Ultradian rhythms are those that cycle many times in a day and are therefore measured in hours, minutes, seconds or even fractions of a second. In yeasts and protists, a temperature‐compensated clock with a period of about an hour (30–90 minutes) provides the time base upon which all central processes are synchronized. A 40‐minute clock in yeast times metabolic, respiratory and transcriptional processes, and controls cell division cycle progression. This system has at its core a redox cycle involving NAD(P)H and (...) dithiol–disulfide interconversions. It provides an archetype for biological time keeping on longer time scales (e.g. the daily cycles driven by circadian clocks) and underpins these rhythms, which cannot be understood in isolation. Ultradian rhythms are the foundation upon which the coherent functioning of the organism depends. BioEssays 29:465–473, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The idea that incompatibilism is intuitive is one of the key motivators for incompatibilism. Not surprisingly, then philosophers who defend incompatibilism often claim that incompatibilism is the natural, commonsense view about free will and moral responsibility (e.g., Pereboom 2001, Kane Journal of Philosophy 96:217–240 1999, Strawson 1986). And a number of recent studies find that people give apparently incompatibilist responses in vignette studies. When participants are presented with a description of a causal deterministic universe, they tend to deny that people (...) are morally responsible in that universe. Although this suggests that people are intuitive incompatibilists, Eddy Nahmias and Dylan Murray, in a recent series of important papers, have developed an important challenge to this interpretation. They argue that people confuse determinism with bypassing, the idea that one’s mental states lack causal efficacy. Murray and Nahmias present new experiments that seem to confirm the bypassing hypothesis. In this paper, we use structural equation modeling to re-examine the issue. We find support instead for an incompatibilist explanation of the bypassing results, i.e., incompatibilist judgments seem to cause bypassing judgments. We hypothesize that this phenomenon occurs because people think of decisions as essentially indeterministic; thus, when confronted with a description of determinism they tend to think that decisions do not even occur. We provide evidence for this in three subsequent studies which show that many participants deny that people make decisions in a deterministic universe; by contrast, most participants tend to allow that people add numbers in a deterministic universe. Together, these studies suggest that bypassing results don’t reflect a confusion, but rather the depth of the incompatibilist intuition. (shrink)

This volume of the Great American Thinkers series purports to let Thoreau speak for himself, primarily through passages quoted from his journals. Originally published in fourteen volumes, the journals represent over twenty years of Thoreau's life, and are the background and, in some cases, the original form of works more polished and more widely known. Murray has aptly considered Thoreau's wide range of thought and comment under several main headings, such as "Primacy or Purpose," "Society as Burden," and "Freedom (...) and Simplicity." In this arrangement, many of Thoreau's specific and often curt observations can be seen in a more general context, with Thoreau himself providing some of the keys to the transition.--G. B. S. C. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 145-147. Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and, having em- ployed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to des- cribe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to which I assumed to belong; (...) and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon the strictest ex- amination, conceive that any one could have traced out the per- son of Caleb Williams in this new disguise. William Godwin Caleb Williams (352). Giorgio Agamben. Nudities . Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. 144 pp. | 10 illustrations. | ISBN: 9780804769501 | $16.95 A. The Protective Overcoat. The most pervasive, resilient, robust, sneaky, and significant concept in all of Giorgio Agamben’s essays is that of separation. This is not the same as alienation. Separation is more nostalgic, for Agamben valorizes an ancient world in which human society and its beings were not subject to such separation. He implies that these separations are damaging to human beings, crippling them at the very level of their identities. $4.99 B. The Handsome Gloves. Giorgio Agamben’s Nudities , like Profanations before it, employs a wide range of subjects in order to establish separation as a metaphor, in much the same way that interdisciplinary scholars have adopted Michel Foucault’s concepts in order to rethink societies and texts. The longest essay from Profanations, entitled “In Praise of Profanation,” laments humankind’s inability to profane as the result of what Walter Benjamin has called “the capitalist religion.” Likewise, “Nudity” adopts a pessimistic stance on the Christian theological tradition’s perverse asphyxiation of the unclothed body. $2.50 C. The Hoop Earrings. Religion separates humans from things by procuring for itself items as “sacred,” thus taking them out of common use. In this state, human beings are unable to play with them, unable to change their use-value. They become off-limits, museified. $1,499.00 D. The Uncomfortable Shoes. Biometrics polices identity, replacing meaningful metrics of identity. It is a deplorable situation that leaves human beings in danger of, and indeed already victims of, mass persecution. $111.75 E. The Prince Albert. One could characterize Giorgio Agamben’s desire to catalogue a history of ignorance as a recognition that human beings are separated from knowledge by language. Where then is the prophet, and how shall we be saved? $49.50 + tip F. The Corset. Franz Kafka’s character of Joseph K. has put himself on trial, as in Roman trials when the Kalumniator was marked with the letter K. The torture he undergoes is meant to elicit a confession of the truth. It is possible that Giorgio Agamben perceives his role as a philosopher to be confined to self-trial, and that with every passage he flays the unclothed page with prophetic intent. $27.00 G. The Derby. Giorgio Agamben himself tries to bridge various separations through exploratory play. He is not a performative writer semantically, but his exploratory style is rooted in the play spirit. His strategy of numbering points is almost comical, yet it is not misleading. It is play, after all, not ruse. He denudes with pecks, like carrion on a tattered corpse. $11.00 H. The Trousers. Although Giorgio Agamben is elsewhere concerned with the profanation of religion’s apparatuses, in essay nine he would like to consider what is consumed during days of inoperativity, how religion governs these, and how to account for our binges and purges. Inoperativity is inextricably bound to feasting, to the festival. $24.50 I. The Stylish Belt. The only essay in Nudities to contain photographs is the essay entitled, “Nudity.” All of these photographs project human bodies. $.01 I The aim here is not to tap into an original state prior to the separation but to comprehend and neutralize the apparatus that produced this separation. (66) II The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light but rather its darkness. (13) III We can therefore only experience nudity as a denudation and a baring, never as a form and a stable possession. (65) IV Just as genius and talent originally distinct and even opposite—are nevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the work of creation and the work of salvation, inasmuch as they represent the two powers of a single God, remain in some way secretly conjoined. (6) V In our culture, the face-body relationship is marked by a fundamental asymmetry, in that our faces remain for the most part naked, while our bodies are normally covered. (88) VI Every man initiates a slanderous trial against himself. (21) VII The glorious body is not some other body, more agile and beautiful, more luminous and spiritual; it is the body itself, at the moment when inoperativity removes the spell from it and opens it up to a new possible common use. (103) VIII As Kleist understood so well, the relationship with a zone of nonknowledge is a dance. (114) IX The deactivation of this apparatus retroactively operates, therefore, as much on nature as on grace, as much on nudity as on clothing, liberating them from their theological signature. (90) X At any rate, whether festive inoperativity precedes religion or results from the profanation of its apparatuses, what is essential here is a dimension of praxis in which simple, quotidian human activities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and rendered inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such, in a festive manner. (112) XI This is just how much [of] the land [the] surveyor is allowed to catch a glimpse. (36). (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Well-known social psychologist David G. Myers addresses why Americans can have so many social problems--reflecting a deep spiritual poverty--at a time when material wealth is at record levels. 32 illustrations.

Drawing on ten years of research on the unpublished Wittgenstein papers, Stern investigates what motivated Wittgenstein's philosophical writing and casts new light on the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The book is an exposition of Wittgenstein's early conception of the nature of representation and how his later revision and criticism of that work led to a radically different way of looking at mind and language. It also explains how the unpublished manuscripts and typescripts were put together and why they often provide (...) better evidence of the development of his ideas than can be found in his published writing. In doing so, the book traces the development of a number of central themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, including his conception of philosophical method, the picture theory of meaning, the limits of language, the application of language to experience, his treatment of private language, and what he called the "flow of life." Arguing that Wittgenstein's views are often much more simple (and more radical) than we have been led to believe, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language provides an overview of the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy and brings to light aspects of his philosophy that have been almost universally neglected. (shrink)

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, David Stern examines Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He gives particular attention to both the arguments of the Investigations and the way in which the work is written, and especially to the role of dialogue in the book. While he concentrates on helping the reader to arrive at his or her own interpretation of the primary text, he also provides guidance to the unusually wide range of existing interpretations, and to the reasons (...) why the Investigations have inspired such a diversity of readings. Following closely the text of the Investigations and meant to be read alongside it, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Wittgenstein, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

Although the importance of spirituality is increasingly recognized in clinical medicine, spirituality is rarely mentioned in the practice, literature, or training programs of global health. To understand the role of spirituality in global health practice and identify factors that influence and limit its expression, I initiated conversations and informal interviews with more than 300 global health leaders, students, and practitioners during 2010-2014. Four spiritual themes or challenges emerged: compassion at a distance; dichotomous thinking; conspiracy of silence; and compulsion to save (...) the world. Practitioners expressed strong interest in bringing spirituality more fully into global health discourse, which could help the field realize its potential. (shrink)

This edition of G. E. Moore's notes taken at Wittgenstein's seminal Cambridge lectures in the early 1930s provides, for the first time, an almost verbatim record of those classes. The presentation of the notes is both accessible and faithful to their original manuscripts, and a comprehensive introduction and synoptic table of contents provide the reader with essential contextual information and summaries of the topics in each lecture. The lectures form an excellent introduction to Wittgenstein's middle-period thought, covering a broad range (...) of philosophical topics, ranging from core questions in the philosophy of language, mind, logic, and mathematics, to illuminating discussions of subjects on which Wittgenstein says very little elsewhere, including ethics, religion, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and anthropology. The volume also includes a 1932 essay by Moore critiquing Wittgenstein's conception of grammar, together with Wittgenstein's response. A companion website offers access to images of the entire set of source manuscripts. (shrink)

Semiotic objections to markets urge us not to place a good on the market because of the message that doing so would send. Brennan and Jaworski reject them on the grounds that either the contingent semiotics of a market can be changed or the weakness of semiotic reasons allows them to be ignored. The scope of their argument neglects the impure semiotic objections that claim that the message a market sends causes, constitutes, or involves a nonsemiotic wrong. These are the (...) most compelling class of semiotic objections and are the kind actually advanced in the literature. Rather than focusing on the necessity or contingency of a market's semiotics, we should instead attend to a semiotic objection's most important feature: its purity or impurity. (shrink)

Originally conceived as a forty-page conclusion to Hacker’s twenty years of work on the monumental four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, this book “rapidly assumed a life of its own”. A major contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, this substantial volume delivers even more than the title promises. The eight chapters are best approached as a six-chapter book, itself some 220 pages long, on Wittgenstein’s contribution to twentieth-century philosophy, followed by a two-chapter, 120-page epilogue about how and why (...) his influence has waned. The first six chapters provide an encyclopedic summary of the fruits of Hacker’s research on Wittgenstein’s writing, an immensely learned account of British philosophy from the turn of the century to the 1970s, and a detailed account of Wittgenstein’s reception by Oxford, Cambridge, and the Vienna Circle. The book’s closing chapters, “Post-positivism in the United States and Quine’s Apostasy” and “The Decline of Analytic Philosophy,” polemically argue that Quine’s philosophy, and the post-Quinean naturalism prevalent in Anglo-American philosophy today, amount to such a decisive break with the analytic tradition, as Hacker conceives of it, that they should not be counted as “analytic.”. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction: Baker on the Private Language Argument Strawson's and Malcolms Interpretations of the Beetle Story Pitcher's, Cook's, and Donagan's Interpretations of the Beetle Story Cohen's Repudiation of the Beetle Story Hacker's and Baker's Interpretations of the Beetle Story.

Jerome Wakefield has argued that a disorder is a harmful dysfunction. This paper develops how Wakefield should construe harmful in his harmful dysfunction analysis. Recently, Neil Feit has argued that classic puzzles involved in analyzing harm render Wakefield’s HDA better off without harm as a necessary condition. Whether or not one conceives of harm as comparative or non-comparative, the concern is that the HDA forces people to classify as mere dysfunction what they know to be a disorder. For instance, one (...) can conceive of cases where simultaneous disorders prevent each other from being, in any traditional sense, actually harmful; in such cases, according to the HDA, neither would be a disorder. I argue that the sense of harm that Wakefield should employ in the HDA is dispositional, similar to the sense of harm used when describing a vile of poison: “Be careful! That’s poison. It’s harmful.” I call this harm in the damage sense. Using this sense of harm enables the HDA to avoid Feit’s arguments, and thus it should be preferred to other senses when analyzing harmful dysfunction. (shrink)

Philosophical analysis of ecological theories has lagged behind the study of evolutionary theory. The semantic conception of scientific theories, which has been employed successfully in the analysis of evolutionary theory, is adopted here to analyse ecological theory. Two general problems in ecology are discussed. One arises from the continued use of covering law models in ecology, and the other concerns the applicability of ecological theory in conservation biology. The semantic conception of ecological theories is used to resolve these problems.

The paper maps out and responds to some of the main areas of disagreement over the nature of Wittgenstein’s philosophy: (1) Between defenders of a “two Wittgensteins” reading (which draws a sharp distinction between early and late Wittgenstein) and the opposing “one Wittgenstein” interpretation. (2) Among “two-Wittgensteins” interpreters as to when the later philosophy emerged, and over the central difference between early and late Wittgenstein. (3) Between those who hold that Wittgenstein opposes only past philosophy in order to do philosophy (...) better and those who hold that Wittgenstein aimed to bring an end to philosophy and teach us to get by without a replacement. It is shown that each of these debates depends on some deeply un-Wittgensteinian, and quite mistaken, assumptions. It is concluded that Wittgenstein’s most polished writing, most notably in Philosophical Investigations I §§ 1–425, is best understood as a kind of Pyrrhonism which aims to subvert philosophical theorizing, by means of a polyphonic dialogue. Because this delicate balance between philosophical questions and their dissolution is not achieved in most of his other published and unpublished writings, we should be very cautious when using the theories and methods we find in those other writings as a guide to reading the Philosophical Investigations. (shrink)

This book attempts to provide an ethical foundation with which to address the question, 'Should we spread life beyond Earth?' It examines the material conditions of the solar system, the limits of consciousness, the limits of society, and the long term possibilities of sending human life out into the universe. The author delineates the ethical criteria of sentient life and considers justifications of space travel for the purpose of human expansion. Duemler gives special attention to the utilitarian explanation which concludes (...) that if life did [gnyad throughout the solar system, or even the galaxy, then this would serve to increase the amount of sentient life and, if life in the new world is a balanced positive, is therefore a positive event. Three main issues, drawing upon both science and philosophy, fall at the center of the discussion: supporting evidence not based on questionable dogma nor requiring huge intuitive leaps of faith; it must square with natural selection and have biological plausibility; and it must have inherent value, not requiring underlying conditions for a judgement to pass. (shrink)

Whose values should count – those of patients or the general public – when adopting the quality-adjusted life year framework for healthcare decision making is a long-standing debate. Specific disciplines, such as economics, are not wedded to a particular side of the debate, and arguments for and against the use of patient values have been discussed at length in the literature. In 2012, Sinclair proposed an approach, grounded within patient preference theory, which sought to avoid a perceived unfair discrimination against (...) people with disabilities when using values from the general public. Key assumptions about general public values that beget this line of thinking were that ‘disabled states always tally with lower quality of life’, and the use of standardised instruments means that ‘you are forced into a fixed view of disability as a lower value state’. Drawing on recent contributions to the health economics literature, we contend that such assumptions are not inherent to the incorporation of general public values for the estimation of QALYs. In practice, whether health states of people with disabilities are of ‘lower value’ is, to some extent, a reflection of the health state descriptions that members of the public are asked to value. (shrink)

Examining the significance of Kant's account of "rational faith," this study argues that he profoundly revises his account of the human will and the moral philosophy of it in his later religious writings.

The "standard account" of Wittgenstein’s relations with the Vienna Circle is that the early Wittgenstein was a principal source and inspiration for the Circle’s positivistic and scientific philosophy, while the later Wittgenstein was deeply opposed to the logical empiricist project of articulating a "scientific conception of the world." However, this telegraphic summary is at best only half-true and at worst deeply misleading. For it prevents us appreciating the fluidity and protean character of their philosophical dialogue. In retrospectively attributing clear-cut positions (...) to Wittgenstein and his interlocutors, it is very easy to read back our current understanding of familiar distinctions into a time when those terms were used in a much more open-ended way. The paper aims to to provide a broader perspective on this debate, starting from the protagonists’ understanding of their respective positions. Too often, the programmatic statements about the nature of their work that are repeated in manifestoes, introductions, and elementary textbooks have occupied center stage in the subsequent secondary literature. Consequently, I focus on a detailed examination of a turning point in their relationship. That turning point is Wittgenstein's charge, in the summer of 1932, that a recently published paper of Carnap's, "Physicalistic Language as the Universal Language of Science", made such extensive and unacknowledged use of Wittgenstein's own ideas that Wittgenstein would, as he put it in a letter to Schlick, "soon be in a situation where my own work shall be considered merely as a reheated version or plagiarism of Carnap’s." While the leading parties in this dispute shared a basic commitment to the primacy of physicalistic language, and the view that all significant languages are translatable, there was a remarkable lack of mutual understanding between them, and deep disagreement about the nature of the doctrines they disputed. Three quarters of a century later, we are so much more conscious of the differences that separated them than the points on which they agreed that it takes an effort of historical reconstruction to appreciate why Wittgenstein once feared that his own work would be regarded as a pale shadow of Carnap’s. (shrink)

In the debates concerning the ethics of human enhancement through biological or technological modifications, there have been several appeals to the concept of human dignity, both by those favouring such enhancement and by those opposing it. The result is the phenomenon of ‘dignity talk', where opposing sides both appeal to the concept of human dignity to ground their arguments resulting in a moral impasse. This article examines the use of the concept of human dignity in the enhancement debates and reveals (...) that the problem of dignity talk arises because proponents of various positions tend to ground human dignity in different features of the human individual. These features include species-membership, possession of a particular capacity, a sense of self-worth, and moral behaviour. The article proposes a solution to this problem by appealing to another feature of human beings, namely their being-in-relationship-over-time. Doing so enables us to understand dignity as a concept that affirms the worth of human individuals as complex, multidimensional wholes, rather than as isolated features. Consequently, the concept of human dignity can serve both a descriptive and a normative function in the enhancement debates. At a descriptive level, asking what advocates of a position mean when they refer to human dignity will reveal what aspects of being human they deem to be most valuable. The debate can then focus on these values. The normative function, although it cannot proscribe or prescribe all enhancement, approves only those enhancements that contribute to the flourishing of human individuals as multidimensional wholes. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's 'middle period' is often seen as a transitional phase connecting his better-known early and later philosophies. The fifteen essays in this volume focus both on the distinctive character of his teaching and writing in the 1930s, and on its pivotal importance for an understanding of his philosophy as a whole. They offer wide-ranging perspectives on the central issue of how best to identify changes and continuities in his philosophy during those years, as well as on particular topics in the (...) philosophy of mind, religion, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of mathematics. The volume will be valuable for all who are interested in this formative period of Wittgenstein's development. (shrink)

Human illusions and the Biblical call to hope.

In this fascinating new collection of essays, contemporary historians examine the ways earlier historians have framed, written, and "made" the Jewish past. Probing the ideology and methodology of their professional predecessors, American and Israeli historians offer new perspectives on some of the central figures of twentieth-century Jewish historiography, including Gershom Scholem, S. D. Goitein, Yitzhak Baer, Elias Bickermann, and Cecil Roth, as well as the Israeli "New Historians." Although the lives and work of these scholars differ in many ways, Jewish (...) historians have recurrently confronted the challenges posed by assimilation, antisemitism, and various forms of nationalism. Through their critical examinations of the construction of the Jewish past, the contributors to this volume develop important insights into current attitudes toward the dominant canons and ideals of historical scholarship and the future of historiography. They shine new light on the formation of a historical worldview and the "making" of history. (shrink)

Ruth Macklin argued that dignity is nothing more than respect for persons or their autonomy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, difficult decisions are being made about the allocation of scarce resources. Respect for autonomy cannot justify rationing decisions. Justice can be invoked to justify rationing. However, this leaves an uncomfortable tension between the principles. Dignity is not a useless concept because it is able to account for why we respect autonomy and for why it can be legitimate to override autonomy in (...) times of critical care resource shortages. Dignity affirms the worth of the human individual as a meaning-making embodied subject, who is always in relationship to others, the world, time, and transcendence, and who realizes their dignity through their moral behaviour. Such an understanding means people should be helped to make morally right decisions about their own treatment, which may include forgoing potentially beneficial treatment for the good of others. Respect for dignity does not require fulfilling the morally wrong choices of one who insists on treatment at the expense of others. Dignity also protects the discretion of clinicians to make decisions appropriate to their competence by prohibiting the application of broad-based criteria such as age. (shrink)

Religious pluralism in healthcare means that conflicts regarding appropriate treatment can occur because of convictions of patients and healthcare workers alike. This contribution argues for a presumption in favour of respect for religious belief on the basis that such convictions are judgements of conscience, and respect for conscience is core to what it means to respect human dignity. The human person is a subject in relation to all that is. Human dignity refers to the worth of human persons as members (...) of the species with capacities of reason and free choice that enable the realisation of dignity as self-worth through morally good behaviour. Conscience is both a feature of inherent dignity and necessary for acquiring dignity as self-worth. Conscience enables a person to identify objective values and disvalues for human flourishing, the rational capacity to reason about the relative importance of these values and the right way to achieve them and the judgement of the good end and the right means. Human persons are bound to follow their conscience because this is their subjective relationship to objective truth. Religious convictions are decisions of conscience because they are subjective judgements about objective truth. The presumption of respect for religious belief is limited by the normative dimension of human dignity such that a person's beliefs may be overridden if they objectively violate inherent dignity or morally legitimate acquired dignity. (shrink)

The essay begins by briefly reviewing the complex history of the collaborative long-distance editing work that led to the publication of Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933 (Cambridge UP, 2016). It then turns to a discussion of the rationale for the innovative editorial policies we ultimately developed and implemented, and some of the broader methodological issues that they raise.

Wittgenstein’s writings and lectures during the first half of the 1930s play a crucial role in any interpretation of the relationship between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations . G. E. Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s Cambridge lectures, 1930-1933, offer us a remarkably careful and conscientious record of what Wittgenstein said at the time, and are much more detailed and reliable than previously published notes from those lectures. The co-authors are currently editing these notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures for a book to (...) be published by Cambridge University Press. We describe the materials that make up Moore’s notes, explain their unique value, review the principal editorial challenges that these materials present, and provide a brief outline of our editorial project. (shrink)