Da un colloquio tra una fenomenologa di chiara fama e un pedagogista emergono iconnotati dell’atteggiamento fenomenologico, inteso come disposizione intellettuale e morale capace di fondare una “conoscenza personale” nel lavoro di cura. Questa attitudine della mente e del cuore può dar forma al “modo di essere” peculiare di chi, per professione e per vocazione, si prende quotidianamente cura delle persone e della loro esistenza.From this conversation between a well-known phenomenologist and a pedagogist thephenomenological attitude arises as both intellectual and existential (...) disposition, wich is the basis of a “personal knowledge” in care professions. This cognitive and emotional attitude can mould the particular “way of being” which characterizes those professionals who, day by day, take care of people and their existence. (shrink)

In the framework of the theory of the semiosphere elaborated by Juri Lotman in the 1980s, the notion of translation acquires a new, broadened meaning and is used to describe a general mechanism of cultural dynamics. This is a direct consequence of the understanding of the semiosphere as a “continuum of semiotic systems” of which heterogeneity and polyglotism are constitutive features. If the “smallest functioning semiotic mechanism” is not an isolated system, but always a (at least) binary system, translation will (...) play a central role in communication not only between different cultures, but also within every single culture.The article focuses on the different places of translation within the semiosphere as a system of systems and its relations to the notion of border. It argues that in Lotman’s theory, translation can function both as a homogenizing and a heterogenizing semiotic force, depending on its position at the center or the periphery of a given semiotic system. The first part of the article develops a theoretical argument on the relation between translation processes and cultural borders, which acquire different meanings and functions within Lotman’s theory of the semiosphere corresponding to differently oriented kinds of translation. The second part of the article develops a close analysis of Giacomo Leopardi’s poem “L’Infinito,” where the tension and dialogue between the different functions of the Lotmanian borders and the different kinds of cultural translation become devices for the generation of new meanings. Finally, the article briefly considers the significance of Lotman’s semiospheric understanding of the relation between borders and translation for contemporary translation and border studies. (shrink)

The concept of “cultural identity” has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as “race”, “ethnicity”, even “nationality” in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become anideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the (...) kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s differance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

The concept of "cultural identity" has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as "race", "ethnicity", even "nationality" in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become an ideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of (...) the kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida's and Lotman's concepts of "mirror structure", "binarism", "numerousness", "textuality" and "semiosphere". An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman's "translation of the untranslatable" and Derrida's différance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

The concept of “cultural identity” has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as “race”, “ethnicity”, even “nationality” in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become anideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the (...) kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s differance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

The concept of “cultural identity” has gradually replaced such discredited concepts as “race”, “ethnicity”, even “nationality” in the conservative political discourse of recent decades which conceives, represents and performs culture as a closed system with clear-cut boundaries which must be defended from contamination.The article employs the theories of Derrida and Lotman as useful tools for deconstructing this understanding of cultural identity, which has recently become anideological justification for socio-political conflicts. In fact, their theories spring from a thorough critique of the (...) kind of internalizing self-enclosure which allowed Saussure to delimit and describe langue as the object of linguistics. The article identifies and compares the elements of this critique, focusing on Derrida’s and Lotman’s concepts of “mirror structure”, “binarism”, “numerousness”, “textuality” and “semiosphere”.An understanding of mediation emerges which is not reducible to any kind of definitive acquisition, thereby frustrating the pretences of identity, constantly dislocating and deferring any attempt at semiotic self-enclosure. My comparison suggests that Lotman’s “translation of the untranslatable” (or “dialogue”) and Derrida’s differance can be considered analogous descriptions of this problematic kind of mediation. The (de)constructive nature of culture, as described by Lotman and Derrida, challenges any attempt to view cultural formations as sources of rigid and irreducible identities or differences. (shrink)

The article compares Roland Barthes’s and Juri Lotman’s notions of ‘second-order semiological systems’ [systemes semiologique seconds] and ‘secondary modelling systems’ [вторичные моделирующие системы]. It investigates the shared presuppositions of the two theories and their important divergences from each other, explaining them in terms of the opposite strategic roles that the notions of ‘ideology’ and ‘culture’ play in the work of Barthes and Lotman, respectively. The immersion of secondary modelling systems in culture as a “system of systems” characterized by internal heterogeneity, (...) allows Lotman to evidence their positive creative potential: the result of the tensions arising from cultural systemic plurality and heterogeneity may coincide with the emergence of new, unpredictable meanings in translation. The context of Barthes’s second-order semiological systems is instead provided by highly homogeneous ideological frames that appropriate the signs of the first-order system and make them into forms for significations which confirm, reproduce and transmit previously existing information generated by hegemonic social and cultural discourses. The article shows how these differences resurface and, partially, fade away in the theories of the text that Barthes and Lotman elaborated in the 1970s. The discussion is concluded by some remarks on the possible topicality of Barthes’s and Lotman’s approaches for contemporary semiotics and the humanities in general. (shrink)

This paper examines the discourse of war from a semiotic point of view and suggests some ideas for the development of practices of resistance to it. The discourse of war can be considered symptomatic in respect to underlying discourses of totality such as globalisation. By aiming at explanatory simplification, this kind of discourse takes the paradoxical form of an exhaustive paradigm which always engenders a residuum to be eliminated. Semiotics can develop practices of resistance to the discourse of war by (...) operating on the syntagmatic chains generated by its mediatic agencies. These practices are based on the postmodernist critique of totalising discourses. A process in which details are disconnected from the mediatic chains where they vanish might trigger the opening of a space of community that makes the residuum of war discourse presentable through metaphorical substitutions. Semiotic practices of resistance to the discourse of war presuppose a shift in theory from the paradigm of globality to that of partiality. Partiality must be understood both from a political and an epistemological point of view and it could therefore represent an important element in the development of a semioethics. (shrink)

It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic (...) norms governing belief, I argue against certain prominent specifications of belief 's aim given in terms of truth, and advance a neglected alternative. (shrink)

This book attempts to open up a path towards a phenomenological theory of values. By drawing on everyday experience, and dissociating the notion of value from that of tradition, it shows how emotional sensibility can be integrated to practical reason. This project was prompted by the persuasion that the fragility of democracy, and the current public irrelevance of the ideal principles which support it, largely depend on the inability of modern philosophy to overcome the well-entrenched skepticism about the power of (...) practical reason. The book begins with a phenomenology of cynical consciousness, continues with a survey of still influential theories of value rooted in 20th century philosophy, and finally offers an outline of a bottom-up axiology that revives the anti-skeptical legacy of phenomenology, without ignoring the standards set by contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe main question addressed in this paper is whether conflict is constitutive of the nature of value commitment, and hence necessarily implied by value pluralism. If this is the case, no resolution of value disagreements, whether on the global level or within modern multicultural societies, is possible via practical reasons, and the only solutions to inner or outer conflicts will be “political”, in the sense of a Realpolitik. Positive and negative answers to the main question are shown to express two (...) intellectual and moral attitudes opposing each other as Gorgias and Socrates, or Rhetoric and Philosophy did in the Ancient World. In post-Nietzschean Modernity, however, most philosophers seem to take sides with Gorgias, against Socrates, as is shown on the basis of Ronald Dworkin’s solitary campaign against the many faces of value scepticism. Drawing on phenomenological axiology, this paper takes sides with Socrates by reconciling value pluralism and universalism. (shrink)

Avec sa participation à l’approche incarnée-enactive de la conscience, la phénoménologie connaît actuellement un regain d’activité. Toutefois, la dimension normative de la conscience tend encore à être négligée dans cette approche, une lacune d’avance dénoncée par Husserl, qui fondait sur l’incapacité du naturalisme d’y remédier sa critique classique de la psychologie scientifique. C’est précisément à l’exigence d’une théorie phénoménologique de la normativité qui soit compatible avec l’approche incarnée-enactive que l’auteure tente d’apporter une réponse satisfaisante.

The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the concept of prefiguration by outlining the necessity of its contribution to a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. In the introduction, I explain how the object of critique for many social theorists has shifted over the course of the last decade from neoliberal globalization to capitalism understood as an encompassing form of life. In light of this, I enumerate the features that should define a progressive public philosophy: radical, emancipatory, and (...) decolonized. The introduction is followed by an overview of the academic debates emerging after the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007–8. Among these, accelerationism fundamentally rejects the incorporation of prefigurative politics in any emancipatory political agenda. To better understand this position, I examine the origin and meaning of prefiguration and prefigurative practices in more detail in Section III. In it, I argue that prefigurative politics entails a holistic approach to social change that digs its roots in feminist and ecological thought and focuses on social reproduction and the preservation of life rather than solely economic production. Subsequently, I deploy the case of Occupy Wall Street to show that a growing number of contemporary social movements are implementing a dualistic strategy that simultaneously combines repertoires of action typical of protest movements with prefigurative practices focused on the embodiment of alternatives. This dualism, along with the limited success of Occupy Wall Street in concretizing its claims and goals, has led prefigurative politics to being labelled as incompatible with, if not even hindering, any emancipatory strategy. My argument instead is that prefigurative politics constitutes a fundamental and necessary component of any political strategy aimed at transcending contemporary capitalism since it conceives progressive social change in an ontologically and epistemologically different way with respect to political parties and protest movements. Taking this into consideration, I conclude that conventional politics and prefigurative politics can be seen as having the potential to mutually reinforce each other and that prefigurative politics should be acknowledged as a pivotal concept in establishing a progressive public philosophy for the 2020s. Only by doing so, will this philosophy be truly radical, emancipatory, and decolonial. (shrink)

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred (...) to an accidentally true belief; if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

Lynne Baker’s Constitution Theory seems to be the farthest-reaching and yet the most subtly elaborated antireductive metaphysics available today. Its original theoretical contribution is a nonmereological theory of material constitution, which yet has a place for classical and Lewisian mereology (this formalized version of Materialism). Constitution Theory hence apparently (i) complies with modern natural science, and yet (ii) rescues the concrete everyday world, and ourselvesin it, from ontological vanity or nothingness, and (iii) does it by avoiding dualism. Why, then, does (...) it meet so many opponents—or rather, why are its many opponents so stubbornly resisting the very idea of constitution, in Baker’s form? One of the most resisted claims is (iii). Is unity without identity—the feature distinguishing the relation between constituting and constituted things—the only nondualist way to oppose reductionism? What would be the price to pay for unity with identity—without reduction? What I (jokingly) call the Unitarian Tradition, going back to Plato, keeps working out the original Platonic way of constructing acomplex object as a Unity comprising a Collection, as opposed to the Aristotelian suggestion of opposing Collections and Substances. For once you have split things apart ontologically, unifying them again may prove a very hard task. (shrink)

Altiero Spinelli (1907-1986) is worldwide renowned as the principal author (with Ernesto Rossi) of the Ventotene Manifesto (1941), whose second edition (1944), prefaced by Eugenio Colorni, is one of the founding documents of the European Union. Less known is the width and depth of Spinelli's thought, not only as a political theorist of supra-national democracy and institutional designer of a possible European Federation but also as a philosopher of civilization and history. While the sources of his federalism have been largely (...) investigated, much less have those of his more comprehensive philosophy. This paper discusses, on a philological basis, the dialogue Spinelli certainly has with some of Max Scheler's writings while going into this dialogue more in-depth, in a philosophical more than philological attitude. (shrink)

La obra de Giovanni Piana se ha interesado también de literatura. La razón se debe al hecho que entre los actos de experiencia la percepción estética posee una naturaleza específica que la filosofía fenomenológica quiere aclarar. Por otra parte, se sabe la pasión de este autor para la música, a la cual ha dedicado un libro de filosofía y numerosos otros textos. El objetivo de este ensayo es analizar el estudio de Piana sobre la obra del poeta italiano Giovanni Pascoli (...) y en particular sobre la relación entre percepción estética, imaginación y material sonoro que se desprende de las poesías de Pascoli. Más allá de considerarse sólo una actividad creativa la producción poética de este autor representa para Piana el lugar de un verdadera reflexión filo-sófica. (shrink)

Questo lavoro verte essenzialmente sul concetto di novità ontologica delle persone umane, e difende una metafisica antimonistica e antidualistica della personhood: essere una persona umana non è avere una mente o un’anima sostanziale in un organismo biologico, non è neppure realizzare un certo insieme di funzioni mediante questo organismo biologico, non è neppure, semplicemente, essere un organismo di specie biologica homo sapiens.Essere una persona umana non è neppure soltanto essere un esemplare della specie suddetta, che in più gode di uno (...) status socialmente riconosciuto, essere cioè una realtà “nuova” solo perché “creata” da certi particolari atti di conferimento di status del tipo di quelli descritti da Searle in svariati scritti — una realtà che decadrebbe se questi atti fossero revocati. Essere una persona non è essere un oggetto sociale. (shrink)

Il pensiero pratico dominante nel Novecento europeo fornisce risposte negative alla questione se sia possibile una fondazione razionale del pensiero pratico, configurando una posizione di scetticismo assiologico e morale ancora oggi maggioritaria. Ma il secolo xx, se da un lato ha rappresentato la bancarotta della ragione pratica, dall'altro ne ha prodotto una vera e propria incarnazione, nelle istituzioni e organizzazioni internazionali, nelle costituzioni rigide degli Stati europei del dopoguerra, nella Dichiarazione Universale dei diritti dell'essere umano del 1948 ecc. Come puň (...) la filosofia pratica portarsi all'altezza della ragione pratica incarnata, invece di minacciarla dall'interno con le sue neo-sofistiche, attraverso relativismi, soggettivismi, nichilismi, politeismi assiologici e simili? (shrink)

The notion of de re truth (Conte, 2016) is put to work in this paper (§ 1). It introduces us to a confrontation between a metaphysics of desertic landscapes, as presented in a stunning poem by Achille Varzi and Claudio Calosi, The Tribulations of Philosophye (§ 2), and an ontology of the lifeworld, as a long-term project based on the key concept of bonds (De Monticelli, 2018). The rich and structured objects of the everyday world are infinite sources of (...) information and cognitive adventure (§§ 3, 3.1., 3.2). Or so I will claim against Varzi’s skepticism about ordinary language, common sense, and ontological realism (§ 4). Far from encouraging our minds to stick to concrete individual things, Ockham’s Razor has been the murder weapon in the dismission of concreteness and the sensible world from the intellectual horizon of Modernity (§§ 5, 6). The “Unitarian Tradition” is a half-playful denomination of a quite real, albeit ignored, alternative theory of individuality (and hence concreteness), brilliantly represented by Boethius, Duns Scotus, and Leibniz. Classic phenomenology quite independently revived it and brought it up to modern analytic standards of rigor and formality (§ 7). (shrink)

" Qualia " is an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us: the ways things seem to us. As is so often the case with philosophical jargon, it is easier to give examples than to give a definition of the term. Look at a glass of milk at sunset; the way it looks to you--the particular, personal, subjective visual quality of the glass of milk is the quale of your visual experience at the (...) moment. The way the milk tastes to you then is another, gustatory quale, and how it sounds to you as you swallow is an auditory quale; These various "properties of conscious experience" are prime examples of qualia. Nothing, it seems, could you know more intimately than your own qualia ; let the entire universe be some vast illusion, some mere figment of Descartes' evil demon, and yet what the figment is made of will be the qualia of your hallucinatory experiences. Descartes claimed to doubt everything that could be doubted, but he never doubted that his conscious experiences had qualia, the properties by which he knew or apprehended them. (shrink)

John Searle reflections on how to derive “Ought” from an “Is’” present a general theory of the sources of normativity within human civilizations. This chapter explores an alternative grounding of normativity on “laws of essence”, a grounding that proceeds by addressing the crucial problem of how to locate essences in a world of facts. To that end, classical phenomenology is shown to be an ontology of concreteness, but this, far from removing it from the dimension of ideals and norms—even practical, (...) ethical, and political ones—instead makes it the philosophy of ideals and relative “oughts” par excellence. (shrink)

La obra de Giovanni Piana se ha interesado también de literatura. La razón se debe al hecho que entre los actos de experiencia la percepción estética posee una naturaleza específica que la filosofía fenomenológica quiere aclarar. Por otra parte, se sabe la pasión de este autor para la música, a la cual ha dedicado un libro de filosofía y numerosos otros textos. El objetivo de este ensayo es analizar el estudio de Piana sobre la obra del poeta italiano Giovanni Pascoli (...) y en particular sobre la relación entre percepción estética, imaginación y material sonoro que se desprende de las poesías de Pascoli. Más allá de considerarse sólo una actividad creativa la producción poética de este autor representa para Piana el lugar de un verdadera reflexión filo-sófica. (shrink)

The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, (...) the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise. (shrink)

1. Happiness, then and now -- Happiness, eudaimonia, and practical reasoning -- Happiness as eudaimonia -- Happiness and virtuous activity -- New directions from old debates -- 2. Happiness then: the sufficiency debate -- Aristotle's case against the sufficiency thesis -- 3. Happiness now: rethinking the self -- Socrates' case for the sufficiency thesis -- Epictetus and the stoic self -- The Stoics' case for the sufficiency thesis -- The embodied conception of the self -- The embodied conception and psychological (...) well-being -- The Stoics' case against the embodied conception. (shrink)

Sometimes it takes years of debate for philosophers to discover what it is they really disagree about. Sometimes they talk past each other in long series of books and articles, never guessing at the root disagreement that divides them. But occasionally a day comes when something happens to coax the cat out of the bag. "Aha!" one philosopher exclaims to another, "so that's why you've been disagreeing with me, misunderstanding me, resisting my conclusions, puzzling me all these years!".

The essay analyses the utopian imaginary in women’s writings with specific reference to the 1970s. Since the late 19 th century, utopia as a genre becomes a space to deconstruct and re-elaborate women’s identity and subjectivity. The appropriation of the utopian paradigm enriches the classical critique of the existing social systems with the deconstruction of gender roles and female stereotypes as a means to fight gender discrimination as well as other forms of oppression which lie at the foundation of the (...) Western symbolic and social orders. It also implies the restructuring of the technical and stylistic devices of the utopian genre. The imaginary worlds represent a space of empowerment that will enable the transformation of power systems, gender and sexual policies against any discriminations. This transformation is seen as salvific for both men and women. (shrink)

Sometimes, learning about the origins of a belief can make it irrational to continue to hold that belief—a phenomenon we call ‘genealogical defeat’. According to explanationist accounts, genealogical defeat occurs when one learns that there is no appropriate explanatory connection between one’s belief and the truth. Flatfooted versions of explanationism have been widely and rightly rejected on the grounds that they would disallow beliefs about the future and other inductively-formed beliefs. After motivating the need for some explanationist account, we raise (...) some problems for recent versions of explanationism. Learning from their failures, we then produce and defend a more resilient explanationism. (shrink)

It has become customary to conceptualize the living cell as an intricate piece of machinery, different to a man-made machine only in terms of its superior complexity. This familiar understanding grounds the conviction that a cell's organization can be explained reductionistically, as well as the idea that its molecular pathways can be construed as deterministic circuits. The machine conception of the cell owes a great deal of its success to the methods traditionally used in molecular biology. However, the recent introduction (...) of novel experimental techniques capable of tracking individual molecules within cells in real time is leading to the rapid accumulation of data that are inconsistent with an engineering view of the cell. This paper examines four major domains of current research in which the challenges to the machine conception of the cell are particularly pronounced: cellular architecture, protein complexes, intracellular transport, and cellular behaviour. It argues that a new theoretical understanding of the cell is emerging from the study of these phenomena which emphasizes the dynamic, self-organizing nature of its constitution, the fluidity and plasticity of its components, and the stochasticity and non-linearity of its underlying processes. (shrink)

Realists about possible worlds typically identify possible worlds with abstract objects, such as propositions or properties. However, they face a significant objection due to Lewis (1986), to the effect that there is no way to explain how possible worlds-as-abstract objects represent possibilities. In this paper, I describe a response to this objection on behalf of realists. The response is to identify possible worlds with propositions, but to deny that propositions are abstract objects, or indeed objects at all. Instead, I argue (...) that realists should follow Prior (1971) and others in treating higher-order quantification (e.g. quantification into predicate or sentence position) as a genuine form of quantification in its own right, and so in particular, not to be analysed in terms of first-order quantification over abstract objects. I argue that from this ‘higher-orderist’ perspective, there is a relatively straightforward answer to the question of how possible worlds-as-propositions succeed in representing possibilities. (shrink)