The life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum offers a unique opportunity to study signal transduction in eukaryotic cells at both the unicellular and multicellular levels of organization. Adding to the already extensive knowledge of the unicellular stages, classical and molecular genetics have begun to unravel transduction of signals controlling morphogenesis and behaviour (phototaxis and thermotaxis) in the multicellular ‘slug’ stage of the life cycle. Distributed over all seven genetic linkage groups are probably about 20, but possibly as many as 55, genes (...) of importance for slug behaviour. The encoded proteins appear from pharmacological studies and mutant phenotypes to govern transduction pathways involving the intracellular second messengers cyclic AMP, cyclic GMP, IP3 and Ca2+. Pathways from the photo‐ and thermoreceptors converge first with each other and thence, at the level of the second messengers, with those from extracellular tip activation (cyclic AMP) and inhibition (Slug Turning Factor and/or ammonia and/or adenosine) signals that control slug movement and morphogenesis. (shrink)

Trenton Merricks argues for and defends a novel version of primitivism about truth : being true is a primitive monadic but non-intrinsic property. This examination consists of the following triad: a critical discussion of Merricks’ argument for his view, a rejection of his objection against Paul Horwich’s minimalist theory of truth, and a direct objection against his view on the grounds that it entails being true is a mysterious and suspicious property. The conclusion is that Merricks’ primitivism should be (...) rejected. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture eds. by Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Mark G. ToulouseMichael R. Fisher Jr.The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, and Mark G. Toulouse LOUISVILLE: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2016. 250 pp. $25.00The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture is notable (...) for interested readers of religion and contemporary popular culture. The authors expand scholarly understandings of religion and the sacred, but [End Page 194] more important, the spaces where they appear in society by providing analysis of the religious nature of six aspects of American culture. These "meaning-making" aspects of popular culture function as "altars of worship." They are the body and sex, big business, entertainment, politics, sports, and science and technology. How religious devotion and worship are manifest in everyday life of Americans is fully examined. This book offers an alternative entry to classical secularization debates that have garnered the attention of religious scholars across fields of study. Resisting polarized battle lines in which secularization debates have positioned the death of religion on one hand, and its resilience in industrialized societies on the other hand, this book considers the idiosyncratic nature of secularization by foregrounding historical, national, and local differences that exist in various contexts.The authors argue that "religion is important to Americans. But the religion we practice is often not the religion we confess" (1, emphasis in the original). According to them, Americans basically believe in a serviceable, friendly "God" who meets their every desire and need. In contemporary American culture, the objects that are deemed to fulfill Americans' desires and passions become their God(s) and thus their religion(s). They support their argument by citing studies by the Pew Research Center on "America's Changing Religious Landscape" and "'Nones' on the Rise," which indicate a decrease in religious affiliation among adults and a notable tension between Americans' professed religious beliefs and their actual religious practices. Given these trends, they contend that Americans discover and produce religious meaning in places outside traditional or conventional sacred spaces. Consequently, they confess, Americans have "laid our fair share, if not our all" (186) on the six altars of American popular culture. Thus, though studies indicate a trending decline in traditional religious affiliations, for the authors, this does not "sound the death knell of religion" (185). Religion, they insist, exists in different shapes and practices.In The Religious Experience of Mankind (1969), the religious historian Ninian Smart offers a seven-dimensional scheme for the interpretation of religion: doctrinal, mythological, ethical, ritual, experiential, institutional, and material. This scheme is adopted in the book as a framing device for interpreting the religious nature of popular culture. The sevenfold scheme is paralleled in each of the six chapters dedicated to a particular altar. Making their case, the authors draw on and weave thinkers from across disciplines and over time as critical interlocutors—from Friedrich Nietzsche, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and Robert Bella to Cornel West, Audre Lord, and bell hooks, among many others—in examining the religious significance of popular culture.Although a truly engaging and provocative book, The Altars Where We Worship is not without challenges. Some readers may find certain categories of analysis underdeveloped. For example, what makes big business or politics sites of popular culture? This line of inquiry may raise questions for readers about what constitutes popular culture in general. Such challenges, however, do not [End Page 195] detract from the overall accomplishments and contributions this book offers the study of religion in the United States.Michael R. Fisher Jr.Vanderbilt UniversityCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Biodiversity studies comprise the systematic examination of the full array of different kinds of organisms together with the technology by which the diversity can be maintained and used for the benefit of humanity. Current basic research at the species level focuses on the process of species formation, the standing levels of species numbers in various higher taxonomic categories, and the phenomena of hyperdiversity and extinction proneness. The major practical concern is the massive extinction rate now caused by human activity, which (...) threatens losses in the esthetic quality of the world, in economic opportunity, and in vital ecosystem services. (shrink)

This paper argues that questions concerning the nature of concepts that are central in cognitive psychology are also important to epistemology and that there is more to conceptual change than mere belief revision. Understanding of epistemic change requires appreciation of the complex ways in which concepts are structured and organized and of how this organization can affect belief revision. Following a brief summary of the psychological functions of concepts and a discussion of some recent accounts of what concepts are, I (...) propose a view of concepts as complex computational structures. This account suggests that conceptual change can come in varying degrees, with the most extreme consisting of fundamental conceptual reorganizations. These degrees of conceptual change are illustrated by the development of the concept of an acid. (shrink)

"Evidence of a flight from reason is as old as human record-keeping: the fact of it certainly goes back an even longer way. Flight from science specifically, among the forms of rational inquiry, goes back as far as science itself... But rejection of reason is now a pattern to be found in most branches of scholarship and in all the learned professions."--from the introduction In the widely acclaimed Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, Paul R. (...) Gross and Norman Levitt offered a spirited response to the "science bashers," raising serious questions about the growing criticism of scientific practice from humanists and social scientists on the academic left. Now, in The Flight from Science and Reason, Gross and Levitt are joined by Martin W. Lewis to bring together a diverse and distinguished group of scholars, scientists, and experts to engage these questions from a wide variety of perspectives. The authors take on critics of science whose views range from moderate to extreme, from social constructivists to deconstructionists, from creationists and feminists to Afro-centrists. They discuss the rise of "alternative medicine" and radical environmentalism (here skewered as "ecosentimentalism"). They explain why the "uncertainty principle" does not work as a metaphor for ambiguity, and why "chaos theory" cannot be invoked without an understanding of mathematics. Throughout, they grapple with the paradox inherent in arguing with opponents who contend that reason itself, and thus logic, is suspect. Distributed for the New York Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

There have been a number of attempts to apply mechanism-related concepts to the notion of extended cognition. Such accounts appeal to the idea that extended cognitive routines are realized by mechanisms that transcend some salient border or boundary. The present paper describes some of the challenges confronting the effort to develop a mechanistic account of extended cognition. In particular, it describes five problems that must be resolved if we are to make sense of the idea that extended cognition can be (...) understood via an appeal to extended mechanisms. These problems are intended to guide the philosophical effort to develop a mechanistic account of extended cognition. (shrink)

The philosophy of chemistry has emerged in recent years as a new and autonomous field within the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. With the development of this new discipline, Eric Scerri and Grant Fisher's "Essays in Philosophy of Chemistry" is a timely and definitive guide to all current thought in this field. One of the themes of this collection is how philosophy of chemistry can make a contributions to problems of philosophy more generally, such as how chemistry and quantum chemistry contribute (...) to the philosophy of the mind. (shrink)

Substantially revised to include a wealth of new material, the second edition of this highly acclaimed work provides a concise, coherent introduction that brings structure to an increasingly fragmented and amorphous discipline. Paul R. McHugh and Phillip R. Slavney offer an approach that emphasizes psychiatry's unifying concepts while accommodating its diversity. Recognizing that there may never be a single, all-encompassing theory, the book distills psychiatric practice into four explanatory methods: diseases, dimensions of personality, goal-directed behaviors, and life stories. These (...) perspectives, argue the authors, underlie the principles and practice of all psychiatry. With an understanding of these fundamental methods, readers will be equipped to organize and evaluate psychiatric information and to develop a confident approach to practice and research. Praise for the original edition: "This brilliant book illuminates psychiatry more clearly than any other work I know.... This is the best (and the shortest) single volume on psychiatry that anyone could read."-- New England Journal of Medicine "Every psychiatry department, regardless of ideology, should build a course around this... work. Open-mindedness might become fashionable."-- Journal of Clinical Psychiatry "An elegantly reasoned and eloquently written book that enriches our understanding of clinical events.... [It provides] an opportunity to open our eyes to new possibilities."-- Hospital and Community Psychiatry. (shrink)

Heng Xian is a previously unknown text reconstructed by Chinese scholars out of a group of more than 1,200 inscribed bamboo strips purchased by the Shanghai Museum on the Hong Kong antiquities market in 1994. The strips have all been assigned an approximate date of 300 B.C.E., and Heng Xian allegedly consists of thirteen of them, but each proposed arrangement of the strips is marred by unlikely textual transitions. The most plausible hypothesis is one that Chinese scholars do not appear (...) to take seriously: that we are missing one or more strips. The paper concludes with a discussion of the hazards of studying unprovenanced artifacts that have appeared during China’s recent looting spree. I believe the time has come for scholars to ask themselves whether their work indirectly abets this destruction of knowledge. (shrink)

Der Autor zeigt auf, dass die Idee der Freiheit fur Karl Jaspers die Grundlage seines politischen Denkens und seiner politischen Ethik darstellt. Jaspers beschreibt, dass der Mensch aus Freiheit und Verantwortung heraus handeln soll, wobei die Motivatoren dafur Vernunft und Liebe seien. So kann der unbedingten Forderung entsprochen werden. Auch in der Politik soll diese Maxime umgesetzt werden. Dementsprechend ist Ethik in Freiheit die Grundlegung von Jaspers' politischem Denken. -Der Autor hat uns mit diesem Buch Karl Jaspers und seine Idee (...) der Freiheit neu nahe gebracht. Moge es viele Fruchte der Freiheit tragen und verbreiten!- "O. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Manfried Welan (Universitat fur Bodenkultur Wien)" -Der Aufgabe, eine politische Ethik bei Jaspers zu rekonstruieren, hat sich Paul R. Tarmann in vorbildlicher Weise unterzogen.- "O. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Norbert Leser + (Universitat Wien)"". (shrink)

L. J. Savage and I. J. Good have each demonstrated that the expected utility of free information is never negative for a decision maker who updates her degrees of belief by conditionalization on propositions learned for certain. In this paper Good's argument is generalized to show the same result for a decision maker who updates her degrees of belief on the basis of uncertain information by Richard Jeffrey's probability kinematics. The Savage/Good result is shown to be a special case of (...) the more general result. (shrink)

Conceptual combinations range from the utterly mundane to the sublimely creative. Mundane combinations include a myriad of adjective-noun and noun-noun juxtapositions that crop up in everyday speaking and writing, such as blue car, cooked carrots, and radio phone. Creative combinations include some of the most important theoretical constructions in science, such as sound wave, bacterial infection, and natural selection. Both mundane and creative conceptual combinations are essential to our attempts to make sense of the world and people's utterances about it. (...) This paper will show how the various aspects of conceptual combination discussed by Hampton (this volume), Shoben and Gagn. (shrink)

This article explores the notion of the Web-extended mind, which is the idea that the technological and informational elements of the Web can sometimes serve as part of the mechanistic substrate that realizes human mental states and processes. It is argued that while current forms of the Web may not be particularly suited to the realization of Web-extended minds, new forms of user interaction technology as well as new approaches to information representation do provide promising new opportunities for Web-based forms (...) of cognitive extension. In addition, it is suggested that extended cognitive systems often rely on the emergence of social practices and conventions that shape how a technology is used. Web-extended minds may thus depend on forms of socio-technical co-evolution in which social forces and factors play just as important a role as do the processes of technology design and development. (shrink)

Professor Kai Nielsen is one of the most forceful proponents of the view that theological assertions have no factual reference because they are compatible with any empirical state of affairs; no evidence, it is alleged, is allowed to count as falsification of such assertions, and therefore they spuriously purport to be what they are not. In this he follows the well-known essay by Professor Antony Flew in which the same argument was advanced, and Nielsen's own most recent contribution on the (...) subject in Religious Studies should be read against the background of his earlier controversy with Professors John Hick and George Mavrodes in The Canadian Journal of Theology. In this latest article he broadens the canvas to question the significance of applying language and concepts appropriate to the realm of empirical observation to anything that is held to transcend it; and this is the substance of Part II of his paper, in which he engages in debate with Professor Ian Crombie, treading well-worn ground that has been the subject of innumerable philosophical discussions. The rest of the paper, however, is a restatement of his earlier contention, and it is with this more limited issue that I shall be concerned in what follows. For I believe that Nielsen is wrong in two quite fundamental respects: he is mistaken in supposing that theological assertions are compatible with any empirical state of affairs: he bases his critique of theological assertions on a far too uncritical appraisal of the principles of verification and falsification in the case of ordinary factual statements. If I am right, the larger questions raised in Part II will still remain open, but it is high time that the ‘verification-falsification argument’ should be shown to be unfounded. (shrink)

Chapter 49 of the Han Feizi, entitled 'Wudu', includes one of the earliest discussions in Chinese history of the concepts of gong and si: Han Fei takes si to mean 'acting in one's own interest'. Gong is simply what opposes si. 'Acting in one's own interest' is not inherently reprehensible in Han Fei's view; but a ruler must remember why ministers propose their policies: they are concerned only with enriching themselves, and look upon the ruler as nothing more than a (...) resource to be exploited in their quest for material aggrandizement. The interests of the ministers and the ruler are diametrically opposed. Ministers hope for a comfortable career; a ruler must weed out the posers in his search for those rare and invaluable adjuvants who are genuinely capable of administering the state. In short, if si is the self-interest of the minister, gong is the self-interest of the ruler. (shrink)

Ten years after the publication of “Heng Xian and the Problem of Studying Looted Artifacts” in Dao, this rejoinder to critics begins by recapitulating my original argument, then considers the leading objections that have appeared in the interim. After dispensing with two trivial and ad hominem responses (that I am a hypocrite and an imperialist), the discussion focuses on the one serious objection, namely, that the benefits of studying looted artifacts outweigh the costs. I conclude with my reasons for disagreeing (...) with this judgment. (shrink)

Shangjun shu, a text that is especially rich in nuanced keywords, coordinates different types of power in significant sequences. Comprehending the philosophy of the text therefore requires comprehending the semantics and etymologies of these keywords. The present article is not a comprehensive discussion of power in Shangjun shu but affords a glimpse of the value of historical linguistics for a deeper understanding of philosophy and conceptual history.

This book is the authorized political biography of Kenneth Waltz. The theoretical work of Kenneth Neal Waltz (June 8, 1924 - May 12, 2013) during the last half of the twentieth century in international relations theory is known by virtually everyone in this scholarly field. He is among the few likely still to be cited in the last half of the twenty-first century. Then, as now, he no doubt has followers within the realist camp who see him as an earlier (...) luminary as well as his critics drawn to the lightning-rod quality of his work. Paul Viotti identifies the intellectual sources and experiences leading to the ideas that underlie Waltz's theoretical work. Viotti has been granted unfettered access to Waltz's files at Columbia, in his residences in Manhattan and Maine, and in archives at Oberlin, and uses these documents to paint a thorough, insightful biography bolstered by some of Waltz's previously-unexplored work. Through a series of interviews with Waltz about his life-starting with his German great-grandparents' immigration to the US in the 19th century-this biography produces personal insights into the development of his theoretical and policy-based contributions. (shrink)

In this essay, I offer a corrective to the standard reading of Hegel as a social constructivist when it comes to matters of the self by shifting the focus from the Phenomenology to his ‘Philosophy of Spirit’ and ‘Anthropology.’ There, a kind-of self or Selbstischkeit is revealed, anticipating the pre-reflective, experiential of the likes of Zahavi and, by extension, Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. I argue that Hegel's conception of the self enhances our understanding of the relationship between the pre-reflective, experiential (...) self and the self of self-consciousness, contributing to the discourse on the continuity between biological and mental life. The self, as it emerges in consciousness, traces its origins to a primarily bodily selfness which is foundational to psychical life. Habit emerges as a vital bridge between this selfness and the self of self-consciousness, offering a dynamic, dialectical framework for thinking the development of the self of self-consciousness in and out of its bodily context. (shrink)

This chapter reviews the aspects of Mencius that did and did not interest Han-dynasty writers. With the help of digital concordances, it is easy to discover that many of the passages considered crucial today were rarely, if ever, cited in the Han. These include the parable of the infant about to fall into a well (2A.6), the debate with a Mohist named Yi Zhi 夷之 (3A.5), and the concept of liangzhi 良知 (7A.15), which, since Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472–1528), has been (...) considered a cornerstone of Mencian ethics. The chapter discusses other key passages that are never mentioned in Han sources. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and thus one cannot simply infer that these passages were unknown in the Han dynasty, but it remains significant that they were not regarded as essential to understanding Mencius’s philosophy. The conclusion will explore the differences between Mencius’s reception in the Han dynasty and his Neo-Confucianized reception today. (shrink)

The philosophy of chemistry has emerged in recent years as a new and autonomous field within the Anglo-American philosophical tradition. With the development of this new discipline, Eric Scerri and Grant Fisher's "Essays in the Philosophy of Chemistry" is a timely and definitive guide to all current thought in this field. This edited volume will serve to map out the distinctive features of the field and its connections to the philosophies of the natural sciences and general philosophy of science (...) more broadly. It will be a reference for students and professional alike. Both the philosophy of chemistry and philosophies of scientific practice alike reflect the splitting of analytical and continental scholastic traditions, and some philosophers are turning for inspiration from the familiar resources of analytical philosophy to influences from the continental tradition and pragmatism. While philosophy of chemistry is practiced very much within the familiar analytical tradition, it is also capable of trail-blazing new philosophical approaches. In such a way, the seemingly disparate disciplines such as the "hard sciences" and philosophy become much more linked. (shrink)

With the benefit of the complete publication of Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France, the reception of his work by political philosophers in the English-speaking world during the late 1970s and early 1980s appears extremely confused. This reception was based on the English translations of work published in the mid-1970s, chiefly Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality Volume One, along with collections of interviews from the same period. The misunderstandings of those works were compounded by ignorance of (...) developments in his approach to politics and his understanding of power worked out in lectures from 1976 to 1979. The aim of this paper is not simply to defend Foucault against critics from that period, but to show how a more complete understanding of the evolution of his political thought might enable a better understanding of the similarities and differences between his genealogical approach to power and government and the concerns of normative political philosophy. (shrink)

In Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen contends that the American founding is fundamentally Hobbesian and that the Constitution is the application of the Hobbesian revolution concerning liberty and anthropology. I contend that Deneen fundamentally mischaracterizes the American founding. The founders and framers affirmed the necessity of consent for political authority and obligation. But they also situated the necessity of consent in the context of a morally and metaphysically realist natural law, maintained that an objective good of the whole constitutes the (...) final end of political association, and described liberty as subjection to the law of nature and the government of God. To be determined by one’s base passions was to be a slave. Moreover, their constitutional thought and the institutional design of the constitutions they built rejected Hobbes’s theory of sovereign power and the metaphysical ground on which it rests. (shrink)

In this book Paul Hinlicky suggests that to the detriment of the church as a whole Martin Luthers legacy did not unfold as he himself would have hoped or ...