Recent studies indicate that plakoglobin may have a similar function to that of β-catenin within the Wnt signaling pathway. β-catenin is known to be an oncogene in many forms of human cancer, following acquisition of stabilizing mutations in amino terminal sequences. Kolligs1 and coworkers show, however, that unlike β-catenin, plakoglobin induces neoplastic transformation of rat epithelial cells in the absence of such stabilizing mutations. Cellular transformation by plakoglobin also appears to be distinct from that of β-catenin in that it requires (...) activation of the proto-oncogene c-myc. Surprisingly, c-myc is activated more efficiently by plakoglobin than β-catenin, despite its previous identification as a target of Tcf/β-catenin.2 In contrast, a synthetic Tcf reporter gene is activated to a much greater extent by β-catenin than plakoglobin. Plakoglobin and β-catenin may therefore have different roles in Wnt signaling and cancer, which reflect their differential effects on target gene activity. BioEssays 22:961–965, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The case of Clever Hans is one of the most notorious episodes in the history of animal psychology. The “Clever Hans effect” has since become the name of a cardinal scientific sin, the experimenter effect by which researchers inadvertently give their subjects the answers to their questions. Yet this discrediting accusation is often overstated, and in need of a careful differentiation. In this section from Vinciane Despret's book Hans she digs through the files to reconsider this famous (...) horse and his psychologists, and thereby, also, provokes us to rethink the legacy of this meaningful scandal in the subsequent history of scientific research on animal intelligence. (shrink)

The development of cognitive capacities depends on environmental conditions, including various forms of scaffolding. As a result, the evolution of cognition depends on the evolution of activities that provide scaffolding for cognitive development. Non-human animals reared and trained in environments heavily scaffolded with human social interaction can acquire non-species-typical knowledge, skills, and capacities. This can potentially shed light on some of the changes that paved the way for the evolution of distinctively human behavioral capacities such as language, advanced social cognition, (...) and elaborate forms of tool craft. In this light, I revisit several widely known—but also widely misunderstood—cases of exceptional animals and argue that each of these cases provides clues about key innovations in our own evolutionary history. (shrink)

The ArgumentBiology, understood in turn-of-the-century Germany to include psychology, held a central but enigmatic place in the philosopher Ernst Cassirer's work. From his earliest studies with Hermann Cohen through his long engagement with the theoretical biology of Jakob von Uexküll and Adolf Meyer-Abich, Cassirer consistently used the history and practice of biology to examine and delineate a set of characteristic tensions between the natural and cultural sciences. This paper examines Cassirer's treatment of this theme by addressing two contrasting interpretations he (...) gave — in hisPhilosophy of Symbolic Forms and in hisEssay on Man — to the benchmark case from empirical psychology of the “talking” horse “Clever Hans.” The original case involved the horse's ability to signal answers to remarkably complex questions by stamping its hooves, an ability that ultimately appeared to rest on a capacity to detect extremely minute unintentional movement cues in its auditors as it reached the appropriate answer. Due to both Cassirer's shifting description of the case within his philosophy and the case's inherent polyvalence, Cassirer's remarks provide a useful window onto the social, epistemological, and stylistic meaning of his “unified” philosophy of human culture and science. (shrink)

Clever Hans, the famous horse who was believed to be able to count, is generally cited as the paradigm of the influence of the observer. Psychologist Rosenthal has illustrated this phenomenon with his well-known experiment about ‘bright’ and ‘dull’ maze rats. Hans, however, achieved something much more interesting. Hecould not only read human minds through their bodies: he could also influence his questioners to produce gestures he could read as cues for finding the answer. Hans could make (...) human bodies be moved and be affected, and move and affect other beings and perform things without their owners’ knowledge. The question of ‘influence’ when we read this case becomes therefore far more complicated and interesting. It involves the question of the way bodies can attune, affect and transformeach other. We may follow carefully how scientists of ethological practices create access to the creatures they study, how they are moved by their subjects of interest, and how they give them a chance to be interesting andto articulate other responses. Doing so, we notice that the signs that define subject and object, what talks and what is talked about, subjectivity and objectivity, are redistributed in a new manner. These practices offer a new and pragmatic definition of the body, close to James’s theory of emotions: to have a body is to learn how to feel. (shrink)

We propose a dynamic logic of lying, wherein a ‘lie that $$\varphi$$ ’ is an action in the sense of dynamic modal logic, that is interpreted as a state transformer relative to the formula $$\varphi$$. The states that are being transformed are pointed Kripke models encoding the uncertainty of agents about their beliefs. Lies can be about factual propositions but also about modal formulas, such as the beliefs of other agents or the belief consequences of the lies of (...) other agents. We distinguish two speaker perspectives: an outside observer who is lying to an agent that is modelled in the system, and an agent who is lying to another agent, and where both are modelled in the system. We distinguish three addressee perspectives: the credulous agent who believes everything that it is told, the skeptical agent who only believes what it is told if that is consistent with its current beliefs, and the belief revising agent who believes everything that it is told by consistently revising its current, possibly conflicting, beliefs. The logics have complete axiomatizations, which can most elegantly be shown by way of their embedding in what is known as action model logic or in the extension of that logic to belief revision. (shrink)

SummaryThe philosophical core of a psychological theory of cognitive processes is developped and commented, focussing on the problem of intentionality, this term being taken in the normal and in the phenomenological sense. Actions, perceived processes, their states and results, operations and concepts are seen as related insofar as they all establish relations between elements, are generated by construction and can be objectivated. These acts and/or the objectives that control them, are intentional insofar as their structure is activated. Such activation is (...) characteristic of living systems. Intentionality sensu Brentano/Husserl is limited to acts of presentation, a contemplative conception which lacks the constructivity and the dynamism of our pragmatistic concept of action and thought. (shrink)

Bei Nietzsches Texten handelt es sich häufig um Reaktionen auf seine breitgestreuten Lektüren. Sein Lesen ist zugleich ein Schreiben, und es verläuft ebenso selektiv und assoziativ wie aneignend: So werden unter Nietzsches Hand etwa Lesefrüchte aus naturwissenschaftlichen Lexika ästhetischen Überlegungen einverleibt oder ethno-anthropologische Fachbücher im Kontext philosophiegeschichtlicher Einordnungsversuche zitiert. Die Interpretation von Nietzsches Schriften ist daher stets auf eine philologisch-differenzierte Quellenarbeit angewiesen, die zugleich auch philosophisch-hermeneutischen Ansprüchen genügt. Nur so findet die spezifische Gemengelage aus Eigenem und Fremdem in Nietzsches Texten (...) ebenso adäquate Berücksichtigung wie die Vielzahl der handschriftlichen Lesespuren in den bis heute erhaltenen Büchern aus seiner persönlichen Bibliothek. In einer Reihe von Überblicksdarstellungen und exemplarischen Fallstudien unternimmt es der Band, Nietzsche im Spiegel seiner Lektüren als äußerst produktiven wie kreativen Leser zu charakterisieren, dessen Voraussetzungsreichtum nicht überschätzt werden kann. (shrink)

This book is the best and most comprehensive treatment we have of Leibniz' study of natural languages, on the same high level of scholarship, knowledge, and insight as the essay Sigrid von der Schulenburg published in 1937. With its rich detail and source references, it is indispensable both to Leibniz scholars and to students of the history of the study of language. The editor's careful indices make it possible to use the book also as a work of reference. The reviewer (...) shows that the chief impulse to Leibniz' study of languages was the need to disprove the Swedish thesis of the northern origin of the Germanic languages. (shrink)

Was sind 'äußere' und 'innere' Bilder? Wie entstehen sie? Was sind ihre Korrelate? Seit der Antike bewegen diese Fragen Philosophie, Rhetorik, Literatur- und Kunstwissenschaft, gegenwärtig auch die Medien- und Intermedialitätsforschung und Neurowissenschaften. Als Beitrag zu Bild- und Literaturwissenschaften sowie Visual Studies bietet der Band interdisziplinäre Untersuchungen der Bewegung vom Sehen über das An-schauen zu Anschaulichkeit und Anschauung. Die Beiträge zeigen Verflechtungen zwischen Epistemologie und Ästhetik auf, erhellen Fragen von Imagination und Stil, stellen neue Bezüge zwischen unterschiedlichen Künsten, Medien und Ausdrucks-formen (...) her und bieten neue Einsichten in die visuell-imaginativen Dimensionen von Wissen, Erkenntnis und Erfahrung. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reintroducing George Herbert Mead by Daniel R. HuebnerAndrea ParraviciniDaniel R. Huebner Reintroducing George Herbert Mead Routledge, 2022, 116 pp.Reintroducing George Herbert Mead is the second book of a brand new series recently inaugurated by Routledge and dedicated to major sociology theorists who contributed to the discipline with significant works. The book reflects the intent of the series to offer concise and accessible texts that appeal to scholars and (...) students interested in the most relevant themes in thought of a particular figure, the context in which it emerged, as well as its reception and importance to contemporary studies. George Mead is, however, such a rich and complex figure that the text inevitably overflows the banks of studies dedicated to sociology and the social sciences and offers a wider glimpse into the boundless interdisciplinary territory of philosophy and natural sciences.Daniel R. Huebner, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina (USA), has contributed in the past years with other influential books on Mead, such as Becoming Mead (Huebner, 2014), and co-edited with Hans Joas both the definitive edition of Mind, Self and Society (Mead, 2015) and the multi-authored volume The Timeliness of George Herbert Mead (Joas & Huebner, 2016).Huebner's latest book cleverly condenses into little more than a hundred pages the most important aspects of Mead's life and work, and places them in close connection with the world in which he lived and with the people he influenced. At the same time, it highlights the legacy that this thinker left to research and studies of contemporary thought in social sciences and philosophy.In contrast to his more famous colleague and friend John Dewey, a very prolific writer who had no difficulties to develop his ideas through a number of important books and essays, Mead never managed, due to various reasons, to articulate his groundbreaking ideas in the more systematic form of books or treatises. As Dewey (1931: 310–311) witnessed in his obituary of Mead, although Mead could be judged as "the most original mind in philosophy in the America of the last generation", he "experienced great difficulty in finding adequate verbal expression for his philosophical ideas". It was his students, colleagues, and friends (Charles Morris above all) who, aware of the outstanding force of his philosophic mind, collected papers, manuscripts, notes, and transcripts from his classroom teaching, and published posthumously [End Page 249] his most famous books. Thanks to those publications, and especially to Mind, Self, and Society, Mead is now considered one of the founding fathers of modern sociology, despite the fact that he neither taught in that discipline, nor wrote that book for which he is especially known, as Huebner (p. 3) pointed out. Indeed, Mead's ideas have had a major influence not only on sociology, social psychology, and the behavioral and social sciences more generally, but his transdisciplinary philosophy crossed in many other fields as well, such as physical science, biology, history, and the religious literature of the world (Dewey, 1931: 312). Despite his encyclopedic mind and culture, his ideas were always in search of practical connections with the problems of concrete life. As a pragmatist thinker, Mead used his theories as practical tools for better understanding how to face the urgent issues of his time and society.As regards its structure, the book is divided into four main chapters, further articulated into various subsections. The text is enriched by several useful figures (three per chapter) which serve as information boxes illustrating interesting aspects related to Mead. The first section introduces the life and influence of the North American philosopher, in the wake of recent scholarship, which has partially changed what we know about him. The chapter focuses particularly on his social reform efforts, but it also highlights his engagement with colonization and war by providing a critical reinterpretation of the texts published after his death, and the rediscovery of important aspects of his work that had been lost. The way the author closely connects Mead's philosophy to different aspects of his life is particularly interesting. Noteworthy aspects related to Mead's life concern also the importance of the Hull House Social Settlement... (shrink)

Anhand der Erinnerungskultur der NS-Psychiatrieverbrechen in den ersten Nachkriegsjahrzehnten wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie sich Erinnern und Gedenken gestalten lassen. Erinnern, Gedenken und Bewusstsein stehen in dynamischer Beziehung zueinander: Je nach Perspektive, ob der des Opfers oder des Täters, war das, was erinnert, wessen gedacht und was bewusst wurde bzw. unbewusst bleiben musste, sehr unterschiedlich. Durchgesetzt hat sich das Täter-Opfer-Narrativ der deutschen Nachkriegs-Psychiater, das die verstörende Realität, als Wissenschaft, als Institution und als Individuen so willfährig für ein verbrecherisches Regime gewesen (...) zu sein, verleugnen wollte. An dieser spezifischen »Erinnerungskultur« wird gezeigt, dass Erinnern und Gedenken Konstruktionen aus der Jetztzeit über die Vergangenheit sind und von der jeweiligen Gegenwart des Erzählenden geformt werden. Eine Aufführung der »Antigone« in der Erlanger psychiatrischen Anstalt 1946 wird als Rahmen gewählt, um die sich aus der Erinnerungskultur der NS-Psychiatrieverbrechen ergebenden ethischen Fragestellungen auf einer anderen Ebene zu betrachten. (shrink)

This paper tries to shed some light on the paradox that people cling to national ideologies at just the time when nations are counting less and less in social, cultural, economic and political affairs, and when transnational corporations and international organizations increasingly determine the framework of things. Many nations still rigidly think of themselves as independent and sovereign, accountable to no one but themselves, even when our global interdependence can no longer be ignored or denied. Ethnic cleansing and crimes against (...) humanity testify to the dangers of isolationist tendencies, such as blind conservatism, which we may escape only by cultivating and advancing democracy and a shared public life on a global scale, i.e. by developing transnational institutions on strictly empirical and experimental grounds that could assist people in coping with the newly emerging world-order. Key Words: cosmopolitanism • ethnic cleansing • ethnic codes • human rights • international organizations • nationalism • natural rights • negotiated agreements • patriotism • self-evident truths • sovereignty • universal moral principles. (shrink)