Life-history-derived models of female sexual development propose menarche timing as a key regulatory mechanism driving subsequent sexual behavior. The current research utilized a twin subsample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; _n_ = 514) to evaluate environmental effects on timings of menarche and sexual debut, as well as address potential confounding of these effects within a genetically informative design. Results show mixed support for each life history model and provide little evidence rearing environment is (...) important in the etiology of individual differences in age at menarche. This research calls into question the underlying assumptions of life-history-derived models of sexual development and highlights the need for more behavior genetic research in this area. (shrink)

Adipose tissue (AT) inflammation, a hallmark of the metabolic syndrome, is triggered by overburdened adipocytes sending out immune cell recruitment signals during obesity development. An AT immune landscape persistent throughout weight loss and regain constitutes an immune‐obesogenic memory that hinders long‐term weight loss management. Lipid‐associated macrophages (LAMs) are emerging as major players in diseased, inflamed metabolic tissues and may be key contributors to an obesogenic memory in AT. Our previous study found that LAM abundance increases with weight loss via intermittent (...) fasting (IF) in obese mice, which is driven by adipocyte p53 signalling. However, the specific signals causing LAM accumulation in AT under IF remain unknown. In this piece, we hypothesise on a range of adipocyte‐secreted signals that can harbor immune‐attractive features upon fasting/refeeding cycles. We highlight possible mechanisms including cell death signalling, matrikines, and other damage‐associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), as well as adipo(‐cyto)kines, lipid mediators, metabolites, extracellular vesicles, and epigenetic rewiring. Finally, we consider how advances in mechanisms of AT LAM recruitment gleaned from preclinical models might be translatable to long‐term weight management in humans. Thus, we provide vantage points to study signals driving monocyte recruitment, polarisation towards LAMs, and LAM retention, to harness the therapeutic potential of modulating AT LAM levels by impacting the immune‐obesogenic memory in metabolic disease. (shrink)

Este libro es un homenaje a la trayectoria intelectual y académica de la profesora María Teresa López de la Vieja, Catedrática emérita de la Universidad de Salamanca. En él se trazan algunos de los caminos que, con su obra, nos invita a transitar. El volumen recoge contribuciones de colegas de varias nacionalidades y procedentes de diversos ámbitos de reflexión que le son afines: la filosofía moral y política, la literatura, la teoría de la argumentación, los estudios feministas, las éticas aplicadas, (...) la bioética. Los capítulos que componen este libro dan voz a varias generaciones de investigadoras e investigadores que han acompañado y acompañan su andadura académica y que aquí dialogan con ella haciendo propias sus preocupaciones intelectuales. Con su participación contribuyen al justo reconocimiento de su dedicación a la labor docente e investigadora. (shrink)

This paper aims 1) to introduce the notion of theoretical story as a resource and source of constraint for the construction and assessment of models of phenomena; 2) to show the relevance of this notion for a better understanding of the role and nature of values in scientific activity. The reflection on the role of values and value judgments in scientific activity should be attentive, I will argue, to the distinction between models and the theoretical story that guides and constrains (...) their construction. The aim of scientific activity is to develop understanding of phenomena, and something that serves this aim and contributes to the development of understanding has a cognitive value. Cognitive values are the features that something that plays a role in scientific activity should have so that it can serve its aim. I will focus my attention on the features of the theoretical story and of the models. (shrink)

Making sense of modeling: beyond representation Content Type Journal Article Category Original paper in Philosophy of Science Pages 335-352 DOI 10.1007/s13194-011-0032-8 Authors Isabelle Peschard, Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA Journal European Journal for Philosophy of Science Online ISSN 1879-4920 Print ISSN 1879-4912 Journal Volume Volume 1 Journal Issue Volume 1, Number 3.

Idealism is the core of the Pratyabhijñã philosophy: the main goal of Utpaladeva (fl. c. 925–950 AD) and of his commentator Abhinavagupta (fl. c. 975–1025 AD) is to establish that nothing exists outside of consciousness. In the course of their demonstration, these Śaiva philosophers endeavour to distinguish their idealism from that of a rival system, the Buddhist Vijñānavāda. This article aims at examining the concept of otherness (paratva) as it is presented in the Pratyabhijñā philosophy in contrast with that of (...) the Vijñānavādins’. Although, according to the Pratyabhijñā, the other subjects are not ultimately real since all subjects are nothing but limited manifestations of a single absolute subject, the fact that we are aware of their existence in the practical world has to be accounted for. The Vijñānavādins explain it by arguing the we infer the others’ existence. The Pratyabhijñā philosophers, while refuting their opponents’ reasoning as it is expounded in Dharmakīrti’s Santānāntarasiddhi, develop a particulary original analysis of our awareness of the others, stating that this awareness is neither a perception (pratyakṣa) nor an inference (anumāna), but rather a guess (ūha) in which we sense the others’ freedom (svātantrya). (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengersâe"one of todayâe(tm)s leading philosophers of scienceâe"goes straight to the beating heart of Whiteheadâe(tm)s thought. The product of thirty yearsâe(tm) engagement with the mathematician-philosopherâe(tm)s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault. (...) Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whiteheadâe(tm)s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whiteheadâe(tm)s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whiteheadâe(tm)s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language. âeoeTo think with Whitehead today,âe Stengers writes, âeoemeans to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.âe. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead called Isabel Scribner Stearns the most talented female philosopher in America. Drawing on Whitehead and her other teachers, Paul Weiss, C.I. Lewis, H.H. Price, and Grace de Laguna, as well as the traditions of ancient Greek philosophy, Continental Rationalism, German Idealism, and American Pragmatism, Stearns has created an epistemologically and logically sound systematic account of the ontology of individuation and the relational genesis and endurance of individual beings.

In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, an important conceptual battleground for democratic theorists ought to be, it would seem, the capitalist firm. We are now painfully aware that the typical model of government in so-called investor-owned companies remains profoundly oligarchic, hierarchical, and unequal. Renewing with the literature of the 1970s and 1980s on workplace democracy, a few political theorists have started to advocate democratic reforms of the workplace by relying on an analogy between firm and state. To (...) the extent that a firm is an organization comparable to the state, it too ought to be ruled along democratic lines. Our paper tests the robustness of the analogy between firm and state by considering six major objections to it: the objection from a difference in ends, the objection from shareholders’ property rights, the objection from worker’s consent, the objection from workers’ exit opportunities, the objection from workers’ expertise, and the objection from the fragility of firms. We find all of these objections wanting. While the paper does not ambition to settle the issue of workplace democracy at once, our goal is to pave the way for a more in-depth study of the ways in which firms and states can be compared and the possible implications this may have for our understanding of the nature of managerial authority and the governance of firms. (shrink)

In this interview with Andrée Bergeron, Isabelle Stengers casts fresh light on the question of expertise, with which the movement of the intermittents - like other movements both yesterday and today - is now confronted. She recalls that the figure of the expert is not a contemporary « invention » and that it includes multiple realities which are rarely free of political consequences. On the contrary, the choice of the expert, the definition of acceptable questions and the degree of (...) « deafness » to « democratic events », are all eminently political problems. By acquiring the tools to ask the questions that matter to them the collective of intermittents and precarious workers has already created a « democratic event ». Now it is a matter of rising to a double challenge: for the movement, that of fabricating a collective intelligence that can transform the knowledge produced into interventions capable of making people think and feel; and for the researchers in the social science, that of succeeding in considering this event as the experimental science consider the laboratory, namely, as that which makes innovation and learning possible. Constructing the choice of a counter-expertise therefore means learning to double the struggle around what Deleuze and Guattari call axioms with a practical invention of a quite different sort, involving a minority becoming - a collective intelligence that does not contradict but creates. (shrink)

Some studies have reported that, under some circumstances, participants sometimes reject the truth of conditional premises and give incorrect uncertain conclusions to MP and MT, despite the standard instructions to assume the truth of the premises. Instructions that emphasise the logical nature of the task, on the other hand, increase the number of valid conclusions to these two inferences. In this paper, we examine two possible explanations for the influence of instructions on the production of valid conclusions: (1) instructions trigger (...) a logical mode of thinking that is appropriate for the task to be solved, and (2) instructions affect the way that retrieved information is used when constructing a mental representation of the premises. In order to compare these two hypothesis, we used conditional causal relations having either many or few disabling conditions (i.e. cases of P and not-Q) and presented them in four different instructional conditions. When presented with the standard instructions to suppose the premises to be true, MP and MT inferences show a relatively low percentage of valid conclusions. However, when the logical nature of the task and the necessity to assume the truth of the premises are emphasised, the number of valid conclusions greatly increases. Also, if disabling conditions are made explicit or generated before the presentation of these logical instructions, the performance on MP and MT is lower than when only the logical instructions are presented. Finally, the instructions had no effect on AC and DA. From these results, we concluded that the instructions had an effect on the use of retrieved information rather than on inducing different modes of thinking. (shrink)

"Isabelle Stengers presents us with a new way of understanding a remarkably diverse range of sciences and their relation to a material and living world. Playing with a position both inside the practices that constitute and transform science and outside the sciences as their mode of conceptualization, Stengers explores the limits, constraints, and inventions that fuse modern science and contemporary society." Elizabeth Grosz --.

Higher Order theories of consciousness have their fair share of sympathisers, but the arguments mustered in their support are—to my mind—unduly persuasive. My aim in this paper is to show that Higher Order theories cannot accommodate the possibility of misrepresentation without either falling into contradiction, or collapsing into a First-Order theory. If this diagnosis is on the right track, then Higher Order theories—at least in the specific versions here considered—fail to give an account of what they set out to explain: (...) what is distinctive of ‘conscious’ phenomena. (shrink)

This article represents a real account of visiting my mother in hospital during 2006. Too often we see and hear what has been termed ?bad practice? going on around us. We may not be in our professional role at the time although our professional identity, our values, our embedded professional codes of practice, remain with us constantly. If we were in our professional role we would have no hesitation in making the necessary steps to ensure that bad practice is reported (...) and acted upon. However, if the person involved is a very close relative who specifically asks us not to take any action because they fear that any repercussions will ?make things bad for them? we are left with an ethical dilemma about what we should do. This article re-enacts the dialogue between my mother and me during visiting time in a hospital ward where she stayed for several months following a reactive depressive illness. All names have been changed in order to ensure confidentiality and respect for the patients mentioned. (shrink)

Concerned with the interplay between science, society, and power, Isabelle Stengers offers a unique perspective on the power of scientific theories to modify society, and vice versa. 9 diagrams.

This article revisits certain aspects of the discussion originated by dissident Franciscans over the two keys conferred by Christ to Peter, bringing it into connection with the value that Ockham and John XXII accord respectively to knowledge and power in the definition of doctrine. Rather than an extraneous element in the debate, as it has often been perceived, the two-keys argument is pivotal to the proper understanding of Ockham’s ecclesiology and the pope’s own, as it serves to articulate the twin (...) notions they both advance of “authority to inquire” and “authority to determine” on a question of faith. By focusing away from the usual template of the competing claims of infallibility and sovereignty, this article hopes to bring to light the profound similarities in their respective views on doctrinal authority and the value accorded to the theological enterprise. (shrink)

Based on an extensive review of the literature and field surveys, the paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of corporate citizenship meaningful in two countries: the United States and France. A survey of 210 American and 120 French managers provides support for the proposed definition of corporate citizenship as a construct including the four correlated factors of economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary citizenship. The managerial implications of the research and directions for future research are discussed.

El presente artículo parte de analizar el vínculo existente entre los derechos sociales y la democracia conforme a las funciones que desempeñan tales derechos, adaptándose a la realidad en la que deben ser implementados. Por tanto, el paso de la democracia a una posdemocracia plantea dificultades desde un primer momento al crearse obstáculos para el desenvolvimiento real de los principios que han de regir la operatividad de los derechos sociales. Tal es así que nos debemos plantear si es posible que (...) subsistan en ese contexto. De esta manera, se presentan una serie de observaciones y propuestas para salvar los derechos sociales desde una perspectiva de participación de la ciudadanía y un enfoque de derechos humanos. Finalmente, se concluye que lo importante es que se superen los obstáculos que impidan una justiciabilidad y efectividad adecuadas de los derechos sociales. (shrink)

Johan Grimonprez’s dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y has been critically surveyed for its use of mass media: this film, a masterful feat of editing, appropriates found footage from television newscasts to examine the history of hijacking. My reading of this piece further analyzes Grimonprez’s use of appropriation, locating the image of the chimera featured in the film as a symbol of the method of montage that dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y uses, and of the links that this work makes between violence, homelessness and art making. The (...) chimera stands for the artwork itself, for the latter’s rapid sequence of disparate images functions as a grafted body. As a figment of the imagination, the chimera also stands for the constructed nature of the news event, which the film assays. Furthermore, the eloquence of the chimera’s image bespeaks the body that has lost its home. In this film, hijackings are related to homelessness; Grimonprez implies that wellsprings of violence arise from radical histories of displacement. By way of the chimera, he also suggests that art can impact society only by hijacking the images of mass culture, thus relating art making to violence. (shrink)

Gracias a la documentación conservada en la Real Academia de la Historia y a una cuidada revisión bibliográfica, se aportan nuevos datos para el conocimiento del descubrimiento y primeros estudios del epitafio del monarca aftasí, Abd Allah al-Mansur I de Badajoz.

Pregnancy and motherhood bring enormous change to one’s life. As a student of philosophy, I have struggled to find a place for myself, as a new mother, in academic life. Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness examines human consciousness -- it places human experience as the starting point of philosophical inquiry. This approaches the sort of place I think human experience should rest in philosophy. If I am to claim that motherhood is academically significant, surely, this examination must begin with an (...) examination of human experience. This paper tries to root my experience of pregnancy as something that I think is academically interesting. It was through writing this paper that I found myself hopeful that my becoming a mother was not the end of my academic career, but rather presents an interesting and important new path in my philosophical journey. (shrink)

En este artículo el objetivo es leer desde las premisas de la teoría tridimensional de la justicia de Nancy Fraser, que comprende distribución, reconocimiento y paridad política, la jurisprudencia más relevante de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en materia de pueblos originarios. Para llevar a cabo esta tarea el texto se divide en dos partes. En la primera, se exponen los lineamientos del planteamiento de Nancy Fraser sobre la justicia y, en la segunda, se analiza con base en las (...) herramientas teórico políticas ofrecidas por esta pensadora, un conjunto de sentencias. Se concluye que la Corte IDH ha incorporado, en parte, esta perspectiva, aun cuando falta vigilar su implementación por parte de los Estados. (shrink)

"The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond the apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists."--pub. desc.

Qu’aurait pensé Paul Otlet, « l’homme qui voulait classer le monde », face à la globalisation des procédures d’évaluation, s’étendant aujourd’hui ni plus ni moins au domaine de la pensée ? Le père fondateur de la bibliographie, qui entendait inventer un système permettant la mutualisation et le partage des fruits du génie humain, verrait aujourd’hui son rêve transformé..