Significant strides have been made in recent years towards understanding the molecular basis of cell cycle progression in the model bacterium Caulobacter crescentus. At the heart of cell cycle regulation is a multicomponent transcriptional feedback loop, governing the production of successive regulatory waves or pulses of at least three master regulatory proteins. These oscillating master regulators direct the execution of phase‐specific events and, importantly, through intrinsic genetic switches not only determine the length of a given phase, but also provide the (...) driving force that catapults the cell into the next stage of the cell cycle. The genetic switches act as fail safe mechanisms that prevent the cell cycle from relapsing and thus govern the ordered production and the periodicity of these regulatory waves. Here, we detail how the master regulators CtrA, GcrA and DnaA coordinate cell cycle progression and polar development in Caulobacter. BioEssays 28: 355–361, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should distinguish two different kinds of imaginative vividness: vividness of mental images and vividness of imaginative experiences. Philosophy has focussed on mental images, but distinguishing more complex vivid imaginative experiences from vivid mental images can help us understand our intuitions concerning the notion as well as the explanatory power of vividness. In particular, it can help us understand the epistemic role imagination can play on the one hand and our emotional engagement with literary fiction on (...) the other hand. (shrink)

This paper argues that a crucial skill needed to empathize with others cannot be trained by reading fiction: the skill of reading the evidence for the other person’s state of mind and, thus, empath...

This article investigates whether investors consider the reliability of companies’ sustainability information when determining the companies’ market value. Specifically, we examine market reactions (in terms of abnormal returns) to events that increase the reliability of companies’ sustainability information but do not provide markets with additional sustainability information. Controlling for competing effects, we regard companies’ additions to an internationally important sustainability index as such events and consider possible determinants for market reactions. Our results suggest that first, investors take into account the (...) reliability of sustainability information when determining the market value of a company and second, the benefits of increased reliability of sustainability information vary cross-sectionally. More specifically, companies that carry higher risks for investors (e.g., higher systematic investment risk, higher financial leverage, and higher levels of opportunistic management behavior) react more strongly to an increase in the reliability of sustainability information. Finally, we show that the benefits of an increase in the reliability of sustainability information are higher in times of economic uncertainty (e.g., during economic downturns and generally high stock price volatilities). (shrink)

Much ink has been spilled in the last years on whether voting is a duty that citizens ought to discharge in a democracy that aspires to be acceptably just. In this essay, I concentrate on whether a moral duty to participate in elections logically entails that people ought to vote simpliciter or well. I propose that voting well – i.e. with information and a sense of justice – is the electoral duty that we should value. Voting as such is not (...) – at least, not if we care about the substantive quality of democratic outcomes, not only about equality of participation. As a matter of fact, voting well seems to be a more adequate form of political participation than simply voting under varied normative conceptions of democracy, as I will show. At the same time, while we can't freely choose not to follow a moral duty to vote well just because we're not inclined to do so, we have to allow for the possibility that some individuals will not be in a good position to act on it. I conclude by discussing admissible reasons for this inability with respect to our citizenship responsibilities. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium has been considered a paradigm method involving intuitions. Some philosophers have recently claimed that it is trivial and can even accommodate the sort of scepticism about the reliability of intuitions advocated by experimental philosophers. I discuss several ways in which reflective equilibrium could be thought of as trivial and argue that it is inconsistent with scepticism about the reliability of intuitions.

In this paper I will examine two responses to the argument from marginal cases; the argument from kinds and the similarity argument. I will argue that these arguments are insufficient to show that all humans have moral status but no animals do. This does not prove that animals have moral status but it does shift the burden of proof onto those who want to maintain that all humans are morally considerable, but no animals are.

A case has been made by various authors that the normative and processual notion of personhood found in African philosophy is discriminatory: it has been labelled as sexist, ableist and anti-queer. Within the anti-queer critique, one area that has not been specifically addressed in the literature is whether this notion of personhood is biased against people who identify as non-binary with respect to gender. This includes people who are gender fluid and gender neutral, among others. In this article, we argue (...) that the binary conception of gender is deeply connected to a colonial agenda, and does not accurately fit extra-colonial gender conceptions. Through an analysis of extra-colonial language and logic, read together with the flexibility inherent in the processual notion of personhood (on our reading), we argue that binaries do not sit comfortably with extra-colonial African thinking, and as such, processual and normative personhood can be understood in a way that embraces non-binary individuals. Further, the standards for achieving personhood are set by and achieved within the community, so a community which recognises and celebrates non-binary individuals can set up a framework for them to achieve personhood. Accordingly, normative personhood in African thought is found not to exclude those of non-binary gender. This reading saves the normative approach from some of the critiques levelled against it, as well as: i) enhancing consistency in an African world view; ii) strengthening the decolonial agenda; and iii) showing normative personhood to be fairer and more inclusive. (shrink)

Per definition business sustainability demands the integration of environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Yet, managerial decision-making involving sustainability objectives is fraught with tension and the way managerial decision-makers frame sustainability issues in their mindset influences how sustainability tensions are managed at the organisational level. In the bid to better understand what types of managerial mindsets, or cognitive frames, foster integrative business sustainability practices that simultaneously advance environmental, social, and economic objectives, extant research has focussed on the underlying logics that drive (...) the acknowledgement of sustainability tensions. However, the existing logics-based constructs do not sufficiently explain this link, and it has been suggested that managers perceive and manage sustainability tensions based on the values that they hold. To clarify the roles of managerial values and logics as antecedents in business sustainability decision-making, we integrate Keeney’s value-focussed thinking approach with managerial and organisational cognition perspectives. Drawing on data from a survey with 169 senior procurement managers in Australia we found three types of cognitive frames which demonstrate that stronger sustainability values are associated with a more holistic perception of sustainability tensions and vice versa. We also found that managers’ cognitive framing of sustainability is strengthened by more holistic organisational cognitive frames and discuss according implications for managerial decision-making in theory and practice. (shrink)

ABSTRACTReceived wisdom in most democracies is that voting should be seen as a political freedom that citizens have a right to exercise at their discretion. But I propose that we have a duty to vote, albeit a duty to vote well: with knowledge and a sense of impartiality. Fulfillment of this obligation would contribute to the epistemic advantages of democracy, and would thereby instantiate the duty to promote and support just institutions.

Includes texts by Leibniz and Wolff, translated from French, German and Latin.

ABSTRACT:Biomedical and philosophical traditions postulate the experience of pain either as quantifiable or as sociocultural phenomena. This critical assessment offers a close reading of Lara Parker’s Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics (2020) and Abby Norman’s Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain (2018), analyzing the authors’ use of language as a tool to comprehend and communicate pain. Norman’s and Parker’s memoirs narrate the lived experience of endometriosis, a condition diagnosed (...) almost exclusively in women and characterized by chronic pain. The essay looks at how metaphors are employed in living and narrating endometriosis in medical, social, and cultural settings that are highly skeptical of women’s pain and trace a shift in the use of pain metaphors towards an acceptance of the pain experience, which is conceptualized as empowering by the climax of the narrative. (shrink)

This paper examines whether certain workers have a moral claim to decent wages for work that contributes to the social surplus in a fundamental way. This "fundamental" way refers to work whose fruits other members of society need to live acceptably good lives (not maximally good ones). The paper argues that what is due to this type of worker is based on the nature of the benefit that her labor produces for others in society and on the returned value that (...) such labor should, by virtue of fair play considerations, command. The core of the argument in the paper is that such benefit is connected to an important dimension of human freedom, which is enabled by the absence of necessity to toil to secure subsistence in society. The paper also dwells on questions related to whose responsibility it should be to guarantee decent pay for contributions to society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article seeks to draw parallels between today’s transmodern reality and the events recounted in Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and in The Handmaid’s Tale Hulu TV series, particularly Seasons 2 and 3. Addressing issues such as controlled reproduction, violence, corporeal subjection of women, and environmental injustice, I focus on the body as a site of social construction, vulnerability and control. Drawing on the work of various scholars, I argue that the body is simultaneously a site of vulnerability and of (...) resistance that exceeds totalitarian categories, thus allowing for empowering “modes of heterogeneity,” fluidity, diversity, environmental as well as transcorporeal. In Gilead, the totalitarian state where Atwood’s two novels are set, it is the body that is acted upon, with massive repression and violence, and it is the body that resists by forming alternative relations and practices, which eventually facilitate the fall of Gilead from within. Throughout my analysis, I draw on the transmodern concept, while widening it toward the corporeal enmeshment with others in order to demonstrate that it is the interdependence of vulnerability and empowerment that reveals transmodernity’s “new visions of justice.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I first develop desiderata for an ontology of intuitions on the basis of paradigmatic cases of intuitions in philosophy. A special focus lies on cases that have been subject to extensive first-order philosophical debates but have been receiving little attention in the current debate over the ontology of intuitions. I show that none of the popular accounts in the current debate can meet all desiderata. I discuss a view according to which intuitions reduce to beliefs, Timothy Williamson's (...) (2004, 2007) account of intuitions as beliefs or inclinations to believe, and traditional rationalist accounts of intuitions. I then show that a widely ignored account of intuitions as appearance states can meet the desiderata best. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Sprechen Wissenschaftler üblicherweise vom Platonischen Charakter der Dialektik Schleiermachers, meinen sie deren grundlegend Sokratisch-dialogischen Charakter, zumal Schleiermacher Dialektik als „die Kunst des Diskurses oder des Dialogs“ definierte. Problematisch daran ist nun, daß Platons Dialoge mehr als eine Art von Dialektik aufweisen. Der Aufsatz beginnt mit einem Überblick auf die, in der „Allgemeinen Einleitung“ dargelegten fünf Grunddeutungsprinzipien, die Schleiermachers Interpretation der platonischen Dialektik untermauern, leiten und einschränken sollen. Der Beitrag wendet sich dann den Einleitungen der einzelnen Dialoge zu, um zu (...) überprüfen, wie Schleiermacher diese Prinzipien auf konkrete Situationen bei seiner Bearbeitung eines jeden Dialogs anwendet. Schleiermacher scheint manchmal einfach die eher spekulativen Züge der Platonischen Dialektik zu ignorieren, wie seine Interpretation des Phaidros zeigt. Gelingt es ihm nicht diese spekulativen Züge zu ignorieren, unterdrückt er sie, indem er einen zwingenden Bezug zur dialogischen Form der Dialektik herstellt, wie seine Interpretationen des Sophistes und des Phaidon zeigen. Läßt er dann schließlich einen bestimmten unabhängigen Status der spekulativen Dialektik Platons zu, marginalisiert Schleiermacher die entsprechenden Passagen so, daß er sie ihrer Bedeutung beraubt, wie seine Interpretation der Bücher V–VII der Politeia zeigt. (shrink)

This thesis is concerned with the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of intuitions in philosophy. It consists of an introduction, Chapter 1, and three main parts. In the first part, Chapter 2, I defend an account of intuitions as appearance states according to which intuitions cannot be reduced to beliefs or belief-like states. I argue that an account of intuitions as appearance states can explain some crucial phenomena with respect to intuitions better than popular accounts in the current debate over the (...) ontology of intuitions. The second part, Chapters 3 to 5, is a reply to Timothy Williamson’s view on the epistemology and methodology of intuitions. The practice of appealing to the fact that we have an intuition as evidence from thought experiments has recently been criticised by experimental philosophers. Williamson argues that since thought experiments reliably lead to knowledge of the content of our intuition, we can avoid this criticism and the resulting sceptical threat by appealing to the content of the intuition. I agree that thought experiments usually lead to knowledge of the content of our intuition. However, I show that appealing to the fact that we have an intuition is a common and useful practice. I defend the view that for methodological reasons, we ought to appeal to the fact that we have an intuition as initial evidence from thought experiments. The third part, Chapter 6, is devoted to a paradigm method involving intuitions: the method of reflective equilibrium. Some philosophers have recently claimed that it is trivial and could even accommodate scepticism about the reliability of intuitions. I argue that reflective equilibrium is not compatible with such scepticism. While it is compatible with the view I defend in the second part of the thesis, more specific methodological claims have to be made. (shrink)

This article focuses on the relationship of employer behaviour to labour market inequalities. Matched employer-employee data are casting an important new light on how variation in wage setting practices across firms can affect the structure of earnings and earnings mobility. It shows that very different wages are paid to equivalent labour across and within firms. It also argues that policies targeting firm selection of workers may affect inequality as much as policies of training and education.

The practice of appealing to intuitions as evidence has recently been criticized by experimental philosophers. While some traditional philosophers defend intuitions as a trustworthy source of evidence, others try to undermine the challenge this criticism poses to philosophical methodology. This paper argues that some recent attempts to undermine the challenge from experimental philosophy fail. It concludes that the metaphilosophical question whether intuitions play a role in philosophy cannot be decided by analyzing our use of the word ‘intuition’ or related terms, (...) and what philosophers rely on may not be manifest on the surface of what they write. The question what intuitions are and what their role is in philosophy has to be settled within the wider framework of a theory of knowledge, justification, and philosophical methodology. (shrink)

Much recent work on concepts has been inspired by and developed within the bounds of the representational theory of the mind often taken for granted by philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists, and psychologists alike. The contributions to this volume take a more encompassing perspective on the issue of concepts. Rather than modelling details of our representational architecture in line with the dominant paradigm, they explore three traditional issues concerning concepts. Is mastery of a language necessary for thought? Do concepts reduce (...) to abilities? Is the analysis of concepts a viable means to ascertain truths from the proverbial armchair? An introductory essay provides a rough geography of key ideas and issues shaping the overall debate on concepts within contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of the study was to develop a new comprehensive reading assessment battery for multi-ethnic and multilingual learners in Malaysia. Using this assessment battery, we examined the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the factors associated with reading difficulties/disabilities in the Malay language, a highly transparent alphabetic orthography. In order to further evaluate the reading assessment battery, we compared results from the assessment battery with those obtained from the Malaysian national screening instrument. In the study, 866 Grade 1 children from (...) multi-ethnic and multilingual backgrounds from 11 government primary schools participated. The reading assessment battery comprised 13 assessments, namely, reading comprehension, spelling, listening comprehension, letter name knowledge, letter name fluency, rapid automatized naming, word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency, oral reading fluency, expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, elision, and phonological memory. High reliability and validity were found for the assessments. An exploratory factor analysis yielded three main constructs: phonological-decoding, sublexical-fluency, and vocabulary-memory. Phonological-decoding was found to be the most reliable construct that distinguished between at-risk and non-at-risk children. Identifying these underlying factors will be useful for detecting children at-risk for developing reading difficulties in the Malay language. In addition, these results highlight the importance of including a range of reading and reading-related measures for the early diagnosis of reading difficulties in this highly transparent orthography. (shrink)

The results of some high-stakes aptitude tests in Austria have revealed sex differences. We suggest that such discrepancies are mediated not principally by differences in aptitudes, skills, and knowledge but gender differences in test takers’ perceptions of the test situation. Furthermore, previous research has indicated that candidates’ evaluations of the fairness of the testing tool are of great importance from an institutional point of view because such perceptions are known to influence an organization’s attractiveness. In this study, we aimed to (...) investigate how women and men perceive and evaluate certain aspects of a high-stakes test situation by using the results and evaluations of an actual medical school aptitude test (753 applicants; 59% women). Test takers voluntarily evaluated the test situation and rated specific aspects of it (e.g., the fairness of the selection tool) and provided information regarding their test anxiety immediately after they completed the 4-hour test. Data analyses indicated small, albeit significant sex differences in participants’ perceptions of the test. Men described the test situation as slightly giving more opportunity to socialize and possessing more opportunity to deceive than women did. Furthermore, the perception of the test situation did not directly predict the test results, but it served as a moderator for the indirect effect of test anxiety on test results. By contrast, there were significant direct effects but no indirect effects of situation perception on evaluations of the fairness of the selection tool: The more the test situation was perceived as a high-pressure situation, the lower the fairness ratings of the testing tool. Results were discussed with reference to gender roles and test fairness. (shrink)

In this book, Maskivker argues that there ought to be a right not to participate in the paid economy in a new way; not by appealing to notions of fairness to competing conceptions of the good, but rather to a contentious (but defensible) normative ideal, namely, self-realization. In so doing, she joins a venerable tradition in ethical thought, initiated by Aristotle and developed in the work of important eighteenth and nineteenth century thinkers including Smith, Hume, and Marx.The book engages on-going (...) debates (in both philosophical and real world political and social policy circles) about the provision of basic income grants, necessary to make the possibility of self-realization real for all. Traditional defenses of unconditional welfare benefits emphasize ideals of state neutrality when they claim that society should not discriminate against preferences for leisure in favor of preferences for work. According to these views, the state ought not to interfere with people’s choices about what constitutes the "good life." In contradistinction, Maskivker offers an innovative argument in defense of a particular ideal of the "good life," namely, life-goals directed at the pursuit of self-realization. However, her understanding of self-realization appeals to modern and contemporary values of freedom and pluralism. In a refreshingly new light, the book strikes a balance between fascinating debates on the conditions of human flourishing on the one hand, and heated discussions about the Welfare State on the other. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper aims at exposing a strategy to organize the debate around physicalism. Our starting point is the pre-philosophical notion of physicalism, which is typically formulated in the form of slogans. Indeed, philosophers debating metaphysics have paradigmatically introduced the subject with aid of slogans such as “there is nothing over and above the physical”, “once every physical aspect of the world is settled, every other aspect will follow”, “physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical”. These ideas are very (...) intuitive but they are, of course, far from being a satisfactory metaphysical conception of Physicalism. For that end, we will begin with the definition of physicalism as the thesis that everything is physical, following Stoljar, we should be able to respond to one central question: how to interpret the physicalist claim that everything in physical. (shrink)

Methodology is often a point of contention in gender-based salary studies. Although this debate seems at first to be merely about technical issues, it also has an important conceptual dimension. We argue that there are two competing implicit conceptions of discrimination, one institutional and the other individual, that underlie many such debates. We first contrast the preferred methodologies advanced by each side, the policy capturing approach and the flagging approach, and explore the theoretical meaning of their statistical models. We then (...) describe a practical application of both methodological approaches in one specific salary inequity study. In conclusion, we reflect on the implications of such practical statistical choices, discuss how such models can be combined, and make suggestions for sociologists who act as statistical experts or work with them in gender-based salary inequity studies on their own campuses. (shrink)

You know you should be staying positive, but how do you get back to your happy place after something sidetracks your thoughts? Whether you're having a bad day, are suddenly faced with a difficult situation, or you've found yourself in a bit of a rut, Whatever You Do, Be Happy is the perfect guide to getting back to a positive mindset. This book includes 400 totally manageable activities that will bring back your smile with ease! Try finding a quiet space (...) to help you reset from a stressful experience or take a few minutes to focus on your breathing when trying to solve a problem. You will discover that it doesn't take months of work or a total life overhaul to live a happy lifestyle. All it takes is the simple, actionable advice in this book to start changing your mindset immediately. Start your journey to optimism and happiness now! (shrink)

As an approach to public engagement, deliberation has the potential to pursue a range of goals identified by public participation theorists including the opportunity to substantively inform policy processes, increase the public’s knowledge and understanding of public issues and create or restore loss of public trust and confidence in public institutions. Baum and colleagues (2009) offer several important take-home messages for policy makers and public health leaders about the value of engaging with the public about ethically challenging, value-laden and resource (...) intensive policy issues such as pandemic response planning. (shrink)