Many enzymes are inhibited by their own substrates, leading to velocity curves that rise to a maximum and then descend as the substrate concentration increases. Substrate inhibition is often regarded as a biochemical oddity and experimental annoyance. We show, using several case studies, that substrate inhibition often has important biological functions. In each case we discuss, the biological significance is different. Substrate inhibition of tyrosine hydroxylase results in a steady synthesis of dopamine despite large fluctuations in tyrosine due to meals. (...) Substrate inhibition of acetylcholinesterase enhances the neural signal and allows rapid signal termination. Substrate inhibition of phosphofructokinase ensures that resources are not devoted to manufacturing ATP when it is plentiful. In folate metabolism, substrate inhibition maintains reactions rates in the face of substantial folate deprivation. Substrate inhibition of DNA methyltransferase serves to faithfully copy DNA methylation patterns when cells divide while preventing de novo methylation of methyl‐free promoter regions. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

The Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT-2) and Engineering Ethical Reasoning Instrument (EERI) are designed to measure ethical reasoning of general (DIT-2) and engineering-student (EERI) populations. These tools—and the DIT-2 especially—have gained wide usage for assessing the ethical reasoning of undergraduate students. This paper reports on a research study in which the ethical reasoning of first-year undergraduate engineering students at multiple universities was assessed with both of these tools. In addition to these two instruments, students were also asked to create personal (...) concept maps of the phrase “ethical decision-making.” It was hypothesized that students whose instrument scores reflected more postconventional levels of moral development and more sophisticated ethical reasoning skills would likewise have richer, more detailed concept maps of ethical decision-making, reflecting their deeper levels of understanding of this topic and the complex of related concepts. In fact, there was no significant correlation between the instrument scores and concept map scoring, suggesting that the way first-year students _conceptualize_ ethical decision making does not predict the way they behave when _performing_ scenario-based ethical reasoning (perhaps more situated). This disparity indicates a need to more precisely quantify engineering ethical reasoning and decision making, if we wish to inform assessment outcomes using the results of such quantitative analyses. (shrink)

David Stove's sarcastic dismissal of sociobiology rests on a false dilemma. Cuckoos lay their eggs in reed-warbler nests, and the large gape of cuckoo chicks so readily triggers the feeding reflex of the adult warbler that the warbler chicks go underfed. However, argues Stove, the cuckoos are ‘manipulating’ the warblers, getting them to feed cuckoo chicks, only if the cuckoos consciously intend their behaviour to have this effect: ‘The moon causally influences the tides, but it cannot manipulate them…. [C]ausal (...) influence plus resulting advantage are not enough to constitute manipulation. The causal influence must also be purposeful and intended.’. (shrink)

Across the globe, radical conservative political forces and ideas are influencing and even transforming the landscape of international politics. Yet IR is remarkably ill-equipped to understand and engage these new challenges. Unlike political theory or domestic political analyses, conservatism has no distinctive place in the fields’ defining alternatives of realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism. This paper seeks to provide a point of entry for such engagement by bringing together what may seem the most unlikely of partners: critical theory and the (...) New Right. Important parts of today’s New Right represent self-conscious appropriations of Critical themes and thinkers—turning them to self-declared “reactionary” ends. Developing outside the confines of the academy, these forms of thought have woven insights from across Critical theory into new and mobilizing forms of conservative ideology, seeking to link that ideology to social forces that play increasingly active roles in global politics. Our intention here is not to somehow blame Critical perspectives for the ideas of the New Right, either directly or by association. Rather, we seek to show how an engagement with Critical theory helps us understand the New Right, while also demonstrating some of the direct challenges the New Right poses for critical perspectives. (shrink)

In a small course on technology and society, students participated in an extended role-play simulation for two weeks. Each student played a different adult character in a fictional community, which faces technological decisions in three scenarios set in the near future. The three scenarios involved stem cell research, nanotechnology, and privacy. Each student had an active role in two scenarios and served as an observer for the third. At the beginning, students were apprehensive, excited, and uncertain. During the first and (...) second sessions, they experienced some frustration, but by the end, they were generally satisfied with the outcomes. Over the two weeks, students changed their definitions of success: Initially they tried to convince others to agree with their positions; at the end, they felt that a consensus represented success. In their final reflective essays, students reported that the role-play experience helped them learn to understand the perspectives of others. (shrink)

Introduces several of the concepts and assumptions that will occupy center stage in the book's main argument. In particular, introduces the notion of a research programme, and provides characterizations of realism about material objects and its rival, constructivism. Also defends the conclusion that it is impossible to adopt a research programme on the basis of evidence. This constitutes the author's argument for the conditional claim that if naturalism is a research programme, its status as orthodoxy is without rational foundation. Introduces (...) the central thesis of the book – that naturalists are committed to rejecting realism about material objects, materialism, and perhaps realism about other minds – and goes on to provide a brief outline of the remaining chapters. (shrink)

Begins the third part of the book, in which the author discusses two important alternatives to naturalism. The alternative that is discussed is intuitionism, a research programme that takes the methods of natural science and rational intuition, but nothing else, as basic sources of evidence. Argues that, unless one has intuitions that support the view that our world is the product of intelligent design, intuitionism is self‐defeating. Also argues that, though there might be empirical reason for thinking that intuition is (...) reliable in some domains, this fact does not save intuitionism from self‐defeat, nor is it of any use to a naturalist in trying to avoid the ontological consequences described in earlier chapters of the book. (shrink)

Argues that characterizing naturalism as a view rather than a research programme and inevitably portrays naturalism either as a self‐defeating thesis or as a view commitment to which would be inconsistent with the core dispositions of the tradition. Thus, the fairest and most plausible characterization of naturalism treats it as a research programme – in particular, a research programme wherein one treats the methods of science and those methods alone as basic sources of evidence.

Some philosophers think that the presupposition that there are intrinsic modal properties can be justified on pragmatic grounds; and some also think that, in light of this presupposition, we are justified in thinking that the properties that science takes as definitive of various natural kinds are essential to the things that have them. Argues that this way of explaining how we might be justified in attributing particular intrinsic modal properties to material objects is unsuccessful. Even if it is true that (...) we have pragmatic justification for believing in intrinsic modal properties, it does not follow that we have epistemic justification for believing in them. The author goes on to note that, though one might argue for the conclusion that, for naturalists anyway, pragmatic considerations do confer epistemic justification upon our beliefs, the argument will be cogent only under theistic or anti‐realist assumptions. Theism is an unwelcome alternative for most naturalists; and to concede that naturalists must be anti‐realists is to concede one of the main conclusions that the author aims to defend. (shrink)

In an earlier chapter, the author argues that naturalists can justifiably accept realism about material objects only if the methods of science justify belief in intrinsic modal properties. One suggestion as to how they might do this is as follows: beliefs attributing intrinsic modal properties to material objects are justified because their truth provides a good explanation for the existence of proper functions in nature. This examines this suggestion and argues that, except in the case of objects that are the (...) products of design, proper functions are not empirically detectable. (shrink)

Begins the defense of the conclusion that the characterization of naturalism that is most faithful to the tradition, and the one that best explains both the similarities and the differences one finds among contemporary naturalists, is one which takes naturalism to be not a view but a research programme. Provides a brief discussion of the pre‐history of naturalism, together with a more extended discussion of the relevant views of naturalism's two main spokesmen in the twentieth century – John Dewey and (...) W. V. Quine. The purpose of this chapter is to give the reader a clear perspective on the core dispositions underlying the naturalistic tradition. (shrink)

Supernaturalism is a research programme wherein one takes at least the methods of the natural sciences and religious experience as basic sources of evidence. Argues that embracing supernaturalism offers our best hope of avoiding the consequences of naturalism described earlier in the book. However, the author also argues that not just any version of supernaturalism will do the job, but only those that give rise to evidence for the conclusion that our world and, in particular, our cognitive faculties are the (...) products of intelligent design. (shrink)

Begins the second part of the book, in which the author argues that commitment to the naturalistic research programme precludes one from accepting realism about material objects and materialism. The argument turns on the prospects that naturalists have for solving what the author calls the Discovery Problem. Roughly, the Discovery Problem is just the fact that intrinsic modal properties seem not to be discoverable by the methods of science. Describes this problem in Ch. 4, and argues that if there is (...) good reason to think that the problem cannot be solved, then naturalists cannot be justified in accepting realism about material objects. (shrink)

Argues that, having been forced to give up realism about material objects, naturalists are committed to accepting constructivism, the view that the modal properties of material objects are mind‐dependent. Also argues that, in accepting constructivism, naturalists must give up materialism. Finally, shows that, once materialism has been given up, standard arguments against mind‐body dualism turn their teeth against realism about other minds.

We prove that many seemingly simple theories have Borel complete reducts. Specifically, if a countable theory has uncountably many complete one-types, then it has a Borel complete reduct. Similarly, if $Th(M)$ is not small, then $M^{eq}$ has a Borel complete reduct, and if a theory T is not $\omega $ -stable, then the elementary diagram of some countable model of T has a Borel complete reduct.

This article challenges conventional readings of Michel Foucault by examining his fascination with neoliberalism in the late 1970s. Foucault did not critique neoliberalism during this period; rather, he strategically endorsed it. The necessary cause for this approval lies in the broader rehabilitation of economic liberalism in France during the 1970s. The sufficient cause lies in Foucault's own intellectual development: drawing on his long-standing critique of the state as a model for conceptualizing power, Foucault concluded, during the 1970s, that economic liberalism, (...) rather than “discipline,” was modernity's paradigmatic power form. Moreover, this article seeks to clarify the relationship between Foucault's philosophical antihumanism and his assessment of liberalism. Rather than arguing that Foucault's antihumanism precluded a positive appraisal of liberalism, or that the apparent reorientation of his politics in a more liberal direction in the late 1970s entailed a partial retreat from antihumanism, this article contends that Foucault's brief, strategic, and contingent endorsement of liberalism was possible precisely because he saw no incompatibility between antihumanism and liberalism—but only liberalism of the economic variety. Economic liberalism alone, and not its political iteration, was compatible with the philosophical antihumanism that is the hallmark of Foucault's thought. (shrink)

The arguments for redistribution of wealth, and for prohibiting certain transactions such as price-gouging, both are based in mistaken conceptions of exchange. This paper proposes a neologism, “euvoluntary” exchange, meaning both that the exchange is truly voluntary and that it benefits both parties to the transaction. The argument has two parts: First, all euvoluntary exchanges should be permitted, and there is no justification for redistribution of wealth if disparities result only from euvoluntary exchanges. Second, even exchanges that are not euvoluntary (...) should generally be permitted, because access to market exchange may be the only means by which people in desperate circumstances can improve their position. (shrink)

This book addresses the various ways in which key social identities--for example, race, gender, and disability--intersect with, shape, and are shaped by traditional questions in analytic theology and philosophy of religion. The book both breaks new ground and encourages further analytic-theological work in these important areas of research.

AbstractMany management theories have descriptive and normative elements, and no management theory used to generate prescriptions can be totally devoid of normative assumptions. Yet, there remain few useful models for assessing the relative strength or utility of the normative frameworks that inform most management theorizing. In this essay, we offer a model from a field of art rather than science. We introduce the poetry of early twentieth century American writer Hart Crane as providing such a model. Crane uses a panorama (...) of consequences to examine modern social phenomena and subject them to normative evaluation. We argue that management theorists can use a similar panorama of consequences method to “test” normative theories by assessing the directional consistency of the normative evaluations the theories generate about an empirical phenomenon or relationship, as well as how extensively the theories’ normative evaluations cover the full scope of a phenomenon’s or relationship’s impact. We explicate an exemplar poem of Crane’s, and then demonstrate how his method might be used to study shareholder activism, a normatively ambiguous management practice, in a way that illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the relevant normative frameworks. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article, I offer a proposal to clarify what I believe is the proper relation between value maximization and stakeholder theory, which I call enlightened value maximization. Enlightened value maximization utilizes much of the structure of stakeholder theory but accepts maximization of the long-run value of the firm as the criterion for making the requisite tradeoffs among its stakeholders, and specifies long-term value maximization or value seeking as the firm’s objective. This proposal therefore solves the problems that arise (...) from the multiple objectives that accompany traditional stakeholder theory. I also discuss the Balanced Scorecard, which is the managerial equivalent of stakeholder theory, explaining how this theory is flawed because it presents managers with a scorecard that gives no score—that is, no single-valued measure of how they have performed. Thus managers evaluated with such a system (which can easily have two dozen measures and provides no information on the tradeoffs between them) have no way to make principled or purposeful decisions. The solution is to define a true (single dimensional) score for measuring performance for the organization or division (and it must be consistent with the organization’s strategy), and as long as their score is defined properly, (and for lower levels in the organization it will generally not be value) this will enhance their contribution to the firm. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to provide characterizations of matter, form and constituency in a way that avoids what I take to be the three main drawbacks of other hylomorphic theories: (i) commitment to the universal-particular distinction; (ii) commitment to a primitive or problematic notion of inherence or constituency; (iii) inability to identify viable candidates for matter and form in nature, or to characterize them in terms of primitives widely regarded to be intelligible.

The language we use over the course of conversation changes as we establish common ground and learn what our partner finds meaningful. Here we draw upon recent advances in natural language processing to provide a finer‐grained characterization of the dynamics of this learning process. We release an open corpus (>15,000 utterances) of extended dyadic interactions in a classic repeated reference game task where pairs of participants had to coordinate on how to refer to initially difficult‐to‐describe tangram stimuli. We find that (...) different pairs discover a wide variety of idiosyncratic but efficient and stable solutions to the problem of reference. Furthermore, these conventions are shaped by the communicative context: words that are more discriminative in the initial context (i.e., that are used for one target more than others) are more likely to persist through the final repetition. Finally, we find systematic structure in how a speaker's referring expressions become more efficient over time: Syntactic units drop out in clusters following positive feedback from the listener, eventually leaving short labels containing open‐class parts of speech. These findings provide a higher resolution look at the quantitative dynamics of ad hoc convention formation and support further development of computational models of learning in communication. (shrink)

Legal reasoning requires identification through search of authoritative legal texts that apply to a given legal question. In this paper, using a network representation of US Supreme Court opinions that integrates citation connectivity and topical similarity, we model the activity of law search as an organizing principle in the evolution of the corpus of legal texts. The network model and probabilistic search behavior generates a Pagerank-style ranking of the texts that in turn gives rise to a natural geometry of the (...) opinion corpus. This enables us to then measure the ways in which new judicial opinions affect the topography of the network and its future evolution. While we deploy it here on the US Supreme Court opinion corpus, there are obvious extensions to large evolving bodies of legal text. The model is a proxy for the way in which new opinions influence the search behavior of litigants and judges and thus affect the law. This type of “legal search effect” is a new legal consequence of research practice that has not been previously identified in jurisprudential thought and has never before been subject to empirical analysis. We quantitatively estimate the extent of this effect and find significant relationships between search-related network structures and propensity of future citation. This finding indicates that “search influence” is a pathway through which judicial opinions can affect future legal development. (shrink)

This paper defends Mereological Universalism(the thesis that, for any set S of disjoint objects, there is an object that the members of S compose. Universalism is unpalatable to many philosophers because it entails that if there are such things as my left tennis shoe, W. V. Quine, and the Taj Mahal, then there is another object that those three things compose. This paper presents and criticizes Peter van Inwagen's argument against Universalism and then presents a new argument in favor of (...) Universalism. It turns out that the most reasonable way to resist the argument for Universalism is to deny the existence of artifacts; thus, if we believe in artifacts, we have no real choice other than to embrace Universalism. (shrink)

Physics has been thought to truly represent reality since at least Galileo, and the foundations of physics are always established using philosophical ideas. In particular, the elegant naming of physical entities is usually very influential in the acceptance of physical theories. We here demonstrate (using current developments in thermodynamics as an example) that both the epistemology and the ontology of physics ultimately rest on poetic language. What we understand depends essentially on the language we use. We wish to establish our (...) knowledge securely, but strictly speaking this is impossible using only analytic language. Knowledge of the meanings of things must use a natural language designed to express meaning, that is, poetic language. Although the world is really there, and although we can indeed know it truly, this knowledge is never either complete or certain but ultimately must rest on intuition. Reading a recently discovered artefact with a palaeo-Hebrew inscription as from the first century, we demonstrate from it that this ontological understanding long predates the Hellenic period. Poetic language is primary, both logically and temporally. (shrink)

The linguistic input children receive across early childhood plays a crucial role in shaping their knowledge about the world. To study this input, researchers have begun applying distributional semantic models to large corpora of child‐directed speech, extracting various patterns of word use/co‐occurrence. Previous work using these models has not measured how these patterns may change throughout development, however. In this work, we leverage natural language processing methods—originally developed to study historical language change—to compare caregivers' use of words when talking to (...) younger versus older children. Some words' usage changed more than others; this variability could be predicted based on the word's properties at both the individual and category levels. These findings suggest that caregivers' changing patterns of word use may play a role in scaffolding children's acquisition of conceptual structure in early development. (shrink)

Realism is commonly portrayed as theory that reduces international relations to pure power politics. Michael Williams provides an important reexamination of the Realist tradition and its relevance for contemporary international relations. Examining three thinkers commonly invoked as Realism's foremost proponents - Hobbes, Rousseau, and Morgenthau - the book shows that, far from advocating a crude realpolitik, Realism's most famous classical proponents actually stressed the need for a restrained exercise of power and a politics with ethics at its core. These (...) ideas are more relevant than ever at a time when the nature of responsible responses to international problems are at the centre of contemporary political debate. This original interpretation of major thinkers will interest scholars of international relations and the history of ideas. (shrink)

There are five individually plausible and jointly incompatible assumptions underlying four familiar puzzles about material constitution. The problem of material constitution just is the fact that these five assumptions are both plausible and incompatible. I will begin by providing a very general statement of the problem. I will present the five assumptions and provide a short argument showing how they conflict with one another. Then, in subsequent sections, I will go on to show how these assumptions underlie each of the (...) four puzzles. I will conclude by providing an exhaustive taxonomy of possible solutions to the problem. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The authors argue that individual psychologists have an obligation to understand, review, and comment on upcoming revisions of the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct. Psychologists may want to consider several factors as they review and prepare comments on these revisions. Among other things, commenting psychologists should consider the purposes of ethics codes and how the writing of a code can meet or balance these often-conflicting purposes; the overarching ethical theory or theories that should form the basis (...) of the APA Ethics Code; and the extent to which individual standards are useful and comprehensive, and avoid unnecessary harm to both the public and psychologists. The authors provide examples from the current and recent APA Ethics Codes to illustrate the types of decisions that psychologists must make when evaluating revisions to the APA Ethics Code. (shrink)

Drawing in part on recent work by Eleonore Stump and Sarah Coakley, I shall argue that even if NO HUMAN GOOD is true, divine hiddenness does not cast doubt on DIVINE CONCERN. My argument will turn on three central claims: (a) that ABSENCE OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE and INCONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE are better thought of as constituting divine silence rather than divine hiddenness, (b) that even if NO HUMAN GOOD is true, divine silence is compatible with DIVINE CONCERN so long as God (...) has provided a way for rational creatures to find him and to experience his presence despite the silence, and (c) that there is some reason to think that Biblical narratives and liturgical acts are vehicles by which we might find and experience the presence of God. Each of these claims will be defended, in turn, in the three sections that follow. (shrink)

A bronze statue is a lump of bronze – or so it might appear. But appearances are not always to be trusted, and this one is notoriously problematic. To see why, imagine a bronze statue (perhaps a statue of David) and ask yourself: Which lump of bronze is the statue? Presumably, it is the lump that makes up the statue (or, as we say, the lump that constitutes the statue). After all, why should the statue be any other lump of (...) bronze? But if that is right, if the statue is the lump of bronze that constitutes it, then why can the lump of bronze survive being melted down whereas the statue it constitutes cannot? It seems that in fact the bronze statue is not the lump of bronze that constitutes it, since the statue and the lump of bronze have different persistence conditions. But then is it some other lump of bronze? Is it a lump of bronze at all? These questions are troubling; they appear to have no easy answers. (shrink)

In the first section, I characterize skeptical theism more fully. This is necessary in order to address some important misconceptions and mischaracterizations that appear in the essays by Maitzen, Wilks, and O’Connor. In the second section, I describe the most important objections they raise and group them into four “families” so as to facilitate an orderly series of responses. In the four sections that follow, I respond to the objections.

In this paper, I present an Aristotelian solution to the problem of material constitution. The problem of material constitution arises whenever it appears that an object a and an object b share all of the same parts and yet are essentially related to their parts in different ways. (A familiar example: A lump of bronze constitutes a statue of Athena. The lump and the statue share all of the same parts, but it appears that the lump can, whereas the statue (...) cannot, survive radical rearrangements of those parts.) I argue that if we are prepared to follow Aristotle in making a distinction between numerical sameness and identity, we can solve the problem of material constitution without recourse to co-location or contingent identity and without repudiating any of the familiar objects of common sense (such as lumps and statues) or denying that these objects have the essential properties we ordinarily think that they have. (shrink)