Nucleosomes are the basic elements of chromatin structure. Polyamines, such as spermine and spermidine, are small ubiquitous molecules absolutely required for cell growth. Photoaffinity polyamines bind to specific locations in nucleosomes and can change the helical twist of DNA in nucleosomes. Acetylation of polyamines reduces their affinity for DNA and nucleosomes, thus the helical twist of DNA in nucleosomes could be regulated by cells through acetylation. I suggest that histone and polyamine acetylation act synergistically to modulate chromatin structure. On naked (...) DNA, the photoaffinity spermine bound preferentially to a specific ‘TATA’ sequence element, suggesting that polyamines may be involved in the unusual chromatin structure in this region. Further work is needed to test whether the specificities shown by photoaffinity polyamines are also shown by cellular polyamines; such experiments are now feasible. (shrink)

Verklaring van de wereld, ook in haar irrationele aspect, vanuit één oerprincipe: het glijdend octaaf.

What is education for? Should it produce workers or educate future citizens? Is there a place for faith schools - and should patriotism be taught? In this compelling and controversial book, Harry Brighouse takes on all these urgent questions and more. He argues that children share four fundamental interests: the ability to make their own judgements about what values to adopt; acquiring the skills that will enable them to become economically self-sufficient as adults; being exposed to a range of (...) activities and experiences that will enable them to flourish in their personal lives; and developing a sense of justice. He criticises sharply those who place the interests of the economy before those of children, and assesses the arguments for and against the controversial issues of faith schools and the teaching of patriotism. Clearly argued but provocative, On Education draws on recent examples from Britain and North America as well as famous thinkers on education such as Aristotle and John Locke. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the present state of education and its future. (shrink)

The present study used masked repetition priming to examine whether face representations can be accessed without attention. Two experiments using a face recognition task presented masked repetition and control primes in spatially unattended locations prior to target onset. Experiment 1 used the same images as primes and as targets and Experiment 2 used different images of the same individual as primes and targets. Repetition priming was observed across both experiments regardless of whether spatial attention was cued to the location of (...) the prime. Priming occurred for both famous and non-famous targets in Experiment 1 but was only reliable for famous targets in Experiment 2, suggesting that priming in Experiment 1 indexed access to view-specific representations whereas priming in Experiment 2 indexed access to view-invariant, abstract representations. Overall, the results indicate that subliminal access to abstract face representations does not rely on attention. (shrink)

"Text and translation of the twenty-five porpositions of Book 1 of the Or Adonal": p. [129]-315.

In the reckoning of historian Enzo Traverso, the accumulative inventory of the past’s crimes has exceeded the ‘frontiers of historical research’ and colonised the public sphere to ‘interpellate our present’. The quarrel over the crisis of historicism before World War ii has been superseded by postwar debates that have now spilled over into everyday life that demand recognition as instances of the continuing collision of claims of a past that refuses to pass and the formation of a new historical consciousness (...) in which collective memory of the crimes occupies a central position. Traverso’s purpose has been to repair this emergent dichotomy between historical practice and memoration, event and experience, as well as to overcome attending binary couplings like subjective and objective, individual and group in order to avoid falling into an unbridgeable antinomy that risks collapsing into contradiction. (shrink)

Does the centralization of the Web change both the diffusion of knowledge and the philosophical definition of knowledge itself? By exploring the origins of the Semantic Web in the philosophy of Carnap and of Google’s machine learning approach in Heidegger, we demonstrate that competing philosophical schools are deeply embedded in artificial intelligence and its evolution in the Web. Finally, we conclude that a decentralized approach to knowledge is necessary in order to bring the Web to its full potential as project (...) for the spread of human autonomy. (shrink)

Humanistic management emphasises the importance of respecting humanity in and through meaningful work within organisations. In this paper we introduce a Levinasian approach to organising. Levinas argues that the Other appeals to us and allows us to take responsibility towards the Other – i.c. an employee, a customer, a supplier, etcetera. In this article our focus is on employees. By taking the Other as a starting point of his reflections, Levinas helps to transform the organisation and management of work and (...) humans in business organisations. Based on the concept of alterity and becoming susceptible to the appeal that comes to us through what Levinas refers to as the ‘face of the Other’, we argue that the philosopher calls for ‘an agapeic turn’ to management and organisation. This turn means that the focus on the well-being of the employee – and the needs, interests, ideas, and expectations as perceived by him or her – should be at the core of organising. As a result, this paper calls for an increased focus on self-determination and self-organisation to allow the Other both voice and control over her or his behaviour, actions and contributions to the outputs and outcomes of one’s organisational unit. Through our focus on a Levinas approach, we concretize and deepen the traditional understanding of agape, making it more relevant to our functioning in a business setting. As a result, agape is introduced as an analytical concept that guides the structuring and the effectuation of human interaction in and through organisations. (shrink)

Many people question whether God is the source of morality. Under divine command theory, God's will creates the moral order, and therefore ethical truths are true because of God's will. Under natural law, on the other hand, some ethical truths do not depend on God's will, and yet perhaps they depend on his reason or creation. Ethics and Religion develops strong, defensible, and original versions of both divine command theory and natural law. The book also discusses ethics and atheism: how (...) atheists object on ethical grounds to belief in God and how they view ethics. The book defends belief in God from criticisms and analyzes related concepts, such as practical reason, the golden rule, ethics and evolution, the problem of evil, and the fine-tuning argument. (shrink)

This article argues that plato's choice of the dialogue as a vehicle for his philosophy and aristotle's choice of an objective compressed lecturing style (in his later works) has less to do with differences in philosophical doctrine and more with differences in pedagogic aim. Plato aimed at teaching pupils to begin thinking and to keep re-examining the foundations of their thought, aristotle at advancing the sum of human knowledge. This in its turn, it is argued, was connected with a difference (...) in epistemology and with aristotle's greater optimism about our ability to avoid error and to advance in knowledge. (shrink)

The aim of Massimiliano Tomba’s Insurgent Universality is to return to Marxism’s original historical vocation by freeing it from the hegemony of the exchange system and the encompassing agency of value. At the heart of this project appears the recognition that time, space and thus history have been captured by capitalism and transformed into categories of its own to organise people and social relationships for capital’s programme of accumulation. In this way, capital has been able to hijack history and invert (...) it into a representation of the real, into a historical trompe-l’œil instead of ‘presentify(ing) the past’. In this regard contemporising the past is an act of intervening in history and actualising it rather than representing it. Through this operation Tomba is able to retrieve an inventory of repressed and forgotten histories, which will unveil the sources of an ‘alternate legacy of modernity’ and radical political possibilities for the present. (shrink)

Business and love appear to have little to do with each other. We hold the opposite to be true if the concept of love in business draws from two corresponding grammars. This paper contributes to the ‘agenda for growth and affirmation of people and the environment’ in business. By focusing on the grammars of love and business we operationalize the concept of love in ways that business executives, managers and employees can understand, adopt, and implement. With references to the theory (...) and practice of management and organizations, we aim to contribute to expanding the theory and practice of responsible organizations and their leaders caring for others. (shrink)

In this two-part paper I want to introduce a conceptual framework for Humanistic Information Studies. This framework is provisional. As it stands, its main use is to show a path for the further development of Information Studies in a critical and humanistic direction. In the first part of this two-part paper, I will focus on the epistemological questions connected with the conceptual foundations of Humanistic Information Studies (or HIS): what are the characteristics of the specific form of knowledge sought after (...) in HIS. In the second part I will further elaborate the proposal developed in the first part from the standpoint of the specific, form of normative professionalism and of organizational transformation sought after and furthered by Humanistic Information Studies. ESTUDOS HUMANISTICOS DA INFORMAÇÃO: UMA PROPOSTAResumoNeste artigo, composto por duas partes, pretende-se introduzir uma quadro conceitual para os Estudos Humanísticos da Informação. Esta quadro é provisório. Do modo como está apresentado sua função principal é indicar um caminho para o desenvolvimento dos Estudos da Informação em um sentido crítico e humanista. A primeira parte do artigo concentram-se em questões epistemológicas relacionadas com fundamentos conceituais dos Estudos Humanísticos da Informação (EHI): quais são as características da específica forma de conhecimento buscadas para os EHI. Na segunda parte trata-se do desenvolvimento da proposta apresentada na primeira, partindo de um ponto de vista específico, a saber, uma forma de profissionalismo normativo e de transformação organizacional, buscados e promovidos pelos Estudos Humanísticos da Informação. (shrink)

We examine a crucial question for the World Wide Web: What does a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) mean? Crucial for the next-generation Semantic Web, can it refer to things outside web-pages? The Web is a universal information space for naming and accessing information via URIs. However, the classical philosophical problems of meaning and reference that have been the source of debate within the philosophy of language return when the Web is given as the foundation for a knowledge representation with the (...) Semantic Web. Debates on the Semantic Web about the meaning and referential status of a URI are explored as analogues to debates about the meaning and reference of names in the philosophy of language. Three main positions are inspected: the logical position, as exemplified by the descriptivist theory of reference, the direct reference position, as exemplified by Putnam and Kripke’s causal theory of reference, and a Wittgensteinian position that views URIs as a public language, as exemplified by Web search engines. These positions show that debates within the philosophy of language are alive and well on the Web, and so in the philosophy of computer science. (shrink)

Erstmals im deutschsprachigen Raum werden in diesem repräsentativen Reader Arbeiten von Harry G. Frankfurt publiziert, dessen Überlegungen bedeutsam wurden für nicht-utilitaristische Werttheorien, für die Ethik der Fürsorge bzw. der Tugendethik, aber auch für die moderne Rationalitätstheorie. Freiheit und Determinismus sind miteinander vereinbar - diese Auffassung vertritt Frankfurt nachdrücklich. Zunächst entwickelte er ein hierarchisches Modell des Wünschens und arbeitete eine philosophische Begründung für das Argument aus, daß die Bedingung, jemand hätte anders handeln können, keine notwendige Bedingung für Freiheit und Verantwortung (...) bildet. In seinen neuesten Arbeiten entwirft er ein umfassenderes Konzept der Selbstbestimmung und der Rationalität, wobei er sein früheres Wunschmodell ersetzt durch ein erweitertes hierarchisches Modell fundamentaler Einstellungen, zu denen neben Wünschen nunmehr auch Überzeugungen und Emotionen zählen, die sich daher zugleich auf Konzeptionen unseres Charakters und unserer Integrität richten. (shrink)

This article addresses the critical comments that focus on what is perceived as lack of clarity with regard to different uses of the system concept: on the one hand, in the usual general sense, on the other, in a specific ‘Habermassian’ sense. This final reply tries to remedy this in critical discussion with Morin, arguing that Morin’s paradigm of generalized complexity addresses the question of what subjects are, but remains silent with regard to the question of who they are. Answering (...) this question confronts us with a specific ethical manifestation of complexity that cannot be adequately understood within the conceptual space of systems-oriented complexity theory. (shrink)

Hidden in Historicism considers how the nineteenth-century philosophy of historicism depicts three "forgotten time regimes": a time of rise and fall, an ambiguous time of synchronicity of the non-synchronous, and a time in which decisive moments dominate. Before the eighteenth century, time was past-oriented. This inversed in the Enlightenment, when the future became dominating. Today, this time of progress continues to be embraced as a "time of the modern". Yet, inequality, increasing violence and climate change lead to doubts over a (...) bright future. In this book, Harry Jansen moves away from the heritage of Reinhart Koselleck and his single time of the modern towards a historicist, threefold temporal approach to history writing. In the time regime of the twenty-first century past, present and future coexist. It is a heterogeneous time that takeson the three forms of historicism. Jansen's study shows how all three times exist together in current historiography and contribute to a better understanding of the world today. Based on the idea that an incarnated time rules everything that happens it reality, the book offers a fresh perspective on the ongoing discussion about time and time regimes in contemporary philosophy and theory of history for students and scholars, both time specialists and the non-specialist. (shrink)

Comtrary to general assumption, subjective reports of immediate ordinary consciousness and non-ordinary alterations of consciousness can provide unique evidence concerning the bases of the human symbolic capacity. Evidence from classical introspectionism, the meditative traditions, and descriptions of synaesthesias suggests that thought, rests on a cross-modal synthesis or fusion of the patterns from vision, audition, and touch-kinesthesis. This would provide a holistic, non-reductionist explanation of our capacity for reflective self awareness and recombinatory creativity. The approach is consistent with Geschwind's and Luria's (...) models of neocortical operation and Jackendoff's and Yates' recent emphasis on symbolic thought as a "neutral" or "amodal" synthesis. (shrink)

This is a translation of the second chapter of F.W.J. Schelling's Abhandlungen zur Erlaüterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre. It is preceded by a brief introduction in which I situate the chapter within Schelling's oeuvre and suggest that it is not only an early articulation of Schellingian Naturphilosophie, but also prescient, anticipating Schelling's later positive philosophy.

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 2001, given by Harry Frankfurt, an American philosopher.