Signaling through both the transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) superfamily of growth factors and Notch play crucial roles during embryonic pattern formation and cell fate determination. Although both pathways are able to exert similar biological responses in certain cell types, a functional interaction between these two signaling pathways has not been described. Now, three papers provide evidence of both synergy and antagonism between TGFβ and Notch signaling.1-3 These reports describe a requirement for Notch signal transducers in TGFβ- and BMP-induced expression (...) of Notch target genes, as well as in BMP-controlled cell differentiation and migration. These papers uncover a direct link between the Notch and TGFβ pathways and suggest a critical role for Notch in some of the biological responses to TGFβ family signaling. BioEssays 27:115–118, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Although for many years a sharp distinction has been made in language research between rules and words—with primary interest on rules—this distinction is now blurred in many theories. If anything, the focus of attention has shifted in recent years in favor of words. Results from many different areas of language research suggest that the lexicon is representationally rich, that it is the source of much productive behavior, and that lexically specific information plays a critical and early role in the interpretation (...) of grammatical structure. But how much information can or should be placed in the lexicon? This is the question I address here. I review a set of studies whose results indicate that event knowledge plays a significant role in early stages of sentence processing and structural analysis. This poses a conundrum for traditional views of the lexicon. Either the lexicon must be expanded to include factors that do not plausibly seem to belong there; or else virtually all information about word meaning is removed, leaving the lexicon impoverished. I suggest a third alternative, which provides a way to account for lexical knowledge without a mental lexicon. (shrink)

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s thought. "Kosky examines Levinas’s thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas’s argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas’s work." —John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality in postmodern philosophy, (...) class='Hi'>Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas’s work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas’s writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas’s early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas’s phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50. (shrink)

The construction of geometrical concepts is familiar to readers of Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ and _Prolegomena_ as the “shining example” [_glänzendes Beispiel_] of a priori cognition. So when Kant begins to offer constructions of concepts in physics in the _Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science_, it seems unproblematic that mathematics is being applied to matter in motion. Much of Kant’s rhetoric suggests that nothing extraordinary is going on. And yet, constructions in Kant’s philosophy of physics display such peculiarities in comparison (...) to mathematical ones that they begin to seem like unfamiliar operations, distinct from constructions in pure mathematics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI ed. by John C. CavadiniJeffrey L. MorrowExplorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI. Edited by John C. Cavadini. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Pp. viii + 318. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-268-02309-6.Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is arguably the greatest theologian to ascend to the chair of St. Peter in centuries. His theological output even prior to becoming pope (...) is staggering. It is thus fitting that an edited volume examine his theological oeuvre; there is a need for many more such volumes. The essays collected in this book were originally presented at a conference on the theology of Pope Benedict at the University of Notre Dame. Each contribution brings something insightful and unique to the volume. The book is divided into three sections: “The Dynamic of Advent,” encompassing chapters 2–5; “Caritas in Veritate,” encompassing chapters 6–7; and “God is Love,” encompassing the remaining chapters 8–11. The initial chapter-length introduction and the first chapter fall outside of this division because in many ways they set the stage for the entire volume.John Cavadini’s introduction (1–20) could serve as a useful overview of the theological work of Pope Benedict. Cavadini provides a preview of each chapter but also underscores the significance of Benedict’s theological work. He emphasizes how “one of Benedict’s major achievements is the demonstration of Augustine’s original insight into the unity of the theological tasks of understanding and of engendering understanding” (3).Cyril O’Regan’s very fine essay, “Benedict the Augustinian” (21–60), examines the Augustinian nature of Benedict’s theology. O’Regan maintains, “throughout his career Benedict not only turns again and again to Augustine as his theological model, but also... in Benedict’s self-understanding[,] the basic figuration of his theology is Augustinian” (22). This Augustinian texture to Benedict’s theology involves, among other things, his “real familiarity with and admiration” for “the classic” works of Augustine, his use of Augustine’s “theological style,” his use of shared themes, and the manner in which he consciously “articulates substantive theological positions” typical of Augustine. Moreover, O’Regan points to “Benedict’s sense that he is living in a time of crisis and senescence similar to that of Augustine” (21–22). Some of the similarities O’Regan observes in the theological work of Augustine and Benedict pertain to eschatology, the relationship between faith and reason, biblical interpretation, culture, the role of the liturgy, and the centrality of prayer. O’Regan’s essay is undoubtedly the best piece I have read on the importance of Augustine for Benedict.The thesis of Peter Casarella’s “Culture and Conscience in the Thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI” (63–86) is that for Benedict, “the witness to truth is the key to seeing how culture and conscience are necessarily intertwined” (64). Casarella initiates his investigation with the pope’s critique of relativism. The first major section examines what he terms Benedict’s “theology of culture.” For Benedict, this has a moral dimension, and thus [End Page 493] Caserella spends the entire second portion of his essay looking at conscience and its formation in the context of culture. This is a very helpful essay that makes an important contribution to Benedict’s thought as it relates to moral theology.The late Fr. Edward Oakes’s contribution, “Resolving the Relativity Paradox: Pope Benedict XVI and the Challenge of Christological Relativism” (87–113), explores Benedict’s problem with relativism, but homes in on relativism in the context of Christology. Oakes argues, “the challenge of relativism cannot be met unless it is done first and foremost in Christological terms” (93), and he thinks Benedict does precisely this. Oakes’s overview of Ernst Troeltsch’s discussion of historical criticism as corrosive to Christology is enlightening:what most undermines Christocentrism is the historical-critical method, not so much because of the results arising from that method as from its very use.... Historical criticism... is marked by three key methodological principles: (1) the principle of criticism, that no historical document... can be taken on its own terms as automatically reliable but must... (shrink)

This article contrasts St. Thomas More's theoretical work on the role of faith and history in biblical exegesis with that of Fr. Richard Simon. I argue that, although Simon's work appears to be a critique of his more skeptical contemporaries like Hobbes and Spinoza, in reality he is carrying their work forward. I argue that More's union of faith and reason, theology and history, is more promising than Simon's for Catholic theological biblical exegesis.

Individuals vary in the way they navigate through space. Some take novel shortcuts, while others rely on known routes to find their way around. We wondered how and why there is so much variation in the population. To address this, we first compared the trajectories of 368 human subjects navigating a virtual maze with simulated trajectories. The simulated trajectories were generated by strategy-based path planning algorithms from robotics. Based on the similarities between human trajectories and different strategy-based simulated trajectories, we (...) found that there is a variation in the type of strategy individuals apply to navigate space, as well as variation within individuals on a trial-by-trial basis. Moreover, we observed variation within a trial when subjects occasionally switched the navigation strategies halfway through a trajectory. In these cases, subjects started with a route strategy, in which they followed a familiar path, and then switched to a survey strategy, in which they took shortcuts by considering the layout of the environment. Then we simulated a second set of trajectories using five different but comparable artificial maps. These trajectories produced the similar pattern of strategy variation within and between trials. Furthermore, we varied the relative cost, that is, the assumed mental effort or required timesteps to choose a learned route over alternative paths. When the learned route was relatively costly, the simulated agents tended to take shortcuts. Conversely, when the learned route was less costly, the simulated agents showed preference toward a route strategy. We suggest that cost or assumed mental effort may be the reason why in previous studies, subjects used survey knowledge when instructed to take the shortest path. We suggest that this variation we observe in humans may be beneficial for robotic swarms or collections of autonomous agents during information gathering. (shrink)

La pensée de Lévinas, du début jusqu’à la fin, est animée par le souci de libérer le moi du « mal de l’être » – c’est-à-dire, de l’expérience de l’être anonyme et irrémissible, sans fin ni commencement, que Lévinas nomme il y a. Dans les premiers ouvrages , l’autofondation du sujet répond à ce souci, mais cette tentative de libération échoue en tant qu’elle condamne le sujet à la présence toujours présente de lui-même et à sa persévérance dans l’effort d’être. (...) La notion de substitution que développera pleinement Autrement qu’être réussit là où la tentative des premiers ouvrages a échoué. La substitution dans la responsabilité libère la subjectivité mais, selon un paradoxe essentiel, la libère en la rendant otage de l’autre. Si la substitution dans la responsabilité est en effet l’événement de la subjectivation, comme le soutient Lévinas, alors il n’y a pas d’éthique sans libération et pas de libération sans éthique.Levinas’ thought, form start to finish, was animated by a concern for liberation of the self form the « evil of Being » – that is, form the experience of anonymous, irremissible Being without start or finish, which Levins names there is. In the early works , the autofoundation of the subject responds to this concern, but this attempt at liberation falls short as it condemns the subject to the ever present presence of itself and its perseverance in the effort of existing. The notion of substituion, developed most fully in Autrement qu’être, then succeeds xhere the aerlier effort failed. Substitution in responsibility liberates subjectivity, but, according to an essential paradox, liberates it as hostage of the other. If substitution in responsibility is indeed the event of subjectification, as Levinas argues, then there is no ethics without liberation, and no liberation without ethics. (shrink)

Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 231-237, June 2011.

Time underlies many interesting human behaviors. Thus, the question of how to represent time in connectionist models is very important. One approach is to represent time implicitly by its effects on processing rather than explicitly (as in a spatial representation). The current report develops a proposal along these lines first described by Jordan (1986) which involves the use of recurrent links in order to provide networks with a dynamic memory. In this approach, hidden unit patterns are fed back to themselves: (...) the internal representations which develop thus reflect task demands in the context of prior internal states. A set of simulations is reported which range from relatively simple problems (temporal version of XOR) to discovering syntactic/semantic features for words. The networks are able to learn interesting internal representations which incorporate task demands with memory demands: indeed, in this approach the notion of memory is inextricably bound up with task processing. These representations reveal a rich structure, which allows them to be highly context‐dependent, while also expressing generalizations across classes of items. These representations suggest a method for representing lexical categories and the type/token distinction. (shrink)

Thomas More presents us with a wonderful example of martyrological exegesis where his exegetical work was intended to inspire his readers to live the virtues, to follow Christ, and to provide consolation amidst tribulation. Such exegesis aimed to aid the reader to live the martyrdom required in ordinary life and beyond that, if necessary, with mental anguish, physical torture, and even death on behalf of Christ. Before examining More's work, I first situate this discussion within the broader conversation concerning modern (...) biblical interpretation- in particular the notion of senses of Scripture - therein explaining how I shall be using terms like mystagogy and martyrdom in this article. I shall then examine More's spiritual exegesis of Jesus' passion narratives, paying particular attention to the agony in the garden. I shall conclude with a look at the saint's life, which provides a background for his interpretation of Scripture. (shrink)

Mitochondria are essential subcellular organelles containing an extranuclear genome (mtDNA). Mutations in mtDNA have recently been identified as causing a variety of human hereditary diseases. In most of these cases, the tissues of the affected individual contain a mixture of mutant and normal mtDNA, with this ratio determining the severity of symptoms. Stochastic factors alone have generally been believed to determine this ratio. Jenuth et al.(1), however, examining mice that contain a mixture of mtDNA types, show evidence of strong selective (...) forces at work in favoring one mtDNA variant over another in some tissues. (shrink)

This study investigates whether local gambling norms are associated with audit pricing. Using a religion-based measure of local social gambling norms, we find strong evidence that public firms located in U.S. counties with more liberal gambling norms exhibit higher levels of audit fees. This result is consistent with our view that, as an important external risk factor, clients’ local gambling norms influence audit pricing decisions. Our findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests, including non-religion based measures of liberal (...) gambling norms and a natural experiment. (shrink)

All ethics codes serve an argumentativefunction to improve public opinion, avoid government regulation, and produce ethical behavior among members. The National Religious Broadcasters' increased eforts to enforce its code illustrates the potential for three dificnlties to surface when organizations use codes to justify their activities. Organizations tend to limit public discussions to the code 's existence, and shorthand descriptions of it, fail to address enforceability problems, and assume that the code will change corporate culture. To overcome these problems, ongoing maintenance (...) of the code in relationship to its public context is required. (shrink)

El filósofo político de la Temprana Edad Moderna, Benedicto Spinoza, es a menudo visto como el padre del método crítico histórico para el estudio de la Biblia. A partir del trabajo de contemporáneos, Spinoza construyó el fundamento metodológico sobre el cual más tarde levantaría la crítica histórica. En este trabajo se examina el trasfondo político de la crítica bíblica de Spinoza, colocando así la obra de Spinoza en su contexto socio-histórico. La Guerra de los Treinta Años y la agitación política (...) en la República holandesa proveen el trasfondo próximo de la teoría política de Spinoza y de su crítica bíblica. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to begin the study of the handful of references to celestial divination found in the Assyrian royal inscriptions from the perspective of propaganda analysis by approaching one text in particular, Esarhaddon’s Aššur A inscription. This inquiry helps to solve some of the outstanding problems in regard to the celestial phenomena recorded in these inscriptions and their mantic implications.

When corporations are accused of unethical behaviour by external actors, executives from those organizations are usually compelled to offer communicative responses to defend their corporate image. To demonstrate the effect that corporate executives'' communicative responses have on third parties'' perception of corporate image, we present the Corporate Communicative Response Model in this paper. Of the five potential communicative responses contained in this model (no response, denial, excuse, justification, and concession), results from our empirical test demonstrate that a concession is the (...) most effective and robust communicative option. (shrink)

Genetic analysis is revealing molecular components of circadian rhythms. The gene products of the period gene in Drosophila and the frequency gene in Neurospora oscillate with a circadian rhythm. A recent paper(1) has shown that the PERIOD protein can undergo both intermolecular and intramolecular interactions in vitro. The effects of temperature and two period mutations on these molecular interactions were compared to the effects of the mutations and temperature on the in vivo period length of circadian rhythms. The results suggest (...) that the molecular interactions may compete to maintain a rhythm with a constant period over a wide temperature range. (shrink)

Even the most casual observer of Chinese society is aware of the tremendous significance of Confucianism as a linchpin of both ancient and modern Chinese identity. Furthermore, the Confucian tradition has exercised enormous influence over the values and institutions of the other cultures of East Asia, an influence that continues to be important in the global Asian diaspora. If forecasters are correct in labeling the 21st century 'the Chinese century,' teachers and scholars of religious studies and theology will be called (...) upon to illuminate the history, character, and role of Confucianism as a religious tradition in Chinese and Chinese-influenced societies. The essays in this volume will address the specifically pedagogical challenges of introducing Confucian material to non-East Asian scholars and students. Informed by the latest scholarship as well as practical experience in the religious studies and theology classroom, the essays are attentive to the various settings within which religious material is taught and sensitive to the needs of both experts in Confucian studies and those with no background in Asian studies who are charged with teaching these traditions. The authors represent all the arenas of Confucian studies, from the ancient to the modern. Courses involving Confucius and Confucianism have proliferated across the disciplinary map of the modern university. This volume will be an invaluable resource for instructors not only in religious studies departments and theological schools, but also teachers of world philosophy, non-Western philosophy, Asian studies, and world history. (shrink)

This essay concerns various difficulties encountered in the attempt to assess the relation between Heidegger and Nietzsche. More specifically, those difficulties are due to the notion and function of repetition in the texts of both Heidegger and Nietzsche. I attempt to provide an analysis of repetition in the Heidegger of Being and Time and surrounding texts (e.g., Plato’s Sophist and Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie). Following this attempt, I then examine the transformed notion of repetition operative in the now famous text (...) written at the time of the Nietzsche lectures, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), a repetition that goes by the name of crossing (Übergang). In my presentation of crossing, I attempt to draw Heidegger and Nietzsche together through the repetition of crossing and that of eternal recurrence of the same. Finally, I argue that what draws Heidegger and Nietzsche together is also what prevents us from distinguishing them in any traditional way, a distinction that could then be followed by any number of judgments regarding historical influence. That is, that what draws the two to thinking is what both draws them together, which is abyssal repetition, and problematizes any attempt to distinguish them. (shrink)

The dissertation focuses on the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In claiming "ethics is first philosophy," Levinas helps overcome the perceived indifference to ethical concerns among post-modern thinkers. However, it is often overlooked that this claim is as much about philosophy as it is about the importance of ethics. The dissertation explains why Levinas' philosophy turns to ethics and what philosophy is capable of once it has adopted this ethical figure. ;The first section is devoted to Levinas' Totality and Infinity. There, (...) Levinas argues that ethics reorients philosophy by accomplishing the metaphysical desire for beings as such, what Levinas calls the absolutely other. A reading of Jacques Derrida's essay "Violence and Metaphysics" shows that Totality and Infinity is profoundly determined by a theological conceptuality and correlatively by forgetting the ontological difference. This suggests that the primacy of ethics depends on an anterior instance, thus rendering Levinas' first philosophy secondary. ;The second section of the dissertation positions Levinas' ethical philosophy within the tradition of phenomenological philosophy and its quest for a subject who is first or ultimate. Whereas Husserl practiced the reduction to the point where it reached consciousness, Levinas practices it to a point beyond that: responsibility. Ethics intervenes as a supplement to Husserl's phenomenology: ethics is added to phenomenology in order to explain its possibility at the same time as it replaces phenomenology with ethical descriptions. This section concludes by contesting the privilege that Levinas accords to ethics in the phenomenology of the subject. It does so by showing that Heidegger's Dasein analytic offers phenomenological philosophy a similar subject. ;The third section argues that in responsibility, phenomena appear which do not appear when the subject is consciousness. These include religious phenomena. The phenomenology of responsibility can thus be the basis for a philosophy of religion. Like the modern philosophy of religion figured in Hegel and Nietzsche, it articulates the rationality or significance of religious phenomena without recourse to the dogmatic authority of faith or historical tradition. However, a philosophy of religion issued from Levinas surpasses the origin of this tradition in the death of God and end of metaphysics. (shrink)