Structural biology has experienced several transformative technological advances in recent years. These include: development of extremely bright X-ray sources and the use of electrons to extend protein crystallography to ever decreasing crystal sizes; and an increase in the resolution attainable by cryo-electron microscopy. Here we discuss the use of these techniques in general terms and highlight their application for biological filament systems, an area that is severely underrepresented in atomic resolution structures. We assemble a model of a capped tropomyosin-actin minifilament (...) to demonstrate the utility of combining structures determined by different techniques. Finally, we survey the methods that attempt to transform high resolution structural biology into more physiological environments, such as the cell. Together these techniques promise a compelling decade for structural biology and, more importantly, they will provide exciting discoveries in understanding the designs and purposes of biological machines. Structural biology is undergoing technological advancements that now reveal the structures of previously inaccessible biological machines. Microfocus synchrotron beamlines, X-ray free electron lasers, and MicroED cope with vanishingly small crystals, while cryo-electron microscopy targets single molecules at near atomic resolution. These advances promise an exciting decade for structural biology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Is a language necessarily shared with a community of speakers? Innate knowledge of a language Robinson Crusoe sails again Solitary cavemen and monologuists Private languages and ‘private languages’ Overview.

The emotion of anger, when chronic, is especially problematic. Frequent and intense experiences of anger predict quite a few adverse health outcomes and are especially implicated in cardiovascular...

This book consists of a selection of papers which throw new light on old problems in one of Plato s most difficult dialogues. The first set of papers deals with definitions of sophistry from different perspectives. In the central section E. Hulsz, D. O'Brien, B. Bossi, P. Mesquita and N. Cordero consider the problem of being and relative non-being with regard to Heraclitus and the legacy of Parmenides. The final section with papers by F. Fronterotta, J. de Garay, D. Ambuel (...) and L. Palumbo is devoted to ontology, predication and truth.". (shrink)

Systematic study of the intersection of ethics consultation services and solid organ transplants and recipients can identify and illustrate ethical issues that arise in the clinical care of these patients, including challenges beyond resource allocation. This was a single-centre, retrospective cohort study of all adult ethics consultations between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2017, at a large academic medical centre in the north-eastern United States. Of the 880 ethics consultations, sixty (6.8 per cent ) involved solid organ transplant, thirty-nine (...) (65.0 per cent) for candidates and twenty-one (35.0 per cent ) for recipients. Ethics consultations were requested for 4.3 per cent of heart, 4.9 per cent of lung, 0.3 per cent of liver, and 0.3 per cent of kidney transplant recipients over the study period. Nurses were more likely to request ethics consultations for recipients than physicians (80.0 per cent vs 20.0 per cent, p = 0.006). The most common reason for consultation among transplant candidates was discussion about intensity of treatment or goals of care after the patient was not or was no longer a transplant candidate. The most common reason for ethics consultation among transplant recipients was disagreement between transplant providers and patients/families/non-transplant healthcare professionals over the appropriate intensity of treatment for recipients. Very few consultations involved questions about appropriate resource allocation. Ethics consultants involved in these cases most often navigated communication challenges between transplant and non-transplant healthcare professionals and patients and families. (shrink)

Background: The bioethics literature contains speculation but little data about sociodemographic differences between patients for whom ethics committees (EC) are consulted for conflict about life-sustaining treatment (LST) and the broader hospital population that these committees serve. To provide an empirical context for this discussion, we examined differences in five sociodemographic factors between patients for whom an EC was consulted for conflict over LST and the general inpatient population, hypothesizing that nonwhite patients were most likely to be disproportionately represented. Methods: This (...) was a retrospective cohort study comparing self-reported race/ethnicity, household income, insurance status, primary language, and religious affiliation between patients involved in EC consultations for conflict over LST and the general adult inpatient population at a large academic hospital from January 1, 2007, through December 31, 2013. Results: There were 169 EC consultations involving conflict over LST and 243,197 adult inpatient admissions over the study period. On bivariate analysis, patients for whom the EC was consulted for conflict over LST were more likely to be nonwhite, low-income, and to speak a primary language other than English. They were not more likely to be underinsured or to report a religious affiliation. On multivariate analysis, patients for whom the EC was consulted for conflict over LST were more likely to be nonwhite (odds ratio [OR], 2.5; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.7–3.7; p <.001). They were also more likely to be low income (OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.1–3.0; p =.02). They were not more likely to speak a primary language other than English (OR, 1.4; 95% CI, 0.9–2.1; p =.17). None of the assessed variables were associated with conflict over LST requiring additional meetings beyond the first EC consultation. Conclusions: Nonwhite and low-income status patients are disproportionately represented in EC committee consultation for conflict over LST compared to the general inpatient population. (shrink)

Bullying often results in negative coping in victims, including an increased consumption of alcohol. Recently, however, an increase in alcohol use has also been reported among perpetrators of bullying. The factors triggering this pattern are still unclear. We investigated the role of empathy in the interaction between bullying and alcohol use in an adolescent sample (IMAGEN) at age 13.97 (±0.53) years (baseline (BL), N = 2165, 50.9% female) and age 16.51 (±0.61) years (follow-up 1 (FU1), N = 1185, 54.9% female). (...) General empathic distress served as a significant moderator of alcohol use in perpetrators (F9, 493 = 17.978, p < 0.01), which was specific for males and FU1. Male perpetrators, who are generally less sensitive to distress, might thus be more vulnerable to alcohol abuse. (shrink)

Although this excellent introductory and intermediate level text is intended for students of mathematics, it could serve well in any course for philosophers on that level. The first two chapters present the propositional and predicate calculi, along with an informal discussion of some of the set-theoretic concepts needed to study logic. The third chapter discusses what exactly an axiomatic system is, and examples of various mathematical systems cast in axiomatic form are provided; the discussion here, as elsewhere in the book, (...) is generally self-contained and presupposes only an ability to deal with abstract ideas. The study of the propositional calculus is resumed in chapter four, but its formulation is now more rigorous and thoroughly axiomatic; in a similar manner the predicate calculus is treated in the next chapter, and the usual metatheorems are proved about each, but the specific techniques differ from the usual. The last chapter concentrates on the completeness proof of quantification theory, relating it to some of the axiomatic algebraic systems considered earlier. An appendix sketches some sophisticated results of Vaught and Robinson on model theory and completeness. In sum, this is one of the very best of a plethora of logic texts on the market, and it should serve well for years to come.—P. J. M. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of testimonia and fragments of the Presocratics designed to introduce the Italian high school student to an understanding of what philosophy is. This purpose is so praiseworthy that it should deter the specialist from raising his eyebrows at the volume's shortcomings. Curi has selected only fragments of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and the Eleatics. Empedocles, Anaxagoras and the Atomists are excluded from the selections, presumably because the editor holds, with many Italian scholars, the questionable (...) theory that by "Presocratics" is understood only those thinkers who lived before the birth of Socrates. The translation of texts from the sixth edition of Diels and Kranz is accurate and readable, and the selections of testimonia are more comprehensive than the ones found in the textbooks of Burnet, Nahm, and Robinson. It is pedagogically interesting to ask what the very young may learn from this volume. The answer lies in its short introduction and in the critical footnotes attached to each fragment. Unlike the aforementioned English and American authors, Curi avoids textual exegesis and analysis of the mythopoeic background of Homer and Hesiod to which the early philosophic views may be related. He centers his own comments on the intricate issues of ancient and modern historiography. He analyzes the history of ancient historiography from Aristotle to Mondolfo and concludes that Wilamowitz, Stenzel, and Jaeger are the only historiographers who have been able to capture the complexity of Presocratic philosophy. Curi's method of teaching philosophy and his own philosophical views goes beyond the scope of this notice, however we can not help but remark how much Croce's spirit still pervades the Italian class-room.--L. M. P. (shrink)

The author proposes to delineate the basic outlines of an entirely new religio-metaphysical foundation for the religious, moral, and social convictions of modern Western man—an admittedly ambitious undertaking. More specifically, he wishes to nail the lid on the coffin of "the so-called Aristotelian substantialism," by means of an "interpretational synthesis" of the thought of Whitehead and that of Heidegger. Accordingly, he argues for an organismic view of history, according to which the event of the life-death-resurrection of Christ reveals the structure (...) and hence the meaning of history and of being. Man's appropriation of this meaning is characterized in roughly Bultmannian terms, though with somewhat more stress on the role of the Church qua social institution and on the empirically factual character of the crucial events comprising the over-all Christ-event than Bultmann lays. This essay is best regarded as another instance of the current phenomenon most notably instanced by Bishop Robinson's Honest to God and the debate it has initiated.—P. C. M. (shrink)

Abraham Robinson has twice been the initiator of trends in the foundations of mathematics which have later become recognized as profound and important, although they were generally ignored at first: metamathematical problems of algebra and non-standard analysis. This book considers the second topic; before we begin analysis—especially a treatment of the classical theorems of calculus—we need basic results from logic, model theory in particular. Robinson then sketches non-standard arithmetic and proceeds to develop the usual properties and relations of (...) differentiability and integrability of functions, convergence; he then examines general topology in this new context and fortified with these results develops "modern" functional analysis in some detail: measure theory and functions of a real variable, functions of a complex variable, normed and linear spaces, topological groups and some harmonic analysis. The last two chapters cover selected topics in analysis drawn principally from applied mathematics and the history of the calculus with special reference to infinitesimals. Robinson views the development of non-standard mathematics as the renaissance of ideas about infinitesimals as serious topics of mathematical study. Robinson primarily has confined himself to analysis and not attempted to cover non-standard algebraic systems; several important results of Alling concerning non-standard arithmetic and rings of continuous functions appeared too late to be included. Of course, the real test of non-standard analysis will come in allowing us to prove new theorems about standard analysis, but although Robinson does not attempt to do this here—although he has obtained results in this direction—other mathematicians have already begun to do so: the future of this new branch of mathematics already looks secure.—P. J. M. (shrink)

An enlargement of a previous work by the author, this work is intended as a reference source for study in the theory of models of logical systems, and as a textbook; the latter aim is reached by including numerous problems, many of them of a high level of difficulty, at the end of each chapter. The sections deal with, respectively, the lower predicate calculus, the structure of algebraic theories, concepts from model theory, completeness of various systems, definability of concepts, generalizations (...) of algebraic concepts, the metamathematical theories of ideals and varieties, and various selected topics including non-standard analysis. Unfortunately, there are numerous misprints which mar an otherwise excellent presentation. Much of the material presented is new, or is presented in new form. Robinson's approach is mildly idiosyncratic and often at variance with more conventional presentations, and this may make for difficulty in relating it to these presentations. Nevertheless, for the reader with a working knowledge of algebra and no small perseverance, this book will be rewarding.—P. J. M. (shrink)

The emphasis in this collection is clearly on logic, and this is one reason why it lacks the overall diversity and richness of the 1960 Stanford volume. However, the eight sections do contain much interesting material; in the mathematical logic section Kochen and Specker continue their study of logics appropriate for quantum theory, Vaught presents several new results about the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem, and Büchi studies second-order ordinal theory from the viewpoint of automata theory; the section on foundations of mathematical theories (...) contains papers on higher-order logic by Kaplan and Montague, model theory and ultra-products by Keisler, definability in set theory by Lévy. The topic of the justification of formal theories was the essential topic of the philosophy of logic section: an especially interesting paper is that of A. Robinson in which the present state of Hilbertean Formalism is analyzed, and in which the notion of potential truth is formalized. The section on the philosophy of science contains a single paper, by Hesse, on metaphor and explanation; Braithwaite, Hintikka, Jeffrey, and Kyburg contribute to a lively section on probability and induction; the section on methodology in physical science takes as topics the theory of relativity, causality, and irreversibility. The last two sections, on the philosophy of the life sciences, and on history of logic and philosophy of science, contain, respectively, papers by Davidson and Suppes on meaning and concept formation, and essays by Church and Geach on existential import historically considered and intentionality among the medievals. The collection would have been better if more of the contributed papers had been included.—P. J. M. (shrink)

Gordon Baker and I had been colleagues at St John’s for almost ten years when we resolved, in 1976, to undertake the task of writing a commentary on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. We had been talking about Wittgenstein since 1969, and when we cooperated in writing a long critical notice on the Philosophical Grammar in 1975, we found that working together was mutually instructive, intellectually stimulating and great fun. We thought that we still had much to say about Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and (...) it seemed to us that misinterpretations of passages in the Investigations were so extensive that it would be worth trying to write a detailed analytical commentary. It is difficult to recapture the excitement of those early days in being among the first to work on the microfilms and, subsequently, on the photocopies of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. We spent many hundreds of hours poring over the typescripts and the often only semi-legible manuscripts, fascinated and privileged to be able to try to follow the development of the thoughts of a great philosophical genius. We talked endlessly about what we had found in Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts, and debated how it should be understood. The first fruit of our labours was Wittgenstein – Understanding and Meaning. Its guiding idea was to draw attention to the manner in which Wittgenstein linked the concepts of meaning, understanding and explanation, and so to bypass the connections between meaning, truth and truth-conditions that so fascinated philosophers of the 1970s, and to abandon the red-herring of assertion-conditions and anti-realism. After a hiatus of four years, during which time we wrote a controversial book entitled Frege – Logical Excavations and a polemical book on contemporary philosophy of language – Language, Sense. (shrink)

... 243-) INTRODUCTION §§243- constitute the eighth 'chapter' of the book. Its point of departure is a natural query with respect to the conclusion of the ...

Sympathy, empathy, and compassion are strands in the network of love and essential corollaries of friendship. Together with love and friendship, they are the saving graces of mankind. This chapter aims to clarify the relationship between sympathy and empathy. It may be helpful first to list the relevant dispositions, tendencies, powers, and feelings. The most important contributions to the analysis of sympathy were Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature and Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It was they who (...) provided the first extensive phenomenological description and philosophical anatomy of sympathy. It is noteworthy that Theodor Lipps had translated Hume's Treatise into German. His account of empathy had its roots in Hume's projectivism. With the demise of behaviourism in the 1970s, the notion of empathy became an object for reflections of experimental and practical psychologists and therapists. (shrink)

The distinction between shame cultures and guilt cultures is due to the anthropologist Ruth Benedict. The moral education of the youth in a shame culture will involve a multitude of prescriptions determining how to conduct oneself. Heroic societies with a closed aristocratic warrior class are typically shame cultures. The form of the dominant norms of a guilt culture is the imperative or dominative tense, which determines what one is obligated to do. This is the typical form of the obligation‐imposing commandments (...) of God. A primary focus of shame in the emerging guilt culture became sexuality and the body, and shame became forcefully riveted to the notion of sin. Feeling shame, like feeling pride, lies at the centre of a ramifying cluster of emotions and emotional attitudes. Shame bears a kinship to embarrassment. Embarrassment is distinguished from feeling shame in so far as it is essentially an audience‐involving emotion. (shrink)

Given the ubiquity of the phenomena of anger and the roots of the emotion in the animal nature, it is not surprising that human languages have a rich vocabulary to express, report, describe, and evaluate the various manifestations and expressions of anger. Different cultures and different languages have evolved their distinctive orgetic vocabularies. This chapter is concerned with the family of concepts of anger, as expressed in English. The doctrine of the humours is reflected in the iconography of anger. Eichler's (...) engraved illustration for Ripa's iconological analysis of Cholericus depicts an angry youth – for the young, Ripa explained, like the choleric, lack judgement. The chapter discusses the physiognomy, behavioural manifestations, and verbal expressions of anger. So much for the connective analysis of anger. People's understanding of the place of anger in human life can be deepened and enriched by scrutiny of some of the ancient literary and philosophical descriptions and analyses of the phenomena. (shrink)

Actions done out of jealousy or envy are vicious. The corresponding character traits – having a jealous or envious disposition – are vices. Envy motivates ever greater efforts in the pursuit of private wealth, and, coupled with greed and covetousness, stimulates acquisitive competition, thus benefiting the economy. Envy is often linked to Schadenfreude. Jealousy characteristically involves hostility if not hatred towards the person who is taking away the love one feels is due to one, and engenders bitterness, hostility, or hatred (...) towards the person one loved. Like many emotions, envy and jealousy provide motives for action. For in both cases there are characteristic patterns of backward‐ and forward‐looking reasons for action. There are numerous biblical tales to illustrate the evils of envy, and others that demonstrate the vice of jealousy. For the most part, qin'ah is condemned as a serious and self‐destructive vice. (shrink)

In antiquity the subject of friendship occupied centre stage in discussions of the good life. Friendship is possible between people who are not equals in virtue, status, power, or intellect, but then, Aristotle argues, it is a less than perfect form of friendship. Friendship is a focal concept, the focus of which is the friendship of men of excellence and virtue who are, in relevant respects, equals. Aristotle's detailed investigations of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics set the stage and determined (...) the questions to be addressed in all subsequent discussions. The abstract noun philia brackets both love and friendship. Aristotle argued that the origins of philia lie in the household. This chapter discusses prominent characteristics of friendship. It is believed that friendship is a relationship, not an emotion. That relationship may be deep or superficial (casual), depending upon the strength and depth of the feelings that obtain. (shrink)

Jealousy often wreaks havoc among those who love each other. There are many different forms of jealousy. These can be brought to light by scrutiny of grammar, which discloses the scope and limits of the concept of jealousy and hence too of the emotion it subsumes. In Bronzino's painting, Jealousy has a livid complexion (a mixture of yellow and black bile). Robert Herrick's poem in Anthony Frederick Sandys's painting, however, associates jealousy with yellow. In this, he too was following the (...) doctrine of the humours, which explained jealousy by reference to an excess of the choleric humour of yellow bile that causes anger, irritability, boldness, envy, jealousy, and courage. The chapter elaborates the manifold differences between two emotions, envy and jealousy, and the corresponding character traits and motives. The comparison involves numerous for the most parts, and normallys. (shrink)

The manifold phenomena of love exhibited in diverse human societies during different periods of recorded history are rooted in biological features of human beings. The human procreative urge among women is natural to our species. Maternal love is rooted in mammalian nature. The ideal love of a mother for her child is a common transcultural paradigm of selflessness. This chapter first examines the biological roots of love and subsequently to the social constraints within which its various forms are possible. It (...) then discusses the multiple kinds of possible objects of love and the threads connecting them, and explains the framework of moral, social, and legal norms within which human love is realized. Love is a paradigm of a developing emotion. Being in love is the natural sequel to falling in love. It involves wanting to be with the person loved, a strong desire to please, to share experience, and to delight in shared experiences. (shrink)