In Remnants of Auschwitz , Giorgio Agamben argues that the hidden structure of subjectivity is shame. In shame, I am consigned to something that cannot be assumed, such that the very thing that makes me a subject also forces me to witness my own desubjectification. Agamben’s ontological account of shame is problematic insofar as it forecloses collective responsibility and collapses the distinction between shame and humiliation. By recontextualizing three of Agamben’s sources – Primo Levi, Robert Antelme and Maurice Blanchot – (...) I develop an alternative account of shame as the structure of intersubjectivity , and of a collective responsibility that is more fundamental than the subject itself. On this basis, I sketch the preliminary outline of a biopolitics of resistance rooted in the ethics of alterity. The intuition driving this approach is that life is never bare ; even in situations of extreme affliction there remains a relation to alterity which provides a starting point for resistance. (shrink)

Communication is defined as an interaction between at least two living agents which share a repertoire of signs. These are combined according to syntactic, semantic and context dependent, pragmatic rules in order to coordinate behavior. This volume deals with the important roles of soil bacteria in parasitic and symbiotic interactions with viruses, plants, animals and fungi. Starting with a general overview of the key levels of communication between bacteria, further reviews examine the various aspects of intracellular as well as intercellular (...) biocommunication between soil microorganisms. Th is includes the various levels of biocommunication between phages and bacteria, between soil algae and bacteria, and between bacteria, fungi and plants in the rhizosphere, the role of plasmids and transposons, horizontal gene transfer, quorum sensing and quorum quenching, bacterial-host cohabitation, phage-mediated genetic exchange and soil viral ecology. (shrink)

: Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's account of natality, Guenther argues that Martin Heidegger overlooks the distinct ontological and ethical significance of birth as a limit that orients one toward an other who resists appropriation, even while handing down a heritage of possibilities that one can—and must—make one's own. Guenther calls this structure of natality Being-from-others, modifying Heidegger's language of inheritance to suggest an ethical understanding of existence as the gift of the other.

What is the meaning of critique for critical phenomenology? Building on Gayle Salamon’s engagement with this question in the inaugural issue of Puncta: A Journal for Critical Phenomenology (2018), I will propose a six-fold account of critique as: 1) the art of asking questions, moved by crisis; 2) a transcendental inquiry into the conditions of possibility for meaningful experience; 3) a quasi-transcendental, historically-grounded study of particular lifeworlds; 4) a (situated and interested) analysis of power; 5) the problematization of basic concepts (...) and methods; and 6) a praxis of freedom that seeks not only to interpret the meaning of lived experience, but also to change the conditions under which horizons of possibility for meaning, action, and relationship are wrongfully limited or foreclosed. While the first two dimensions of critique are alive and well in classical phenomenology, the others help to articulate what is distinctive about critical phenomenology. (shrink)

The sociological dimension of science is studied using the discovery of the Wasserman reaction and its accidental application as a test for syphilis as a basis, ...

This book presents an analysis of the institutional development of selected social science and humanities disciplines in Argentina, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Where most narratives of a scholarly past are presented as a succession of ‘ideas,’ research results and theories, this collection highlights the structural shifts in the systems of higher education, as well as institutions of research and innovation within which these disciplines have developed. This institutional perspective will facilitate systematic comparisons between (...) developments in various disciplines and countries. Across eight country studies the book reveals remarkably different dynamics of disciplinary growth between countries, as well as important interdisciplinary differences within countries. In addition, instances of institutional contractions and downturns and veritable breaks of continuity under authoritarian political regimes can be observed, which are almost totally absent from narratives of individual disciplinary histories. This important work will provide a valuable resource to scholars of disciplinary history, the history of ideas, the sociology of education and of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to understand (...) the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. -/- Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. (shrink)

In the history of Tibetan Buddhism, the eleventh-century Indian mystic Nbropa occupies an unusual position, for his life and teachings mark both the end of a long tradition and the beginning of a new and rich era in Buddhist thought. Nbropa's biography, translated by the world-renowned Buddhist scholar Herbert V. Guenther from hitherto unknown sources, describes with great psychological insight the spiritual development of this scholar-saint. It is unique in that it also contains a detailed analysis of his teaching that (...) has been authoritative for the whole of Tantric Buddhism. This modern translation is accompanied by a commentary that relates Buddhist concepts to Western analytic philosophy, psychiatry, and depth psychology, thereby illuminating the significance of Tantra and Tantrism for our own time. Yet above all, it is the story of an individual whose years of endless toil and perseverance on the Buddhist path will serve as an inspiration to anyone who aspires to spiritual practice. (shrink)

Whereas telomeres protect terminal ends of linear chromosomes, telomerases identify natural chromosome ends, which differ from broken DNA and replicate telomeres. Although telomeres play a crucial role in the linear chromosome organization of eukaryotic cells, their molecular syntax most probably descended from an ancient retroviral competence. This indicates an early retroviral colonization of large double-stranded DNA viruses, which are putative ancestors of the eukaryotic nucleus. This contribution demonstrates an advantage of the biosemiotic approach towards our evolutionary understanding of telomeres, telomerases, (...) other reverse transcriptases and mobile elements. Their role in genetic/genomic content organization and maintenance is no longer viewed as an object of randomly derived alterations (mutations) but as a highly sophisticated hierarchy of regulatory networks organized and coordinated by natural genome-editing competences of viruses. (shrink)

First uniform description of all key levels of communication in the organismic kingdoms of plants, fungi, animals (bees and corals), bacteria and additionally the natural genome editing competences of viruses based on the most recent empirical data. The biocommunicative approach presented is based on the results of the philosophy of science discourse concerning coherent definitions of 'language' and 'communication'.

Archaea represent a third domain of life with unique properties not found in the other domains. Archaea actively compete for environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between 'self' and 'non-self'. They process and evaluate available information and then modify their behaviour accordingly. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realize the optimum variant. These highly diverse competences show us that this is possible owing to sign- mediated communication processes within archaeal (...) cells, between the same, related and different archaeal species, and between archaea and non-archaeal organisms. This is crucial in coordinating growth and development, shape and dynamics. Such communication must function both on the local level and between widely separated colony parts. This allows archaea to coordinate appropriate response behaviors in a differentiated manner to their current developmental status and physiological influences. This book will orientate further investigations on how archaeal ecosphere inhabitants communicate with each other to coordinate their behavioral patterns and whats the role of viruses in this highly dynamic interactional networks. (shrink)

Accelerated approval of aducanumab for mild Alzheimer's by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 7, 2021, has generated substantial medical, scientific, and ethical controversy. That approval was contrary to the nearly unanimous judgment of the FDA's Advisory Committee that little reliable evidence existed of significant benefit, even though the drug did reduce β‐amyloid. Three major ethical problems were created by this approval: (1) Medicare resources would be unjustly squandered, given the drug's $56,000 annual price and the 3.1 million (...) older potential American patients needing the drug; (2) physicians will feel ethically compelled to provide the drug to desperate, insistent patients, given FDA approval and in spite of side effects of brain bleeds and brain swelling; (3) and false hopes are generated for patients. A needed corrective by the federal government would reduce reimbursement to the bare cost of producing the drug (plus only a modest profit) until a phase IV trial has been successfully completed. (shrink)

The reconstruction of meaning in the aftermath of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is part of the grieving process but has to date been poorly understood. Earlier theorists including Freud, Bowlby and Kübler‐Ross provided a foundation for what occurs during this time using stage theories. More recent researchers, often using qualitative techniques, have provided a more complex and expanded view that enhances our knowledge of meaning reconstruction following infant loss. This overview of representative contemporary authors compares and contrasts them with (...) the longstanding models that are being supplanted within the emerging field of thanatology. Understanding parental reactions within this new framework can help healthcare professionals in dealing with those affected by SIDS and provide a more empathic and sensitive approach to individual differences. Parents’ own accounts of their post‐SIDS experience are consistent with these newer theories. Comprehending how parents cope and reconstruct their lives is an important element in providing appropriate psychological support services. (shrink)

De Bie et al. (2023) call attention at the conclusion of their essay to the “novel questions” generated by complete ectogenesis. The question I explore is how complete ectogenesis from conception t...

The Chorus representation is a sparse, similarity-preserving representation achieved by a feedforward neural network. Hence it is probably better suited for interpolation than for categorization. This commentary raises the question of how to combine categorization with interpolation, whether feedforward networks can be reasonable models for parts of the cerebral cortex, and whether people can perform more than one interpolation at a time.

In ‘L'Animal que donc je suis’, Derrida analyzes the paradoxical use of discourses on shame and original sin to justify the human domination of other animals. In the absence of any absolute criterion for distinguishing between humans and other animals, human faultiness becomes a sign of our exclusive capacity for self-consciousness, freedom and awareness of mortality. While Derrida's argument is compelling, he neglects to explore the connection between the human domination of animals and the male domination of women. Throughout ‘L'Animal’, (...) Derrida equivocates between ‘man’ and ‘humanity,’ and between the biblical figures of Ish and Adam. In so doing, he repeats a gesture that he himself has insightfully criticized in other philosophers, such as Levinas. By articulating the distinctions that Derrida elides, I suggest a way of reading Genesis which avoids this difficulty, but also continues Derrida's project. (shrink)

Solidarity is a fundamental social value in many European countries, though its precise practical and theoretical meaning is disputed. In a health care context, I agree with European writers who take solidarity normatively to mean roughly equal access to effective health care for all. That is, solidarity includes a sense of justice. Given that, I will argue that precision medicine represents a potential weakening of solidarity, albeit not a unique weakening. Precision medicine includes 150 targeted cancer therapies (mostly for metastatic (...) cancer), all of which are extraordinarily expensive. Our critical question: Must a commitment to solidarity as defined mean that all these targeted cancer therapies should be guaranteed to all within each country in the European Union, no matter the cost, no matter the degree of effectiveness? Such a commitment would imply that cancer was ethically special, rightfully commandeering unlimited resources. That in itself would undermine solidarity. I offer multiple examples of how current and future dissemination of these targeted cancer drugs threaten a commitment to solidarity. An alternative is to fund more cancer prevention efforts. However, that too proves a threat to solidarity. Solidarity, with or without a sense of justice, is too abstract a notion to address these challenges. Further, we need to accept that we can only hope to achieve “rough justice” and “supple solidarity.” The precise practical meaning of these notions needs to be worked out through a fair and inclusive process of rational democratic deliberation, which is the real and practical foundation of just solidarity. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s Institution Course Notes to clarify Patrick Wolfe’s claim that, for settler colonialism, “invasion is a structure, not an event.” I also engage critically with colonial assumptions in Merleau-Ponty’s own work, including his Eurocentric response to questions such as: “[I]s there a field of world history or universal history? Is there an intended accomplishment? A closure on itself? A true society?” In this essay, I ask different questions – with Merleau-Ponty, against him, and beyond (...) him. I neither defend Merleau-Ponty against his own worst self nor disown him as “bad” philosophical kin. Rather, I learn what I can from Merleau-Ponty for a critical phenomenology of settler colonialism and for amplifying movements to transform and abolish settler colonial structures at the level of thought, being, and politics. (shrink)

This is the first coherent description of all levels of communication of ciliates. Ciliates are highly sensitive organisms that actively compete for environmental resources. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realise the optimum variant. They take measures to control certain environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’. They process and evaluate information and then modify their behaviour accordingly. These highly diverse competences show us that this is (...) possible owing to sign-mediated communication processes within ciliates, between the same, related and different ciliate species, and between ciliates and non-ciliate organisms. This is crucial in coordinating growth and development, shape and dynamics. This book further serves as a learning tool for research aspects in biocommunication in ciliates. It will guide scientists in further investigations on ciliate behavior, how they mediate signaling processes between themselves and the environment. (shrink)

The world as we know it is structured by intersecting forms of systemic violence. It might seem obvious that this violence calls for critique. But this essay experiments with another, more radical possibility inspired by Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Black feminist poethics and by abolitionist refusals of critique as an end in itself and a substitute for collective action. To what extent might phenomenology, even in its most critical form, be so deeply invested in the Kantian tradition of transcendental critique (...) that it confirms the logic of the world as we know it? And how, if at all, might a praxis of phenomenology beyond critique imagine and affirm a poethical world in which entanglement, indeterminacy, and simultaneity generate virtual possibilities for being, knowing, and doing beyond and against racial violence? (shrink)

This book deals in narrative form with the theme of recovering lost wholeness—with the perennial question of beginnings and what role a human being must play in order to find meaning in his or her life.

Darwinian evolutionary theory has two key terms, variations and biological selection, which finally lead to survival of the fittest variant. With the rise of molecular genetics, variations were explained as results of error replications out of the genetic master templates. For more than half a century, it has been accepted that new genetic information is mostly derived from random error-based events. But the error replication narrative has problems explaining the sudden emergence of new species, new phenotypic traits, and genome innovations (...) as a sudden single event. Meanwhile, it is recognized that errors cannot explain the evolution of genetic information, genetic novelty, and complexity. Now, empirical evidence establishes the crucial role of non-random genetic content editors, such as viruses, diversity generating retroelements, and other RNA networks, to produce new genetic information, complex regulatory control, inheritance vectors, genetic identity, immunity, new sequence space, evolution of complex organisms, and evolutionary transitions. (shrink)

Plants are sessile, highly sensitive organisms that actively compete for environmental resources both above and below the ground. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realise the optimum variant. They take measures to control certain environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘non-self’. They process and evaluate information and then modify their behaviour accordingly. These highly diverse competences are made possible by parallel sign(alling)-mediated communication processes within the plant (...) body (intraorganismic), between the same, related and different species (interorganismic), and between plants and non-plant organisms (transorganismic). Intraorganismic communication involves sign-mediated interactions within cells (intracellular) and between cells (intercellular). This is crucial in coordinating growth and development, shape and dynamics. Such communication must function both on the local level and between widely separated plant parts. This allows plants to coordinate appropriate response behaviours in a differentiated manner, depending on their current developmental status and physiological influences. Lastly, this volume documents how plant ecosphere inhabitants communicate with each other to coordinate their behavioural patterns, as well as the role of viruses in these highly dynamic interactional networks. (shrink)

Concept of meditation in Tibetan Buddhism.

What is the relationship between prisons designed to lock people in and suburban fortresses designed to lock people out? Building on Jonathan Simon’s account of “homeowner citizenship,” I argue that the gated community is the structural counterpart to the prison in a neoliberal carceral state. Levinas’s account of the ambiguity of dwelling—as shelter for our constitutive relationality, as a site of mastery or possessive isolation, and as the opening of hospitality—helps to articulate what is at stake in homeowner citizenship, beyond (...) the spectre of stranger danger: namely, my own capacity for murderous violence, and my investment in this violence through the occupation of territory and the accumulation of private property. Given the systemic nature of such investments, the meaning of hospitality in the carceral state is best expressed in abolitionist social movements like the Movement for Black Lives, which holds space for a radical restructuring of the world. (shrink)

The annual cost of healthcare in the United States reached $2.5 trillion in 2009 (about 17.6% of GDP) with projections to 2019 of about $4.5 trillion (about 20% of likely GDP).

An alternative account of the locus equation phenomenon based on recent theories of speech movement planning is provided. It is similar to Sussman et al.'s account in positing that our productions are tuned to satisfy auditory constraints. It differs by suggesting that the locus equation effect may be an epiphenomenon of a planning process that satisfies simpler auditory constraints.

This paper analyzes the Security Housing Unit in Pelican Bay State Prison as a form of weaponized architecture for the torture of prisoners and the unmaking of the world. I argue that through collective resistance, prisoners in the Pelican Bay Short Corridor have re-purposed this weaponized architecture as a tool for remaking the world by creating new, resistant and resurgent forms of social life. This collective practice of remaking of the world used the self-destructive tactic of a hunger strike to (...) weaponize their bodies and their lives against the weaponized architecture of solitary confinement. But it also developed less spectacular, everyday practices of communication, self-expression, and community-building within a system that is designed to suppress these practices. By collectively refusing food, and by articulating the meaning and motivation of this refusal in articles, interviews, artwork, and legal documents, prisoners at Pelican Bay reclaimed and expanded their perceptual, cognitive, and expressive capacities for world-making, even in a space of systematic torture. (shrink)

The article discusses topics in the context of contemporary legal argumentation. It starts with a sketch of the development of topics from ancient times until the present day. Here the author focuses on the theory of the German legal philosopher Theodor Viehweg, which was most influential to legal argumentation in the 20th century. Then a modern concept of topics is introduced and finally the author discusses the role of topics in contemporary legal argumentation. In this part the distinction between topoi (...) in the weak sense (practically all argumentation schemes) and in the strong sense (specific legal topoi as listed by Gerhard Struck in 1971 is introduced. The author argues that Viehweg’s claim that topics plays an important role in legal argumentation is problematic, because topoi in the weak sense are certainly of high importance, but this is almost trivial. Topoi in the strong sense on the other hand are only of minor importance for legal practice. What characterises legal discourse much more is a set specific pragmatic discourse rules, discussed at the end of the paper. (shrink)

We briefly review the long-standing ideas about the use of synchronicity in the brain, which rely on Donald Hebb's views on cell assemblies and synaptic plasticity. More recently the distinction among several timescales in the description of neural activity has become a focus of theoretical discussion. Phillips & Singer's target article is criticized mainly because it does not distinguish these timescales properly and hence does not really address the questions so intensely debated today.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

While Merleau-Ponty does not theorize sexual difference at any great length, his concepts of the flesh and the institution of a sense suggest hitherto undeveloped possibilities for articulating sexual difference beyond the male–female binary. For Merleau-Ponty, flesh is a “pregnancy of possibilities” which gives rise to masculine and feminine forms through a process of mutual divergence and encroachment. Both sexes bear “the possible of the other,” and neither represents the first or generic form of the human; each sex bears the (...) possibility of the other. By approaching sexual difference in terms of intersubjectively distributed possibilities rather than interlocking forms or types, we may grasp sexual difference in terms of both a developmental process in which bodies become sexed (and sometimes re-sexed) over time, and in terms of a social-historical process in which patterns of relation and exchange between sexed bodies shift over time, altering the very sense of sexual difference. (shrink)

Shame is notoriously ambivalent. On one hand, it operates as a mechanism of normalization and social exclusion, installing or reinforcing patterns of silence and invisibility; on the other hand, the capacity for shame may be indispensible for ethical life insofar as it attests to the subject’s constitutive relationality and its openness to the provocation of others. Sartre, Levinas and Beauvoir each offer phenomenological analyses of shame in which its basic structure emerges as a feeling of being exposed to others and (...) bound to one’s own identity. For Sartre, shame is an ontological provocation, constitutive of subjectivity as a being-for-Others. For Levinas, ontological shame takes the form of an inability to escape one’s own relation to being; this predicament is altered by the ethical provocation of an Other who puts my freedom in question and commands me to justify myself. For Beauvoir, shame is an effect of oppression, both for the woman whose embodied existence is marked as shameful, and for the beneficiary of colonial domination who feels ashamed of her privilege. For each thinker, shame articulates the temporality of social life in both its promise and its danger. (shrink)

The debate around age-based healthcare rationing was precipitated by two books in the late 1980s, one by Daniel Callahan and the other by Norman Daniels. These books ignited a firestorm of criticism, best captured in the claim that any form of age-based healthcare rationing was fundamentally ageist, discriminatory in a morally objectionable sense. That is, the elderly had equal moral worth and an equal right to life as the nonelderly. If an elderly and nonelderly person each had essentially the same (...) medical problem requiring the same medical treatment, then they had an equal right to receive that treatment no matter what the cost of that treatment. Alternatively, if cost was an issue because the benefits of the treatment were too marginal, then both the elderly and nonelderly patients requiring that treatment ought to be denied it. If there were something absolutely scarce about the treatment, then some fair process would have to be used to make an allocation decision. (shrink)

I agree with Jecker et al that “the headline-grabbing nature of existential risk (X-risk) diverts attention away from immediate artificial intelligence (AI) threats…”1 Focusing on very long-term speculative risks associated with AI is both ethically distracting and ethically dangerous, especially in a healthcare context. More specifically, AI in healthcare is generating healthcare justice challenges that are real, imminent and pervasive. These are challenges generated by AI that deserve immediate ethical attention, more than any X-risk issues in the distant future. Almost (...) 50 years ago, John Knowles edited a volume titled Doing Better and Feeling Worse: Health in the United States. We are ‘doing better’ because numerous advances in medical technologies are saving more lives and improving the quality of our lives. But we are ‘feeling worse’ because the additional costs are unsustainable, are threatening funding for other social goods and are increasing injustices regarding the allocation of those resources. This is precisely the situation we are faced with regarding AI in medicine today. Exploding healthcare costs have generated increasing pressure to control those costs, often with unjust consequences. AI is touted as a critical mechanism for controlling healthcare costs, often with little thought given to justice-relevant consequences. Consider, for example, …. (shrink)

Within the last decade, thousands of studies have described communication processes in and between organisms. Pragmatic philosophy of biology views communication processes as rule-governed sign-mediated interactions (rsi's). As sign-using individuals exhibit a relationship to following or not-following these rules, the rsi's of living individuals dier fundamentally from cause-and-effect reactions with and between non-living matter, which exclusively underlie natural laws. Umwelt thus becomes a term in investigating physiological influences on organisms that are not components of rsi's. Mitwelt is a term for (...) the investigation of all rsi's of organisms. Living organisms are never solus ipse subjects of semioses, but share common sets of rules and signs. Life depends decisively on symbiotic communities. Serial Endosymbiotic Theory proved that the evolution of the eukaryotic super-kingdom was a merger of anchestral bacteria. The integration of bacterial genomes into eukaryotic genomes was also a step from analog to symbolic genetic codes. Now we know, that so-called ‘junk DNA’ has higher order regulatory functions on genome architecture and protein coding DNA plays only the role of a structural vocabulary. (shrink)

In “Criminal Empire,” Ojibwe scholar Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark argues that the criminalization of Indigenous resistance to colonization “averts attention” from the criminality of democratic settler states, which fail or refuse to honor their own legal agreements with Indigenous peoples. This chapter reflects on the implications of Stark’s analysis for the relation between property, dispossession, and liberal democratic state violence. From this perspective, the prison appears not as a correctional institution for individual lawbreakers, but as a spatial strategy for the imposition (...) and enforcement of a colonial legal order and a capitalist property regime. The challenge of decolonization, then, is not just to return stolen land to Indigenous peoples, but also to dismantle the structures of propertied personhood and dispossession that the settler democracy (re)produces through the prison system. (shrink)