projects. Although the buzz around RCT evaluations dates from the 2000s, we show that what we are witnessing now is a second wave of RCTs, while a first wave began in the 1960s and ended by the early 1980s. Drawing on content analysis of 123 RCTs, participant observation, and secondary sources, we compare the two (...) waves in terms of the participants in the network of expertise required to carry out field experiments and the characteristics of the projects evaluated. The comparison demonstrates that researchers in the second wave were better positioned to navigate the political difficulties caused by randomization. We explain the differences in the expertise network and in the type of projects as the result of concurrent transformations in the fields of development aid and the economics profession. We draw on Andrew Abbott’s concept of “hinges,” as well as on Bourdieu’s concept of “homology” between fields, to argue that the similar positions and parallel struggles conducted by two groups of actors in the two fields served as the basis for a cross-field alliance, in which RCTs could function as a “hinge” linking together the two fields. (shrink)

In this paper I present an interpretation of Deleuze's concept of the virtual. I argue that this concept is best understood in relation to the problematic of individuation or differentiation, which Deleuze inherits from Duns Scotus. After analysing Scotus' critique of Aristotelian or hylomorphic approaches to the problem of individuation, I turn to Deleuze's account of differentiation and his interpretation of the calculus in chapter 4 of Difference and Repetition. The paper seeks thereby to explicate Deleuze's dialectics or theory of (...) Ideas, his approach to the principle of sufficient reason, and the concept of the virtual itself. (shrink)

Many philosophers reject the view that well-being over a lifetime is simply an aggregation of well-being at every moment of one's life, and thus they reject theories of well-being like hedonism and concurrentist desire satisfactionism. They raise concerns that such a view misses the importance of the relationships between moments in a person's life or the role narratives play in a person's well-being. In this article, we develop an atomist meta-theory of well-being, according to which the prudential value of a (...) life depends solely on the prudential value of each moment of that life. This is a general account of momentary well-being that can capture different features of well-being that standard atomistic accounts fail to capture, thus allowing for the possibility of an atomism that is compatible with a variety of well-being theories. Contrary to many criticisms leveled against momentary well-being, this well-being atomism captures all of the important features of well-being. (shrink)

Contextualist theories of truth appeal to context to solve the liar paradox: different stages of reasoning occur in different contexts, and so the contradiction is dispelled. The word ‘true’ is relativized by the contextualists to contexts of use. This paper shows that contextualist approaches to the liar are committed to a form of semantic relativism: that the truth value of some sentences depends on the context of assessment, as well as the context of use. In particular, it is shown how (...) Simmons’s and Glanzberg’s contextualist approaches entail relativism. In both cases, the liar sentence gets different semantic evaluations as uttered in a fixed context of use but assessed from different contexts. Shift in context of use alone cannot provide the full explanation of the liar. These contextualist approaches, as originally presented, were thus mischaracterised and they should be re-evaluated according to their full implications. (shrink)

This essay offers a conception of logic by which logic may be considered to be exceptional among the sciences on the backdrop of a naturalistic outlook. The conception of logic focused on emphasises the traditional role of logic as a methodology for the sciences, which distinguishes it from other sciences that are not methodological. On the proposed conception, the methodological aims of logic drive its definitions and principles, rather than the description of scientific phenomena. The notion of a methodological discipline (...) is explained as a relation between disciplines or practices. Logic serves as a methodological discipline with respect to any theoretical practice, and this generality, as well as logic’s reflexive nature, distinguish it from other methodological disciplines. Finally, the evolution of model theory is taken as a case study, with a focus on its methodological role. Following recent work by John Baldwin and Juliette Kennedy, we look at model theory from its inception in the mid-twentieth century as a foundational endeavour until developments at the end of the century, where the classification of theories has taken centre-stage. (shrink)

The DNA of all species is constantly under threat from both endogenous and exogenous factors, which damage its chemical structure. Probably the most common lesion that arises in cellular DNA is the loss of a base to generate an abasic site, which is usually referred to as an apurinic or apyrimidinic (AP) site. Since these lesions are potentially both cytotoxic and mutagenic, cells of all organisms express dedicated repair enzymes, termed AP endonucleases, to counteract their damaging effects. Indeed, many organisms (...) consider it necessary to express two or more of these lesion‐specific endonucleases, underscoring the requirement that exists to remove AP sites for the maintenance of genome integrity and cell viability. Most AP endonucleases are very versatile enzymes, capable of performing numerous additional repair roles. In this article, we review the AP endonuclease class of repair enzymes, with emphasis on the evolutionary conservation of structural features, not only between prokaryotic and eukaryotic homologues, but also between these enzymes and the RNase H domain of one class of reverse transcriptase. (shrink)

Science education in the early years is vital in assisting young children to come to know about and understand the world around them. Science in Early Childhood covers the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications of teaching science in early childhood settings in way that is engaging and accessible. It is a comprehensive resource for students, as well as early childhood teachers and carers and provides up-to-date coverage of the Early Years Learning Framework. This text explores the current issues and debates (...) in early childhood science education from an Australian perspective, whilst recognising the links to international practice and research. A summary at the start of each chapter helps students identify the key themes and ideas in early science education and application boxes throughout the text illustrate how theories relate to practice. Written by experts in the field, Science in Early Childhood is essential reading for pre-service teachers. (shrink)

Over the past 20 years, organ donations in Spain have soared from modest numbers to the highest rate in the world. In the brief span between 1998 and 2005, donation rates have increased from 14 per million population to 35.1 p.m.p. By way of comparison the number in the United States is 25.5 donations p.m.p.

La repugnancia es una emoción que pone de manifiesto la especificidad de los seres humanos como seres naturales y seres culturales. Es por ello que la repugnancia constituye un objeto de estudio privilegiado para la Neuroética. En el siguiente artículo trataremos de mostrar que la repugnancia no es una mera reacción fisiológica, sino que la evolución biológica y cultural ha hecho de ella una emoción enormemente compleja dotada de un gran contenido cognitivo. Veremos qué papel ha jugado el recurso retórico (...) a la repugnancia en distintos procesos de deshumanización y crueldad a lo largo de la historia. Por último, examinaremos cómo funciona la empatía en la agencia moral y analizaremos qué relación tiene este mecanismo psicológico con la repugnancia. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene por objeto analizar los límites y exigencias de la mirada en la poética de Alberto Caeiro, heterónimo de Fernando Pessoa. Esta mirada, sostiene Gil, es singular, supone un proceso de crítica de la tradicional relación sujeto - objeto en el acto de conocer. Una especie de epojé en el sentido fenomenológico. No es una mirada empírica, no apela a los sentidos, es una mirada que tiene más bien el carácter de “una intuición intelectual de los sentidos”. (...) El propósito de fondo del artículo es mostrar cómo el paganismo preconizado por Caeiro apela a un “objetivismo absoluto” y reivindica como su invención más propia una armonización del acto de sentir con el de pensar. El ensayo de Gil desarrolla sus argumentos siguiendo minuciosamente algunos de los poemas del poeta caeiro así como algunas de las afirmaciones dedicadas a él por el propio Pessoa. (shrink)

Acts of Religion, compiled in close association with Jacques Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on religion and questions of faith and their relation to philosophy and political culture. The essays discuss religious texts from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, as well as religious thinkers such as Kant, Levinas, and Gershom Scholem, and comprise pieces spanning Derrida's career. The collection includes two new essays by Derrida that appear here for the first time in any (...) language, as well as a substantial introduction by Gil Anidjar that explores Derrida's return to his own "religious" origins and his attempts to bring to light hidden religious dimensions of the social, cultural, historical, and political. (shrink)

One of the foundational problems of biochemistry concerns the conceptualisation of the relationship between the composition, structure and function of macromolecules like proteins. Part of the recent philosophical literature displays a reductionist bias, that is, the endorsement of a form of microstructuralism mirroring an out-dated biochemical conceptualisation. We shall argue that such microstructuralist approaches are ultimately committed to a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism whereby the macrostructure and function of proteins is accounted for solely in terms of the intrinsic properties and (...) potentialities of the components of the primary structure as if they were self-contained or essentially immutable entities. We shall instead suggest that a conceptualisation of the relationship between proteins’ composition, structure and function consistent with contemporary biochemical practice should account also for the causal role of the cellular, organismal and environmental relations in protein development. The analysis of the folding process we propose suggests that microstructure-laden reductionist approaches are ontologically indefensible. Rather than a potentialist form of micro-predeterminism, our analysis ultimately supports a relational-construction-based view of protein development and potentialities formation, which requires an indispensable analysis of the dynamical interplay between the micro-level of the parts and the macro-level of the relational structures of their systems. (shrink)