Disjunctivism, as a theory of visual experience, claims that the mental states involved in a “good case” experience of veridical perception and a “bad case” experience of hallucination differ, even in those cases in which the two experiences are indistinguishable for their subject. Consider the veridical perception of a bar stool and an indistinguishable hallucination; both of these experiences might be classed together as experiences (as) of a bar stool or experiences of seeming to see a bar stool. This might (...) lead us to think that the experiences we undergo in the two cases must be of the same kind, the difference being that the former, but not the latter, is connected to the world in the right kind of way. Such a conjecture has been called a “highest common factor” or “common kind” assumption. At heart, disjunctivism consists in the rejection of this assumption. According the disjunctivist, veridical experiences and hallucinations do not share a common component. There are a host of interesting questions surrounding disjunctivism including: What is involved in the claims that good case and bad case experiences differ? Why might one might want to be a disjunctivist? What kinds of claims can the disjunctivist make about hallucination and illusion? These questions, and problems for the thesis, will be discussed as we proceed. (shrink)

These lectures outline the project of a general organology, which is to say an account of life when it is no longer just biological but technical, or when it involves not just organic matter but organized inorganic matter. This organology is also shown to require a modified Simondonian account of the shift from vital individuation to a three-stranded process of psychic, collective and technical individuation. Furthermore, such an approach involves extending the Derridean reading of Socrates's discussion of writing as a (...) pharmakon, so that it becomes a more general account of the pharmacological character of retention and protention. By going back to Leroi-Gourhan, we can recognize that this also means pursuing the history of retentional modifications unfolding in the course of the history of what, with Lotka, can also be called exosomatization. It is thus a question of how exteriorization can, today, in an epoch when it becomes digital, and in an epoch that produces vast amounts of entropy at the thermodynamic, biological and noetic levels, still possibly produce new forms of interiorization, that is, new forms of thought, care and desire, amounting to so many chances to struggle against the planetary-scale pharmacological crisis with which we are currently afflicted. (shrink)

The story of superheavy elements - those at the very end of the periodic table - is not well known outside the community of heavy-ion physicists and nuclear chemists. But it is a most interesting story which deserves to be known also to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science and indeed to the general public. This is what the present work aims at. It tells the story or rather parts of the story, of how physicists and chemists created (...) class='Hi'>elements heavier than uranium or searched for them in nature. And it does so with an emphasis on the frequent discovery and naming disputes concerning the synthesis of very heavy elements. Moreover, it calls attention to the criteria which scientists have adopted for what it means to have discovered a new element. In this branch of modern science it may be more appropriate to speak of creation instead of discovery. The work will be of interest to scientists as well as to scholars studying modern science from a meta-perspective. (shrink)

The accumulation of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) has raised public awareness due to harmful contamination to both human and marine creatures. This study was designed to determine the concentration of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni) in the intestine, kidney, muscle, gill, and liver tissues of local commercial edible fish, fourfinger threadfin (Eleutheronema tetradactylum), and black pomfret (Parastromateus niger) collected from Morib (M) and Kuala Selangor (KS). Among the studied PTEs, Cu and Zn were essential (...) class='Hi'>elements to regulate body metabolism with certain dosages required while Cd and Ni were considered as non-essential elements that posed chronic and carcinogenic risk. The concentration of PTEs in fish tissue samples was analyzed using flame atomic absorption spectrometry (F-AAS). By comparing the concentration of PTEs in fish tissues as a bioindicator, the environmental risk of Morib was more serious than Kuala Selangor because both fish species collected from Morib resulted in a higher PTEs concentration. For an average 62 kg adult with a fish ingestion rate (FIR) of 0.16 kg/person/day in Malaysia, the estimated weekly intake (EWI) of Cd from the consumption of E. tetradactylum (M: 0.0135 mg/kg; KS: 0.0134 mg/kg) and P. niger (M: 0.0140 mg/kg; KS: 0.0132 mg/kg) had exceeded the provisional tolerable weekly intake (Cd: 0.007 mg/kg) established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) and oral reference dose (ORD) values of Cd (0.001 mg/kg/day) as provided by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) regional screening level, thus it posed chronic risks for daily basis consumption. Besides, the value of the carcinogenic risk of Cd (0.7−3 to 0.8−3) and Ni (0.5−3 to 0.6−3) were in between the acceptable range (10−6 to 10−4) of the health index that indicates a relatively low possibility cancer occurrence to the consumers in both Morib and Kuala Selangor. This study recommended FIR to be 0.80 kg/person/day to reduce the possibility of posing chronic and carcinogenic risks while at the same time obtaining the essential nutrients from the fish. (shrink)

An excellent introduction to mathematical logic, this book provides readers with a sound knowledge of the most important approaches to the subject, stressing the use of logical methods in attacking nontrivial problems. It covers the logic of classes, of propositions, of propositional functions, and the general syntax of language, with a brief introduction that also illustrates applications to so-called undecidability and incompleteness theorems. Other topics include the simple proof of the completeness of the theory of combinations, Church's theorem on the (...) recursive unsolvability of the decision problem for the restricted function calculus, and the demonstrable properties of a formal system as a criterion for its acceptability. 1950 ed. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections (...) in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This article aims to advance the historical-materialist understanding of racism by addressing some central theoretical questions. It argues that racism should be understood as a social relation of oppression rather than as solely or primarily an ideology, and suggests that a historical-materialist concept of race is necessary in order to capture features of societies shaped by historically specific racisms. A carefully conceived concept of privilege is also required if we are to grasp the contradictory ways in which members of dominant (...) racial groups are affected by social relations of racial oppression. The persistence of racism today should be explained as a consequence of two dimensions of the capitalist mode of production – imperialism and the contribution of racism to profitability – and of a social property emergent from racism: the efforts of members of dominant groups to preserve their advantages relative to the racially oppressed. (shrink)

This article suggests a novel approach to the study of the argumentative structure of Proclus’ Elements of Theology (ET). Instead of studying it through the prism of the Elements of Euclid (EG), this novel approach proposes an evaluation of ET’s argumentative structure based on Proclus’ reflections about the genre of stoicheiôsis and the methods of dialectic and geometry. Thus, I argue that studies under the suggested form of evaluation should standardize the conceptual framework of their analyses about the (...) features of ET’s argumentative structure, explicating their relevance for the interpretation of the text’s system of logical relations. Moreover, this article presents some examples of editorial enhancements made by editors of ET clarifying the argumentative structure of the text. With these examples, I will show how these enhancements help us clarify the argumentative structure of ET. (shrink)

First published in 1903, Taylor endeavours to provide a detailed study of metaphysic as a discipline. Opening with a brief history of metaphysics, the book explores topics including the problem of the metaphysician, the metaphysical method, subdivisions of metaphysics, ontology, reality, cosmology, rational psychology, morality, ethics and religion.

The theme surrounding scientific discoveries is quite neglected in and about the sciences, especially in terms of historical and epistemological understanding. Discoveries are often treated as simple information about dates, places, and people. This work presents discussions centered on historical episodes related to chemical elements and the Periodic Law, based on reflections by Thomas Kuhn and Norwood Hanson, aiming to highlight and contextualize specific scientific discoveries' conceptual and epistemological structure. With that in mind, issues related to the inseparability of (...) the contexts of discovery and justification are recovered, along with the complex intrinsic structures of the genesis of scientific knowledge and distinct types and categories of scientific discoveries. (shrink)

Reconciliation is a biblical concept, wherein God reconciled himself with humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The concept of reconciliation remains complicated in nature, and for the church to be an agent of reconciliation, prescriptive elements such as confession, repentance, forgiveness, restoration, restitution, mercy, truth, justice, peace and reconciliation will be discussed. The elements needed for the church to be an agent of change are action-driven and include a vision for change, the acceptance of responsibility, (...) the acceptance of failure, repentance, confession, forgiveness, action towards change justice, peace and mercy, and reconciliation. The aim of this article is to describe a possible process for reconciliation through change agency by using the biblical perspective of the concept as a foundation. The research will then focus on different perspectives of change and the church’s role as a change agent to bring about positive change in the transformation of existing and persistent forms of injustice that are problematic in society. Many theories of change exist; I will briefly refer to some theories of change and will then move on to sketching the elements that are necessary for the church to fulfil its calling as a change agent towards reconciliation as a core biblical principle. (shrink)

What drives individuals to generate utopian fictions, and how does this process take place? From a sociological perspective, we can phrase this question as follows: Why and how, in a given society, at a given point of its history, do some individuals design some idealized forms of social organization? Surprisingly, the process through which utopias are produced has not been widely addressed in utopian studies.Indeed, four types of research question dominate this scholarship :First, following Engels’s critique of utopianism and Mannheim’s (...) countercritique, some reflections explore how utopian logics... (shrink)

The essence of Marxist philosophy is a philosophical criticism of society, and its development is driven by its philosophical criticism of social phenomena. Examining and criticizing music from a philosophical perspective can provide us with a brand new theoretical framework for music philosophy, exploring and applying new philosophical theories to analyze the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition, thereby expanding the philosophical field of music. This paper first introduces the concept and development of Marx's philosophy and philosophical (...) view of music, then analyzes the characteristics and current situation of the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition and discusses the criticality and practicality of the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition under the perspective of Marx's philosophical view. Finally, it is pointed out that the fusion of ethnic elements in modern music composition has the philosophical basis of combining formal analysis with meaning interpretation, technical rationality with musical aesthetics, and intersubjectivity. From the perspective of Marxist philosophy, exploring the philosophical foundation of the combination of modern music composition and ethnic factors helps to deeply analyze the philosophical connotations of modern music composition and ethnic elements, seek dialogue and understanding between modern music and ethnic elements, and reshape human sensory understanding. (shrink)

The genomes of virtually all sexually reproducing species contain transposable elements. Although active elements generally transpose more rapidly than they are inactivated by mutation or excision, their number can be kept in check by purifying selection if its effectiveness becomes disproportionately greater as their copy number increases. In sexually reproducing species, such synergistic selection can result from ectopic crossing-over or from homologous recombination under negative epistasis. In addition, there may be controls on transposon activity that are associated with (...) meiosis. Because a sexual lineage that abandons sex must lack such mechanisms, it may be driven to extinction by the unchecked proliferation of deleterious transposons inherited from its sexual progenitor. An important component of the evolutionary advantage of sex over asex may therefore lie in the ability of sex, despite facilitating the spread of deleterious elements within interbreeding populations, also to restrain their intragenomic proliferation. BioEssays 27:76–85, 2005. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

As Sungmoon Kim points out, contemporary Confucian studies has been disproportionately focused on the ethical side of the tradition. In this regard, Kim’s book, Theorizing Confucian Virtue Politics: The Political Philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi, makes an enormous contribution to the field of Confucian political thought. What makes his project even more valuable is that he goes beyond the textual analysis of political concepts and ideas in classical Confucian writings and builds them into a coherent and systematic political theory.In what (...) follows, I will examine Kim’s reconstruction of the Confucian political theories of Mencius and Xunzi. However, rather than taking issue with whether his reconstructions are true... (shrink)

Although VL30 retrotransposable elements have been associated with certain cancers for nearly twenty years, because of their expression in rodent malignancies and recombination into murine sarcoma viruses, their causative role, if any, in cancer has been uncertain and enigmatic. Recent findings suggest loss of normal transcriptional control of specific VL30 element expression may make a critical contribution to tumor progression at a step associated with malignant conversion, by bringing into play a cellular program normally involved in wound healing. This (...) program, the fibroblast anoxic response system, includes an adaptation to glycolytic metabolism, secretion of metalloproteinases, and activation of an endonuclease. While appropriate for facilitating debris removal during wound healing, loss of control of this program in a cell which has already progressed to the benign neoplastic state has the potential to simultaneously produce the invasiveness and genomic instability charateristic of malignancy. Examination of tumors and tumor derived cell lines has confirmed that key aspects of this system are in fact activated in cancer. (shrink)