Regulation of transcriptional elongation is emerging as an important control mechanism for eukaryotic gene expression. In this essay, we review the basis of the current view of the regulation of elongation in the human c‐myc gene and discuss similarities in elongation control among the c‐myc, Drosophila hsp70 and the HIV‐1 genes. Based upon these similarities, we propose a model for control of expression of these genes at the elongation phase of transcription. This model suggests that distinct promoter elements direct the (...) assembly of RNA polymerase II transcription complexes which differ in their elongation efficiency. (shrink)

In their landmark 2010 paper, “The weirdest people in the world?”, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan outlined a serious methodological problem for the psychological and behavioural sciences. Most of the studies produced in the field use people from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies, yet inferences are often drawn to the species as a whole. In drawing such inferences, researchers implicitly assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that WEIRD populations are generally representative of the (...) species. Yet neither of these assumptions is justified. In many psychological and behavioural domains, cultural variation begets cognitive variation, and WEIRD samples are recurrently shown to be outliers. In the years since the article was published, attention has focused on the implications this has for research on extant human populations. Here we extend those implications to the study of ancient _H. sapiens_, their hominin forebears, and cousin lineages. We assess a range of characteristic arguments and key studies in the cognitive archaeology literature, identifying issues stemming from the problem of sample diversity. We then look at how worrying the problem is, and consider some conditions under which inferences to ancient populations via cognitive models might be provisionally justified. (shrink)

Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical (...) licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture. (shrink)

This article maps existing research from 5,874 scholarly publications on social entrepreneurship (SE) utilizing scientometrics. The mapping indicates a taxonomy of five clusters: (a) the nature of SE, (b) policy implications and employment in relation to SE, (c) SE in communities and health, (d) SE personality traits, and (e) SE education. We complement the scientometric analysis with a systematic literature review of publications on SE in the Financial Times 50 list (FT50) and Business & Society and propose a multistage, multilevel (...) framework that highlights the clusters of existing research on SE based on their stage and level of analysis. This review study also helps outline a set of future research directions, including studies examining (a) the process stage at the micro-level and macro-level, (b) linkages across levels and stages, (c) linkages across stages over time or longitudinal studies, (d) SE in resource-constrained environments, (e) technological advancement and its impact on SE, (f) the types of social enterprises and their outcomes, and (g) various emerging topics in SE. (shrink)

The debate concerning the ontological status of musical works is perhaps the most animated debate in contemporary analytic philosophy of music. In my view, progress requires a piecemeal approach. So in this article I hone in on one particular musical work concept – that of the classical Western art musical work; that is, the work concept that regulates classical art-musical practice. I defend a fictionalist analysis – a strategy recently suggested by Andrew Kania as potentially fruitful – and I develop (...) a version of such an analysis in line with a broad commitment to philosophical naturalism. (shrink)

Marxism -- Middle-class materialism -- Dietzgen -- Mach -- Avenarius -- Lenin -- The Russian revolution -- The proletarian revolution.

Irad Kimhi considers the conundrum, first addressed by Parmenides, of how negative facts can be the case and be thought, to be the puzzle that philosophy has been working to solve since Plato and Aristotle and wants to do his part by criticizing Frege's dissociation of sense and force and developing a more Aristotelian account of judgment. Michael Della Rocca considers the conundrum a hopeless aporia that we must avoid by embracing Parmenides' radical monism of being and in a recent (...) article (“Parmenides' insight and the possibility of logic”) aims to show that Kimhi is confronted with exactly the kind of insoluble difficulties that he that finds in Frege. The present article agrees with Kimhi that we can think about what is not the case, although thinking reaches all the way to what IS the case. But Della Rocca is right that Kimhi cannot explain by virtue of what we are able to do this. The counter‐proposal says: (1) Thinking reaches to being in that we have learned to read things in the intersubjective spatial field of consciousness as model tokens of singular propositions about them. (2) Negation can be thought of because thinking has its very origin in absolute, non‐well‐founded negation. (shrink)

Aristotle maintains that vicious people are blameworthy despite their moral ignorance, since becoming vicious was up to them and whatever is up to us we are able to do or not do. However, one’s upbringing shapes one’s moral character. Together, these claims invite an objection I call the horrible childhood challenge. According to this objection, vicious adults who suffered horrible childhoods through which they were taught to adopt bad ends as though they were good should not be held accountable for (...) their vice. Aristotle’s likely answer to this challenge reveals that, for Aristotle, a minimal degree of rationality is necessary for moral responsibility. I argue that, for Aristotle, a vicious agent is responsible for her vice only if 1) she is rational, which implies 2) she grasps a specific basic principle, thus consenting to become a certain kind of person through action. The thoroughly bad who satisfy both claims are moral idiots; those who do not may be blameless brutes. (shrink)

In this article I critique F. R. S. Lawson's evolutionary theorising about music that appeared in a recent issue of Ethnomusicology Forum. Moreover, I argue that asking whether music is an adaptation or technology, as Lawson does, artificially splits the interwoven, dynamic co-evolutionary forces at work. In my view, in cases of complex, dynamic co-evolution, the distinction between the ‘biological’ and the ‘cultural’ is undermined. I suggest that human musicality is one such example, calling into question the adaptation/technology distinction that (...) frames Lawson's theorising about music. In place of that research framework, I offer a niche construction perspective, with reference to several brief ethnographic examples, and a ‘socio-cognitive niche’ picture of the evolution of music that takes seriously co-evolution and the project of developing empirically constrained, phylogenetically plausible scenarios for the evolution of music, in a general context of hominin evolution. I identify areas of research where ethnomusicology can weigh in on debates concerning the evolutionary career of music, including, importantly, data for phylogenetic modelling and analysis. (shrink)

This essay reviews one of the most recent books in a trend of new publications proffering evolutionary theorising about aesthetics and the arts—themes within an increasing literature on aspects of human life and human nature in terms of evolutionary theory. Stephen Davies’ The Artful Species links some of our aesthetic sensibilities with our evolved human nature and critically surveys the interdisciplinary debate regarding the evolutionary status of the arts. Davies’ engaging and accessible writing succeeds in demonstrating the maturity and scope (...) of the field and his critique is timely and unparalleled. A laudable effort, however it may have benefited from espousing a co-evolutionary model more explicitly. Moreover there may be reason to question the usefulness of the standard set of distinctions (‘adaptation’, ‘spandrel’, ‘technology’) that Davies appeals to. (shrink)

According to pluralism about some concept, there are multiple non-equivalent, legitimate concepts pertaining to the ontological category in question. It is an open question whether conceptual pluralism implies anti-realism about that category. In this article, I argue that at least for the case of music, it does not. To undermine the application of an influential move from pluralism to anti-realism, then, I provide an argument in support of indifference realism about music, by appeal to music archaeological research, via an analogy (...) with Adrian Currie’s indifference realism about species licensed by paleobiological research. (shrink)

Review of: Fiona MacDonald: Individualising risk (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 223 pp, 130€ HB). MacDonald advances several claims. First, the ‘gig economy’ and ‘cash-for-care’ marketisation of social care and health support work come with major pitfalls: These are explored with reference to specific cases in Australia and England. Second, processes that underlie the individualisation of care need to be identified and critically evaluated. For when risk and responsibility are shifted onto individual workers, what we can expect to see, given the (...) evidence, is a marked decrease in the quality of care that the elderly and people with disability receive. [...]. (shrink)

This volume explores various themes at the intersection of archaeology and philosophy: inference and theory; interdisciplinary connections; cognition, language and normativity; and ethical issues. Showcasing this heterogeneity, its scope ranges from the method of analogical inference to the evolution of the human mind; from conceptual issues in assessing the health of past populations to the ethics of cultural heritage tourism. It probes the archaeological record for evidence of numeracy, curiosity and creativity, and social complexity. Its contributors comprise an interdisciplinary cluster (...) of philosophers, archaeologists, anthropologists, and psychologists, from a variety of career stages, of whom many are leading experts in their fields. Chapter 3 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. (shrink)

Mehr et al. seek to explain music's evolution in terms of a unitary proper function – signalling cooperative intent – which they cash out in two guises, coalition signalling and parental attention signalling. Although we recognize the role signalling almost certainly played in the evolution of music, we reject “ultimate” causal explanations which focus on a unidirectional, narrow range of causal factors.

: Marcel says that the experience of ownership of actions is given in the specifications for action. He is referring not to a bodily movement but that which precedes it. Is the body involved or are all the changes in the brain? This paper examines the evidence for changes in the spinal cord and muscles that occur with motor imagery, simulation and preparation. There are changes in the alpha motoneurons and in the gamma motoneurons to the muscle spindles. These may (...) be caused by stimulation from the covert efferent arm to the body. To experience the ownership of covert actions in the body requires feedback to the owner as their spatially perspectival source. There is evidence that an ascending pathway from the muscle spindles to the brain carries such feedback. This view of the feedback loop is integrated into the sensorimotor view of the genesis of consciousness of Ellis and Newton. (shrink)

The American way of Renaissance and the Humanistic Tradition of Greece -- The Aristotelian tradition in American naturalism -- George Santayana and Greek philosophy -- Frederick J.E. Woodbridge and the Aristotelian tradition -- John Dewey and ancient philosophies -- John H. Randall Jr.'s interpretation of Greek philosophy -- The ontology of Herbert W. Schneider -- Ernest Nagel's pragmatism and Aristotle's principle of contradiction -- The naturalistic metaphysics of Justus Buchler -- Naturalism and the platonic tradition.

This article seeks to interpret how the scientific study of individualization, broadly construed, is conceived from within. It presents and discusses an analysis of qualitative data gained from performing semi-structured expert interviews. By way of a thematic-analytic approach to interpreting this data, this article seeks to investigate the attitudes and opinions of a sample of scientific experts who study individualization, across a wide range of scientific fields, with regard to key concepts, phenomena, motivating factors, and open questions. Centering its analysis (...) on discussion of four themes, this paper (1) emphasizes the importance for science of individuals and individuality, (2) reflects on matters pertaining to language and interdisciplinary communication, (3) distinguishes between nine meanings of the word “individualization,” stressing their significant features, and (4) considers ideas about the consequences of individualization and ongoing methodological concerns. (shrink)

When we want to justify claims against one another, we discover that conceptual thought alone is not sufficient to legitimize property and income in the relative and proper proportions among members of a productive group. Instead, the basis for justification should also be seen in motivational states, validated less by rational thought than by an effective behaviour. To circumnavigate otherwise dangerously utopian claims to justice, the social sciences, and especially behavioural economics, are the most reliable basis for normative distributive justice. (...) This article builds on recent findings of experiments, first of all in order to give proof of the extent to which a general behavioural tendency towards equality is widespread among people, and second of all in order to highlight ‘desert’ and ‘need’ as the crucial criteria of just distribution, which will then sum up to justified inequality in the economic sphere. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 16 Heft: 1 Seiten: 159-178.

The degradation of natural resources in the environment is, technically speaking, a form of depleting a public good. Public goods are notorious for free-riding among egoists, but the marginality of individual contributions provides no less an obstacle, both to moral duty and motivation. This article discusses the problems of minimized and missing causal involvement on the empirical side; and, in the applicability of classical moral arguments, on the ethical side. It. suggests that individual responsibility is derived on the basis of (...) implicit advantage-taking from participation in collective action. (shrink)

While the story of Stanislav Petrov – the Soviet Lieutenant Colonel who likely saved the world from nuclear holocaust in 1983 – is often trotted out to advocate for the view that human beings ought to be kept “in the loop” of automated weapons’ responses, I argue that the episode in fact belies this reading. By attending more closely to the features of this event – to Petrov’s professional background, to his familiarity with the warning system, and to his decisions (...) to defy his protocol – it becomes clear that Petrov was not seamlessly working “in his loop,” but reassessing it entirely. I claim that this exhibits a paradox intrinsic to all automated loops: namely, that their optimum function in fact rests on unforeseen human interventions that cannot be reliably codified ex ante, that is, that good judgment cannot simply be “programmed into” their protocols. This dependence, moreover, reveals automation’s ineluctable need for virtue ethics – not in the usual sense (whereby ethics deliberates about, say, possible damages and loss of life), but in the sense that ethical judgment, rightly understood, entails the reassessment of all of the conditions surrounding a decision, including whether a protocol should be followed at all. (shrink)

“Having a moral right” in private and public debates probably is one of the most important arguments to bring some foundation to one’s claims. Within international law and politics, for example, one easily falls back on universal “human rights”, especially if neither a more subtle moral argument nor prudential reasons find a hold. But in some contrast to this agreement on the strong practical relevance of rights, both the conceptual analysis and normative justification of rights are rather controversial in moral (...) philosophy. There is, perhaps, a consensus on a constructivist understanding of rights, that is that rights have to be constructed from a basis of more “elementary parts” of morality. There is no agreement, however, on the exact character of these parts and their normative import within an overall construction of rights. It seems to be clear somehow that rights have to secure and promote interests — of a human and animal kind. Not so clear is the kind of foundation rights can be given within the sphere of interests, especially if this is understood in a reductive sense. Nevertheless, because the function of rights is to secure interests, the construction of rights from an understanding of interests seems to suggest itself. It is in the interest of all beings to have their interests secured and furthered by rights. Therefore, an “interest theory of rights” provides itself as a primary option — meaning thereby the justificatory, and not the directive side of rights. (shrink)

Mouse tracking, a new action‐based measure of behavior, has advanced theories of decision making with the notion that cognitive and social decision making is fundamentally dynamic. Implicit in this theory is that people's decision strategies, such as discounting delayed rewards, are stable over task design and that mouse trajectory features correspond to specific segments of decision making. By applying the hierarchical drift diffusion model and the Bayesian delay discounting model, we tested these assumptions. Specifically, we investigated the extent to which (...) the “mouse‐tracking” design of decision‐making tasks (delay discounting task, DDT and stop‐signal task, SST) deviate from the standard “keypress” design of decision making tasks. We found remarkable agreement in delay discounting rates (intertemporal impatience) obtained in the keypress and mouse‐tracking versions of DDT (ρ = 0.90) even though these tasks were given about 1 week apart. Rates of evidence accumulation converged well in the two versions (DDT, ρ =.86; SST, ρ =.55). Omission/commission error in SST showed high agreement (ρ =.42, ρ =.53). Mouse‐motion features such as maximum velocity and AUC (area under the curve) correlated well with nondecision time (ρ = −.42) and boundary separation (ρ =.44)—the amount of information needed to accumulate prior to making a response. These results indicate that the response time (RT) and motion‐based decision tasks converge well at a fundamental level, and that mouse‐tracking features such as AUC and maximum velocity do indicate the degree of decision conflict and impulsivity. (shrink)

In the present essay my aim is first to review and extend Frank’s thinking on ‘the sociology of development,’ and second, I will attempt to apply his insights to some of the new or present-day directions in sociological theory and research with a view to showing how they might be seen as contributing to ‘the underdevelopment of sociology.’ Beginning with the vision of the founding fathers of sociology broadly understood, I will argue that that vision and the promise of sociology (...) are being lessened by the aforementioned new directions in the discipline. (shrink)

Includes substantial selections from the Second Part of the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles. Pegis's revision and correction of the English Dominican Translation renders Aquinas' technical terminology consistently as it conveys the directness and simplicity of Aquinas' writing; the Introduction, notes, and index aim at giving the text its proper historical setting, and the reader the means of studying St. Thomas within that setting.

Includes the whole of the First Part of the Summa Theologica. Pegis's revision and correction of the English Dominican Translation renders Aquinas' technical terminology consistently as it conveys the directness and simplicity of Aquinas' writing; the Introduction, notes, and index aim at giving the text its proper historical setting, and the reader the means of studying St. Thomas within that setting.

Through critical examination of three main contemporary approaches to describing moral responsibility, this book illustrates why philosophers must take into account the relationship between retrospective moral responsibility and desert of praise or blame. The author advances the moral attitude account, whereby desert of praise and blame depends on the agent’s moral attitudes in response to moral reasons, and retrospective moral responsibility results from expressions of those attitudes in overt behavior.

It is useful in an article of this kind to inform the reader of the author’s background, biases, and rationale for the format and content. As a clinically trained psychiatrist and addiction specialist/researcher, my training and experience have led me to best understand the “clinical side” of alcoholism and substance abuse. A large part of my career has been devoted to treating individuals with alcohol use disorders, especially in the context of clinical trials devoted to finding new medications to reduce (...) craving, drinking, and preventing relapse. I also teach professionals about the diagnosis and treatment of alcohol and other substance abuse disorders. While my focus has been mainly on alcohol use disorders, much of what is known about the neuroscience of addiction is applicable to many, if not all, substances of abuse. I have seen the ravages of these diseases, including death, but I more commonly see the milder forms of these diseases that make people’s lives just plain miserable and/or less enjoyable or productive than they would have been without their addiction. (shrink)

_Historiae encomium_ es el título con el que, desde 1530, se conoce la Epístola a Galeazzo Visconti que el jurista Andrea Alciato escribió como prefacio a sus_ Annotationes in Cornelium Tacitum _(Milán, 1517). En este texto no solo hace un entusiasta elogio de la historia, que considera superior a otras disciplinas, sino una vehemente defensa de Tácito, al que concede la primacía sobre Tito Livio. Sin embargo, no existe aún una edición moderna ni una traducción de dicha Epóstola. De ahí (...) mi intención de hacer la primera edición crítica del texto latino y la primera traducción completa y anotada, a fin de facilitar la comprensión de un opúsculo con el que Alciato marcó un hito en la pervivencia de Tácito y en la corriente tacitista. (shrink)

It is my contention that understanding natural phenomena such as vocal mimicry can bolster theories of the evolution of language and music as well as inform evolutionary and naturalistic aesthetics more generally. In this commentary I present this phenomena as a case study in order to stimulate further aesthetic theorising.

David White’s Myth, Metaphysics and Dialectic in Plato’s Statesman is an ambitious work that aims not only to interpret the message of Plato’s Statesman, but also to situate the dialogue within Plato’s corpus as one that serves as a transition between Plato’s earlier metaphysics and his more mature views in later dialogues such as Philebus and Laws. White makes several adept observations of oddities sprinkled throughout Statesman, and he frequently connects these observations to thoughtful claims concerning possible motivations on the (...) part of Plato as well as possible revelations concerning Platonic metaphysics and philosophy. However, justifiably made inferences are difficult for the reader to discern, as White tends to obfuscate his message with difficult and wordy prose. In addition to these flaws, White makes frequent references to many other Platonic dialogues with little explanation in the way of contextualization. While I find this aspect of White’s thinking to be impressive and indicative of both extensive knowledge and great aptitude for synthesis in thought, readers are warned that novices of Plato scholarship might get lost in the copious references to dialogues beyond those central to the book. That being said, in most respects, White’s interpretation is both sound and refreshing. In my opinion, the virtues of this work heavily outweigh any imperfections. (shrink)

Camil Petrescu (1894-1957) was a Romanian novelist, dramatist, poet and philosopher. His PhD thesis in philosophy was entitled The Aesthetic Method of Theater, and wasinfluenced by Joseph Gregor, Julius Bab, Gordon Craig, Constantin Stanislavski, Adolphe Appia, and William Butler Yeats.. His thesis was published in 1937. In Romanian literature, he was the initiator of the modern novel, with the volume The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War (1930). As a philosopher he was influned by and continued to (...) studyPlato, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, James, Bergson and Husserl. Petrescu is the first Romanian philosopher to write a micro-monograph about Husserl (1938). His main philosophical work, entitled The Doctrine of Substance (deposited in 1942 to the Library of Vatican), was published in 1988 (The Doctrine of Substance, volumes I-II). In this paper, I present a placement of the Romanian philosopher in his time and in the relationshe has with his contemporaries, some of them of world-class (Mircea Eliade, Eugen Ionesco, Emil Cioran, inclusiv Constantin Noica). (shrink)

Comme le disent le titre et le sous-titre de l'article, l'auteur centre son attention sur la «proposition» faite par l'encyclique Ut Unum Sint aux responsables d'Eglises et aux théologiens, d'approfondir, en dialogue avec le successeur de Pierre, la distinction entre la «substance» du ministère de Pierre et les «formes d'exercice» qu'il pourrait prendre en fonction de la «nouvelle situation». L'article ne se propose pas de faire un commentaire, encore moins d'analyser en détails, le contenu doctrinal de l'encyclique; il se contente (...) d'examiner la «proposition papale» dans le contexte immédiat de l'encyclique. Cela implique certaines coordonnées quant à la méthode et au contenu, pour qu'un thème aussi brûlant soit situé en vue de porter une lumière nouvelle sur la «fonction papale». Approfondir l'essence du ministère. de Pierre représente un désir profond de la «conscience oecuménique», tant de Paul VI que de Jean Paul II. Celui-ci annonça, dès le début de son pontificat, que la «cause oecuménique» était -comme le rappelle la UUS, n. 99 - «une des priorités pastorales» de son pontificat. L'encyclique réaffirme l'«engagement oécuménique» de toute l'Eglise et du pape en personne. La UUS, «de caractère essentiellement pastoral» , ne se préoccupe pas tant de développer les principes doctrinaux contenus dans les décrets conciliaires que de faire appel avec insistance à la conscience des fidèles chrétiens, afin d'avancer ve. (shrink)

La obra americana de la baronesa de Wilson es un buen ejemlo para estudiar cómo en el siglo XIX se vive la "batalla" por los "modelos de mundo", fruto del encuentro entre las viejas representaciones de lo americano nacidas de las crónicas y aquellas nuevas producidas por la ideología criolla.Este artículo trabaja las nociones de modelo mundo y modelización de la Crítica como sabotaje (Asensi) ejemplificadas sobre este corpues textual. El modo en que la mujer es representada en este contexto (...) es también decisivo. (shrink)