New concepts may prove necessary to profit from the avalanche of sequence data on the genome, transcriptome, proteome and interactome and to relate this information to cell physiology. Here, we focus on the concept of large activity-based structures, or hyperstructures, in which a variety of types of molecules are brought together to perform a function. We review the evidence for the existence of hyperstructures responsible for the initiation of DNA replication, the sequestration of newly replicated origins of replication, cell division (...) and for metabolism. The processes responsible for hyperstructure formation include changes in enzyme affinities due to metabolite-induction, lipid-protein affinities, elevated local concentrations of proteins and their binding sites on DNA and RNA, and transertion. Experimental techniques exist that can be used to study hyperstructures and we review some of the ones less familiar to biologists. Finally, we speculate on how a variety of in silico approaches involving cellular automata and multi-agent systems could be combined to develop new concepts in the form of an Integrated cell (I-cell) which would undergo selection for growth and survival in a world of artificial microbiology. (shrink)

Most philosophers who have expressed a view about whether forgiveness is compatible with forgivers’ continuing to punish, or support the punishment of, people who have wronged them hold that forgiveness is compatible with punishing or favouring punishment of wrongdoers. I argue that whether forgiveness entails forbearing punishment depends on which of two senses of forgiveness is operative. On the first, sentiment-based sense of forgiveness as consisting essentially in a change of heart on the part of a victim, a victim can, (...) I submit, forgive while continuing to punish or to support the punishment of a person who has wronged her. On the second sense of forgiveness as consisting in debt remission whether or not accompanied by a change of heart, the state’s remission of the entirety of criminal offenders’ punishment qualifies as forgiveness and, moreover, the state could not forgive offenders in this sense while continuing to punish them. (shrink)

This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.

Au Moyen Âge, les rapports entre savoirs théorique et pratique dans la mesure des champs sont difficiles à appréhender. L’article examine d’une part l’évolution de la géométrie depuis les premiers traités de l’époque carolingienne jusqu’à l’apparition de la geometria practica, puis l’évolution de ce dernier genre, d’autre part la pratique effective des mesureurs telle qu’on la reconstitue à partir d’une documentation évasive. On observe que les techniques de mesure ne relèvent jamais de la géométrie savante, euclidienne ou pratique, malgré les (...) tentatives de quelques savants à partir du xiii e siècle. (shrink)

Il s'agit d'un travail consacré à Heidegger en tant que ce dernier s'est donné pour tâche de frayer le chemin menant à une pensée post-métaphysique. C'est cette pensée qui est caractérisée comme "pensée en souffrance" au double sens de pensée à venir, qui n'est pas comme telle programmable et à laquelle il s'agit seulement de se préparer, et de pensée cherchant à répondre à l'attente d'une humanité soumise à la dévastation et en recherche de salut. Françoise Dastur a salué ce (...) texte en ces termes : "Ecrit dans une langue claire et élégante, et s'appuyant sur une lecture informée et approfondie de l'oeuvre entière de Heidegger, à laquelle on sent que l'auteur a consacré de longues années de méditation, cet essai se présente comme une tentative d'appropriation personnelle de sa pensée, et comme une mise en relief de ses axes principaux.". (shrink)

Cynthia Freeland’s investigation of four kinds of ‘fidelity’ in portraiture is cut across by more general philosophical concerns. One is about what might be called the expression of persons--the persons or ‘inner selves’ of portrait subjects and of portrait artist: whether either is possible across each of the four kinds of fidelity, and whether these two kinds of expression are in tension. More fundamental is the problem of telling how self-expression is at all possible in any of these forms. Finally, (...) she wonders how photography affects all these questions. This comment addresses portraiture not so much in terms of the four fidelities, but with another quartet of concepts: four ordinary types of ‘display’, in terms of which we see how artists’ self-expression is possible in all these forms, also including photography. Its key idea is that portraits are displays simply by being pictures or sculptures, which are kinds of artifacts, hence things that we perceive as having intentional affordance: that is, as being intentionally made ‘for’ something. (shrink)

La notion de chair s’élabore chez Merleau-Ponty, à l’encontre du primat husserlien du toucher, dans l’articulation du toucher et du voir. C’est par cette articulation, ce recouvrement l’un par l’autre des champs sensoriels que Merleau-Ponty peut penser la chair comme chair du monde, élément de l’Être. L’auto-appréhension charnelle doit se comprendre d’abord selon une visibilité errante, dans la transitivité des regards qui se voient et s’échangent le paysage commun de leurs vues. Mais, remontant au cœur même de ce « transitivisme (...) », c’est dans la rencontre des corps, dans leur enlacement, que Le visible et l’invisible décrit au plus près l’opération de cette réversibilité. Naissance du monde dans la figure d’une scène primitive où les corps se donnant l’un à l’autre ouvrent un espacement originaire. Cette réflexivité essentiellement est inaccomplie, les corps ne se touchent que dans l’écart qui les unit. La chair, Merleau-Ponty y insiste, ne se rejoint que dans l’immi­nence d’une auto-affection toujours différée, par là elle est différenciée, polymorphe, et elle demeure ouverte. De cette ouverture de la chair naît l’expression. La voix s’élève dans une autre réflexivité, celle d’un sonore qui s’entend et, plus proprement, celle des voix qui s’écoutent. Incarnation sonore, la voix est la chair vive du sens. Entre la caresse et la voix, c’est à un même mouvement de réflexivité et d’expressivité charnelle que Merleau-Ponty nous fait donc assister, un même élan de la chair qui s’exhausse de son anonymat élémentaire pour naître à soi dans l’expression. (shrink)

The emerging view of early dorso‐ventral patterning of amphibian embryos is that two opposing gradients of dorsalising and ventralising secreted factors are necessary. while several transcription factors acting upstream or downstream of the dorsalising molecules have been identified, until recently little was known about the transcriptional response to ventralising signals. Now two groups describe the identification of related homeodomain proteins, Xvent‐1 and Vox, which are able to convert dorsal cells of Xenopus embryos into more ventral ones(1,2).

No. South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25(1) 2006: 48-61.

Despite any shortcomings of Kant's transcendental philosophy, the spirit of Kant's approach is correct. In particular, Kant is correct to believe an accurate account of the types of “access” humans possess to internal and empirical content should form the groundwork for epistemic and ethical investigation and epistemic and ethical investigations cannot successfully circumvent this groundwork. In this context, the term “access” concerns the mental processes that render internal and external experience possible. In supporting the above claims, this article outlines and (...) defends what can be considered a weak version of Kant's transcendental approach. This weaker approach does not require the achievement of synthetic a priori judgments, which permit deductive conclusions concerning possible experience. (shrink)

Au cours des deux ou trois dernières décennies, l’éthique théologique a vu se développer aux Etats-Unis un fort mouvement “communautarien”, inspiré particulièrement par l’oeuvre marquante du théologien méthodiste Stanley Hauerwas. Selon la thèse essentielle de Hauerwas, l’éthique chrétienne consiste à vivre de la foi en Jésus Christ, et cela ne peut être mis en oeuvre de manière authentique que dans une communauté qui se conforme à l’Evangile. Hauerwas ne s’intéresse pas tant à l’action politique qu’à la fidélité chrétienne. Il préconise (...) une politique de la communauté chrétienne, apte à former le caractère selon sa vision propre, ses valeurs et ses relations. Cependant, il y a une contradiction entre l’opinion de Hauerwas selon laquelle l’éthique chrétienne ne peut avoir d’influence significative sur les cultures et sur les gouvernements, et l’enseignement social catholique qui tient que l’action politique des chrétiens peut faire progresser la dignité humaine et le bien commun, au plan national et international.During the last twenty or thirty years, theological ethics witnessed the development of a strong “communitarian” movement in the United States, inspired, in particular, by the seminal work of the Methodist theologian Stanley Hauerwas. According to the main thesis of Hauerwas, Christian ethics consists in living one’s faith in Jesus Christ, and this can only be done in an authentic way in a community based on the Gospel. Hauerwas is not so much interested in political action as in Christian fidelity. He recommends a “politics” of the Christian community, capable of forming character according to its own vision, its values, and its relationships. There is a contradiction, however, between Hauerwas’ opinion according to which Christian ethics cannot have a significant influence on cultures or governments, and Catholic social teaching which holds that the political action of Christians can advance human dignity and the common good at the national and international level. (shrink)

In this paper we provide a formal description of what it means to be in a local or partial information-state. Starting from the notion of locality in a relational structure, we define so-called adaptive gen- erated submodels. The latter are then shown to yield an adaptive logic wherein the derivability of Pφ is naturally interpreted as a core property of being in a state in which one holds the information that φ.

Descartes with his sharp separation of the mental and the physical set the stage for the philosophy of mind for the next 350 years. Philosopher Patrick T. Mackenzie finds in the later writings of Wittgenstein the suggestion that Descartes got off on the wrong foot. Following Wittgenstein's lead, Mackenzie argues that instead of analyzing our human nature as a composite of mind and body, we should view ourselves as whole persons. One of the dividends of this approach to the (...) mind-body problem is that it provides us with a resolution to the problem of human freedom—i.e., how can a human being be free if his or her body (including the brain) belongs to a deterministic world? Mackenzie here argues that the person is largely free even though the movements of the body are determined by neurophysiological events. He takes the same approach to the philosophy of mind as that taken by M.R.Bennett and P.M.S.Hacker in their recent and controversial book, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Mackenzie's approach is, however, much more accessible. Students of philosophy and philosophers interested in the problem of human freedom will welcome Mackenzie's fresh approach, especially those disenchanted by the present list of mind-body "isms.". (shrink)

This book is about what makes law possible. A stranger to contemporary legal practice might think such a book unnecessary, but the eight authors of this book share the view that what makes law possible is under siege today. The authors also share the hope that by exploring how law is a humanistic practice that involves whole persons, the siege will be reversed. The pathbreaking work of University of Michigan Law professor Joseph Vining provides the authors' focus for their varied (...) analyses of how law works not through force but, instead, through affinity.Vining's four books and other writings, spanning four decades, reveal the hidden connections by which men and women freely create and sustain a world of meaning through the phenomena we associate with law. Drawing on legal philosophy, theology, musicology, and other humanistic disciplines, the authors join Vining in discovering how law is, as Vining has written, “evidence of view and belief far stronger than academic statement or introspection can provide.” Law as Vining and the other authors reveal it is evidence of our better selves, not of the totalizing and brutalizing selves humans are capable of becoming, sometimes even under cover of law.In addition to the three editors, the book's authors are Joseph Vining, Rev. John McCausland, Hon. John T. Noonan, Jr., Steven Smith, and James Boyd White.Lawyers and all who care about law, the human future, and what human freedom can do to connect person to person as valued will find much to ponder in the chapters of this book. By avoiding jargon and the cliché, the authors follow Vining's lead in illuminating the deep springs of law's vitality and authority. (shrink)

The Don W. Davis Program in Ethical Leadership is seeking manuscripts for the “Challenges to Digital Media Flourishing” symposium. Submission deadline is 15 April 2024.[Exact Symposium dates to be...

Patrick L. Miller - Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician-King - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 165-166 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Patrick Lee Miller Duquesne University Carl Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician-King. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 665. Cloth, $180.00. Archytas of Tarentum has in some ages been considered a major philosopher. He was one of the three (...) most important early Pythagoreans—along with Philolaus and Pythagoras himself—and so his reputation has risen and fallen with the popularity of this movement. When Pythagoreanism captivated some Romans at the end of the Republic, they championed him as a native talent; much later, some medieval Europeans inflated him into one of the great wise men of the ancient world. But Pythagoreanism has ebbed in recent centuries, and Archytas is now known only to specialists in ancient philosophy, and even then only by acquaintance from a few passages of Plato and.. (shrink)

By drawing on the work of Ivan Illich, John Holt, and Jacques Ellul, one can see that alternatives to the modern concept of education are desirable and practical. The homeschooling movement enables teachers, parents, and children to step outside the concept of education and discover how it is possible to teach and learn in various ways throughout their lives, not just through organized learning in conventional schools. By using homeschooling as the lens to view the concept of producing "good citizens" (...) (the stated purpose for compulsory schooling), new possibilities for achieving lifelong learning can be seen. This analysis also suggests how technology can become a means to achieve various personal ends, rather than just an expansion of educational techniques to use on people. (shrink)

Meiosis is the process by which diploid germ cells divide to produce haploid gametes for sexual reproduction. The process is highly conserved in eukaryotes, however the recent availability of mouse models for meiotic recombination has revealed surprising regulatory differences between simple unicellular organisms and those with increasingly complex genomes. Moreover, in these higher eukaryotes, the intervention of physiological and sex-specific factors may also influence how meiotic recombination and progression are monitored and regulated. This review will focus on the recent studies (...) involving mouse mutants for meiosis, and will highlight important differences between traditional model systems for meiosis (such as yeast) and those involving more complex cellular, physiological and genetic criteria. BioEssays 23:996–1009, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

In this paper incomplete data sets, or data sets with missing attribute values, have three interpretations, lost values, attribute-concept values and ‘do not care’ conditions. Additionally, the process of data mining is based on two types of probabilistic approximations, global and saturated. We present results of experiments on mining incomplete data sets using six approaches, combining three interpretations of missing attribute values with two types of probabilistic approximations. We compare our six approaches, using the error rate computed as a result (...) of ten-fold cross validation as a criterion of quality. We show that for some data sets the error rate is significantly smaller (5% level of significance) for lost values, for some data sets the smaller error rate is associated with attribute-concept values, and sometimes with ‘do not care’ conditions. Again, for some approaches the error rate is significantly smaller for saturated probabilistic approximations than for global probabilistic approximations, while for some approaches it is the other way around. Thus, for an incomplete data set, the best approach to data mining should be chosen by trying all six approaches. (shrink)