Aphids display an abundance of adaptations that are not easily studied in existing model systems. Here we review the biology of a new genomic model system, the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. We then discuss several phenomena that are particularly accessible to study in the pea aphid: the developmental genetic basis of polyphenisms, aphid–bacterial symbioses, the genetics of adaptation and mechanisms of virus transmission. The pea aphid can be maintained in the laboratory and natural populations can be studied in the field. (...) These properties allow controlled experiments to be performed on problems of direct relevance to natural aphid populations. Combined with new genomic approaches, the pea aphid is poised to become an important model system for understanding the molecular and developmental basis of many ecologically and evolutionarily relevant problems. BioEssays 28: 747–755, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

La discussion sur le langage privé que l’on trouve dans les Recherchesphilosophiques a été écrite entre 1937 et 1945, après que les 190 premières remarques de la partie I du livre eurent presque atteint leur forme finale. Les textes post-1936 sur le langage privé constituent un nouveau départ, dans sa lettre et son esprit, par rapport au matériau d’avant 1936.Néanmoins, entre 1929 et 1936, Wittgenstein s’est penché à plusieurs reprises sur l’idée d’un langage « que moi seul peux comprendre ». (...) Un volet de cette question qui, lui, est abordé directement dans les Recherches, c’est l’idée que « si j’appliquais le mot “douleur” uniquement à ce que j’ai nommé jusqu’ici “ma douleur”, et les autres “la douleur de L.W.”, je ne ferais ainsi aucun tort aux autres, si toutefois l’on avait prévu une notation qui d’une façon ou d’une autre, permettrait de pallier l’absence du mot “douleur” dans d’autres combinaisons ». Cependant, la discussion de cette question dans les Recherches est beaucoup plus brève que dans les textes d’avant 1936. J’examine le rapport entre ce § 403 des Recherches d’un côté, et de l’autre côté les textes des cahiers de 1929 et les Remarques philosophiques , en retraçant le développement initial de cette argumentation et en explorant les principales lignes de continuité et de discontinuité dans le traitement que Wittgenstein réserve à la question du langage privé.The discussion of private language in the Investigations was written between 1937 and 1945, after the first 190 remarks of Part I of the book had almost reached their final form. The post-1936 writing on private language represents a fresh start, both in wording and in conception, on the pre-1936 material.Nevertheless, Wittgenstein did repeatedly discuss the idea of a language which “only I myself can understand” during 1929-36. One strand in this discussion that is directly taken up in the Investigations is the idea that “If I were to reserve the word ‘pain’ solely for what I had hitherto called ‘my pain”, and others “L.W.’s pain,” I should do other people no injustice, so long as a notation were provided in which the loss of the word ‘pain’ in other connexions were somehow supplied.” However, the discussion of this topic in the Investigations is much briefer than in the pre-1936 writing. I look at the relationship between §403 and texts from the 1929 notebooks and the Philosophical Remarks, assembled in the spring of 1930, mapping out the earlier development of this line of argument and exploring the principal continuities and discontinuities in Wittgenstein’s treatment of private language. (shrink)

Criticized as a nostalgic anachronism by those who oppose her version of political theory and lauded as symbol of direct democratic participation by those who favor it, the Athenian polis features prominently in Hannah Arendt's account of politics. This essay traces the origin and development of Arendt's conception of the polis as a space of appearance from the early 1950s onward. It makes particular use of the Denktagebuch, Arendt's intellectual diary, in order to shed new light on the historicity of (...) one of her central concepts. The article contends that both critics and partisans of Arendt's use of the polis have made the same mistake: they have presumed that the polis represents a space of face-to-face immediacy. In fact, Arendt compared the polis to a series of analogues, many of which are not centered on direct exchanges between political actors and spectators. As a result, Arendt's early work on the polis turns out to anticipate many of the concerns of her later work on judgment, and her theory of the polis becomes a theory of topics. (shrink)

This paper examines a number of river images which have been attributed to Heraclitus, the ways they are used by Plato and Wittgenstein, and the connection between these uses of imagery and the metaphilosophical issues about the nature and limits of philosophy which they lead to. After indicating some of the connections between Heraclitus’, Plato’s and Wittgenstein’s use of river images, I give a preliminary reading of three crucial fragments from the Heraclitean corpus, associating each with a different river image. (...) Each of these images implies an overall conception of the nature of change and continuity and of the relationship between language and world. I then turn to the use of these images by Plato and Wittgenstein, and explore the relationship between their uses of river imagery and their conceptions of philosophy. To put it slightly differently, this paper is about Plato’s and Wittgenstein’s use of certain Heraclitean ideas. (shrink)

Theories in cognitive science, and especially cognitive neuroscience, often claim that parts of cognitive systems are reused for different cognitive functions. Philosophical analysis of this concept, however, is rare. Here, I first provide a set of criteria for an analysis of reuse, and then I analyse reuse in terms of the functions of subsystems. I also discuss how cognitive systems execute cognitive functions, the relation between learning and reuse, and how to differentiate reuse from related concepts like multi-use, redundancy, and (...) duplication of parts. Finally, I illustrate how my account captures the reuse of dynamical subsystems as unveiled by recent research in cognitive neurobiology. This recent research suggests two different evolutionary justifications for reuse claims. _1_ Introduction _2_ Criteria for Analyses of Reuse _3_ Use and Reuse _4_ The Reuse of Dynamical Systems in Cognitive Systems _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Executive dysfunctions, psychopathologies arising from problems in the control and regulation of behavior, can occur as a result of the faulty execution of formal information processing models or as a result of malfunctioning neural mechanisms. The models correspond to the formal descriptions of how signals in the environment must be transformed in order to behave adaptively, and the mechanisms correspond to the signal transformations that nervous systems implement in order to execute those cognitive functions. Mechanisms in the form of repeated (...) patterns of neural dynamics execute information processing models. Two distinct modes of malfunction can occur when neural dynamics execute models of information processing. The processing models describing behavior may fail to be executed correctly by neural mechanisms. Or, the neural mechanisms may malfunction, failing to implement the right computation. As an example of malfunctioning models in executive cognition, purported failures of rule following can be understood as failures to appropriately execute a suite of processing models. As an example of malfunctioning mechanisms of executive cognition, maladaptive behavior resulting from dysfunction in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) can be understood as failures in the signal transformations carried out therein. The purpose of these examples is to illustrate the potential benefits of considering models and mechanisms in the diagnosis and etiology of neuropsychological illness and dysfunction, especially disorders of executive cognition. (shrink)

In the context of deceased organ donation, donors are routinely tested for HIV, to check for suitability for organ donation. This article examines whether a donor’s HIV status should be disclosed to the donor’s next of kin.On the one hand, confidentiality requires that sensitive information not be disclosed, and a duty to respect confidentiality may persist after death. On the other hand, breaching confidentiality may benefit third parties at risk of having been infected by the organ donor, as it may (...) permit them to be tested for HIV and seek treatment in case of positive results.We conclude that the duty to warn third parties surpasses the duty to respect confidentiality. However, in order to minimize risks linked to the breach of confidentiality, information should be restrained to only concerned third parties, that is, those susceptible to having been infected by the donor. (shrink)

The goal of cladistic systematics is to discern sister-group relations (cladistic relations) by the methods of cladistic analysis and to represent them explicitly and unambiguously in cladograms and cladistic classifications. Cladists have selected cladistic relations to represent for two reasons: cladistic relations can be discerned with reasonable certainty by the methods of cladistic analysis and they can be represented with relative ease in cladograms and classifications. Cladists argue that features of phylogeny other than cladistic relations cannot be discerned with sufficient (...) certainty to warrant attempting to represent them in either cladograms or classifications and could not be represented if they could. I argue that a better alternative is to work toward improving methods of cladistic analysis (or else to supplement them with other methods) so that such features of phylogeny can be discerned and to devise methods of representation capable of representing them in both cladograms and classifications. However, cladograms and classifications cannot represent everything about phylogeny. It is better to represent one or two aspects of phylogeny explicitly and unambiguously than nothing at all. (shrink)

“Hildebrand has constructed a well-paced and historically informative evaluation of neopragmatism. . . . This book makes an excellent companion for courses in both contemporary epistemology and American philosophy.” –Choice How faithful are the Neopragmatists' reformulations of Classical Pragmatism? Can their Neopragmatisms work? In examining the difficulties in Neopragmatism, David L. Hildebrand is able to propose some distinct directions for Pragmatism.

Henry Thoreau boasted that he was widely travelled in Concord, Massachusetts. He was born there on 12 July 1817, and he died there on 6 May 1862, of tuberculosis, at the age of forty-four years. In 1837 he graduated from Harvard College, and in 1838 he joined Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and others in the informal group that became known as the New England Transcendentalists. The author of four books, many essays and poems, and a voluminous journal, he is (...) best known for the book Walden and the essay ‘Civil Disobedience’, and for the circumstances attending these two milestones in American thought and literature. (shrink)

When do organizations decide to ‘adopt’ a given social issue such that they come to acknowledge it in their patterns of action and communication? Traditional answers to this question have focused either on the characteristics of the issue itself, or on the traits of the focal organization. In many cases, however, a firm’s decision to adopt or ignore an issue is not a straightforward function of firm or issue characteristics. Instead, we view issue adoption as a socially constructed process of (...) information exchange between parties that are involved in the emergence and evolution of the issue, mediated by third-party organizations. We refer to this process as the infomediary process and these latter organizations as ‘infomediaries,’ after the information mediation and brokerage roles they play in the social processes linking social issues to organizational impact. We present a concise theoretical model of how infomediaries establish credible linkages between focal organizations and social issues. The thrust of the model is that the infomediation process, rather than the issue or firm characteristics, is what really drives firm-level issue adoption decisions. (shrink)

Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico's significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at (...) the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought. (shrink)

Examines the issues of self (including gender), truth, and transcendence in classical Chinese and Western philosophy.

Extreme variation in the meaning of the term “species” throughout the history of biology has often frustrated attempts of historians, philosophers and biologists to communicate with one another about the transition in biological thinking from the static species concept to the modern notion of evolving species. The most important change which has underlain all the other fluctuations in the meaning of the word “species” is the change from it denoting such metaphysical entities as essences, Forms or Natures to denoting classes (...) of individual organisms. Several authors have taken notice of the role of metaphysics in the work of particular biologists. An attempt will be made in this paper to present a systematic investigation of the role which metaphysics has played in the work of representative biologists throughout the history of biology, especially as it relates to their species concepts. (shrink)

Will democracy figure prominently in China's future? If so, what kind of democracy? In this insightful and thought-provoking book, David Hall and Roger Ames explore such questions and, in the course of answering them, look to the ideas of John Dewey and Confucius.

In the Western media, stories about China seem to fall into one of two categories: China’s astounding economic development or its human rights abuses. As human rights discourses follow increasingly hegemonic conventions, especially with regard to China, many of their key assumptions remain unexamined. This special issue—the second in a two-part series beginning with “Cosmologies of the Human”—critically investigates the relationship between China and the human as it plays out in law, politics, biopolitics, political economy, labor, medicine, and culture. The (...) contributors interrogate the evolving meanings of “China” and “the human,” both inside China and internationally. The issue tracks the ways in which global discourses treat China—still officially socialist—as similar to, different from, and alternative to Western capitalist modernities. Several essays probe the modern theoretical underpinnings of human rights abuses in China, including a crucial distinction between “the human” and “the people.” Others review the impact of Maoism on Marxist debates in China and in the West, as well as the specific influences of Mao’s writings on French politics and theory in the 1960s. A visual dossier compares eight contemporary Chinese artists, directors, and public image-makers in order to discuss the figure of the human from Tiananmen Square to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. While many contributors discuss China and the West comparatively, the issue interrogates the universalizing claims of both Western and Chinese norms of the human by privileging the local, particular, and eccentric. Contributors: Ackbar Abbas, Michael Dutton, David L. Eng, Doug Howland, Petrus Liu, Camille Robcis, Teemu Ruskola, Shuang Shen, Shu-mei Shih, Wang Xiaoming David L. Eng is Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of _The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy_ and _Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America_, both also published by Duke University Press. Teemu Ruskola is Professor of Law at Emory University and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University. Shuang Shen is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese at Pennsylvania State University. (shrink)

Several important terms in biology have recently been criticized for not being "operational." In this paper the course of operationism in physics, psychology and genetics is sketched to show what effect this particular view on the meaning of scientific terms had on these disciplines. Then the biological species concept and the concept of homology are examined to see in what respects they are or are not "operational." One of the primary conclusions of this investigation is that few terms in science (...) are completely operational or completely nonoperational. Some scientific terms, especially theoretical terms, are a good deal less operational than others; but, far from being regrettable, this situation is essential if theoretical terms are to fulfill their systematizing function and if scientific theories are to be capable of growth. (shrink)

In a recent paper, William K. Goosens objects to the arguments I set out some time ago attacking the logical empiricist analysis of reduction as applied to genetics. In these works I did not argue against the claim that Mendelian genetics was being reduced to molecular biology. Nor did I conclude, as Goosens asserts, that in the case of genetics, “reduction is insignificant”. To the contrary, I repeatedly stated that, “given our pre-analytic intuitions about reduction,” the reduction of Mendelian to (...) molecular genetics “is a case of reduction, a paradigm case”. And in agreement with Kenneth Schaffner I argued that reduction “in some very important, pre-analytic sense has taken place and is taking place in genetics”. The target of my objections to reduction in genetics was not “reduction” in some pre-analytic sense. Nor was it the various explications which have appeared since. Rather it was the notion of theory reduction set out a generation ago by such logical empiricists as Ernest Nagel, The particular version of this analysis which I chose to attack was that presented by Schaffner ; for Schaffner's later views, see his. I chose Schaffner's explication to attack because I thought it was the best of its kind and because it was the only defense of the logical empiricist analysis at the time which used genetics as one of its chief examples. Contrary to Goosens' assumption, in criticizing Schaffner's explication, I did not thereby “endorse” it. (shrink)

In Physical Theory Mr. Lenzen writes, “Thus the concept of thing is the concept of a class of aspects which are in the past, present, or future for several minds.” Again, in Mind and the World-Order, Mr. Lewis defines “thing” as “… a complex of properties or qualities, recognizable by some uniformity of appearance.” Without questioning the metaphysics implied in these two definitions of “thing” I shall accept them as quite compatible and as useful in defining the rôle of experience (...) in the construction of scientific objects. If in “Pragmatism and Metaphysics” Mr. Morris has not established proof of the existence of objects independent of any and all experience of them, he certainly has shown conclusively that the possibility of experiencing objects is independent of any and all observers. (shrink)

Here we will discuss the necessary relationship between both prediction and human behavior and meaning and human behavior. The main assumption upon which our thesis rests is that knowing is for the sake of acting and that, consequently, the symbolic process is continuous with overt bodily behavior and with the environment of the knower. A corollary to this assumption is: the locus of meaning is in behavior. Possibly after reading the article it will be clear that meanings presuppose conduct of (...) which we can take cognizance, and that there is a difference between behaving and taking cognizance of behavior. And although the locus of meaning is in behavior, meanings emerge only in relation to the symbolic process. In a sense we suffer, endure, live through behavior, but in the bare suffering of it there may be no meaning, for meaning requires also the symbolic process. (shrink)

The idea of self-knowledge divides naturally into two parts in accordance with the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. I know myself and I know things about myself. The latter I know partly from self-acquaintance, partly from the behavior, especially linguistic, of others, and partly from each of these. All aspects of self-knowledge are controversial, so I shall concentrate in this paper on the question of self-acquaintance. My purpose is both philosophical and historical. It is commonly believed (...) that Hume and Descartes held diametrically opposed, or at least strongly contrasting, views regarding self-acquaintance since Hume is regularly ridiculed for his denial of ability to discover his own Self whereas it would occur to no one to ascribe that same view to the author of the Meditations. In this paper I shall argue that contrary to appearances these two philosophers either held the same position or Descartes occupied the more agnostic extreme; and also that the position usually ascribed to Hume is, when properly understood, both correct and of fundamental philosophical significance. Part of my reason for selecting Hume and Descartes for analysis and comparison is to show thereby that the thesis of this paper is true independently of the rationalist/empiricist schism in philosophy. (shrink)