Resident microbiota do not just shape host immunity, they can also contribute to host protection against pathogens and infectious diseases. Previous reviews of the protective roles of the microbiota have focused exclusively on colonization resistance localized within a microenvironment. This review shows that the protection against pathogens also involves the mitigation of pathogenic impact without eliminating the pathogens (i.e., “disease tolerance”) and the containment of microorganisms to prevent pathogenic spread. Protective microorganisms can have an impact beyond their niche, interfering with (...) the entry, establishment, growth, and spread of pathogenic microorganisms. More fundamentally, we propose a series of conceptual clarifications in support of the idea of a “co-immunity,” where an organism is protected by both its own immune system and components of its microbiota. -/- . (shrink)

This research tests a model of employee helping behavior (a component of Organizational Citizenship Behavior, OCB) that involves a direct path (Intrinsic Motives → Helping Behavior, the Good Samaritan Effect) and an indirect path (the Love of Money → Extrinsic Motives → Helping Behavior). Results for the full sample supported the Good Samaritan Effect. Further, the love of money was positively related to extrinsic motives that were negatively related with helping behavior. We tested the model across four cultures (the USA., (...) Taiwan, Poland, and Egypt). The Good Samaritan Effect was significant for all four countries. For the indirect path, the first part was significant for all countries, except Egypt, whereas the second part was significant for Poland only. For Poland, the indirect path was significant and positive. The love of money may cause one to help in one culture (Poland) but not to help in others. Results were discussed in the light of ethical decision making. (shrink)

Resident microorganisms, known as the microbiota, are essential for many physiological functions including protection against pathogens. Microbiota is indeed required for proper immune system development and function, and can also host-independently protect against infections. Thus, a co-constructed view of host protection involving both host and microbiota, named ’co-immunity,’ has been proposed, and the idea of an ’immunological holobiont’ has been suggested. Yet this view of co-immunity might be too limited, as experimental work has shown that the immune system is involved (...) in functions other than protection, essentially development and repair. Microbiota, through co-immunity, is thereby most likely involved in these functions, although strong evidence is currently lacking. Moreover, as our point of view is mainly host-centered, we may miss the implications of co-immunity at broader scales, including cellular and population levels. Intriguingly, co-immunity effects could be beneficial for one function and/or one level, while being detrimental for others. All these elements should be taken into consideration for microbiota manipulation, in order to avoid potentially harmful side effects. (shrink)

Exploring online criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ protest during ‘Euro 2020’, this article examines how alt- and far-right conspiracies were both constructed and communicated via the social media platform, Twitter. By providing a novel exploration of alt-right conspiracies during an international football tournament, a qualitative thematic analysis of 1,388 original tweets relating to Euro 2020 was undertaken. The findings reveal how, in criticisms levelled at both ‘wokeism’ and the Black Lives Matter movement, antiwhite criticisms of the ‘take the knee’ (...) protest were embroiled in alt-right conspiracies that exposed an assumed Cultural Marxist, ‘woke agenda’ in the tournament’s organization and mainstream media coverage. In conclusion, it is argued that conspiratorial discourses, associated with the alt-right, provided a framework through which the protest could be understood. This emphasises how the significance of conspiracy functions to promote the wider dissemination of alt-right ideology across popular cultural contexts, such as sport. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

This volume contains thirteen papers that were presented at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/Société canadienne d’histoire et de philosophie des mathématiques, which was held at Ryerson University in Toronto. It showcases rigorously reviewed modern scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century. A series of chapters all set in the eighteenth century consider topics such as John Marsh’s techniques (...) for the computation of decimal fractions, Euler’s efforts to compute the surface area of scalene cones, a little-known work by John Playfair on the practical aspects of mathematics, and Monge’s use of descriptive geometry. After a brief stop in the nineteenth century to consider the culture of research mathematics in 1860s Prussia, the book moves into the twentieth century with an examination of the historical context within which the Axiom of Choice was developed and a paper discussing Anatoly Vlasov’s adaptation of the Boltzmann equation to ionized gases. The remaining chapters deal with the philosophy of twentieth-century mathematics through topics such as an historically informed discussion of finitism and its limits; a reexamination of Mary Leng’s defenses of mathematical fictionalism through an alternative, anti-realist approach to mathematics; and a look at the reasons that mathematicians select specific problems to pursue. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible to not only mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also anyone with a general interest in mathematics. (shrink)

The shapes of neurons and glial cells dictate many important aspects of their functions. In olfactory systems, certain architectural features are characteristics of these two cell types across a wide variety of species. The accumulated evidence suggests that these common features may play fundamental roles in olfactoryinformation processing. For instance, the primary olfactory neuropil in most vertebrate and invertebrate olfactory systems is organized into discrete modules called glomeruli. Inside each glomerulus, sensory axons and CNS neurons branch and synapse in patterns (...) that are repeated across species. In many species, moreover, the glomeruli are enveloped by a thin and ordered layer of glial processes. Theglomerular arrangement reflects the processing of odor information in modules that encode the discrete molecular attributes of odorant stimuli being processed. Recent studies of the mechanisms that guide the development of olfactory neurons and glial cells have revealed complex reciprocal interactions between these two cell types, which may be necessary for the establishment of modular compartments. Collectively, the findings reviewed here suggest that specialized cellular architecture plays key functional roles in the detection, analysis, and discrimination of odors at early steps in olfactory processing. (shrink)

Rather than focusing on political and legal debates surrounding attempts to determine if and when genocidal rape has taken place in a particular setting, this essay turns instead to a crucial, yet neglected area of inquiry: the moral significance of genocidal rape, and more specifically, the nature of the harms that constitute the culpable wrongdoing that genocidal rape represents. In contrast to standard philosophical accounts, which tend to employ an individualistic framework, this essay offers a situated understanding of harm that (...) features the importance of interdependence and relationality and that conceptualizes harms as embodied and contextual. The paper ultimately reveals what is distinctive about this particular crime of sexual violence by exploring the logic of genocidal rape: genocidal rape involves the harm of forced self-betrayal unleashed relationally, causing victims as representatives of their group to participate inadvertently in the destruction of that group. (shrink)

A friend once told me I was wasting my time writing about cross-cultural perspectives on the beginnings of life. “Your work is interesting for its curiosity value,” he said, “but fundamentally worthless. What happens in other cultures is totally irrelevant to what is happening here.” Those were discouraging words, but as I followed the American debates about the beginnings and ends of life, it seemed he was right. Anthropologists have written a great deal about birth and death rites in other (...) societies and about non-western notions of personhood, but to date our findings have had little impact on American policy, ethics, or law. The recognized experts on contentious topics such as abortion and euthanasia tend to come from the fields of philosophy, bioethics, theology, law, and biology, but rarely from the social sciences. I was a bit surprised, therefore, to be invited to address the Thomas A. Pitts Memorial Lectureship on “Defining the Beginning and the End of Human Life.”. (shrink)

In Nowhere in the Middle Ages Karma Lochrie extends what is already an impressive set of forays into medieval culture. To studies of medieval sexuality, medieval secrecy, and The Book of Margery Kempe, she adds a probing analysis of utopianism by which she extends utopianism backwards into medieval thought and expands an understanding of the term by placing the medieval texts she has chosen in dialogue with Thomas More's Utopia. As Lochrie explains in the introduction, she aims not to restrict (...) but to query the "utopian potential" of medieval texts whose energies are rooted in the world and thus not affiliated with apocalypticism and religious mysticism. Within what is a carefully framed exploration of medieval... (shrink)

This chapter deals with a brief word about the Christian doctrine of Incarnation. The doctrine of the Incarnation, which takes Jesus Christ to be a person fully human and fully divine, requires a slight modification of constitutionalism. Constitutionalism seems to have an advantage over mind‐body dualism about Christ's nature: his human nature is wholly material and his divine nature is wholly immaterial. The chapter also focuses on Christian doctrines of resurrection of the dead. Next, it discusses St Thomas Aquinas's views (...) in particular, and points to a few difficulties it has. It shows how constitutionalism can avoid Thomas's difficulties and provides an understanding of the doctrine of resurrection without immaterial souls. Aquinas gives a way to distinguish between Smith's and Brown's souls between death and the general resurrection. Separated souls are individuated by the bodies that they long for. Each separated soul has an affinity for the body with which it was united during earthlylife. (shrink)

In response to Lynne Rudder Baker’s intriguing paper, “Why Christians Should Not Be Libertarians,” I suggest that, even if a Christian simply lets the chips fall where they may with respect to the dispute between libertarians and compatibilists, a Christian should not be a determinist. I also offer for consideration a rather controversial non-Augustinian explanation for the near universality and seeming inevitability of human sin.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory,Thomas LeddySpirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory, by H. L. Hix; x & 208 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995, $16.95 paper.This intriguing, rich and witty book is a collection of twelve mainly previously published essays each of which is titled “Postmodern” something.“Postmodern Grief,” which first appeared in Philosophy and Literature (1993), is a wonderful and fun deconstruction (...) of the postmodernists themselves. Hix sees certain writings in terms of Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The grief is over cultural losses (the ashes of which are referred to in the book’s title) in our electronic information age.Hix is dead right when he argues that Derrida exemplifies the strategy of denial in “Plato’s Pharmacy.” Derrida, as Hix puts it, addresses yesterday’s problem. Hix also plausibly fits writers like Eco and Bloom into the stage of anger. His interpretation of Lyotard as dealing with grief by bargaining (“if I let consensus go, will you let me keep justice?”) is brilliant. There is something pathetic about Lyotard’s belief that if we give all people free access to information technology then this will insure justice. Hix matches Baudrillard, who laments the loss of four-dimensionality in the electronic era, with depression. Finally, Ong exemplifies acceptance since, for Ong, electronic [End Page 511] technologies bring us to a new oral age which fosters a communal sense and concentrates on the present. Hix then calls for a new Socrates who will take us beyond lament to forge a new ideal.“Postmodern Beauty” argues, contra Lyotard, that beauty is still possible in our computer age since artworks are eternally created here and now. We can have aesthetic friendships with a visionary superior such as Van Gogh. However the Van Gogh we are speaking of is not the real historical one but a created proxy who only exists discursively. Still, the great artist is divine and gives us his (Hix’s examples are all male) blessing.“Postmodern Obscenity” presents Baudrillard’s view that obscenity is to be found not in desire’s triumph but rather in its defeat. In this postmodern age we lose sexuality because penetration is no longer possible, and that is so because of the collapse of the distinction between surface and depth. Hix then contrasts a photograph by Mapplethorpe with a Victoria’s Secret catalog. The catalog fits the postmodern conception of obscenity nicely. The Mapplethorpe, although obscene in the traditional sense, is not in the postmodern sense.“Postmodern Color” is my favorite chapter. Here, Hix deconstructs Derrida’s own analysis of metaphor and metaphysics. He shows how Derrida must use metaphors of opacity and depth to make his point. These metaphors also entail the very view Derrida opposes. It is here that Hix develops his theme of the postmodern replacement of metaphors of time with those of space. Prior to our postmodern era the Other which constitutes our selves was historical (for example, ancestors) while the Other which threatened us was spatial (for example, foreigners). By contrast, in the postmodern era we are constituted by the spatial Other and are threatened by the temporal Other. This explains something that has puzzled me in recent curriculum debates. As Hix puts it, reasonable people like Lynne Cheney and Louis Gates understand the humanities differently in terms of these competing metaphors. Cheney takes the traditional view, using temporal metaphors of origin and tradition, while Gates takes the postmodern view, using spacial metaphors of decentering and marginality.“Postmodern Love” and “Postmodern Sex” fit together. The first argues that although postmodernists claim we lack a language of love, they actually believe that love and language are one. More importantly, they know but repress the idea that love is something that transcends language. Here Hix calls on postmodernism to recognize that what structures language is outside language. The second argues that sex in our postmodern era has been transformed into discourse and discourse into sex. Each is in exchange for the other. Thus, whereas postmodern love is inexpressible, postmodern sex is nothing but talk.“Postmodern Virtue” begins by showing that... (shrink)

Biologists, historians of biology, and philosophers of biology often ask what is it to be an individual, really. This book does not answer that question. Instead, it answers a much more interesting one: How do biologists individuate individuals? In answering that question, the authors explore why biologists individuate individuals, in what ways, and for what purposes. The cross-disciplinary, dialogical approach to answering metaphysical questions that is pursued in the volume may seem strange to metaphysicians who are not biologically focused, but (...) it is adroitly achieved by the editors. Scott Lidgard (a paleontologist and marine ecologist) and Lynn K. Nyhart (a historian of biology) orchestrate a dialogue among historians of biology, philosophers of biology, and practicing biologists over 10 chapters. These are followed by three reflective commentaries written to frame the different disciplinary perspectives and to highlight the historical, biological, and philosophical themes across the chapters. The result is a volume—in structure and in content—that has much to be generously commended. Biological individuality is a hotly discussed topic, but it is also part of a series of long-standing arguments within both the history and philosophy of biology (HPB) and metaphysics. Notable and fervent debates have centered on evolution and the units of selection, predominantly on Michael T. Ghiselin’s and David L. Hull’s notion of species as individuals, Peter Godfrey-Smith’s Darwinian individuals, and Ellen Clarke’s individuating mechanisms. Lately, it has encompassed non-Darwinian individuals, symbiotic associations like Thomas Pradeu’s immunological individuals, and John Dupré and Maureen A. O’Malley’s metabolic individuals.2 The present volume is curated in a way to introduce the reader to new research in HPB that articulates these debates as well as to introduce and engage in the study of further notions of biological individuality. But its aim is more than an introduction. As the subtitle suggests, it is also intended to give the reader insight into the working together of biologists, historians of biology, and philosophers of biology in figuring out how the notion of biological individuality is instantiated. As such, the problem-centered dialogue that results does more than talk through biological individuality. It shows how the different and often divergent goals of the authors’ disciplines shape not only how they think about individuality but how they communicate this thinking in reciprocal collaboration with others in different disciplines. … cont’d…. (shrink)

Bestselling author of The Intention Experiment reveals the latest science that proves the extensive connectedness of mind, matter, and consciousness.

Persons and Bodies develops and defends an account of persons and of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Human persons are constituted by bodies, without being identical to the bodies that constitute them—just as, I argue, statues are constituted by pieces of bronze, say, without being identical to the pieces of bronze that constitute them. The relation of constitution, therefore, is not peculiar to persons and their bodies, but is pervasive in the natural world.

J. S. Mill's role in the Indian education controversy is well known, but scarcely well understood. That he drafted, in 1836, a despatch sharply critical of Macaulay's infamous Minute on Indian Education, is general knowledge now. That in drafting the despatch Mill drew upon the ideas of H. H. Wilson, a noted Orientalist and sharp critic of Macaulay and the Anglicists, has been adequately demonstrated. That the despatch was never sent to India, because of the objections of the President of (...) the Board of Trade, John Hobhouse, a Whig with some utilitarian connections, has been common knowledge for several decades. (shrink)

Scholars have proposed a number of courses and programs intended to improve the ethical behavior of scientists in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the scientific enterprise. In the present study, we conducted a quantitative meta-analysis based on 26 previous ethics program evaluation efforts, and the results showed that the overall effectiveness of ethics instruction was modest. The effects of ethics instruction, however, were related to a number of instructional program factors, such as course content and delivery methods, in (...) addition to factors of the evaluation study itself, such as the field of investigator and criterion measure utilized. An examination of the characteristics contributing to the relative effectiveness of instructional programs revealed that more successful programs were conducted as seminars separate from the standard curricula rather than being embedded in existing courses. Furthermore, more successful programs were case based and interactive, and they allowed participants to learn and practice the application of real-world ethical decision-making skills. The implications of these findings for future course development and evaluation are discussed. (shrink)

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a non-Cartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains us (...) persons is irreducibly personal.After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality. (shrink)

The upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has the potential to eliminate or severely restrict access to legal abortion care in the United States. We a...

When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem-solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from (...) individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration. (shrink)