ABSTRACTRecognising identity and emotion conveyed by the face is important for successful social interactions and has thus been the focus of considerable research. Debate has surrounded the extent...

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1621-1631.

Intrachromosomal recombination between direct repeats can occur either as gene conversion events, which maintain exactly the number of repeat units, or as deletions, which reduce the number of repeat units. Gene conversions are classical recombination events that utilize the standard chromosome recombination machinery. Spontaneous deletions between direct repeats are generally recA‐independent in E. coli and RAD52‐independent in S. cerevisiae. This independence from the major recombination genes does not mean that deletions form through a nonrecombinational process. Deletions have been suggested to (...) result from sister chromatid exchange at the replication fork in a recA‐independent process. The same type of exchange is proposed to be RAD52‐independent in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. RAD52‐dependent events encompass all events that involve the initial steps of a recombination reaction, which include strand invasion to form a heteroduplex intermediate. (shrink)

There is growing interest in nature-based interventions to improve human health and wellbeing. An important nascent area is exploring the potential of outdoor therapies to treat and prevent common mental health problems like depression. In this conceptual analysis on the nature–depression nexus, we distil some of the main issues for consideration when NBIs for depression are being developed. We argue that understanding the mechanisms, or ‘active ingredients’ in NBIs is crucial to understand what works and for whom. Successfully identifying modifiable (...) mediating intervention targets will pave the way for interventions with increased efficacy. We highlight a non-exhaustive list of five clinically relevant putative, candidate mechanisms which may underly the beneficial effects of NBIs on depression: stress, rumination, mindfulness, sleep and exercise. We also make the case that when developing NBIs it is important to not neglect young people, explore personalised approaches and focus on both treatment and prevention approaches. To achieve these aims methodologically rigorous programmes of clinical research are needed that include well-powered and controlled experimental designs including randomised controlled trials, qualitative research, longitudinal studies and large prospective cohorts. (shrink)

This text departs from a contradictory claim in deaf studies and sound studies: both disciplines describe a hierarchical regime of the sensible – visuocentrism and audiocentrism – which they try to counter with conceptualisations as “acoustemology” or “deaf gain.” However, as we argue, they both thereby erect what they claim to overcome: a sensual regime that privileges one sense over another and a restricted conception of subjectivity deriving from it. First, we draw a philosophical line in the critique of sensual (...) regimes. Then we propose a figure for the transcendence of the separation of the sensible: in re-reading of the myth of Odysseus and the sirens, we engage various examples from literature, art, and acoustics to describe sirens as a mythological and technical archetype of the transcendence of the sensual regime, as well as reified subjectivity. The question, then, is not how to escape the sirens, but how they can be approached. It is necessary, we argue, for sound studies to develop a critical self-consciousness of its own restricted concepts in order to move from sonic thinking towards a sirenic thinking. (shrink)

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods have resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems (...) using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed. (shrink)

Philip Roth’s novel 'The Human Stain' recounts an instance of racial passing: its protagonist, Coleman Silk, is African-American but light-skinned enough to pass as white. Coleman’s decision to pass and his subsequent violent death, I argue, confront us with complex ethical questions regarding unjust social roles, loyalty, and moral luck. I also argue, building on Hegel’s definition of tragedy, that 'The Human Stain' is a particularly modern tragedy. The novel highlights conflicting role obligations, inadequate conceptions of freedom, and the tensions (...) of cultural paradigm shifts—all characteristics typical of modern tragedy. I claim that parsing 'The Human Stain' as a tragedy deepens our understanding of the novel as well as drawing our attention to its philosophical significance. (shrink)

In Hegel on Political Identity, Lydia Moland provocatively draws on Hegel's political philosophy to engage sometimes contentious contemporary issues such as patriotism, national identity, and cosmopolitanism. Moland argues that patriotism for Hegel indicates an attitude toward the state, whereas national identity is a response to culture. The two combine, Hegel claims, to enable citizens to develop concrete freedom. Moland argues that Hegel's account of political identity extends to his notorious theory of world history; she also proposes that (...) his resistance to cosmopolitanism be reassessed in response to our globalized world. By focusing on Hegel's depiction of political identity as a central part of modern life, Moland shows the potential of Hegel's philosophy to address issues that lie at the heart of ethical and political philosophy. (shrink)

Hegel's Aesthetics is the first comprehensive interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of art in English in thirty years. It gives a new analysis of his notorious "end of art" thesis, shows the indispensability of his aesthetics to his philosophy generally, and argues for his theory's relevance today.

Hegel’s “Anthropology” considers components of an agent’s practical identity that are not chosen but rather inherited: components such as the agent’s temperament, talents, and ethnic background. Through a discussion of habit and happiness, Hegel explores how these inherited traits can become part of the agent’s self-determination. I argue that this process provides a model for explaining how we are obligated within roles we do not choose—roles for instance within the family or as citizens of a state. Through evaluation of an (...) inherited role itself and assessment of her own place in it, the agent earns and eventually comes to own her actions within the role. In this way an inherited role, like an inherited trait, can contribute to an agent’s freedom. (shrink)

Despite Hegel’s effusive praise for art as one of the ways humans express truth, art by his description is both essentially limited and at perpetual risk of ending. This hybrid assessment is apparent first in Hegel’s account of art’s development, which shows art culminating in classical sculpture’s perfect unity but then, unable to depict Christianity’s interiority, evolving into religion, surrendering to division, or dissipating into prose. It is also evident in his ranking of artistic genres from architecture to poetry according (...) to their ability to help humans produce themselves both individually and collectively: the more adequately art depicts human self-understanding, the more it risks ceasing to be art. Nevertheless, art’s myriad endings do not exhaust its potential. Art that makes us alive to the unity and interdependence at the heart of reality continues to express the Idea and so achieves Hegel’s ambitions for its role in human life. (shrink)

This article outlines arguments in Schiller's major philosophical works, including his writings on tragedy, "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" and "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry.".

Towards the very end of his wide-ranging lectures on the philosophy of art, Hegel unexpectedly expresses a preference for comedy over tragedy. More surprisingly, given his systematic claims for his aesthetic theory, he suggests that this preference is arbitrary. This essay suggests that this arbitrariness is itself systematic, given Hegel’s broader claims about unity and necessity in art generally and his analysis of ancient as opposed to modern drama in particular. With the emergence of modern subjectivity, tragic plots lose their (...) necessity and so their redemptive conclusions; comic plots disintegrate into mockery and entertainment. In many cases, the dramas in question consequently fail to be art. This does not, however, mean that art ends: insofar as it inspires humans to a better understanding of their unity with the divine, it will continue to meet its mandate. But the lack of necessity in modern drama means we are free to prefer happy endings. Hegel’s seemingly arbitrary preference is, in the end, systematically justified. (shrink)

In his early and unpublished essay on Schiller’s trilogy Wallenstein, Hegel criticizes the plays’ denouement as “horrific” and “appalling” and for depicting the triumph of death over life. Why was the young Hegel’s response to Wallenstein so negative? To answer this question, I first offer an analysis of Wallenstein in terms of Hegel’s mature theory of modern tragedy. I argue that Schiller’s portrayal of Wallenstein’s character and death indeed render the play a particularly dark and unredemptive example of modern tragedy (...) as Hegel understands it. I suggest, however, that Hegel’s early objections are primarily motivated by his philosophy of history rather than by his theory of tragedy. Hegel accurately sensed the loss of faith in historical progress that Schiller experienced in the wake of the French Revolution; in essays written shortly before Wallenstein appeared, Schiller associates the tragic sublime with humans’ ability to act in the face of the meaninglessness of history. In his essay “The German Constitution,” composed during the same period as his Wallenstein review, Hegel instead formulates his familiar exhortation that we see history as meaningful. Hegel’s objection to Wallenstein’s darkness, then, is primarily an objection to the vision of history it portrays. Against the background of Peter Stein’s 2007 Berlin production of Wallenstein, I suggest that Wallenstein’s lasting appeal lies in its ability to allow audiences to experience the sublime as Schiller intended: as an assertion of our agency despite the cycles of history we so little control. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard attempts to reinterpret Kantian ethics in a way that might alleviate Bernard Williams’ famous worry that a man cannot save his drowning wife without determining impartially that he may do so. She does this by dividing a reflective self that chooses the commitments that make up an agent’s practical identity from a self defined as a jumble of desires. An agent, she then argues, must act on the commitments chosen by the reflective self on pain of disintegration. Using (...) Harry Frankfurt’s emphasis on love as a final end, I argue that disintegration as motivation is not a more acceptable motivation than impartiality and so does not adequately address Williams’ criticism. I also argue that the idea of a divided self either leads to an infinite regress or to an implausible description of how our commitments evolve and change. To make this last claim, I discuss a case from John Updike’s novel 'In the Beauty of the Lilies.'. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard attempts to reinterpret Kantian ethics in a way that might alleviate Bernard Williams’ famous worry that a man cannot save his drowning wife without determining impartially that he may do so. She does this by dividing a reflective self that chooses the commitments that make up an agent’s practical identity from a self defined as a jumble of desires. An agent, she then argues, must act on the commitments chosen by the reflective self on pain of disintegration. Using (...) Harry Frankfurt’s emphasis on love as a final end, I argue that disintegration as motivation is not a more acceptable motivation than impartiality and so does not adequately address Williams’ criticism. I also argue that the idea of a divided self either leads to an infinite regress or to an implausible description of how our commitments evolve and change. To make this last claim, I discuss a case from John Updike’s novel 'In the Beauty of the Lilies.'. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's description of humans' first encounter with each other depicts a peaceful recognition of mutual worth. G.W.F. Hegel's by contrast depicts a struggle to the death. I argue in this paper that Hegel's description of conflict results in an ethical theory that better preserves the distinctness of the other. I consider Christine Korsgaard's description of first encounters as a third alternative but conclude that Hegel's approach better accounts for the specific commitments we make--as family members, works, and citizens --in (...) ethical life. (shrink)

According to Thomas Pogge’s theory of human rights, those of us in the developed world have a negative duty to the global poor. In other words, our responsibility to them is not merely to help them but to stop harming them by hoarding natural resources and imposing unfair institutional structures. I argue that Hegel would agree that we have a responsibility to the global poor and that he would also agree with some of Pogge’s institutional diagnosis. Hegel thought that civil (...) society, as a new institution in his time, generated new responsibilities; he would, I argue, have thought the same about a globalized civil society. I discuss recognition as a possible foundation for this obligation and emphasize Hegel’s preference for a representative structure based on economics rather than geography as part of a possible solution. (shrink)

This book offers an analysis of humor, comedy, and laughter as philosophical topics in the 19th Century. It traces the introduction of humor as a new aesthetic category inspired by Laurence Sterne’s "Tristram Shandy" and shows Sterne’s deep influence on German aesthetic theorists of this period. Through differentiating humor from comedy, the book suggests important distinctions within the aesthetic philosophies of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Solger, and Jean Paul Richter. The book links Kant’s underdeveloped incongruity theory of laughter to Schopenhauer’s more (...) complete account and identifies humor’s place in the pessimistic philosophy of Julius Bahnsen. It considers how caricature functioned at the intersection of politics, aesthetics, and ethics in Karl Rosenkranz’s work, and how Kierkegaard and Nietzsche made humor central not only to their philosophical content but also to its style. The book concludes with an explication of French philosopher Henri Bergson’s claim that laughter is a response to mechanical inelasticity. (shrink)

The early history of German patriotism is complex and illuminates many of patriotism’s potential virtues as well as its dangers. Throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, patriotism’s overarching connotation was devotion to the greater good, but whether that greater was local, national, or global varied dramatically. Early uses of patriotism were devoid of national or military connotations and instead denoted local engagement in public projects and willingness to aid to those in need. The patriot moreover worked for enlightened (...) political reform, convinced that good government could convert subjects into citizens. Patriotism also had distinct cosmopolitan connotations, indicating someone who had humanity’s good generally as a goal. In the early aftermath of the French Revolution, acting in the interest of humanity’s development meant supporting the revolutionaries as the best hope for furthering political progress. As the Revolution dissolved into the Terror, German intellectuals hoped that Germany could assume the mantle of progress: being a patriot meant supporting German culture as a means of furthering humanity’s enlightenment. The Napoleonic Wars, however, shifted Germans’ attitude significantly: years of French occupation culminated in patriotism being defined as favoring German culture and unity in the interest of defeating the French. Patriotism’s nationalist connotations from that point intensify significantly. But its early history argues for remembering and revitalizing its potential to unite the local with the global and to promote enlightened civic engagement in the pursuit of political progress. (shrink)

According to Thomas Pogge’s theory of human rights, those of us in the developed world have a negative duty to the global poor. In other words, our responsibility to them is not merely to help them but to stop harming them by hoarding natural resources and imposing unfair institutional structures. I argue that Hegel would agree that we have a responsibility to the global poor and that he would also agree with some of Pogge’s institutional diagnosis. Hegel thought that civil (...) society, as a new institution in his time, generated new responsibilities; he would, I argue, have thought the same about a globalized civil society. I discuss recognition as a possible foundation for this obligation and emphasize Hegel’s preference for a representative structure based on economics rather than geography as part of a possible solution. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that an agent's particular commitments are an integral and necessary part of his autonomy. I refer to Hegel's Philosophy of Right to argue that the autonomous self is in fact a committed self. According to Hegel, freedom is only possible when the agent inhabits roles within a family, civil society, and the greater community of the state. These roles make up the agent's practical identity, or the set of commitments and characteristics around which he orients his actions. (...) His practical identity provides him with norms: he has specific obligations as, for instance, a parent, police officer, or judge. ;Chapter One critiques Christine Korsgaard's Kantian account of practical identity, arguing that it is inadequate because of its insistence on an ontologically divided self. Chapter Two argues that practical identity according to Hegel must include consideration of an agent's contingent circumstances. Chapter Three claims that Hegel's agent knows himself and other humans to possess universal rights and to be sources of moral certainty. Chapter Four discusses social institutions and the norms they generate. When the agent freely embraces roles in these institutions, he embraces the obligations that accompany those roles. He gives himself these obligations and is autonomous through them. ;Chapter Five argues that Hegel's definition of conscience crucially depends on his theory of practical identity. Hegel's conscience is not a source of arbitrary, unimpeachable conclusions but refers to the norms of rational institutions. It does not neglect an agent's particular commitments within those institutions such as commitments to particular causes, family members, or political organizations. It rather explains the freedom of his actions through those commitments. So defined, conscience allows for both inner certainty and external sanction. Chapter Six argues that a wide range of professions describe their ethical experience in terms of conscience, and that Hegel's definition of conscience makes sense of this experience. By referring to roles, Hegel's conscience also requires the agent to be involved in the evaluation and reformation of institutions. As such, his theory is of great relevance to contemporary ethical life. (shrink)

Nurses all too often experience situations that threaten their identification with the caring aspect of their profession. This article examines systematic reasons for the loss of integrity they describe as their lived work experience conflicts with their self-conception. I examine Ruth Barcan Marcus' description of moral dilemmas and the role of regret, arguing that the real experience of regret should not be associated with a lack of integrity. I conclude that a more complex understanding of care in nurses' self-understanding is (...) needed in order to describe the kinds of moral dilemmas they frequently face. (shrink)

Hegel’s philosophical system turns to a species of the laughable at three critical junctures of his dialectic: comedy appears both at the conclusion of classical art and of Hegel’s discussion of poetry, and romantic art ends with humor. But we misunderstand these transitional moments unless we recognize that Hegel did not use comedy and humor synonymously. Comedy refers to a dramatic genre with a 2000-year-old history; humor was a relatively recent aesthetic phenomenon that had become central to philosophizing about art (...) in Hegel’s generation. Hegel also differentiated between subjective humor, which he associated with the novelist Jean Paul’s eccentric excesses, and objective humor. Focusing on the surprising examples Hegel offers of objective humor— from epigrams to Persian poetry to the obscure novels of T.G. von Hippel—I argue that we better understand Hegel’s “end of art” thesis by tracing ways both comedy and humor can end. By understanding those endings, we also come closer to imagining how art can continue. (shrink)

A subject’s ethical agency is closely tied up with her particular commitments: her ethnic group, her family, her beliefs, her occupation. The question of how these specific commitments relate to the subject’s actions is therefore pivotal to describing moral agency. Christine Korsgaard has proposed a theory whereby a subject’s commitments are an essential part of her moral agency, namely her practical identity. According to this theory, having commitments is normative, a necessary component of an agent’s respect for her own humanity. (...) Obligation to other humans is an essential part of our practical identity, and our unavoidable responsiveness to the call of other humans assures that we will feel our obligation to them. I argue that explaining practical identity as necessary to ethical agency begins to describe the role of commitments in our agency, but that this description must go further to address the real import of commitments in ethical life. (shrink)

Philosophers in the nineteenth century took laughter and its related concepts very seriously. Most philosophers before this period treated laughter as tangential to philosophy’s core concerns, but beginning with Kant’s immediate successors, the family of concepts relating to the laughable—including comedy, wit, irony, and ridicule—took on new significance. They went from describing something derivative about humans to telling us what we, in the most basic sense, are. Well-known philosophers such as Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche offered substantial treatments of these (...) topics; they were also taken up by lesser-known thinkers such as Rosenkranz, Solger, Jean Paul, Bahnsen, and Bergson. The nineteenth century also saw the introduction of humor in particular as a new and distinct aesthetic category. For several philosophers of this period, humor described nothing less than the relationship between the human and the divine and its implications for how humans should live. It described our awareness of our finitude—our fallibility, our petty concerns, our meaningless obsessions—and the amusement tinged with melancholy this awareness elicits. Despite this wealth of theorizing, the nineteenth century is often neglected in studies of the philosophy of laughter and humor. This essay introduces a volume of articles intended to remedy that neglect. (shrink)

Perceived behavioral integrity involves the employee’s perception of the alignment of the manager’s words and deeds. This meta-analysis examined the relationship between perceived behavioral integrity of managers and the employee attitudes of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, satisfaction with the leader and affect toward the organization. Results indicate a strong positive relationship overall (average r = 0.48, p<0.01). With only 12 studies included, exploration of moderators was limited, but preliminary analysis suggested that the gender of the employees and the number of (...) levels between the employee and the manager are potential moderators of the relationship. In the current sample of studies, country where the research was conducted did not seem to have any moderating effects. In addition to suggesting further investigation of potential moderators, we call for research that examines the relationship between behavioral integrity and outcomes that include individual behavior and organizational performance. (shrink)

Child maltreatment not only leads to epigenetic changes, but also increases the risk of related behavioral deficits and mental disorders. These issues presumably are most closely associated with epigenetic changes in the brain, but epigenetic changes in peripheral tissues like blood are often examined instead, due to their accessibility. As such, the reliability of using the peripheral epigenome as a proxy for that of the brain is imperative. Previously, our lab has found aberrant methylation at the Brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene (...) in the prefrontal cortex of rats following aversive caregiving. The current study examined whether aversive caregiving alters Bdnf DNA methylation in the blood compared to the prefrontal cortex. It was revealed that DNA methylation associated with adversity increased in both tissues, but this methylation was not correlated between tissues. These findings indicate that group trends in Bdnf methylation between blood and the brain are comparable, but variation exists among individual subjects. (shrink)

Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem (just as a speech giver uses a speech) who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this challenge is (...) to consider the poem expressive of a plural subject, which frees us from looking for a particular individual whose voice we hear in the work, whether she be fictional or actual. Some lyrics give voice to a group whose experience is attended to in the work. This may be done through a posited fictional speaker, but the ontology of the speaker is shown to be less important. Attending to a group whose concerns are voiced allows us to explain how poems can manage to address our-worldly concerns even when lacking actual persons whose expressions we encounter in the poems. (shrink)

This paper is going to explore the adverse effects of exposure to combat death on medics’ holistic well-being, which, if ignored could decrease individual readiness and negatively impact the mission. We rely on the experience of United States Air Force Special Operation Surgical Teams (AF SOST) whose exposure to mass casualty scenarios in austere environments could serve as approximations of conditions of future battlefields. Over the past two decades, the ability to deliver advanced medical care on and off the battlefield (...) along with a rapid casualty evacuation platform has allowed for unprecedented survival rates exceeding 90%. While laudable, these medical achievements have also set up a casualty management paradigm in which medical decision-making singularly focuses on life-saving care. Confronting peer-peer adversaries in large scale combat operations (LSCO) on a multi-domain battlefield will make casualty management frighteningly more complex by introducing major infrastructural, personnel, and resource constraints. When considering the high number of casualties expected in LSCO alongside enormous limitations in medical resource and resupply capability, the current casualty management paradigm will not be sustainable. The resource constrained environment in LSCO will shift medical decision-making away from a singular focus on life-saving care to triage, which hinges on the ability to determine futile medical interventions—a skill that has been lost in the past two generation of combat medics. As such, a broad ethical challenge that arises in preparation for LSCO is the need to set new expectations concerning dying and death. However, medical decision-making focused on death and dying has not been explicitly addressed in military medical training, research, or policy. Relying on a body of literature known as terror management theory (TMT) and ethnographic data from our study with AF SOST medics, we are going to argue that it is important to expose medics to death in mass casualty and triage training. (shrink)