Cellular dedifferentiation is an important developmental response to perturbations in morphogenesis. In the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum this process gives cells the flexibility, when multicellular development is disrupted, to respond to nutrients and reinitiate vegetative growth. Recent studies in D. discoideum described by Soll and colleagues(1) show that genes previously thought to be expressed only during spore germination are also expressed during induced dedifferentiation, suggesting that similar molecular mechanisms are involved in these two developmental processes. It should now be (...) possible to determine whether the developmental programs that control dedifferentiation during spore germination also control conversion of cell types in the multicellular organism. (shrink)

We show that the theory of the partial ordering of the computably enumerable degrees in any given nontrivial interval is undecidable and has uncountably many 1-types.

Posner characterizes the current preoccupation with moral and constitutional theory as an evasion of the real need of American law, which is for a greater understanding of the social, economic, and political facts out of which great legal controversies arise, and advocates a rebuilding of the law on the basis of systematic empirical inquiry.

This elevating pull of an ethics that can account for the relation of self and other without reducing either term is the central theme of these essays.

This book is a defense of realism about truth.

The reputation and influence of Emmanuel Levinas has grown powerfully. Well known in France in his lifetime, he has since his death become widely regarded as a major European moral philosopher profoundly shaped by his Jewish background. A pupil of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas pioneered new forms of exegesis with his post-modern readings of the Talmud, and as an ethicist brought together religious and non-religious, Jewish and non-Jewish traditions of contemporary thought. Richard A. Cohen has written a book which (...) uses Levinas' work as its base but goes on to explore broader questions of interpretation in the context of text-based ethical thinking. Levinas' reorientation of philosophy is considered in critical contrast to alternative contemporary approaches such as those found in modern science, psychology, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Ricoeur. Cohen explores a manner of philosophizing which he terms 'ethical exegesis'. (shrink)

Richard A. Watson - Descartes: A Biography - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 159-161 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Richard Watson Washington University Desmond M. Clarke. Descartes: A Biography. New York-Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xi + 507. $40.00. This is an excellent critical and contextual presentation of the development of Descartes's thought in its historical context. No recent biographer has done as well in providing (...) names, dates, and outlines of the ideas and positions of thinkers contemporary with Descartes who influenced, criticized, and annoyed him. The persona that emerges from this study is that of an irascible, belligerent egotist of colossal proportions: a man who never admitted a mistake, who sometimes was almost clinically paranoid, who picked fights well beyond reasonable cause and need, who trashed two of the intellectual giants of his day , who tried to take credit for the conception of Pascal's experiment concerning the weight of the atmosphere (in fact, lots of people.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE BARTH LEGACY: NEW ATHANASIUS OR ORIGEN REDIVIVUS? :A RESPONSE TO T. F. TORRANCE RICHARD A. MULLER Fuller Theological Semma1·y Pasadena, California I I N A SERIES of papers, essays, and introductions reaching back some twenty years, T. F. Torrance has provided an interpretation of the place arnd of the importance of Karl Barth not only in the theological debates of the twentieth cent- -bury but also and (...) more importantly in the who1e of the history of doctrine. According to Torrance, Barth is not only the greatest theologian since Schleiermacher and the most important thinker of our own times, he is also the greatest theologian since Athanasius, the heir of the Reformers, and the thinker on whose insights our theological future must rest.1 In these essays by Torrance, the characterization of Barthian thought as "neo1 Cf. Karl Barth, Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920-1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith, with an introduction (1962) by T. F. Torrance (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 7, 9-10; T. F. Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction (London: SCJ'vf, 1965), pp. 99, 103-105, 111-115; idem, ReaUty and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982),,pp. 14-15; idem, Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), pp. vii-x, 279-283; idem, "The Legacy of Karl Barth (1886· 1986)," in Scottish Journal of Theology, 39 (1986): 289-308 and "Karl Barth and the Latin Heresy," in 39 (1986): 461-482. The latter two essays draw together themes from the earlier words..Although the term "Latin heresy" does not seem to have been used by Torrance in any of his previous writings, it does represent a continuation of the attack on medieval and postReformation theology :first presented in his introduction to The School of Faith: The Oatechisms of the Reformed Ohi1rch (N.Y.: Harper, 1959), pp. lxx-lxxix, and elaborated in Space, Time and IncM'nation (London: Oxford, 1969). 673 674 RICHARD A, MULLER orthodox" takes on a new meaning. Barth himself rejected the term, just as (we might guess) Calvin or Chemnitz would have!'ejected any claim that their great dogmatic projects were the proper basis for a new orthodoxy in the sixteenth century. Both Calvin and Chemnitz stood for right teaching, for ortho-doxy, but neither would have presented their own views-no matter how correct they believed their exegesis and interpretation to be-as a final ground for the establishment of future theological formulations. Both in the Reformation aind in the twentieth century, it has been the next generation, the generation of the students of the great teaicher, that has moved definitely from the system of the teaicher to the establishment of a new orthodoxy. And in all fairness to the Protestant orthodox of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we must l'ecognize that they neither exalted the theology of the Reformation to the status of a new orthodoxy (ovcer against the faith of the church throughout the centuries) nor identified any single theological system, whether that of Calvin or that of Chemnitz or of a later, more fully "orthodox" and "scholastic" thinker like Polanus or Gerhard, as an exhaustive statement of theological Ol1thodoxy for the chmch.2 In the writings of Torrance, we encounter this second-generation sense of orthodoxy but, I believe, without the caution characteristic of the Protestant orthodox of the seventeenth century. In the following essay, I propose to examine the origin and the subsequent trajectory of Torrance's views on Barth's relationship to the tradition, with attention to his view of Barth's patristic roots and of Barth's position over against the western theological mind. In the concluding sections of the essay, I will try to provide a corrective to Torrance's approach to the history of 1Christian doctrine and, on the basis of that correc-. tive, an alternative view of the lega1cy of Karl Barth. Torrance's pronouncements concerning the role of Barth in 2 Cf. Richard A. Muller, " Scholasticism Protestant and Catholic: Francis Turretin on the Object and Principles of Theology," in Ohuroh Historv, 55 ( 1986) ; 19::!-205, THE BARTH LEGACY 675 the history of Christian doctrine and, therefore, in its future development a11e based on an... (shrink)

In papers published in the 25 years following his famous 1964 proof John Bell refined and reformulated his views on locality and causality. Although his formulations of local causality were in terms of probability, he had little to say about that notion. But assumptions about probability are implicit in his arguments and conclusions. Probability does not conform to these assumptions when quantum mechanics is applied to account for the particular correlations Bell argues are locally inexplicable. This account involves no superluminal (...) action and there is even a sense in which it is local, but it is in tension with the requirement that the direct causes and effects of events are nearby. (shrink)

Rare is the scholarship that does not somewhere refer to Hobbes's philosophy as a system, but nowhere does Hobbes refer to his philosophy by this term. Since Hobbes in most recognized for his moral and political philosophy, and since the interpretation of his moral and political concepts varies with the variety of views about the systematic relationship between his political and natural philosophy, the issue of system is the most crucial in Hobbes interpretation. ;The standard interpretation is that Hobbes's anthropology (...) is the direct logical result of his mechanistic materialism, that his thoroughly modern moral and political philosophy is the logical consequence of that anthropology. Taylor and Strauss for different reasons denied a systematic relationship between Hobbes's political and natural philosophy, thus ushering in almost fifty years of Hobbes research following their insights, as well as a new generation of scholars who sought to render Hobbes's philosophy systematic by finding in his works new principles of systematization. But as late as 1982, even Willms noted that a comprehensive book on system had not yet emerged. ;This dissertation attempts to show that Hobbes's political philosophy is demonstrative, as he intended it to be, only if it is based upon his natural philosophy. Chapter one traces the history of the system concept to the Seventeenth Century to find an historically accurate operational description of system against which to view Hobbes's philosophy. Chapter Two spells out the systematicity in Hobbes's philosophy and shows how the formal concept of system developed in Chapter One applies accurately to Hobbes's philosophy. Chapter Three confirms the view of Hobbes's system established in Chapter Two by showing that Hobbes's view of Aristotle depends upon his own view of philosophic system. Chapter Four argues that Hobbes did intend a system in which the political philosophy depends upon the natural and that, as a result, Hobbes's moral and political concepts, particularly natural right and natural law, are not "moral" in any traditionally recognized sense. (shrink)

... and Normative Epistemology The Distinction Between Metaepistemology and Normative Epistemology Although this terminology is relatively new, ...

The present article argues: that to support the primary aim of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, which is to establish the primacy of practical reason for religion, Kant elaborates and assigns to it a social ethics. Contrary to the tired adage that without religious foundation ethics must collapse, the reverse is actually the case: without ethical foundation religion must collapse, degenerating into dogmatism, superstition and fanaticism. To ground and concretize the link between ethics and religion Kant elaborates a (...) three layered “anthropology” of human sociality upon which religion builds its communities wherein holiness consists above all in the solidarity of ethical striving to achieve virtue for each and justice for all. Despite his good intentions, however, and independent of the question of the legitimacy of ethical religion, Kant fails in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone owing to the imposition of a debilitating formalism owing to an undiminished allegiance to the epistemological strictures and structures—the Transcendental Idealism—of the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

Alternative oppositions to “infinity” and “totality” are suggested, examined and shown to be inadequate by comparison to the sense of the opposition contained in title Totality and Infinity chosen by Levinas. Special attention is given to this opposition and the priority given to ethics in relation Kant’s distinction between understanding and reason and the priority given by Kant to ethics. The book’s title is further illuminated by means of its first sentence, and the first sentence is illuminated by means of (...) the book’s title. Special attention is given to explicating the nature and significance of the hitherto unnoticed “informal” fallacy contained in the first sentence. (shrink)

Brosio (social foundations of education, Ball State U.) describes and analyzes a number of philosophies that can provide a solid framework for the construction of critical, democratic educational theory and practice. Theorists discussed include the classical Greek thinkers, Marx, Dewey, the existentialists, liberationists, Freire, politics of identity thinkers, and postmodernists. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

My discussion is presented in three steps: The present position of the Catholic Church; why it is a relatively recent tradition; and the roots of the tradition.

Stimulated by these three brilliant target essays this commentary raises a few questions about the universality of the “emotions,” the cultural psychology of “natural kinds,” and the analytic deconstruction of the idea of an emotion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 407 [Access article in PDF] Reply By Margaret J. Osler and Richard A. Watson In his comments on our historiographical Notes in the October 2002 issue of JHP, A. P. Martinich misrepresents our position by erroneously claiming that we presume a sharp dichotomy between the analytic history of philosophy and the historical history of philosophy. Neither of us accepts such (...) a premise. Once that misreading is eliminated there are few disagreements between each of us and Martinich.We agree that any meaningful history of philosophy must be both philosophically sophisticated and historically grounded. History without philosophy would be nothing but chronicle; history of philosophy without historical context would describe a series of moves, but explain nothing. A desideratum of both history and philosophy is careful reading, exposition, and analysis of texts.... (shrink)

Written and set on the banks of the Neva, St Petersburg Dialogues is a startlingly relevant analysis of the human prospect in the twenty-first century. As the literary critic George Steiner has remarked, "the age of the Gulag and of Auschwitz, of famine and ubiquitous torture... nuclear threat, the ecological laying waste of our planet, the leap of endemic, possibly pandemic, illness out of the very matrix of libertarian progress" is exactly what Joseph de Maistre foretold. In the Dialogues Maistre (...) addressed a number of topics that are discussed briefly or not at all in his other works already available in English. These include an apologetic for traditional Christian beliefs about providence, reflections on the social role of the public executioner and the "divinity" of war, a critique of John Locke's sensationalist psychology, meditations on prayer and sacrifice, and a mini-course on "illuminism." The literary form is that of the "philosophical conversation" – one that allowed Maistre to be deliberately provocative and to indulge his taste for paradox, a "methodical extravagance" that he judged particularly appropriate for the eighteenth-century salon. Translator and editor Richard Lebrun provides a full scholarly edition of this classic work, complete with an introduction, chronology, critical bibliography, and generous explanatory notes. The Dialogues will be of interest to scholars of literary history as well as the history of ideas. (shrink)