The dynamic structure and composition of lipid membranes need to be tightly regulated to control the vast array of cellular processes from cell and organelle morphology to protein‐protein interactions and signal transduction pathways. To maintain membrane integrity, sense‐and‐response systems monitor and adjust membrane lipid composition to the ever‐changing cellular environment, but only a relatively small number of control systems have been described. Here, we explore the emerging role of the ubiquitin‐proteasome system in monitoring and maintaining membrane lipid composition. We focus (...) on the ER‐resident RNF145 E3 ubiquitin ligase, its role in regulating adiponectin receptor 2 (ADIPOR2), its lipid hydrolase substrate, and the broader implications for understanding the homeostatic processes that fine‐tune cellular membrane composition. (shrink)

This paper reviews the accountability regimes of contractarian and communitarian theory. The contractarian theory is further elaborated with the developments of shareholder primacy, the stakeholder theory and team production model , and the communitarian themes of single constituency, Catholic social thought and corporate citizenship. Contractarian theory is rooted in liberalism, where as communitarian theory is a humanist discipline. While contractarians stress the value of competition, liberty and freedom, the communitarians emphasize cooperation, justice and civic responsibility. The purpose of this analysis (...) is to frame corporate ‘personhood’ in the perspective of the existing theories. This article suggests that corporate citizenship has been revived under Canadian law which contemplates a communitarian corporation. (shrink)

In this interview, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre introduce their book Enrichment and core concepts for the analysis of new developments in contemporary capitalism. The study focuses the analysis of the enrichment economy, which is grasped as a new form to explore and exploit ‘the past’ as a source for capitalist profits. The interview presents forms of valuation, which are more general principles of how value and prices can be ascribed to goods. The approach of Boltanski and Esquerre assumes an (...) organized plurality of such forms of valuation. Also, the two sociologists stress the importance of discourses of valuation, which bring these forms of valuation into operation. As the interview makes evident, one major aim is to present a new perspective on the relationship between values, prices, and practices how prices are legitimatized or criticized on the basis of discourses of valuation. The interview situates Enrichment in the context of other contemporary sociological works, which focus on the economic core issue of value and valuation. The book can also be recognized as a proposal to reconcile structuralism and pragmatism in sociology. At the end of the interview, the more recent outcomes of the continuing collaborative work of Boltanski and Esquerre after Enrichment are discussed. (shrink)

The article discusses main contributions and results of the monograph Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities, written by the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre. Boltanski and Esquerre focus on the strategy to transform ‘the past’ (patrimony, luxury objects, tradition, collections) into new sources of richness. The book focuses on valuation forms and valuation discourses. Enrichment links Boltanski’s work again to the socio-economic movement of the economics and sociology of conventions (in short, EC/SC), which is part of the new French (...) social sciences and regards conventions as logics of valuation and interpretation. This approach of EC/SC is introduced as a frame to evaluate the recombination of pragmatism and structuralism which is proposed by Boltanski and Esquerre. Finally, open questions and desiderata are addressed from the standpoint of EC/SC. (shrink)

This book examines philosophical approaches to linguistic vagueness, a puzzling feature of natural language that gives rise to the ancient Sorites paradox and challenges classical logic and semantics. -/- The Sorites, or Paradox of the Heap, consists in three claims: (1) One grain of sand does not make a heap. (2) One billion grains of sand do make a heap. (3) For any two amounts of sand differing by at most one grain: either both are heaps of sand, or neither (...) one is. The third claim is rendered plausible by an initial conviction that vague predicates like ‘heap’ tolerate small changes. However, the repeated application of a tolerance principle to the second claim yields the further proposition that one grain of sand does make a heap – which contradicts claim number one. Consequently, many philosophers reject or modify tolerance principles for vague predicates. -/- Inga Bones reassesses prominent responses to the Sorites and defends a Wittgensteinian dissolution of the paradox. She argues that vague predicates are, indeed, tolerant and discusses how this finding relates to the paradox itself, to the notion of validity and to the concept of a borderline case . (shrink)

Precarious employment is commonplace within the University-as-business model. Neoliberal and New Public Management agendas have influenced widespread insecurity, and limited career progression pathways within academic work. Qualitative multi-case data inform this investigation of how young academic workers cope with, and justify, their precarious situations in a large Australian university. This article introduces the notion of cruel optimism to analyse the unethical exploitation of desires of precariously employed academics. This analytical engagement extends empathetic engagement with the lived experiences and rationalisations of (...) precariously employed academic workers, paying homage to their desires and negotiations. Findings demonstrate that participants were heavily invested in working towards achieving their good life fantasy which encompassed secure employment and the recognition this provided. Cruel optimism operated as participants developed coping mechanisms to deal with the ongoingness of their troubling situation as precarious workers uncertain how to change their precarious circumstances. Participants experienced cruel optimism as they navigated through issues of identity, control, and desire, related to their present and future lives as academic workers experiencing an impasse of crisis ordinariness. Optimism directed towards the academic scene of desire motivated participants’ daily actions and informed their understandings. Ethical elements of the impasse of precarious employment are presented in relation to the neoliberal and New Public Management-oriented University context. This article provides a novel conceptualisation of how precarious employment contributes to a relation of cruel optimism among workers by highlighting how organisations exploit the desires of insecure employees for extended periods of time, contributing to an impasse of crisis ordinariness. (shrink)

In this article, drawing upon a feminist epistemology, we examine the critical roles that philosophical standpoint, historical usage, gender, and language play in a knowledge arena which is increasingly opaque to the general public. Focussing on the language dimension in particular, in its historical and social dimensions, we explicate how some keywords in use across artificial intelligence (AI) discourses inform and misinform non-expert understandings of this area. The insights gained could help to imagine how AI technologies could be better conceptualised, (...) explained, and governed, so that they are leveraged for social good. (shrink)

Veterinary oaths are public declarations sworn by veterinarians, usually when they enter the profession. As such, they may reflect professional and social concerns. Analysis of contemporary veterinary oaths may therefore reveal their ethical foundations. The objective of this article is to contextualize the ethical content of contemporary oaths, in terms of the origin and development of veterinary medicine and wider societal changes such as the intensification of farming and the rise of animal welfare. This informs a comparison of oaths from (...) the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Brazil. This analysis suggests some ways in which the oaths might be developed to better reflect contemporary societal values. (shrink)

In recent times developments in the natural sciences and in the sphere of environmental politics have compelled social scientists, and also some natural scientists, to rethink the relations that hitherto have been held, in Western thought generally and within particular disciplines, to characterize ‘nature’ on the one side and ‘culture’ on the other. This article considers the history of this conceptual boundary and looks at new conceptualizations of nature/culture, stimulated by developments both in biotechnology and in the ongoing controversies about (...) environmental degradation. It argues that while some of the contributions to reconfiguring, or abolishing, the nature/ culture division have been productive and stimulating of new ways of conceiving the world, there has nonetheless been an unfortunate tendency for social scientists to bring to bear inherited analytic dispositions on biotechnological and environmental matters. Instead of using these issues as means of challenging social scientific disciplinary dogmas and of engaging in constructive rapprochement with natural scientists, social scientists have in their analyses of such matters often merely asserted the hegemony of ‘culture’ over ‘nature’, and thus in effect the superiority of social scientific over natural scientific conceptualizations of the world. Far from overcoming the nature/culture boundary, social scientists have too often merely asserted the primacy of the sorts of subject matters and analytic techniques they feel comfortable with, rather than subjecting their practices to fully reflexive self-scrutiny. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Katharine Jane Tait, 1923–2021Andrew Bone and Sheila Turcon Click for larger view View full resolutionIt was with great sadness that the Bertrand Russell Research Centre learned of the death on 26 July 2021 of Katharine Tait, Bertrand Russell’s daughter. Dr. Tait was a founder of the Bertrand Russell Society, attended several of its annual meetings, and was always strongly supportive of, and involved in, research and inquiry into the (...) life, times and writings of her father. She attended McMaster’s Russell Centenary Celebrations in 1972. Her scholarly interests and commitments extended to the McMaster edition of Russell’s Collected Papers, of whose Advisory Editorial Board she was a longstanding member. Kate herself wrote an important and poignant memoir, My Father Bertrand Russell; she was an always charming and friendly visitor to McMaster on those occasions she undertook work in the Russell Archives, which included an annotated, as yet unpublished edition of her correspondence with her father. She contributed articles and reviews to this journal. Several members of the McMaster community cherish her personal letters, notes and greeting cards to them.— Andrew Bone; photo by Sheila Turcon [End Page 98]Copyright © 2021 McMaster University... (shrink)

At the 2021 conference of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics, Linda Woodhead presented a paper entitled ‘Truth and Deceit in Institutions’. Amra Bone was then invited to deliver a response to this paper drawing on her knowledge of Islamic traditions and culture. This article is her response. The article highlights the importance the Qur’anic scripture gives to justice and neither distorting nor refusing to give testimony. It then briefly explores the Arabic term Kufr found in the Qur’an. (...) Whilst more commonly interpreted to mean disbelief, this term literally means hiding or covering up truth. Dishonesty can therefore be equated to disbelief which makes it a very serious matter for Muslims. Therefore ethics determine that the road to greater institutional honesty must be adopted. In Islamic Law the end does not justify the means; rather the outcome rests with God alone and the responsibility given to men and women is to act honestly and ethically. For any institution or society to develop positively, every individual must play their part and take this responsibility seriously and not to rely on a few courageous individuals. (shrink)

At the height of the Sino-Indian border dispute in 1962, Bertrand Russell, as “a lifetime friend of India” (Unarmed Victory, p. 88), appealed to Prime Minister Nehru for peace. Yet for the first 75 years of Russell’s life, India had not been an independent, developing state whose non-aligned diplomacy he could (usually) admire, but rather an economically and stra­tegically vital part of the British Empire. Thus Russell’s fraternal bond with India was formed during its protracted struggle against British rule. The (...) central purpose of this article is to reconstruct Russell’s occasionally contorted connection with that historic contest, and it will do so by drawing on a wealth of neglected textual material. More than simply fleshing out a significant but overlooked chapter in Russell’s political life, this assessment of his decades-long association, as participant and observer, with the campaign for Indian independence also strives to capture the complex essence of his thinking on questions of empire generally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Social and Moral Aspects of the WarBertrand Russell and Introduced by Andrew G. BoneAmong nine loose-leaf folders of typed transcriptions of Russell's History of Western Philosophy lectures at the Barnes Foundation1 are two copies of a fourteen-page stenographic record of a political talk he gave there on 2 March 1941.2 The bulk of this significant new accrual to the Russell Archives, bearing as it does on Russell's most successful (...) philosophical work, could stimulate much further research and textual study. But his isolated Barnes lecture, about the politics of American neutrality, Nazi Germany's brutal and expansionist dictatorship, and the causes and possible consequences of the war against it, is also of considerable interest.The transcription reads more like detailed notes than a verbatim account, and there is no evidence that Russell approved this text.3 The stenographer initially recorded Russell in the third person, dispensed with this device before the second [End Page 52] paragraph, but then occasionally returned to it.4 There is also more enumeration of Russell's points than he would have supplied in a prepared script. Even the title may not be his: there is nothing in the text on any social changes wrought by the war. But this title has been retained in the absence of a more plausible alternative in a short report of the speech (quoting sixteen sentences) in the next day's Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.5 Russell's hour-long address on the "Social and Moral Aspects of the War" appears to have been the only occasion when he "laid philosophy aside"6 at the Barnes Foundation. It was delivered on a Sunday to an audience of 160 students (and possibly some invitees, although none are mentioned in the newspaper article), sandwiched between two of his weekly philosophical lectures (on Socrates and Sparta7) in the series scheduled for each Thursday.In opening his case for the United States joining the Allied war effort, Russell challenged the arguments for the "policy of conciliation" which, by his own recent admission in the New York Times,8 he had earlier endorsed. Published two weeks before Russell spoke on a similar topic at the Barnes Foundation, this 2,000-word letter to the editor served as a very detailed and public renunciation of the pacifist viewpoint—neutrality for national governments combined with non-resistance for individuals—which Russell had promoted in Which Way to Peace? (1936) and continued to condone after the Munich Agreement (September 1938) and even the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (March 1939).Yet Russell the "relative political pacifist"9 also admitted in this most programmatic statement of his prewar position that "In other times and other circumstances, I should be prepared to consider gains and losses, and to concede that war might be worth while" (WWP, pp. 151–2).That moment had obviously arrived and may have done so already when on 15 October 1939 Russell confided to Constance Malleson that his passionate desire for a British victory made a "thorough-going pacifism difficult" (ra Rec. Acq. 596). But six months later he still did "not feel sufficiently sure of the opposite to say anything publicly by way of recantation"—before adding in this letter to Gilbert Murray that "it may come to that" (21 April 1940, ra Rec. Acq. 71g). It clearly did shortly afterwards—when the "phoney war" in Western Europe was dramatically ended by the invasion of France and the [End Page 53] Low Countries. On 13 May Russell asked the editor of the New Statesman and Nation to notify its readers that he had abandoned his once strongly held pacifist convictions.10In his lecture to the Barnes Foundation, Russell turned next to the defence of American non-intervention by Robert M. Hutchins (see n. 16 below)—which he had already critiqued in the New York Times. Although rather precariously situated as a resident alien in the United States, Russell was hardly circumspect about pushing a policy that so sharply divided American opinion.11 He also listed the faults of the League of Nations and the most grievous diplomatic mistakes made since the end of the last war and the fatally... (shrink)

Wieso geraten in Informationszeitalter und globaler Marktwirtschaft Werte derart in Widerstreit miteinander, dass eine Krise entsteht? Vor ideengeschichtlichem Hintergrund sind ihre Ursachen mit Bezug auf realpolitische Sachverhalte zu untersuchen. Das Ende der Metaphysik, Probleme des Rationalismus, entfesselter Kapitalismus, Anthropotechnik, kultureller Wandel und Demokratiekrise sind wohlbekannte Phänomene, mit denen sie einhergeht oder die sie bedingen. Gibt es Möglichkeiten, diese Krise zu beenden? Oder bleibt es beim unvermeidbaren Kampf der Werte und ihrer Anhänger gegeneinander? Die Beiträge aus Kunst-, Kultur-, Literatur- und Medienwissenschaften, (...) Kulturökonomie und Philosophie arbeiten die medienübergreifende wie vernetzende Schlüsselfunktion heraus, die Kunst und Kultur in dieser Wertedebatte zukommt. (shrink)

As he neared 80 Russell was more financially secure than he had been for decades. But to remain so he needed to maintain his prodigious output as a writer, broadcaster and lecturer (see Papers 26, forthcoming). Meanwhile, the breakdown of his third marriage threatened to undermine his much-improved financial position. The monetary concerns addressed in both the text prepared by Russell and the related commentary hint at a lifetime’s scrupulous regard for his personal finances.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Social and Moral Aspects of the WarBertrand Russell and Introduced by Andrew G. BoneAmong nine loose-leaf folders of typed transcriptions of Russell's History of Western Philosophy lectures at the Barnes Foundation1 are two copies of a fourteen-page stenographic record of a political talk he gave there on 2 March 1941.2 The bulk of this significant new accrual to the Russell Archives, bearing as it does on Russell's most successful (...) philosophical work, could stimulate much further research and textual study. But his isolated Barnes lecture, about the politics of American neutrality, Nazi Germany's brutal and expansionist dictatorship, and the causes and possible consequences of the war against it, is also of considerable interest.The transcription reads more like detailed notes than a verbatim account, and there is no evidence that Russell approved this text.3 The stenographer initially recorded Russell in the third person, dispensed with this device before the second [End Page 52] paragraph, but then occasionally returned to it.4 There is also more enumeration of Russell's points than he would have supplied in a prepared script. Even the title may not be his: there is nothing in the text on any social changes wrought by the war. But this title has been retained in the absence of a more plausible alternative in a short report of the speech (quoting sixteen sentences) in the next day's Philadelphia Evening Bulletin.5 Russell's hour-long address on the "Social and Moral Aspects of the War" appears to have been the only occasion when he "laid philosophy aside"6 at the Barnes Foundation. It was delivered on a Sunday to an audience of 160 students (and possibly some invitees, although none are mentioned in the newspaper article), sandwiched between two of his weekly philosophical lectures (on Socrates and Sparta7) in the series scheduled for each Thursday.In opening his case for the United States joining the Allied war effort, Russell challenged the arguments for the "policy of conciliation" which, by his own recent admission in the New York Times,8 he had earlier endorsed. Published two weeks before Russell spoke on a similar topic at the Barnes Foundation, this 2,000-word letter to the editor served as a very detailed and public renunciation of the pacifist viewpoint—neutrality for national governments combined with non-resistance for individuals—which Russell had promoted in Which Way to Peace? (1936) and continued to condone after the Munich Agreement (September 1938) and even the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (March 1939).Yet Russell the "relative political pacifist"9 also admitted in this most programmatic statement of his prewar position that "In other times and other circumstances, I should be prepared to consider gains and losses, and to concede that war might be worth while" (WWP, pp. 151–2).That moment had obviously arrived and may have done so already when on 15 October 1939 Russell confided to Constance Malleson that his passionate desire for a British victory made a "thorough-going pacifism difficult" (ra Rec. Acq. 596). But six months later he still did "not feel sufficiently sure of the opposite to say anything publicly by way of recantation"—before adding in this letter to Gilbert Murray that "it may come to that" (21 April 1940, ra Rec. Acq. 71g). It clearly did shortly afterwards—when the "phoney war" in Western Europe was dramatically ended by the invasion of France and the [End Page 53] Low Countries. On 13 May Russell asked the editor of the New Statesman and Nation to notify its readers that he had abandoned his once strongly held pacifist convictions.10In his lecture to the Barnes Foundation, Russell turned next to the defence of American non-intervention by Robert M. Hutchins (see n. 16 below)—which he had already critiqued in the New York Times. Although rather precariously situated as a resident alien in the United States, Russell was hardly circumspect about pushing a policy that so sharply divided American opinion.11 He also listed the faults of the League of Nations and the most grievous diplomatic mistakes made since the end of the last war and the fatally... (shrink)

In December 2006 there was an amendment to the Medicines for Human Use Regulations 2004, the statutory instrument that translated the European directive into UK law. I will demonstrate how the European directive stifled much needed clinical research in urgent critical states whilst there is an international consensus that research in these situations be allowed. The amendments to the UK Medicines for Human Use Regulations 2004 in allowing such exception have failed to preserve the high degree of respect and protection (...) of the participants' interest as reflected in the spirit of the numerous guidelines, conventions and laws appertaining to the ethics of research in clinical emergencies. (shrink)