The mechanisms by which cells become polarised in the plane of an epithelium have been studied in Drosophila for many years. Work has focussed on two key questions: firstly, how individual cells adopt a defined polarity, and secondly how the polarity of each cell within a tissue is aligned with its neighbours. It has been established that asymmetric subcellular localisation of a number of polarity proteins is an essential mechanism underlying polarisation of single cells. The process by which this polarity (...) is coordinated between cells however is less well understood, but is thought to involve gradients of activity of the atypical cadherins Dachsous and Fat. Subsequently, this long‐range polarity signal is refined by local cell–cell interactions involving the transmembrane molecules Frizzled, Strabismus and Flamingo. The role of these factors in coordinating polarity will be discussed. BioEssays 27:1218–1227, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Here the philosopher and physicist David Z Albert argues, among other things, that the difference between past and future can be understood as a mechanical phenomenon of nature and that quantum mechanics makes it impossible to present the entirety of what can be said about the world as a narrative of “befores” and “afters.”.

Presents a guide to the basics of quantum mechanics and measurement.

We discuss two recent attempts two solve Schrodinger's cat paradox. One is the modal interpretation developed by Kochen, Healey, Dieks, and van Fraassen. It allows for an observable which pertains to a system to possess a value even when the system is not in an eigenstate of that observable. The other is a recent theory of the collapse of the wave function due to Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber. It posits a dynamics which has the effect of collapsing the state of (...) macroscopic systems. We argue that the modal interpretation cannot account for non-accurate measurements and that both accounts have the consequence that in ordinary measurement situations the observables that ends up well defined are not quite the ones that we want to be well defined. (shrink)

The model of clinical ethics consultation (CEC) defended in the ASBH Core Competencies report has gained significant traction among scholars and healthcare providers. On this model, the aim of CEC is to facilitate deliberative reflection and thereby resolve conflicts and clarify value uncertainty by invoking and pursuing a process of consensus building. It is central to the model that the facilitated consensus falls within a range of allowable options, defined by societal values: prevailing legal requirements, widely endorsed organizational policies, and (...) professional standards of practice and codes of conduct. Moreover, the model stipulates that ethics consultants must refrain from giving substantive recommendations regarding how parties to a moral disagreement in the clinic should evaluate their options. We argue that this model of CEC is incomplete, because it wrongly assumes that what counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible. We illustrate this problem with a recent case on which one of us consulted—a neonate born with trisomy 18 (T18). We try to show that law, policy, and standards of practice reveal no clear answer to the question posed by the case: namely, whether forgoing gastrostomy tube feedings for a baby with T18 is allowable. We suggest there may be other kinds of cases in which it may simply be unsettled whether a given choice falls within the set of allowable options within which consensus is to be facilitated. What should an ethicist do when confronting such unsettled cases? We agree with the facilitation model that an ethicist should remain neutral among the allowable options, when it is clear what the allowable options are. But, in unsettled cases, the role of a consultant should be expanded to include a process of moral inquiry into what the allowable options should be. We end by raising the issue of whether this means an ethicist should share his or her own conclusions or views about the allowability of a given clinical option. (shrink)

It has been acknowledged that education includes ‘a love of what one teaches and a love of those whom one teaches’ (Hogan 2010: 81), but two traditions of writing in philosophy of education—concerning love for student and love for subject—have rarely been brought together. This paper considers the extent to which the ‘triangular’ relationship of teacher, student and subject matter runs the risk of the rivalry, jealousy and strife that are characteristic of ‘tragic’ love triangles, or entails undesirable consequences such (...) as transference from one intended object of love to another. It argues that this faultline in the literature of educational love corresponds to education's ‘divided heart’. The implication of this exploration of education's triangular relationship is that we cannot ignore the ‘dark of love’, nor can we address it simply by asserting that educational love must be of a more honourable sort than romantic love. These tensions can be reconciled through the loving recourse of ‘ceasing to strive’ and the possibility of sublimating the two originary loves into a higher ‘love of truth’. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 67-68.

Michael Hand argues that at least some moral standards can be robustly justified and that because of this educators can legitimately cultivate subscription to t.

The thesis that all learning has the character of enquiry is advanced and its implications are explored. R. G. Collingwood's account of ‘the logical priority of the question’ is explained and Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical justification and development, particularly the rejection of the re-enactment thesis, is discussed. Educators are encouraged to consider the following implications of the character of the question implied in all learning: (i) that it is a question that is constituted in the event rather than prepared or given (...) in advance, and that this leads to a necessary tension between learning and the curriculum or scheme, (ii) that it is a question that concerns some subject matter or issue that is at stake for both the student and the object of study, which draws our attention to the ‘intentionality’ of learning, and (iii) that it is a question that operates on the level of being—students are ‘called into question’, and thus transformed, by the object of study. (shrink)

Modern humans spend much of their time deploying a very rarefied form of intelligence, manipulating abstract symbols while their muscled body is mostly inert. Other animals, in a constant and largely unmediated relation with their earthly surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies. This kind of distributed sentience, this intelligence in the limbs, is especially keen in the case of birds of flight. Unlike most creatures of the ground, who must traverse an opaque surface of only two-plus dimensions as (...) we make our way through the world, a soaring bird continually adjusts minute muscles in its wings to navigate an omnidimensional plenum of currents and interference patterns that alter from moment to moment. Flight itself may usefully be considered as a kind of thinking—as a sort of gliding within the mind. Moreover, since birds are commonly the most mobile inhabitants of any woodland, able to fly over and scan numerous events occurring on the ground, their varied utterances provide a crucial source of information for many other animals. This paper, written as a philosophic essay, explores avian cognition from a phenomenological standpoint. It then reflects upon the vocalizations of birds—noting the major role that such avian calls, cries, and songs have played in the development of human culture. (shrink)

Ranson, David Towards the end of his historic pontificate John Paul II recalled to the Church a theme which had been a constant in his teaching of thirty years: It is in this perspective that we see the value of all other vocations, rooted as they are in the new life received in the Sacrament of Baptism. In a special way it will be necessary to discover ever more fully the specific vocation of the laity, called 'to seek the (...) kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God'; they 'have their own role to play in the mission of the whole people of God in the Church and in the world by their work for the evangelization and the sanctification of people.'. (shrink)

In the most radical rereading of the opening chapters of Genesis since the Zohar, David Kishik reveals the post-secular and post-human implications of an ancient text that is part of our cultural DNA.

While a number of classical pragmatists crafted their philosophies in conjunction with a careful study of Hegel's works, others saw their philosophies emerge in antagonism with proponents of Hegel. In this paper, we offer an instance of the latter case. Namely, we show that the impetus for Charles S. Peirce's early articulation and avowal of realism (the claim that some generals are real) was William Torrey Harris's claim that the formal laws of logic lacked universal validity. According to Harris, the (...) leading representative of Hegelism in the United States, the universal validity of the laws of logic rested on a nominalistic metaphysics that a Hegelian-realism showed to be false. In response to this charge, we articulate how Peirce's attempt to prove the universal validity of the laws of logic resulted in avowing a realism that differed from both nominalism and Harris's Hegelian-realism. (shrink)

David Finkel’s opening paragraph in the book’s prologue grabs your attention and sets the tone for the rest of the ride:You could see it in his nervous eyes. You could see it in his shaking hands....

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph: Paksi and Héder’s Guide to Personal Knowledge (hereafter GPK and Guide) is, as the title suggests, a guide of the most important and original ideas of Michael Polanyi’s book Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958, hereafter PK). Is a guide to Personal Knowledge needed? I think the answer is a resounding “yes” for many new readers. To see why, let’s briefly review two common complaints about PK.

Each year a national day of commemoration of the war dead is celebrated on 11th November in the United Kingdom. Despite public controversy about the nature and purpose of remembrance, there has been no significant discussion of the role schools should play in this event. In this centenary year of the outbreak of the First World War, with the government planning to send groups from every secondary school in Britain to tour the battlefields of the western front over the next (...) four years, the question of how war should be remembered in schools is more pressing than ever. In this bold and rigorous pamphlet, David Aldridge takes a hard look at the reasons usually advanced for involving children and young people in commemorating the war dead, and finds many of them wanting. He critically examines the high profile in schools of charities, like the Royal British Legion, with vested interests in certain kinds of commemoration. And he argues forcefully for a justification of remembrance in schools that requires a major rethink of established rituals and practices. This is a compelling treatment of a topic high on the agenda of teachers and education policy-makers and will be an invaluable resource for anyone involved in planning centenary commemorative events for children and young people. (shrink)

This is a comment on Tihamér Margitay’s “From Epistemology to Ontology,” where he criticizes Polanyi’s claim that there is a systematic correspondence between the levels of ontology and the levels of tacit knowing. Margitay contends that Polanyi supports this correspondence by appealing to a “purely ontological argument,” one which concludes that it is impossible to reduce machines to a singular, chemical-physical type, and criticizes this claim by pointing to industrial standards (machines that do reduce to singular physical-chemical type). I respond (...) to Margitay’s claim by distinguishing two different “purely ontological arguments” in Polanyi’s thought (one relying on the multi-realizability of a machine in different physical-chemical types, the other pointing to the inability of a purely physical-chemical ontology to account for the artificial shaping and functioning of machines). With these two arguments clarified, Margitay’s criticism by appealing to industrial standards loses much of its initial force. (shrink)

The core question behind this Frontiers research topic is whether explaining linguistic phenomena requires appeal to properties of human cognition that are specialized to language. We argue here that investigating this issue requires taking linguistic research results seriously, and evaluating these for domain-specificity. We present a particular empirical phenomenon, bound variable interpretations of pronouns dependent on a quantifier phrase, and argue for a particular theory of this empirical domain that is couched at a level of theoretical depth which allows its (...) principles to be evaluated for domain-specialization. We argue that the relevant principles are specialized when they apply in the domain of language, even if analogs of them are plausibly at work elsewhere in cognition or the natural world more generally. So certain principles may be specialized to language, though not, ultimately, unique to it. Such specialization is underpinned by ultimately biological factors, hence part of UG. (shrink)

Previous research has found that populist attitudes and conspiracy mentality – here summarised as anti-establishment attitudes – increase when people feel threatened. Two types of intergroup threat have been distinguished, namely realistic threats (pertaining to socio-economic resources, climate, or health), and symbolic threats (pertaining to cultural values). However, there is no agreement on which types of threat and corresponding appraisals would be most important in predicting anti-establishment attitudes. We hypothesise that it is the threat itself, irrespective of its cause, that (...) predicts anti-establishment attitudes. In the current paper, we conducted new (multilevel) regression analyses on previously collected data from four high-powered studies with multiple time points (Study 1) or collected in multiple nations (Studies 2–4). All studies included a populist attitudes scale, a conspiracy mentality scale, and different types of threat and emotion measures, reflecting both realistic and symbolic threats. Across studies, both realistic and symbolic threats positively predicted anti-establishment attitudes. The results support an emotional appraisal approach to anti-establishment attitudes, which highlights the importance of anxiety and feeling threatened regardless of what type of event elicits the threat. (shrink)

This essay presents the use-first-and-investigate-later (UFAIL) approach to technological use through two case studies: the atomic bomb in World War II and chemical defoliants during the Vietnam War. The methodology of UFAIL is as follows: despite limited understanding of an array of potential effects (medical, environmental, etc.), technology users employ a commitment to ex post facto investigations of these effects. In generalizing these cases, the essay argues (a) that failure to check rapid technological uptake will result in continued disaster and (...) (b) the abatement of the negative consequences of UFAIL is a more tempered approach to the infiltration of technologies into society by rigorous and preemptive investigation into the potential effects of a technology. (shrink)

The target article skillfully evaluates data on mental disorders in relation to predictions from evolutionary genetic theories of neutral evolution, balancing selection, and polygenic mutation-selection balance, resulting in a negative outlook for the likelihood of success finding genes for mental disorders. Nevertheless, new conceptualizations, methods, and continued interactions across disciplines provide hope.

Does "nature" still exist? Common wisdom now acknowledges the malleability of nature, the complex reality that circumscribes and constitutes the human. Weather patterns, topographical contours, animal populations, and even our own genetic composition--all of which previously marked the boundary of human agency--now appear subject to our intervention. Some thinkers have suggested that nature has disappeared entirely and that we have entered a postnatural era; others note that nature is an ineradicable context for life. Christian theology, in particular, finds itself in (...) an awkward position. Its Western traditions have long relied upon a static "nature" to express the dynamism of "grace," making nature a foundational category within theology itself. This means that any theological inquiry into the changing face of nature must be reflexive and radically interdisciplinary. This book brings leading natural and social scientists into conversation with prominent Christian theologians and ethicists to wrestle collectively with difficult questions. Is nature undergoing fundamental change? What role does nature play in theological ethics? How might ethical deliberation proceed "without nature" in the future? What does the religious drive to transform human nature have to do with the technological quest to transcend human limits? Would the end of nature make grace less comprehensible? (shrink)

In this paper I introduce a problem regarding whether there are good reasons to accept fallibilism about justified belief. According to this species of fallibilism, one can be justified in believing a proposition on the basis of reasons that do not justify certainty. Call such reasons “fallible reasons.” The problem is this: can one justifiably believe fallibilism on the basis of fallible reasons? To do so would seem to beg the question. If you are undecided as to whether you should (...) accept anything on the basis of fallible reasons, then you should also be undecided as to whether you should accept fallibilism on the basis of such reasons. In this paper I consider several possible responses to this problem. I argue that the most appealing is to grant that good but fallible reasons on behalf of fallibilism are possible, and that this shows that one’s basic rational commitments cannot be defended in a non-circular fashion. (shrink)

This paper reflects a two-fold attempt. Firstly, to give an account the works of Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt and Slavoz Zizek on Violence. Secondly, it aims to illuminate a uniform trend in their work. This trend identifies the necessity of a certain amount violence in order to create the pre-conditions of a lawful society. Benjamin‟s critique shows that the authority of law, when seen naked, is based on a myth. However, what is being advocated here is not childish anarchism. This (...) critique of violence illuminates the complex relationship between violence and the law, in its subjective and systemic manifestations. However, while Law has a tempering effect upon otherwise socially destructive interpersonal violence, despite its necessity, it is simply another form of the violence which it seeks to contain. (shrink)

Comentarios suscitados por el artículo de Javier Gimeno Perelló en El Catoblepas número 10.

Nonlocality in quantum mechanics does not follow from nonseparability, nor does classical stochastic independence imply physical independence. In this paper an explicit proof of a Bell inequality is recalled, and an analysis of the Aspect experiment in terms of noncontextual, but indefinite weights, or improper probabilities, is given.