Type II DNA topoisomerases (Topo II) are essential enzymes implicated in key nuclear processes. The recent discovery of a novel kind of Topo II (DNA topoisomerase VI) in Archaea led to a division of these enzymes into two non‐homologous families, (Topo IIA and Topo IIB) and to the identification of the eukaryotic protein that initiates meiotic recombination, Spo11. In the present report, we have updated the distribution of all Topo II in the three domains of life by a phylogenomic approach. (...) Both families exhibit an atypical distribution by comparison with other informational proteins, with predominance of Topo IIA in Bacteria, Eukarya and viruses, and Topo IIB in Archaea. However, plants and some Archaea contain Topo II from both families. We confront this atypical distribution with current hypotheses on the evolution of the three domains of life and origin of DNA genomes. BioEssays 25:232–242, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Many common arguments for physicalism begin with the principle that the cosmos is “causally closed.” But how good are the arguments for causal closure itself? I argue that the deductive, a priori arguments on behalf of causal closure tend to beg the question. The extant inductive arguments fare no better. They commit a sampling error or a non-sequitur, or else offer conclusions that remain compatible with causal openness. In short, we have no good arguments that the physical world is causally (...) closed. (shrink)

The Ibadis, a religious minority that survived in North Africa and Oman, claim to be the democrats of Islam. The present study highlights their key role in promoting a political alternative to the Caliphate through a collegial model of government. I.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

The meaning of the term logagogy is elucidated, and logagogic practices are outlined in the history of medicine. It is shown how the traditional medicine of India, Ayurveda, shows signs of logagogic practices(sattvavajaya), and that not only Ayurveda but also the famous Greek physician Galenus emphasize a philosophical approach to medicine. As Galenus’s logagogic practices have their roots in the tradition of practical philosophy in Greek antiquity, the most important Greek schools of thought that are relevant to logagogic approaches are (...) sketched. It is shown that the Stoics created a rationalistic system emphasizing the importance of the logos for human beings, and that Epicurus made advances in psychoeducation and cognitive reframing that are important for logagogic practices. These logagogic approaches of antiquity have been taken up by modern counseling in philosophical practices. The article closes with an outline of a clinical logagogy. (shrink)

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance affects a firm's capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to compete in (...) foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature - the relationship between R&D investment and a firm's multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Brentano is perhaps most famously renowned for his re-deployment of Scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ in the elaboration of his novel science of ‘descriptive psychology’ in the mid-1870s and 1880s. In this re-deployment, however, Brentano adapted the original Scholastic meanings of both of these terms. Thus Brentano advanced not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality.1 These theses, however, are often not properly distinguished, and consequently they are more often confused. Nevertheless, once the two theses are distinguished, (...) Brentano’s basic descriptive-psychological tenet of the intentionality of consciousness is more readily understandable on its own terms. Whether Brentano’s descriptive-psychological tenet is entirely acceptable philosophically, or not, of course, is another matter but this presupposes understanding in a straightforward sense what Brentano’s doctrine is. In this article, I will be concerned mainly with Brentano’s re-introduction of ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874),2 even though it is Brentano’s (second) thesis on ‘intentional act’, one that he developed after his 1874 publication, that is more generally well known and examined. While acknowledging that many versions of ‘Brentano’s thesis’, as it is usually (and loosely) referred to by commentators today, have been re-worked in modern philosophy of mind, this article focuses attention on some of the main points of convergence and deviance between the original Scholastic concept and Brentano’s ‘new’ concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (shrink)

This paper analyses Heidegger’s controversial advancement of Husserl’s idea of philosophy and phenomenological research towards ‘the Being-Question’ and its relation to ‘Dasein’. It concentrates on Heidegger’s elision of Dilthey and Husserl’s different concepts of ‘Descriptive Psychology’ in his 1925 Summer Semester lecture-course, with Husserl’s concept losing out in the competition, as background to the formulation of ‘the Being-Question’ in Being and Time (1927). It argues that Heidegger establishes his own position within phenomenology on the basis of a partial appropriation of (...) Dilthey’s hermeneutical manner of thinking, an appropriation that was later radically called into question by Levinas on Diltheyean-hermeneutical-philosophical grounds. (shrink)

This paper evaluates how Amartya Sen’s critique of revealed preference theory stands against the latter’s contemporary, ‘neo-Samuelsonian’ version. Neo- Samuelsonians have argued that Sen’s arguments against RPT are innocuous, in particular once it is acknowledged that RPT does not assume away the existence of motivations or other latent psychological or cognitive processes. Sen’s claims that preferences and choices need to be distinguished and that external factors need to be taken into account to analyze the act of choice then appear to (...) be irrelevant. However, while it is true that contemporary revealed preference theory partially evades Sen’s critique, I show that the latter is still relevant outside the restricted areas of consumer choice and market dynamics. In particular, Sen’s views regarding the importance of incomplete preferences and the multiplicity of levels of agency can hardly be integrated into the framework of CRPT. This is a significant limit, given the imperialistic claims of some of the proponents of the latter. (shrink)

Karl Buhler (1879-1963) was one of the leading theoreticians of language of the twentieth century. This is an English translation of Buhler's theory that begins with a survey on 'Buhler's legacy' for modern linguistics (Werner Abraham), followed by the Theory of Language, and finally with a special 'Postscript: Twenty-five Years Later!'.

:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has (...) a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based. (shrink)

The article will bring some theoretical considerations to be applied to a study of the goal‐structure of human life.One of the theoretical questions in which this study is interested concerns the origin of the different goals and goal‐changes during life. One of the central questions is how goal‐setting and goal‐changes are brought about, what factors are responsible, what mechanisms come into play.The material of the planned research study will be selected individual and interview cases whose goal‐development and goal‐changes will be (...) examined and interpreted.The present study is to survey some of the concepts and theoretical considerations to be applied in the study of individual's goal‐setting, toward a general theory of goal‐setting in human life. (shrink)

Glowacki asserts that interdependent relationships beyond group boundaries are exceptionally rare among nonhuman mammals. However, rudimentary forms of interdependence can be seen in primate species that form multilevel societies, that is, core social units embedded within higher-level grouping categories. Studies of primate multilevel societies can enrich discussions about the evolutionary origins of peaceful between-group interactions in humans.

The essays contained in Beyond the Juxtaposition of Nature and Culture represent an attempt by scholars from Canada, Germany, and Mexico to come to grips with the innovative work of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader who has proposed nothing less than a new theory of nature, according to which there are at least three different orders--the material-biotic, the quantum, and the human--which differ from one another according to their different configurations of space-time, and which cannot be reduced the (...) one to the others. Each author takes up Krader's theory in relation to its impact on their own discipline: sociology, anthropology, the study of myth, the theory of labor and value, economics, linguistics, and aesthetics. The question of how nature and culture can be integrated within a theoretical framework which links them in difference and nexus and allows each their non-reductive space leads each of the contributors to move in their thinking beyond the old dualisms of materialism and idealism, fact and value, nature and culture. (shrink)

This article presents a community-based account of salience as an alternative and a complement to the ‘natural salience’ approach which is endorsed by almost all game theorists who use this concept. While in the naturalistic approach, salience is understood as an objective and natural property of some entities, the community-based account claims that salience is a function of community membership. Building on David Lewis’s theory of common knowledge and on some of its recent refined accounts, I suggest that salience acts (...) as a correlating device in a correlated equilibrium. What is constitutive of salience is common understanding, the fact that agents have common knowledge that they share the same modes of reasoning with respect to a well-identified set of events. I argue that the basis for common understanding is community membership. The relevance of this account stems from the fact that it answers the objection that salience is either unnecessary or unable to account for coordination between rational agents. (shrink)

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance (CSP) affects a firm’s capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises (MNEs) need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to (...) compete in foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature – the relationship between R&D investment and a firm’s multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Issues of academic integrity, specifically knowledge of, perceptions and attitudes toward plagiarism, are well documented in post-secondary settings using case studies for specific courses, recording discourse with focus groups, analyzing cross-cultural education philosophies, and reviewing the current literature. In this paper, the authors examine the perceptions of graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines at the University of Florida regarding misconduct and integrity issues. Results revealed students’ perceptions of the definition and seriousness of potential academic misconduct, knowledge of (...) institutional procedures, and views on faculty actions, all with a focus on divergences between US and internationally-educated students. The open-ended questions provide anecdotal evidence to highlight personal experiences, positive and negative, aimed at the faculty, international students and undergraduates. Combined, these findings outline an important part of the campus academic integrity culture at a major American university. Recommendations for local actions also are discussed. (shrink)

This text expounds and relates the ethical and religious views of a philosopher that are usually discussed in terms of language. (Philosophy).