Developmental, epidemiological, and neurobiological studies indicate that the adaptive and maladaptive functions, as well as immediate and long-term consequences of drug use, may vary by age. Early initiation seems to be associated with a reduced ability to use drugs purposely in a temporally stable, non-addictive manner. Prevention strategies should consider social environmental factors and aim to delay age at initiation.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction A Brief History of Developmental Explanations of Phenotypic Evolution Research Questions of Evo‐Devo Unifying Themes of the Conceptual Basis of Evo‐Devo Conclusion: A Mechanistic Theory of Evo‐Devo Challenges the Modern Synthesis Postscript: Counterpoint References.

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to overcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our opinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biological systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical representations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character identification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly formulated organism concept. (...) Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biological process--such as adaptation by means of natural selection--depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that describe this process. (shrink)

The following contribution1 was inspired by Cleo Condoravdi’s article on NPI licensing in temporal clauses (Condoravdi, this volume). Condoravdi gives a coherent and comprehensive account of be- fore which crucially involves coercion of propositions to the earliest or maximal times at which the propositions are true, and a modal component for non-factual interpretations. I argue for a nonmodal, non-coercive analysis of clauses like [A before B] as ‘A is the case when B has not been the case’, triggering a conversational (...) implicature that B will be the case later. I will discuss temporal operators involving measure phrases, like three hours before, and I will show that so-called “expletive” negation in corresponding clauses in German is, in fact, interpreted as negation. (shrink)

This talk is based on Krifka (2001). Its topic is the interpretation of quantifiers in questions. I will use English data for illustration, but the phenomena to be discussed appear to be general enough to be relevant for other languages as well, at least those languages that have nominal quantifiers.

Equational intensional ‘reconstruction’ relatives. Submitted.

In the development of modern philosophy self-consciousness was not generally or unanimously given important consideration. This was because philosophers such as Descartes, Kant and Fichte thought it served as the highest principle from which we can 'deduce' all propositions that rightly claimed validity. However, the Romantics thought that the consideration of self-consciousness was of the highest importance even when any claim to foundationalism was abandoned. In this respect, Hölderlin and his circle, as well as Novalis and Schleiermacher, thought that self-consciousness, (...) itself, was not a principle but must be ranked on a minor or dependent level, and presupposed the Absolute as a superior but inaccessible condition or ground. This reservation did not hinder them from recognising that the foundationalist Fichte was the first to have shown conclusively that from Descartes, via German Rationalism and British Empiricism, up to Kant, self-consciousness was misconceived of as the result of an act of reflection by which a second-order act bent back upon a first-order act that is identical to itself. This conception entailed circular entanglements and infinite regresses, and was too high a price to pay. Whereas Fichte thought pre-reflexive self-awareness was a philosophical principle, the Romantics and their vehement critic Kierkegaard, abandoned the idea of self-consciousness as a foundational starting point of philosophy. Instead, they founded self-consciousness on transcendent Being, a prior non-conceptual consciousness ('feeling') and reproached Fichte for having fallen back into the repudiated reflection model of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This article1 investigates a particular use of generic sentences (or “characterizing” sentences, in the terminology of Krifka e.a. 1995), which is most prevalent with indefinite singular subjects. Such subjects cannot always be interchanged with bare plural NPs, as has been famously pointed out by Lawler (1973).

This book represents an effort to understand very old questions about biological form, function, and the relationships between them. The essays collected here reflect the diversity of approaches in evolutionary developmental biology, including not only studies by prominent scientists whose research focuses on topics concerned with evolution and development, but also historically and conceptually oriented studies that place the scientific work within a larger framework and ask how it can be pushed further. Topics under discussion range from the use of (...) theoretical and empirical biomechanics to understand the evolution of plant form, to detailed studies of the evolution of development and the role of developmental constraints on phenotypic variation. The result is a rich and interdisciplinary volume that will begin a wider conversation about the shape of Evo Devo as it matures as a field. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:25. HUME'S ANTINOMIES I There are many contradictions in Hume. So much is readily admitted by all Hume scholars. But there is little agreement on what these contradictions show about Hume's thought in general. Many interpretations are based upon the view that Hume's contradictions are signs of his carelessness or lack of thoroughness. He is seen either as having lost all interest in giving a comprehensive or consistent account (...) of human nature or as not having pushed far enough his analysis of the philosophical problems facing him. Other interpretations suggest that Hume, the "skeptic," has recklessly introduced these contradictions in order to confuse us. He is perhaps not altogether serious and is laughing at those who take too serious a view of the "science" of metaphysics and his own contribution 2 to it. Others again argue that the contradictions (or some fundamental class of them) are the consequence of Hume's philosophical presuppositions or his psychological method. Given his particular beliefs and his method, these contradictions had to arise with logical necessity. However, the general opinion seems to be that, if Hume is not to be dismissed as a merely negative skeptic whose philosophy is of no great consequence, he needs to be excused or defended, i.e. his contradictions, which are 4 seen as "inconsistencies," have to be explained away. His discussions of the self, causality, substance, or the relationship of reason and the passions must be, and — it is believed — can be shown not to be contradictory, if all the relevant factors are considered. However, reconstructions of Hume's analysis of the self or causality, for instance, which involve the explaining away of contradictions soon find themselves in a rather peculiar quandary, since they also have to show that Hume's own admissions of the contradictory nature of his analysis is mistaken. Such "defenses" issue only in other 26. accusations, namely that Hume, in addition to not having expressed himself very clearly in his writings, failed to understand them himself when he referred back to them. If only for this reason, I think that interpretations which involve an explaining away or minimizing of the contradictions in Hume are suspect. It is my opinion that Hume needs no such defenses or excuses -- at least not in so far as the most important contradictions are concerned. On the contrary, I believe that Hume can be understood properly, only if we take full account of them. I want in this paper to argue that there is in Hume a fundamental class of contradictions which he believed were neither accidental nor created by his analysis, but were essential characteristics of the human mind. The contradictions uncovered by his analysis can be understood only if they are recognised as one aspect of a more complex problematic. They must have a "deeper" significance for Hume because they are the symptoms of the infirmities... which are common to human nature (T265). These are 'Hume's 7 "antinomies. " In this analysis I have allowed myself to be guided by a more or less Kantian conception of "antinomy" and "antinomical." In fact, I believe that there is a definite similarity between Kant's doctrine of the "Antinomy of Pure Reason" and Hume's "operations" which are equally natural and necessary in the human mind, yet in some circumstances... directly contrary (T266). But the present paper is not so much a sustained comparison of Hume and Kant in this regard as it is an attempt to elucidate the g peculiar nature of several contradictions in Hume. For I believe that, if we have a better understanding of the nature of these contradictions, we will also be able to say something more definite about Hume's theory of mental activity and certain aspects of the relationship of skepticism and naturalism (or: Pyrrhonism and Newtonianism, destructive and constructive side, negative and positive phase, etc.) in his thought. To this end, I shall first 27. explain what I mean by "antinomy" here. Secondly, I shall show in what sense Hume was aware of having discovered something very much like an antinomical dimension in human nature, and, finally, I shall offer some suggestions as to the relevance of this... (shrink)

Speech acts have sometimes been considered as unembeddable, for principled reasons. In this paper, I argue that speech acts can be embedded under certain circumstances. In particular, I consider denegation and conjunction of speech acts, quantification into speech acts, conditionalization of speech acts, the embedding of speech acts by verbs like say and wonder, speechact-modifying adverbials like frankly, clauses commenting on speech acts, like certain uses of because-clauses, parentheticals, and appositive relative clauses. A crucial distinction is made between speech acts (...) and speech act potentials, linguistic objects that can be used to perform speech acts when applied in a specific communicative situation. I develop a semantic theory in which speech act potentials are captured as semantic functions that change a world-time index, reflecting the nature of speech acts as events that happen in the world. As index changers, speech act potentials become nearly regular semantic objects, with a proper semantic type on which other semantic objects can operate on. In this way, speech acts (or rather, speech-act potentials) become part of the recursive structure of language. (shrink)

While language is presumably unique to humans, there are possible pre-linguistic features that developed in the course of human evolution which predate features of language, and might have even been essential for its evolution. A number of such possible preadaptations for human language have been discussed, like the permanent lowering of the larynx, the ability to control one’s breath, or the inclination of humans to imitate. In this paper I would like to point out another candidate for a preadaptation, namely (...) the functional differentiation of the hands and the way in which they cooperate in manual actions. (shrink)

Caenorhabditis elegans is a tiny worm that has become the focus of a large number of worldwide research projects examining its genetics, development, neuroscience, and behavior. Recently several groups of investigators have begun to tie together the behavior of the organism and the underlying genes, neural circuits, and molecular processes implemented in those circuits. Behavior is quintessentially organismal—it is the organism as a whole that moves and mates—but the explanations are devised at the molecular and neurocircuit levels, and tested in (...) populations using protocols that span many levels of aggregation. Following a brief review of the main relevant features of C. elegans, I describe some of these circuits, and then discuss two contrasting approaches in behavioral genetics and neural network analysis of the worm. Finally, I outline the rudiments of a “field and focus” explanation model using the two contrasting approaches. (shrink)

This paper develops a way to model performative speech acts within a framework of dynamic semantics. It introduces a distinction between performative and informative updates, where informative updates filter out indices of context sets (cf. Stalnaker, Cole (ed), Pragmatics, Academic Press, 1978), whereas performative updates change their indices (cf. Szabolcsi, Kiefer (ed), Hungarian linguistics, John Benjamins, 1982). The notion of index change is investigated in detail, identifying implementations by a function or by a relation. Declarations like _the meeting is (hereby) (...) adjourned_ are purely performative updates that just enforce an index change on a context set. Assertions like _the meeting is (already) adjourned_ are analyzed as combinations of a performative update that introduces a guarantee of the speaker for the truth of the proposition, and an informative update that restricts the context set so that this proposition is true. The first update is the illocutionary act characteristic for assertions; the second is the primary perlocutionary act, and is up for negotiations with the addressee. Several other speech acts will be discussed, in particular commissives, directives, exclamatives, optatives, and definitions, which are all performative, and differ from related assertions. The paper concludes a discussion of locutionary acts, which are modelled as index changers as well, and proposes a novel analysis for the performative marker _hereby._. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractThe origins of asexuality in plants as well as animals have long puzzled researchers. In article 2000111, Diego Hojsgaard and Manfred Schartl integrate old ideas with recent molecular and genomic data and provide a single mechanistic model for this phenomenon. They highlight two usually overlooked conditions to understand the molecular nature of clonal organisms to explain asexuals' developmental diversity and biologically vague cases such as automixis and polyploidy.

It is demonstrated that Hamblin's 15 tense theorem does not only hold for temporal logic with linear time but also for branching time. Furthermore three other theorems with finitely many tenses are shown.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:46 HUME IN THE GOTTINGISCHE ANZEIGEN: 1739-1800 Surprisingly little historical and systematic work has been done on the early reception of Hume's philosophy in Germany. Although there are quite a number of papers and books devoted to discussing Kant's relation to Hume, these are, for the most part, thoroughly uninformed by the historical background of Kant's reception of Hume. The question of what Kant actually knew of Hume is (...) raised over and over again, but, in the absence of new evidence, does not seem to admit of any satisfactory answer. These two circumstances, namely, the lack of historical work on Hume's reception in eighteenthcentury Germany, and the seeming futility of discussions concerning Kant's knowledge of Hume, are closely related. For, given the relative sparsity of Kant's remarks on Hume, new light on the Kant-Hume relation will have to come from the general background of Kant's thinking and writing. Once we know that works of Hume were known in Germany, how they were seen, and how they figured, if they did, in the thought of Kant's contemporaries, we will perhaps be able to make more sense of Kant's sometimes 2 cryptic remarks about Hume. But I believe it would be a serious mistake to look at Hume's reception in Germany from an exclusively Kantian point of view. Quite independent of the Kant-Hume relation philosophically important as it obviously is — it should prove interesting to see how Hume was received by his contemporaries in Germany, and whether their view of him reveals interesting aspects of his thought that were seen neither in Britain nor in France. It is clear, however, that the discussion of the reception of Hume in eighteenth-century Germany 47 is far too large an undertaking to be attempted in one article. Therefore I shall attempt to trace, by means of a descriptive bibliography, the rough outline of the history of his reception in just one German publication: the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (GGA). This journal seems to me a particularly good place to start an account of Hume's German Rezept ionsgeschichte because, first, it covers the entire period during which Hume could have influenced German thought. For the GGA began appearing in 1739, the very year in which Hume's Treatise was first published, and it is still being published today. Thus it can supply us with a continuous series of documents from 1739 to the present. Second, since the GGA was begun when Hannover, and thus Gottingen, were closely linked to Britain because of the Personalunion, it had a greater interest in British thought than most other German journals. Thus it reported British developments more quickly than did other German 4 journals. Third, and partially as a result of the British connection, the GGA very soon became one of the most prestigious German journals. What was being said in its reviews carried greater weight, or, at the very least, must be assumed to have been more widely read, than what was put forward in many other German publications. It is useful to divide Hume's early German influence into roughly four different periods. The first period lasted from 1739 to the early 5 seventies. This period saw the translation of most of Hume's works into French and German, and it may be characterized as the time of Hume's first reception. The second period began in the early seventies and lasted to the early eighties. During this time, Hume's Scottish critics Reid, Oswald and Beattie, as 48 well as their and Hume's critic, Joseph Priestley, became better known in Germany, and thus changed the German view of Hume. But this change appears also to have been connected with the more thorough discussion of Hume in Germany itself, and with the reception of Hume's posthumously published writings. The third period I see beginning with the appearance of Kant's first Critique (1781) and the Prolegomena (1783), which, at first, were seen by him as well as by his contemporaries as a continuation of the Humean enterprise. This clearly had significant effects on the way in which Hume was... (shrink)

Dans la continuité des travaux qu’elle a consacrés à la divination et à la théurgie dans le néoplatonisme antique, Crystal Addey publie un ouvrage collectif qui s’intéresse à un aspect trop souvent négligé des pratiques divinatoires antiques, leur rapport au(x) savoir(s) et à la rationalité. Les dix contributions qui composent le livre se concentrent principalement sur des sources philosophiques (Platon, Xénophon, Cicéron, Plutarque, Apulée), théologiques (les Pères de l’Église) et mystiques...

Summary In this article three dramas, quite subjectively picked out of the extensive literature, in which scientists play an important part and science constitutes a main subject, are analysed to find out, what are the underlying and implicit epistemological ideas.