Senshu University has hosted many international conferences on medieval English literature - primarily on Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland - as well as in the related fields of Old Germanic, medieval French and Renaissance Italian literature. These international collaborations inform and contribute to the present volume, which addresses the heritage bequeathed to medieval English language and literature by the classical world.<BR> This volume explores the development of medieval English literature in light of contact with Germanic and Old Norse cultures, on (...) the one hand, and Romance languages, on the other. The book includes a comparative study of <I>Beowulf in the Germanic context, discusses aspects of <I>Piers Plowman and its tradition, and offers philological approaches to Chaucer (especially his <I>Troilus and Criseyde). The articles assembled here collectively suggest how the torches of classical learning were carried from continental Europe to illuminate the pages of medieval English literature. (shrink)

The theory stating that oxidative stress is at the root of several diseases is extremely popular. However, so far, no antioxidant is recommended or offered by healthcare systems neither approved as therapy by regulatory agencies that base their decisions on evidence-based medicine. This is simply because, so far, despite many preclinical and clinical studies indicating a beneficial effect of antioxidants in many disease conditions, randomised clinical trials have failed to provide the evidence of efficacy required for drug approval. In this (...) review, we discuss the levels of evidence required to claim causality in preclinical research on OS, the weakness of the oversimplification associated with OS theory of disease and the importance of the narrative in its popularity. Finally, from a more translational perspective, we discuss the reasons why antioxidants acting by scavenging reactive oxygen species might not only prevent their detrimental effects but also interfere with essential signalling roles. We propose that ROS have a complex metabolism and are generated by different enzymes at diverse sites and with different timing. Aggregating this plurality of systems in a single theory of disease may not be the best way to develop new drugs, and future research may need to focus on specific oxygen-toxifying pathways rather than on non-specific ROS scavengers. Finally, similarly to what is nowadays required for clinical trials, we recommend making unpublished data available in repositories, as this will allow big data approaches or meta-analyses without the blinders of the publication bias. (shrink)

How do people make sense of their experiences? How do they understand possibility? How do they limit possibility? These questions are central to all the human sciences. Here, Vincent Crapanzano offers a powerfully creative new way to think about human experience: the notion of imaginative horizons. For Crapanzano, imaginative horizons are the blurry boundaries that separate the here and now from what lies beyond, in time and space. These horizons, he argues, deeply influence both how we experience our lives (...) and how we interpret those experiences, and here sets himself the task of exploring the roles that creativity and imagination play in our experience of the world. (shrink)

In “Meeting the Moment: Bioethics in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” Camisha Russell calls for transforming “bioethics-as-usual” with help from “outsiders”. Prior scholars agree...

"This book provides new interpretations of Heidegger's philosophical method in light of 20th-century postmodernism and 21st-century speculative realism. In doing so, it raises important questions about philosophical method in the age of global warming and climate change. Vincent Blok addresses topics that have yet to be extensively discussed in Heidegger scholarship, including Heidegger's method of questioning, the religious character of Heidegger's philosophical method and Heidegger's conceptualization of philosophical method as explorative confrontation. He is also critical of Heidegger's conceptuality and (...) develops a post-Heideggerian concept of philosophical method, which provides a new perspective on the role of willing, poetry and earth-interest in contemporary philosophy. This earth-interest turns out to be particularly important to consider and leads to critical reflections on Heidegger's concept of Earth, the necessity of Earth-interest in contemporary philosophy and a post-Heideggerian concept of the Earth. Heidegger's Concept of Philosophical Method will be of interest primarily to Heidegger scholars and graduate students, but its discussion of philosophical method and environmental philosophy will also appeal to scholars in other disciplines and areas of philosophy"--. (shrink)

Epistemic logic begins with the recognition that our everyday talk about knowing and believing has some systematic features that we can track and re‡ect upon. Epistemic logicians have studied and extended these glints of systematic structure in fascinating and important ways since the early 1960s. However, for one reason or another, mainstream epistemologists have shown little interest. It is striking to contrast the marginal role of epistemic logic in contemporary epistemology with the centrality of modal logic for metaphysicians. This article (...) is intended to help in correcting this oversight by presenting some important developments in epistemic logic and suggesting ways to understand their applicability to traditional epistemological problems. Obviously, by itself, tweaking the formal apparatus of epistemic logic does not solve traditional epistemological problems. Epistemic logic can help us to navigate through problems in a systematic fashion by unpacking the logic of the problematic concepts, it can also lead us to recognize problems that we had not anticipated. This is basically analogous to the role that modal logic has played in contemporary metaphysics. (shrink)

The main research programs in quantum gravity tend to suggest in one way or another that most spacetime structures are not fundamental. At the same time, work in quantum foundations highlights fundamental features that are in tension with any straightforward space- time understanding. This paper aims to explore the little investigated but potentially fruitful links between these two fields.

Investigating Girard's new propositionnal calculus which aims at a large scale study of computation, we stumble quickly on that question: What is a multiplicative connective? We give here a detailed answer together with our motivations and expectations.

Abstract: Pluralistic ignorance is a nasty informational phenomenon widely studied in social psychology and theoretical economics. It revolves around conditions under which it is "legitimate" for everyone to remain ignorant. In formal epistemology there is enough machinery to model and resolve situations in which pluralistic ignorance may arise. Here is a simple first stab at recovering from pluralistic ignorance by means of knowledge transmissibility.

A controversy over the pudgala or “person” raged among Indian Buddhists for more than a millennium. Their polemics were at least as much a matter of canonical exegesis as of reasoning and argument, for the “mainstream” Buddhist doctors had to account for—and explain away—the numerous places in scripture where the Buddha speaks of the “person.” The Bhārahārasūtra or “sūtra on the bearer of the burden” was one of the scriptures most frequently quoted and discussed in this connection. The present paper (...) is aimed at presenting a reconstructed Sanskrit version of this sūtra and providing an overview of the doctrinal and argumentative uses that were made of it in the context of the debates about the status of the “person.”. (shrink)

Climate modelling plays a crucial role for understanding and addressing the climate challenge, in terms of both mitigation and adaptation. It is therefore of central importance to understand to what extent climate models are adequate for relevant purposes, such as providing certain kinds of climate change projections in view of decision-making. In this perspective, the issue of the stability of climate models under small relevant perturbations in their structure seems particularly important. Within this framework, a debate has emerged in the (...) philosophy of science literature about the relevance for climate modelling of the mathematical notion of structural stability. This paper adresses several important foundational and epistemological questions that arise in this context, in particular about the the role of abstract mathematical considerations of a qualitative nature for concrete modelling projects with mainly quantitative purposes. (shrink)

‘From now on, I'll describe the cities to you’, the Khan had said, ‘in your journeys you will see if they exist.’ But the cities visited by Marco Polo were always different from those thought of by...

Treating subjects as diverse as Roman carnivals and Balinese cockfights, circumcision, dreaming, and spirit possession in Morocco, transference in ...

La qualité du lien de tendresse et de confiance dans un couple permet la constitution d’un espace intertransférentiel au sein duquel tendent à se répéter les traumatismes archaïques non symbolisés des deux conjoints. Il est également le lieu où se définissent pour chacun les problématiques identitaires de conjoint, d’amant et de parent.

A-theorists and B-theorists debate whether the "Now" is metaphysically distinguished from other time slices. Analogously, one may ask whether the "I" is metaphysically distinguished from other perspectives. Few philosophers would answer the second question in the affirmative. An exception is Caspar Hare, who has devoted two papers and a book to arguing for such a positive answer. In this paper, I argue that those who answer the first question in the affirmative---A-theorists---should also answer the second question in the affirmative. This (...) is because key arguments in favor of the A-theory are more effective asarguments in favor of the resulting combined position, and key arguments against the A-theory are ineffective against the combined position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 112-113 [Access article in PDF] Moses Mendelssohn: The First English Biography and Translations. Introduction by James Schmidt. Vol. 1: M. Samuels [sic]. Memoirs of Moses Mendelsohn [sic]. Pp. xxi + 178. Vol. 2: Writings Related to Mendelssohn's Jerusalem. Translated by M. Samuel. Pp. ix + 329. Vol. 3: Mendelssohn's Jerusalem. Translated by M. Samuel. Pp. 371. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, (...) 2002. Cloth, $295.00. In 1827, the Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle, who believed history was an impressive gallery of great men, wrote that the life of the Jewish philosopher from Berlin, Moses Mendelssohn, was "full of encouragement for all lovers of self improvement." This was just one more stone in the edifice of the Mendelssohnian myth, whose foundations had already been laid during Mendelssohn's lifetime, and which continued to grow after his death, until he became an icon of culture. For the Jews Mendelssohn was a source of pride, proof that Jews could become integrated into the life of liberal Europe and contribute to its culture without assimilating.Moses Samuel (1795-1860), the Jewish scholar from Bristol who earned his living as a watchmaker and silversmith, was undoubtedly one of Mendelssohn's most fervent admirers. Like others before him, who were inspired by the fact that Mendelssohn had the same first name as the biblical Moses, Samuel depicted him as a giant with a redemptive mission in Jewish history, deserving of credit for the entrance of Jews into the modern age: "Like his prototype and namesake Moses, Mendelssohn delivered his people from the bondage of their benighted taskmasters; like him, he led them forty years through the desert of ignorance and superstition, during which he sustained them with the manna of his wisdom" (vol. 1, 112-13). The biography Samuel published in London in 1825 was the first book on Mendelssohn written in English. Making no attempt to conceal his intent to depict an illustrious, exemplary personality, he even omitted facts that might have flawed the perfection of the Mendelssohnian myth. But this in no way detracts from the value of that interesting and comprehensive cultural work that Samuel created in England of the 1820s and '30s, which has now been printed in its entirety in an attractive, three-volume edition, edited by James Schmidt.Far more than a biography intended to expand the camp of Mendelssohn's admirers, it was a scholarly attempt, accompanied by notes and detailed explanations, to acquaint English readers with the Jewish philosopher through some of his major works on Judaism. The first volume contains the biography along with important appendices, including a list of all of Mendelssohn's writings in Hebrew and German, Samuel's scholarly notes and biographical sketches of some of the key figures in Mendelssohn's life, such as Thomas Abbt, Johann Caspar Lavater, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The second and third volumes contain a selection of the writings that Samuel saw fit to translate, and these were published in 1838. This was not a random selection. Mendelssohn, the philosopher who made a contribution to the contemporary German Enlightenment and regarded Leibnitz and Wolf as his main mentors, was not the figure Samuel wanted to present to his readers. Instead he wanted to present Mendelssohn's position on Judaism and Christianity. Consequently, [End Page 112] in the second volume he included a translation of texts connected with Mendelssohn's polemic against Lavater (who publicly challenged Mendelssohn in 1769 to explain his commitment to Judaism or to convert) and his 1783 preface to Menasseh ben Israel's Vindiciae Judaeorum, in which he expressed his opposition to religious discipline and excommunication. The third volume contains the complete translation of Jerusalem (1783), Mendelssohn's best known work, in which he declared his firm adherence to the Jewish religion, defined by him as a religion of the revealed law, along with two hundred pages of the translator's notes that make the book the first work of commentary of its kind.The critical reader, familiar with the wealth of highly developed research that in recent... (shrink)

As one of America’s "public intellectuals," John Dewey was engaged in a lifelong struggle to understand the human mind and the nature of human inquiry. According to Thomas C. Dalton, the successful pursuit of this mission demanded that Dewey become more than just a philosopher; it compelled him to become thoroughly familiar with the theories and methods of physics, psychology, and neurosciences, as well as become engaged in educational and social reform. Tapping archival sources and Dewey’s extensive correspondence, Dalton reveals (...) that Dewey had close personal and intellectual ties to scientists and scholars who helped form the mature expression of his thought. Dewey’s relationships with F. M. Alexander, Henri Matisse, Niels Bohr, Myrtle McGraw, and Lawrence K. Frank, among others, show how Dewey dispersed pragmatism throughout American thought and culture. (shrink)

Invariance of the class of algorithms expressible with respect to changes in computational formalism have provided extremely stable foundations for the Church-Turing thesis, according to which a number of—equivalent—computational mechanisms each fully capture the intuitive notion of algorithm. Thanks to the stability and elegance of the Church-Turing thesis, the notion of computation defined by these mechanisms is etched in stone as the theoretical essence of computation. In particular, this notion has been extensively used as an abstract tool to model natural (...) phenomena. (shrink)

A growing body of research reveals that abusive supervision may have negative impacts in organizations. The purpose of the present study is to expand the knowledge regarding the impacts of this dysfunctional leadership behavior by examining its relationship with innovation in work teams. Specifically, we investigate the process through which abusive supervision may undermine team innovation by taking into account the mediating role of team proactive behavior. Moreover, we propose a boundary condition of the negative effect of abusive supervision by (...) considering leader–members interdependence as a moderator. Using a multisource approach, data were gathered from 394 members and 82 immediate supervisors in a public safety organization. Results of path analyses reveal that the relationship between abusive supervision and team innovation is mediated by team proactive behavior. Furthermore, we found that the relationship between abusive supervision and team proactive behavior is moderated by leader–members interdependence, such that this relationship is stronger when the level of interdependence is high. Taken together, the findings of this study improve the understanding of why and under what circumstances abusive supervision may impair team innovation. (shrink)

The nuclear pore complex (NPC) is emerging as a center for recruitment of a class of “difficult to repair” lesions such as double‐strand breaks without a repair template and eroded telomeres in telomerase‐deficient cells. In addition to such pathological situations, a recent study by Su and colleagues shows that also physiological threats to genome integrity such as DNA secondary structure‐forming triplet repeat sequences relocalize to the NPC during DNA replication. Mutants that fail to reposition the triplet repeat locus to the (...) NPC cause repeat instability. Here, we review the types of DNA lesions that relocalize to the NPC, the putative mechanisms of relocalization, and the types of recombinational repair that are stimulated by the NPC, and present a model for NPC‐facilitated repair. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is twofold. First, I provide an analysis of the notion of cognitive homology. In contrast with the well-known concept of structural homology in biology—defined as the same structure in different animals regardless of form and function—the notion of cognitive homology captures the idea that the basic cognitive contribution of a given homologous brain structure tends to remain stable over long evolutionary time scales. Second, I argue that this notion provides a powerful conceptual tool for the (...) study of cognition. Since a cognitive homology will often consist of an evolutionarily conserved relationship between a homologous brain structure and its basic cognitive contribution, such structure–function mappings can be conceived as basic building blocks of human cognition. (shrink)

Scientific textbooks are often said to deliver a stereotyped kind of knowledge, which conceals rather than reveals the real making of science. They may, however, alternatively be regarded as of peculiar interest for historians of science. An over-mechanical application of the Kuhnian concepts of ‘scientific revolution’ and ‘normal science’ can lead to the neglect of the internal dynamics of ‘normal science’. Scientific textbooks may provide a better understanding of the process of normalization in science.

This book examines the work of Ernst Jünger and its effect on the development of Martin Heidegger’s influential philosophy of technology. Vincent Blok offers a unique treatment of Jünger’s philosophy and his conception of the age of technology, in which both world and man appear in terms of their functionality and efficiency. The primary objective of Jünger’s novels and essays is to make the transition from the totally mobilized world of the 20 th century toward a world in which (...) a new type of man represents the gestalt of the worker and is responsive to this new age. Blok proceeds to demonstrate Jünger’s influence on Heidegger’s analysis of the technological age in his later work, as well as Heidegger’s conceptions of will, work and gestalt at the beginning of the 1930s. At the same time, Blok evaluates Heidegger’s criticism of Jünger and provides a novel interpretation of the Jünger-Heidegger connection: that Jünger’s work in fact testifies to a transformation of our relationship to language and conceptualizes the future in terms of the Anthropocene. This book, which arrives alongside several new English-language translations of Jünger’s work, will interest scholars of 20 th -century continental philosophy, Heidegger, and the history of philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Bibliography of the writings by Hilary Putnam: 16 books, 198 articles, 10 translations into German (up to 1994).

INTRODUCTION Kierkegaard himself hardly requires introduction, but his thought continues to require explication due to its inherent complexity and its ...

... EARTH AND GODS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF Martin Heidegger the language of science ...

Engineers fine-tune the design of robot bodies for control purposes; however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent, and optimization of morphology is lagging behind the development of controllers. This has become even more prominent with the advent of compliant, deformable or ‘soft’ bodies. These carry substantial potential regarding their exploitation for control—sometimes referred to as ‘morphological computation’. In this article, we briefly review different notions of computation by physical systems and propose the dynamical systems framework as the (...) most useful in the context of describing and eventually designing the interactions of controllers and bodies. Then, we look at the pros and cons of simple versus complex bodies, critically reviewing the attractive notion of ‘soft’ bodies automatically taking over control tasks. We address another key dimension of the design space—whether model-based control should be used and to what extent it is feasible to develop faithful models for different morphologies. (shrink)

This paper argues that John Fischer and Mark Ravizza's compatibilist theory of moral responsibility cannot justify reactive attitudes like blame and desert-based practices like retributive punishment. The problem with their account, I argue, is that their analysis of moderateness in regards to reasons-responsiveness has the wrong normative features. However, I propose an alternative account of what it means for a mechanism to be moderately reasons-responsive which addresses this deficiency. In a nut shell, while Fischer and Ravizza test for moderate reasons-responsiveness (...) by checking how a mechanism behaves in a given time slice across other possible worlds, on my account we should ask how that mechanism behaves in this world over a span of time – specifically, whether it responds to reasons sufficiently often. My diachronic account is intended as a drop-in replacement for Fischer and Ravizza's synchronic account. (shrink)

Ποια είναι η πατρίδα κάποιων; Ας δούμε το θέμα λίγο σαν πρόβλημα της φιλοσοφίας της γλώσσας: για ένα κατηγόρημα «Άγγλος» «Γάλλος», «Πορτογάλος», «Βέλγος», «Φλαμανδός», πώς να αποφασίσουμε ποια αντικείμενα (ποιοι άνθρωποι) εμπίπτουν σε ποιο κατηγόρημα; Έχουν τελικά νόημα αυτά τα κατηγορήματα; Η χρήση και κατάχρηση αυτών των κατηγορημάτων έχει αποτελέσει μια από τις κυριότερες πηγές δυστυχίας στη διάρκεια των δύο τελευταίων αιώνων και συνεχίζει να είναι στην ημερήσια διάταξη. Συνήθως εμφανίζεται στα πλαίσια αγώνων για την απόκτηση «ελευθερίας» σε αντιπαράθεση με (...) την «καταπίεση», και σε παγκόσμιο επίπεδο και κοντύτερα μας: στη Μακεδονία, την Καταλονία, την Ιρλανδία, το Κουρδιστάν ... Νομίζω πώς αρκετά από αυτά βασίζονται σε λάθη. (shrink)

Given that Nick Land is one of the central influences on certain strands of accelerationism, xenofeminism, and inhumanism, it is important to understand how he himself first developed and deployed the concepts of acceleration, the feminine, and the inhuman, which others would go on to appropriate for their own purposes. This article will trace the four feminine figures throughout Land's philosophical trajectory, which he sees as agents for accelerating the transcendental critique of both anthropocentrism and phallocentrism: the slave turned lesbian; (...) the sister; the sexborg; and the Sphinx. Having elucidated the importance of these figures for Land's thought, this article will conclude by drawing upon the younger Land's feminist resources to immanently critique the disappearance of women from his more recent neoreactionary philosophy in favor of concessions to patriarchal traditionalists. (shrink)

The central preoccupation of Peirce and Polanyi was to undertake (in the words of the former) an inquiry into inquiry, one in which the defining features of our heuristic practices stood out in bold relief. But both thinkers were also concerned to bring into sharp focus the deep affinities between our theoretical pursuits and other shared practices. They were in effect sketching a portrait of the responsible inquirer and, by implication, that of the responsible agent more generally. This essay is, (...) in structure, a series of études for how we might reconstruct that portrait, since there is no extended treatment in the writings of either author of these central figures (the agent and, in particular, the responsible inquirer). It is accordingly a preliminary study, though in some particulars a detailed one. Its ultimate aim is to join—and thereby to invite others to join—Peirce and Polanyi as inquirers into the very nature of inquiry itself. (shrink)