In fungi, cell fusion between genetically unlike individuals triggers a cell death reaction known as the incompatibility reaction. In Podospora anserina, the genes controlling this process belong to a gene family encoding STAND proteins with an N‐terminal cell death effector domain, a central NACHT domain and a C‐terminal WD‐repeat domain. These incompatibility genes are extremely polymorphic, subject to positive Darwinian selection and display a remarkable genetic plasticity allowing for constant diversification of the WD‐repeat domain responsible for recognition of non‐self. Remarkably, (...) the architecture of these proteins is related to pathogen‐recognition receptors ensuring innate immunity in plants and animals. Here, we hypothesize that these P. anserina incompatibility genes could be components of a yet‐unidentified innate immune system of fungi. As already proposed in the case of plant hybrid necrosis or graft rejection in mammals, incompatibility could be a by‐product of pathogen‐driven divergence in host defense genes. (shrink)

Elementær filologisk-litterær hermeneutik. En historisk skitse er et lærdomshistorisk og litteraturvidenskabeligt essay, som følger udvalgte traditionsstrenge fra det gamle Athen over de hermeneutiske klassikere Schleiermacher og Gadamer til de seneste års postmodernisme og dekonstruktion. Formålet er at vise, at den hermeneutiske tradition ikke kun rummer indsigter af blivende værdi for alle humanistiske videnskaber, hvor læsning og tolkning står centralt, men også i sin mangfoldighed rejser spørgsmål, som på ingen måde er uddebatterede.

A representation theorem is obtained for contraction operators that are based on Levi's recent proposal that selection functions should be applied to the set of saturatable contractions, rather than to maximal subsets as in the AGM framework. Furthermore, it is shown that Levi's proposal to base the selection on a weakly monotonic measure of informational value guarantees the satisfaction of both of Gärdenfors' supplementary postulates for contraction. These results indicate that Levi has succeeded in constructing a well-behaved operation of contraction (...) that does not satisfy the postulate of recovery. (shrink)

New technologies and practices, such as drug testing, genetic testing, and electronic surveillance infringe upon the privacy of workers on workplaces. We argue that employees have a prima facie right to privacy, but this right can be overridden by competing moral principles that follow, explicitly or implicitly, from the contract of employment. We propose a set of criteria for when intrusions into an employee''s privacy are justified. Three types of justification are specified, namely those that refer to the employer''s interests, (...) to the interests of the employee her- or himself, and to the interests of third parties such as customers and fellow workers. For each of these three types, sub-criteria are proposed that can be used to determine whether a particular infringement into an employee''s privacy is morally justified or not. (shrink)

Little is known empirically about the role of supervisor listening and the emotional conditions that listening facilitates. Having the opportunity to speak is only one part of the communication process between employees and supervisors. Employees also react to whether they perceive the supervisor as actively listening. In two studies, this paper examines three important outcomes of employee perceptions of supervisor listening. Furthermore, positive and negative affect are investigated as distinct mediating mechanisms. Results from Study 1 revealed that employee perceptions of (...) supervisor listening reflected supervisors’ self-ratings of how they listen to their employees and these perceptions were associated with the three work outcomes. Study 2 replicated the findings in a larger sample and found evidence for two explanatory mechanisms. Positive affect mediated the effects of perceived supervisor listening on organizational citizenship behavior and turnover intention, whereas negative affect mediated listening effects on emotional exhaustion and turnover intention. Implications for organizational research and managerial practice concerning workforce sustainability are discussed. (shrink)

We prove that four theses commonly associated with coherentism are incompatible with the representation of a belief state as a logically closed set of sentences. The result is applied to the conventional coherence interpretation of the AGM theory of belief revision, which appears not to be tenable. Our argument also counts against the coherentistic acceptability of a certain form of propositional holism. We argue that the problems arise as an effect of ignoring the distinction between derived and non-derived beliefs, and (...) we suggest that the kind of coherence relevant to epistemic justification is the coherence of non-derived beliefs. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume address global, regional, and local landscapes, cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures, and human and more-than-human ecology as they work to reveal place-specific tensional dynamics. This unusual book, which covers a wide-ranging array of topics, coheres into a work that will be a valuable reference for scholars of geography and the philosophy of place.

The literature on ethics and user attitudes towards AVs discusses user concerns in relation to automation; however, we show that there are additional relevant issues at stake. To assess adolescents’ attitudes regarding the ‘car of the future’ as presented by car manufacturers, we conducted two studies with over 400 participants altogether. We used a mixed methods approach in which we combined qualitative and quantitative methods. In the first study, our respondents appeared to be more concerned about other aspects of AVs (...) than automation. Instead, their most commonly raised concerns were the extensive use of AI, recommender systems, and related issues of autonomy, invasiveness and personal privacy. The second study confirmed that several AV impacts were negatively perceived. The responses were, however, ambivalent. This confirms previous research on AV attitudes. On one hand, the AV features were perceived as useful, while on the other hand, their impacts were negatively assessed. We followed theoretical insights form futures studies and responsible research and innovation, which helped to identify that there are additional user concerns than what has been previously discussed in the literature on public attitudes and ethics of AVs, as well what has been envisioned by car manufactures. (shrink)

8 chapters are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

ObjectiveTo determine whether gait and accelerometric features can predict disorientation events in young and older adults.MethodsCognitively healthy younger and older participants navigated on a treadmill through a virtual representation of the city of Rostock featured within the Gait Real-Time Analysis Interactive Lab system. We conducted Bayesian Poisson regression to determine the association of navigation performance with domain-specific cognitive functions. We determined associations of gait and accelerometric features with disorientation events in real-time data using Bayesian generalized mixed effect models. The accuracy (...) of gait and accelerometric features to predict disorientation events was determined using cross-validated support vector machines and Hidden Markov models.ResultsBayesian analysis revealed strong evidence for the effect of gait and accelerometric features on disorientation. The evidence supported a relationship between executive functions but not visuospatial abilities and perspective taking with navigation performance. Despite these effects, the cross-validated percentage of correctly assigned instances of disorientation was only 72% in the SVM and 63% in the HMM analysis using gait and accelerometric features as predictors.ConclusionDisorientation is reflected in spatiotemporal gait features and the accelerometric signal as a potentially more easily accessible surrogate for gait features. At the same time, such measurements probably need to be enriched with other parameters to be sufficiently accurate for individual prediction of disorientation events. (shrink)

To what extent does payment method (managed care vs. out of pocket) influence the likelihood that an independent practitioner will assign a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis to a client? When a practitioner does diagnose, how does payment method influence the specific choice of a diagnostic category? Independent practitioners responded to a vignette describing a fictitious client with symptoms of depression or anxiety. In half of the vignettes, the fictitious client intended to pay (...) via managed care; in the other half, the fictitious client intended to pay out of pocket. Payment method had a very significant impact on diagnosis such that relative to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to receive diagnoses and more likely to receive adjustment disorder diagnoses in particular. We discuss implications involving informed consent and other ethical issues. (shrink)

Hegel, Snellman och språket -- Snellman och Lagus -- Ur Israel Hwassers politiska idévärld -- En finländsk motsvarighet till striden mellan Thibaut och Savigny -- Hans Järta och J.J. Nordström -- "Thomas Frisk," ett inlägg i 1860-talets svenska reformdebatt -- Axel Liljenstrand -- C.G. Estlander, "kultursvensk" och gammalliberal -- Robert Hermanson och nationalitetsbegreppet -- K.J. Ståhlberg och Finlands statsskick.

Max Weber’s methodology is often treated by some as his principal contribution to social science, while his comparative sociology of religion starting with the famous Calvinist thesis is the Schwerpunkt in his work, according to others. There are several reasons to locate and analyze the conjunctions between these two interpretations. Weber’s ideal type is formulated in several places, not only in the so-called ‘Objectivity’ essay from 1904, but also for instance in the marginal utility-essay from 1908. His three meta-texts for (...) the three volumes in GARS (Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie) are also illuminating, especially in ‘Einleitung’ (‘Introduction’) and ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’ (or ‘Intermediate Reflections’). It was in the ‘Zwischenbetrachtung’ where he commented on religion in India, partly as an ‘identity giving other’, that the ideal type reappeared. Weber deals with the uniqueness of Occidental culture and his comparative religion serves as supporting evidence, much in line with J S Mill’s canons for the logic of isolating independent variables by similarities and differences -as indicated in a letter by Weber to Georg von Below. As a result Weber serves still today as a sparring partner for theorists of the Axial Age and the multi-modernity paradigm. (shrink)

Sven Bernecker’s contribution to the ongoing revival in the philosophy of memory offers a consistent vision and analysis of propositional remembering, and covers a range of topics in analytic metaphysics and epistemology. Bernecker defends a methodological externalism, by which memory ‘must be analyzed from a third-person point of view’ (34): so even though conceptual analysis remains the primary method, the ‘linguistic intuitions’ that guide it ‘are not a priori but empirical working hypotheses’ (31). Given the central role of such (...) intuitions in Bernecker’s treatment of many briefly described thought experiments throughout the book, it is strange that he does not defend their use more explicitly in this early section on method, instead leaving it to a later footnote (147, n. 11) to say that ‘trying to defend the use of intuitions in the philosophy of memory would . . . take us too far afield’. Bernecker’s subtitle signals a restricted target audience: this is a book for those analytic philosophers who will enjoy long exegeses on Twin Earth, slow switching or quasi-memory. Psychological results on memory are cited, but only piecemeal, and interactive dialogue with scientific theory is not Bernecker’s aim. (shrink)

J.S. Mill’s advocacy of liberty was based only in part on his harm principle. He also endorsed two other principles that considerably extend the scope of liberty: first, a principle of individual liberty that is based on the value of positive freedom and of developing individuality, and second, a principle of free trade or economic freedom that is based on the value of economic efficiency. An analysis is offered of how these three principles are combined in Mill’s account of liberty (...) and how they connect with his antipaternalism. It is proposed that his appeal in On Liberty to positive freedom and the development of individuality provides a uniting principle that makes his view on liberty cohere with his utilitarianism. (shrink)

Indicative conditionals with present tense antecedents can have ‘shifted’ readings that are unexpected given the semantic behavior of the tenses outside of conditionals. In this paper, we compare two accounts of this phenomenon due to Kaufmann (J Semant 22(3):231–280, 2005) and Schulz (SALT XVIII, pp. 694–710, 2008), by reconstructing them in the framework of branching time. We then propose a novel account of indicative conditionals based on the branching time semantics suggested in Rumberg (J Logic Lang Inf 25(1):77–108, 2016), viz. (...) transition semantics. We show that not only is the account of ‘shifted’ readings with present tense antecedents within this semantics very natural, but it also is empirically superior to its rivals in some respects. (shrink)

The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate has two chief aims. These aims are to help readers understand the existing debate and to move the debate forward. The book consists of an introductory chapter by Alberto Giubilini and Sagar Sanyal (which lays out some prominent bioconservative objections to enhancement), eight essays grouped under the theme of "Understanding the Debate" (Section I), and eight devoted to "Advancing the Debate" (Section II). In this review, we offer brief summaries of each essay (...) and ask whether the book successfully advances the debate. (shrink)

Theoria , the international Swedish philosophy journal, was founded in 1935. Its contributors in the first 75 years include the major Swedish philosophers from this period and in addition a long list of international philosophers, including A. J. Ayer, C. D. Broad, Ernst Cassirer, Hector Neri Castañeda, Arthur C. Danto, Donald Davidson, Nelson Goodman, R. M. Hare, Carl G. Hempel, Jaakko Hintikka, Saul Kripke, Henry E. Kyburg, Keith Lehrer, Isaac Levi, David Lewis, Gerald MacCallum, Richard Montague, Otto Neurath, Arthur N. (...) Prior, W. V. Quine, Nicholas Rescher, Ernest Sosa, Robert C. Stalnaker, P. F. Strawson, Patrick Suppes, Johan van Benthem, Georg Henrik von Wright and many others. Hempel's confirmation paradoxes, Ross's deontic paradox, Montague's universal grammar and Lindström's theorem are among the contributions to philosophy that were first published in Theoria. (shrink)

Theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future. Not long ago, a melancholic left and a manic neoliberalism seemed to arrive at an awkward consensus: the foreclosure of futurity. Whereas the former mourned the failure of its utopian project, the latter celebrated the triumph of a global marketplace. The radical hope of realizing a singularly different, more equitable future displaced by a belief that the future had already come to pass, limiting post-historical society to (...) an uneventful life of endless accumulation. Today, amidst an abundance of neofuturisms, posthumanisms, futurologies, speculative philosophies and accelerationist scenarios, there is as well an expanding awareness of a looming planetary catastrophe driven by the extractionist logic of capitalism. Despite this return to the future, the temporal horizon of our present moment is perhaps more aptly characterized by the “shrinking future” of just-in-time production, risk management, high-frequency trading, and the futures market. In Futurity Report, theorists, historians, and artists address the precarious futurity of the notion of the future itself. Contributors McKenzie Wark, China Miéville, Kerstin Stakemeier, Diedrich Diederichsen, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Marina Vishmidt, Johannes Paul Raether, Felicity D. Scott, Silvia Maglioni, Graeme Thomson, Doreen Mende, Pedro Neves Marques, Achille Mbembe, Kodwo Eshun, Haytham El-Wardany, T. J. Demos, Ana Teixeira Pinto. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the traditional interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature from recent attacks leveled by Faviola Rivera-Castro, James Furner, Ido Geiger, Pauline Kleingeld and Sven Nyholm. After a short introduction, the paper is divided into four main sections. In the first, I set out the basics of the three traditional interpretations, the Logical Contradiction Interpretation, the Practical Contradiction Interpretation and the Teleological Contradiction Interpretation. In the second, I examine the work of Geiger, Kleingeld (...) and Nyholm: these three commentators reject the traditional interpretations entirely, but I argue that this rejection is ill-founded. In the third and fourth, I take a detailed look at Furner’s work, work in which he seeks to revise (rather than reject) the traditional interpretations. I argue that, despite his more modest aims, Furner’s revision is also ill-founded. (shrink)

Though the authors of this commentary have deep felt doubts about the fruitfulness of Björkman and Hansson’s analysis of bodily rights, they do not doubt their capacity to develop both creative and provocative thoughtsIt is always welcoming to be confronted with thoughts that, even though one wholeheartedly disagrees with them, have the effect of stimulating one’s own reflections on matters, which without such confrontations, would have been less distinct, less critical—and we would gladly admit, less polemical. Thus it is thanks (...) to Barbro Björkman and Sven Ove Hansson’s article, “Bodily rights and property rights”, that we have been able to set our present course into these murky waters. The issue they want to address is by no means of a kind that lends itself easily to theoretical speculation. This has, perhaps, as much to do with the inherent intricacy of the issue itself as with the controversy it has managed to arouse. The issue is: is it possible to have ownership over one’s own body—that is, is it appropriate to treat the body and its components as property? What are the implications of conceptualising the body and its parts in terms of property? Should one, as a general rule, be able to sell and buy human biological material? If so, who should be allowed to buy and sell it? Does the sale or donation of one’s own bodily parts imply a transfer of ownership rights to the buyer or receiver, or is it rather that ownership of human bodily parts can only be acquired after the material has been, say, manipulated in a laboratory?Contrary to Björkman and Hansson, who see “the primary normative issue” to be “what combination of rights a person should have to a particular item of biological material”, we believe that their decision to construe …. (shrink)

Dieses Buch versammelt einige der führenden Köpfe heutiger pragmatischer Philosophie zu einem konstruktiven Gespräch über die Zukunft des Pragmatismus. Robert B. Brandom, dessen Theorie der Bedeutung im Mittelpunkt mehrerer Beiträge des Bandes steht, hat das Einleitungskapitel geschrieben. Sämtliche zentrale Problemstellungen der pragmatischen Tradition werden aus teilweise sehr unterschiedlichen Perspektiven eingehend beleuchtet. Neben den Artikeln von Brandom und den Herausgebern, André Fuhrmann und Erik J. Olsson, enthält das Buch Originalbeiträge von Michael Esfeld, Wolfram Hinzen, Friedrich Kambartel, Isaac Levi, Ulrich Metschl, Cheryl (...) Misak, Jaroslav Peregrin, Sven Rosenkranz, Hans Rott und Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure the works of Jacques Ellul, Sven Birkerts, George Steiner, Uwe Poerksen, and others, this article explores the status of language in a technicized civilization. It is argued that language has devolved under the impact of technology, particularly in the dimension of values and ethics. This diagnosis points to the way from which a possible cure may emerge.

Are psychotherapy clients who pay via health insurance more likely to receive Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV], American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnoses than identical clients who pay out of pocket? Previous research (Kielbasa, Pomerantz, Krohn, & Sullivan, 2004) indicates that when psychologists consider a mildly depressed or anxious client, payment method significantly influences diagnostic decisions. This study extends the scope of the previous study to include clients whose symptoms are even less severe. Independent practitioners (...) responded to vignettes of clients whose profiles deliberately included subclinical impairment and a high level of functioning. Half of the participants were told that the clients would pay via managed care; the other half were told that the clients would pay out of pocket. As in the earlier study, payment method had a highly significant impact on diagnosis such that relative to out-of-pocket clients, managed care clients were much more likely to be assigned DSM-IV diagnoses. In addition, a noteworthy percentage of participants assigned diagnoses regardless of payment method. Ethical implications are discussed. (shrink)

How should human beings and robots interact with one another? Nyholm’s answer to this question is given below in the form of a conditional: If a robot looks or behaves like an animal or a human being then we should treat them with a degree of moral consideration (p. 201). Although this is not a novel claim in the literature on ai ethics, what is new is the reason Nyholm gives to support this claim; we should treat robots that look (...) like human or non-human animals with a certain degree of moral restraint out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status. Although Danaher or Coeckelbergh also claim that we should treat robots with a degree of moral consideration, the reasons they give for making this claim focus on duties or rights attaching to the robot themselves (see J. Danaher, “Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism,” Science and Engineering Ethics, (2019): 1–27 or M. Coeckelbergh, “Moral Appearances: Emotions, Robots and Human Morality,” Ethics and Information Technology, 12(3) (2010): 235–241.). Nyholm disagrees with this type of reasoning and claims that until robots develop a human or animal like inner life, we have no direct duties to the robots themselves. Rather, it is out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status that we should treat some robots with moral restraint. Gerdes, similarly inspired by Kant, focuses on the human agent to argue that we should avoid treating robots in cruel ways because this may corrupt the human agent’s character (see A. Gerdes, “The Issue of Moral Consideration in Robot Ethics,” siggas Computers and Society, 45(3) (2015): 274–279.). Nyholm’s contribution here is to extend this view such that the corruption or harm being done is against the humanity in all of us. (shrink)