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)

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)

This study examines the importance of economies of scale in measuring the concentration-profits relationship. Firms are grouped into industries facilitating within industry analyses. Replacement cost disclosures are utilized to evaluate any price change bias resulting from the use of traditional accounting statements. This study produces no indication of economies of scale in high or low concentration industries. In medium concentration industries there is a weak tendency for larger firms to have higher returns. This result cannot, however, be attributed to (...) scale economies. Observed replacement cost price adjustments are not randomly distributed across firms. (shrink)

In 1958, economist A. W. Phillips published an article describing what he observed to be the inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment; subsequently, the "Phillips curve" became a central concept in macroeconomic analysis and policymaking. But today's Phillips curve is not the same as the original one from fifty years ago; the economy, our understanding of price setting behavior, the determinants of inflation, and the role of monetary policy have evolved significantly since then. In this book, some of the (...) top economists working today reexamine the theoretical and empirical validity of the Phillips curve in its more recent specifications. The contributors consider such questions as what economists have learned about price and wage setting and inflation expectations that would improve the way we use and formulate the Phillips curve, what the Phillips curve approach can teach us about inflation dynamics, and how these lessons can be applied to improving the conduct of monetary policy. ContributorsLawrence Ball, Ben Bernanke, Oliver Blanchard, V. V. Chari, William T. Dickens, Stanley Fischer, Jeff Fuhrer, Jordi Gali, Michael T. Kiley, Robert G. King, Donald L. Kohn, Yolanda K. Kodrzycki, Jane Sneddon Little, Bartisz Mackowiak, N. Gregory Mankiw, Virgiliu Midrigan, Giovanni P. Olivei, Athanasios Orphanides, Adrian R. Pagan, Christopher A. Pissarides, Lucrezia Reichlin, Paul A. Samuelson, Christopher A. Sims, Frank R. Smets, Robert M. Solow, Jürgen Stark, James H. Stock, Lars E. O. Svensson, John B. Taylor, Mark W. Watson. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. By G.E.R. Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvi + 175. Price not given.The Art of the Han Essay: Wang Fu's Ch'ien-Fu Lun. By Anne Behnke Kinney. Tempe: Center for Asian Studies, Arizona State University, 1990. Pp. xi + 154. Paper $10.00.The Autobiography of Jamgön Kongtrul: A Gem of Many Colors. By Jamgön Kongtrul (...) Lodrön Thayé and translated by Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima). Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. xxii + 549. Price not given.Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyō. By William R. LaFleur. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xiii + 173. Paper $14.95.Becoming the Compassion Buddha: Tantric Mahamudra for Everyday Life. By Lama Thubten Yeshe, edited by Robina Courtin, and foreword by Geshe Lhundub Sopa. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. xi + 194. Paper $14.95.Between Two Worlds East and West: An Autobiography. By J. N. Mohanty. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 134. Hardcover RS 525.00.The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ. Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Institut Monumenta Serica and China-Zentrum; and Nettetal, Germany: Steyler Verlag, 2002. Pp. 391. EUR 40.00.Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China: Plurality and Synthesis. By Volker Scheid. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 407. Hardcover $69.95. Paper $23.95.Confucian Feminist: Memoirs of Zeng Baosun (1893-1978). Translated and adapted by Thomas L. Kennedy. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002. Pp. xxi + 170. Price not given.Consciousness Studies: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. By K. Ramakrishna Rao. Jefferson (North Carolina) and London: McFarland and Company, 2002. Pp. 367. Hardcover $65.00.Constituting Communities: Theravāda Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Edited by John Clifford Holt, Jacob N. Kinnard, and Jonathan S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 224. Hardcover $65.50. Paper $21.95.Developments in Indian Philosophy from Eighteenth Century Onwards: Classical and Western. By Daya Krishna. Volume X Part 1 of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, edited by D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New [End Page 110] Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 2001. Pp. xxiii + 417. Hardcover RS 1200.East and West: Identità e dialogo interculturale. By Giangiorgio Pasqualotto. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2003. Pp. 210. EUR 16.00.Effortless Action: Wu-wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. By Edward Slingerland. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 352. Price not given.Encountering Kā lī: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West. Edited by Rachel Fell McDermott and Jeffrey J. Kripal. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xviii + 321. Hardcover $55.00, £37.95. Paper $21.95, £15.95.Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. Edited by Antonio S. Cua. New York and London: Routledge, 2003. Pp. xx + 1020. Hardcover $150.00.Essays on Indian Philosophy. By J. N. Mohanty and edited by Purushottama Bilimoria. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxxvii + 347. Paper RS 525.00.Faith, Humor, and Paradox. By Ignacio L. Götz. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2002. Pp. 136. Hardcover $61.95.Four Illusions: Candrakīrti's Advice for Travelers on the Bodhisattva Path. Translated by Karen C. Lang. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xv + 240. Price not given.The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory. By David R. Loy. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 223. Paper $16.95.The Hidden History of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. By Bryan J. Cuevas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 328. Price not given.Huang Di nei jing su wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. By Paul U. Unschuld. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 520. Hardcover $75.00, £52.00.In Dewey's Wake: Unfinished Work of Pragmatic Reconstruction. Edited by William J. Gavin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Pp. vi + 249. Hardcover $71.50. Paper $23.95.Knowledge and Freedom in Indian Philosophy. By Tara Chatterjea. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002. Pp. xvi + 159. Hardcover... (shrink)

Kant repeatedly uses the biangle as an example of an impossible figure. In this paper, I offer an account of these passages and their significance for the possibility of geometry as a science. According to Kant, the constructibility of the biangle would signal the failure of geometry. Whereas Wolff derives the no-biangle proposition from the axiom that between two points there can be only one straight line, Kant gives it axiomatic status as a synthetic a priori principle possessing immediate certainty. (...) Because we are unable to generate a schema for the biangle, the failure of the attempt to construct it is intuitively clear. The parallel between mathematical and empirical concepts is instructive because both involve the synthesis of disparate intuitions into a unity. We do not, strictly speaking, even possess a well-formed concept of the biangle, because its representation cannot fulfill certain basic requirements of concept formation. (shrink)

In a contemporary world where political, environmental, and personal crises succeed one another without respite, it is no surprise that many resort to either nihilism or despair. From the Heart gives us reasons why we should still care--about anything. It finds support in authors as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche and Saint Augustine, Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Ove Knausgaard, and in modern and contemporary artists such as Tehching Hsieh, Bas Jan Ader, and Christian Boltanski-all of whom provide material for a rich, (...) rewarding, heartfelt meditation. It speaks personally about "big questions," drawing on memoir, the arts, philosophy, religious traditions, and science. What does it mean for a heart to fail, to break, and what does it take to recover? Jeffrey Kosky shows us that attentive immersion in the natural and social worlds brings joy in both sickness and health, dying and living. (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 phenomenological project of Jean-Luc Marion’s Being Given (namely, to free phenomenological possibility to the unconditional self-giving of all phenomena) should be distinguished from the theological project of his God without Being (to think God unconditionally and absolutely). In freeing phenomenological possibility to the self-giving of all phenomena (on the model of the saturated phenomenon), and in proposing a new figure of the subject who receives phenomena (the gifted), Marion’s phenomenology provides the conceptual means for a philosophy of religion that (...) admits the phenomenonality of unconditional revelation. And yet, thereremain striking parallels between the unconditional, self-giving phenomenon as it is described in the phenomenology of Being Given and the unconditional, self-giving God of the theological God without Being. This essay concludes by offering a framework for interpreting these parallels without claiming that the saturated phenomenon transforms phenomenology into theology and without claiming that phenomenological givenness limits revelation to its philosophical possibility. (shrink)

Levinas holds that ethics provides a figure of philosophical thought that is not ordered metaphysically and so allows us to explicate the significance of God whose fate is not linked with that of metaphysics, and his descrip- tion of ethics permits philosophy to bypass historical revelations pre- served by religious traditions as it articulates this significance of God. Nevertheless, Levinas's attempt to save the name "God" for that which responsibility witnesses is troubled in several ways: the responsible self cannot tell, (...) and cannot tell us, whether its responsibility witnesses God since (1) both it and God are outside the order (metaphysics and consciousness) where identification would be possible and (2) the anonymity of this God and the trauma suffered by the self are disturbingly close to the menace of the anonymous il y a as that anonymity has been described in Levinas's earlier work. (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)

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)

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)

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.

Books Received listing for: American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly: Journal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. Winter2013, Vol. 87 Issue 1, p219-220. 2p.

An exploration of how the writings of Jürgen Habermas lend philosophical support to the universal validity of reason, thus reinforcing the foundation of humanism.

Exploring the concepts of ethics, morality, and decision-making for the law enforcement community, Decision Point: Real-Life Ethical Dilemmas in Law Enforcement offers an inside look at the difficult challenges officers confront every day as they face ethical decisions that could drastically alter the course of their careers. Through a series of real-life vignettes, the book reviews specific scenarios, the actual decisions that were made, and the consequences and implications of these decisions. Focusing on the critical thinking needed for making appropriate (...) decisions, it retrospectively discusses considerations that were or should have been evaluated at the time. An engaging text ideal for classroom use, the book offers discussion questions at the end of each chapter that can be used as assignments, group breakout discussions, or professor-facilitated discussions. (shrink)

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)

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)

We take our bearings from Francesco Negri — Although many persons attribute the origin of letter writing to various causes, I however believe that one to be closer to the truth that we have received, handed down by memory, from the ancient stories of Turpilius: namely, that the letter was invented for no other purpose than that we should make absent friends once more present [absentes amicos presentes redderemus] and that by regarding [intuentes] their letters we mightfor a time restore (...) the friendship interrupted by intervals of time and space; for since friendship is accustomed to making its foundation in daily companionship,when this thing is missing it seems indeed to weaken not a little.and hear in this passage the resonance of Aristotle:Is it then the same way with friends as with lovers, for whom seeing [to horon] the beloved is their greatest contentment, and the thing they choose over the other senses, since it is especially through seeing that love is present and comes to be present, so that for friends, too, living together [suzèn] is the most choiceworthy thing? For friendship is a sharing in common [koinònia]. (EN 1171b29–33)The audible connection with Aristotle is faint. Negri’s work is securely placed against the background of the increasing formalization of the art of letter writing in the Middle Ages and its Renaissance development, in which he figured prominently. The genealogy that he proposes, whose forebear is an all but forgotten Roman playwright, belongs to an account of literary tradition in which Cicero is the exemplary figure. Nonetheless, it is in St. Jerome that he finds the likely source of his attribution. (shrink)

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

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)

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)

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.

Technology has expanded genomic research and the complexity of extracted gene-related information. Health-related genomic incidental findings pose new dilemmas for nurse researchers regarding the ethical application of disclosure to participants. Consequently, informed consent specific to incidental findings is recommended. Critical Social Theory is used as a guide in recognition of the changing meaning of informed consent and to serve as a framework to inform nursing of the ethical application of disclosure consent in genomic nursing research practices.