Scaling of pattern with size has been described and studied for over a century, yet its molecular basis is understood in only a few cases. In a recent, elegant study, Inomata and colleagues proposed a new model explaining how bone morphogenic protein (BMP) activity gradient scales with embryo size in the early Xenopus laevis embryo. We discuss their results in conjunction with an alternative model we proposed previously. The expansion‐repression mechanism (ExR) provides a conceptual framework unifying both mechanisms. Results of (...) Inomata and colleagues implicate the chordin‐stabilizing protein sizzled as the expander molecule enabling scaling, while we attributed this role to the BMP ligand Admp. The two expanders may work in concert, as suggested by the mathematical model of Inomata et al. We discuss approaches for differentiating the contribution of sizzled and Admp to pattern scaling. (shrink)

This paper studies the role that known bounds on message transmission times in a computer network play on the evolution of the epistemic state over time. A connection to cones of causal influence analogous to, and more general than, light cones is presented. Focusing on lower bounds on message transmission times, an analysis is presented of how knowledge about when others are guaranteed to be ignorant about an event of interest can arise. This has implications in competitive settings, in which (...) knowing about another’s ignorance can provide an advantage. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMost legal theorists and philosophers of law who work in the analytic tradition believe that intellectual progress in their fields necessarily means going ‘deeper’: coming up with more nuan...

This paper addresses the phenomenon of judicial greatness by developing a general concept of greatness and applying it to law. Under the view offered in the paper, greatness is connected to theoretical or methodological diversification. When applied to adjudication, this means that great judges are revered because they successfully make a prima facie case for their novel adjudicative methods. This is not a judicial duty but rather a voluntary project. However, once a judge succeeds in making such a prima facie (...) case, he is exempt from other judicial duties. This thesis challenges many theories of judicial duty, which do not allow normative room for supererogatory actions in law. The paper demonstrates these claims by discussing two paradigmatic great judges – Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Holmes. (shrink)

The effect of upper bounds on message delivery times in a computer network upon the dynamics of knowledge gain is investigated. Recent work has identified centipedes and brooms—causal structures that combine message chains with time bound information—as necessary conditions for knowledge gain and common knowledge gain, respectively. This paper shows that, under the full-information protocol, these structures are both necessary and sufficient for such epistemic gain. We then apply this analysis to gain insights into the relation between “everyone knows” and (...) common knowledge. We prove a tight threshold on the depth k, beyond which Ek G (everyone in G knows nested to depth k) collapses into CG (common knowledge), when this knowledge concerns the occurrence of a spontaneous event. The threshold depends on the size of the group G of agents, as well as the time that has elapsed since the event of interest occurred. The existence of such a threshold is not guaranteed for all protocols, which is demonstrated here by presenting a counterexample in which no such threshold exists. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's ‘higher men’ doctrine, which explains how he can simultaneously hold the following two positions: first, that higher types are especially important or valuable; and second, that all moral claims are false. Nietzsche can coherently subscribe to both views by arguing that higher types have wide inter-subjective value to lower types. More specifically, higher men, who are mainly characterized by their strong, commanding nature, fulfill a psychological need, common in most humans—the need to (...) obey. The paper develops this conception of higher types and shows how it relates to Nietzsche's insights on culture, nihilism, and becoming. (shrink)

This paper offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's ‘higher men’ doctrine, which explains how he can simultaneously hold the following two positions: first, that higher types are especially important or valuable; and second, that all moral claims are false. Nietzsche can coherently subscribe to both views by arguing that higher types have wide inter-subjective value to lower types. More specifically, higher men, who are mainly characterized by their strong, commanding nature, fulfill a psychological need, common in most humans—the need to (...) obey. The paper develops this conception of higher types and shows how it relates to Nietzsche's insights on culture, nihilism, and becoming. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay presents and discusses how James Rennel (1742–1830), a royal cartographer in eighteenth-century Bengal and father of British Modern Geography, presented and discussed the biblical concept of "exile" as a "practice" for the benefit of the empire. Following Rennell's readings in Biblical and Classical texts, this essay shows how Rennell intervened in contemporary European debates about Jews and trade.

What is sovereignty? Often taken for granted or seen as the ideology of European states vying for supremacy and conquest, the concept of sovereignty remains underexamined both in the history of its practices and in its aesthetic and intellectual underpinnings. Using global intellectual history as a bridge between approaches, periods, and areas, The Scaffolding of Sovereignty deploys a comparative and theoretically rich conception of sovereignty to reconsider the different schemes on which it has been based or renewed, the public stages (...) on which it is erected or destroyed, and the images and ideas on which it rests. The essays in The Scaffolding of Sovereignty reveal that sovereignty has always been supported, complemented, and enforced by a complex aesthetic and intellectual scaffolding. This collection takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigating the concept on a global scale, ranging from an account of a Manchu emperor building a mosque to a discussion of the continuing power of Lenin's corpse, from an analysis of the death of kings in classical Greek tragedy to an exploration of the imagery of "the people" in the Age of Revolutions. Across seventeen chapters that closely study specific historical regimes and conflicts, the book's contributors examine intersections of authority, power, theatricality, science and medicine, jurisdiction, rulership, human rights, scholarship, religious and popular ideas, and international legal thought that support or undermine different instances of sovereign power and its representations. (shrink)

What is sovereignty? Often taken for granted or seen as the ideology of European states vying for supremacy and conquest, the concept of sovereignty remains underexamined both in the history of its practices and in its aesthetic and intellectual underpinnings. Using global intellectual history as a bridge between approaches, periods, and areas, The Scaffolding of Sovereignty deploys a comparative and theoretically rich conception of sovereignty to reconsider the different schemes on which it has been based or renewed, the public stages (...) on which it is erected or destroyed, and the images and ideas on which it rests. The essays in The Scaffolding of Sovereignty reveal that sovereignty has always been supported, complemented, and enforced by a complex aesthetic and intellectual scaffolding. This collection takes a multidisciplinary approach to investigating the concept on a global scale, ranging from an account of a Manchu emperor building a mosque to a discussion of the continuing power of Lenin’s corpse, from an analysis of the death of kings in classical Greek tragedy to an exploration of the imagery of “the people” in the Age of Revolutions. Across seventeen chapters that closely study specific historical regimes and conflicts, the book’s contributors examine intersections of authority, power, theatricality, science and medicine, jurisdiction, rulership, human rights, scholarship, religious and popular ideas, and international legal thought that support or undermine different instances of sovereign power and its representations. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 25, Issue 2, pp 256 - 278 Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook’s essay “The War” is a text of immense importance with respect to the development of ideological militaristic writing in religious Zionism. The essay was first published in the book _Orot me-Ofel_, edited by R. Kook’s son, Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook. In this study, I wish to distinguish the views presented in the notebooks and collected writings of R. Kook from his position as set forth in (...) the edited essay, which bears the stamp of the editor’s interpretation. Nine of the essay’s ten passages were written during World War I, and only the first passage, which bears the theological-militant stamp, does not appear in the collections of manuscripts from which the essay was constructed. My aim is to trace how R. Zvi Yehudah edited the essay and to explore the important influence of this passage. (shrink)

According to the epistemic account of request normativity, a request gives us reasons by revealing normatively relevant information. The information is normative, not the request itself. I raise a new objection to the epistemic account based on situations where we might try to avoid someone requesting something of us. The best explanation of these situations seems to be that we do not want to acquire a new reason to do something. For example, if you know I am going to ask (...) you to read a draft of my paper, you might avoid running into me so as to avoid acquiring a reason to read a draft of my paper. I then argue that the epistemic account can successfully reply to this objection and that in fact the epistemic account does a better job of accounting for cases like this than competing views of the normativity of requests. (shrink)

Claims concerning processes, claims of the form “xisφing”, have been the subject of renewed interest in recent years in the philosophy of action. However, this interest has frequently limited itself to noting certain formal features such claims have, and has not extended to a discussion of when they are true. This article argues that a claim of the form “xisφing” is true when what is happening withxis such that, if it is not interrupted, a φing will occur. It then applies (...) itself more directly to the case of action, arguing that when “xisφing” describesx's intentional action, it is true iffxis acting from a method she knows to be sufficient to φ, in the sense that if she is not interrupted in carrying out this method, she will φ. I use this criterion to argue that the carbon‐copier example Donald Davidson gives in “Intending” fails to refute Elizabeth Anscombe's claim that an agent who is φing intentionally knows that she is, because the agent in Davidson's example is not intentionally making the copies. (shrink)

Abstract:This article sets out two central theses. Both theses primarily involve a fundamental criticism of current contractarian business ethics (CBE), but if these can be sustained, they also constitute two boundary conditions for any future contractarian theory of business ethics. The first, which I label the self-discipline thesis, claims that current CBE would gain considerably in focus if more attention were paid to the logic of the social contract argument. By this I mean the aims set by the theorist and (...) method of reasoning by which normative conclusions are drawn in the contract model. The second, to which I refer as the domain-specificity thesis, argues that current CBE needs to be better adapted to its field of application and the specific goals which it aims to establish. I will substantiate these two theses on the basis of a comparative analysis of CBE with two earlier families of social contract theories. (shrink)

Scanlon (2008) has argued that his theory of permissibility (STP) has more explanatory power than the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE). I believe this claim is wrong. Borrowing Michael Walzer’s method of inquiry, I will evaluate the explanatory virtue of these accounts by their understanding of actual moral intuitions originated in historical cases. Practically, I will evaluate these accounts as they explain cases of hostage crises. The main question in this context is: is it permissible that nation-states act with military (...) force in order to liberate hostages, even if those actions put the lives of the hostages at risk? The first part of this paper has an operative reconstruction of the relevant theories. In the second section, two cases of hostage crises will be considered: the Moscow theater hostage crisis of 2002, and the Jaque Operation, which occurred in Colombia in 2008. Additionally, it will be shown that DDE explains these cases better than STP. Finally, this paper offers a critical analysis of Scanlon’s account of the explanatory power of both STP and DDE. (shrink)

The article examines the compatibility of agonistic democracy and populism as well as their relationship to the idea of constitutionalism. The first part shows that Chantal Mouffe’s recent attempts to reconcile her normative approach of an agonistic pluralism with a populist style of politics are not fully convincing. Although there are undeniable commonalities between an agonistic and a populist understanding of politics – the appreciation of conflict, the rejection of moralistic and juridical modes of conflict resolution etc. – the populist (...) mode of the construction of the people (and the denunciation of political opponents as enemies of the people) risks impeding the transformation of antagonistic into agonistic modes of political contest. The tensions between agonism and populism are especially evident in matters of constitutionalism. This topic is examined in the second part of the article, which provides some ideas for reducing the normative and institutional blind spots of contemporary theories of agonistic democracy. It focuses on elementary principles for an agonistic concept of democratic constitutionalism that differs from the populist view of the relationship between politics and law, especially in respect of its interpretation of the concept of ‘resistibility’ of legal norms. (shrink)

The computation of both Scalar Implicatures (SI) and Association with Focus (AF) is characterized with reference to sets of alternatives. However, it has generally been assumed that the relevant alternatives are determined in different ways for the two processes. Specifically, it has been assumed that the alternatives for SI – scalar alternatives – are computed by a special procedure specifically designed for implicatures, whereas the alternatives for AF – focus alternatives – are determined by the general theory of association with (...) focus – focus semantics. As far as we know, the only attempt to connect the two is Krifka (1995), under which scalar alternatives and focus alternatives are identical and determined by focus semantics. However, Krifka’s result is based on a specific stipulation about scalar items, which he borrows from Horn and incorporates into focus semantics, namely that scalar items are inherently focused and have their Horn Scale as their lexically specified focus values. (shrink)

There is ample discussion of MBA self-serving values in the corporate social responsibility literature, and yet empirical studies regarding the corporate manifestations and consequences of those values are scant. In a comprehensive study of major US public corporations, we find that MBA CEOs are more apt than their non-MBA counterparts to engage in short-term strategic expedients such as positive earnings management and suppression of R&D, which in turn are followed by compromised firm market valuations.

In this stunning reappraisal of the celebrated case of Daniel Paul Schreber, Lothane takes the reader on a richly documented tour of all the ingredients that made Schreber's illness a unique psychiatric event. Building outward from a close examination of Schreber's troubled relationship to his two psychiatrists, Flechsig and Weber, Lothane elaborates the personal, familial, and cultural contexts of Schreber's illness. Incorporating extensive new archival and bibliographic research, and providing extensive accounts of the personalities and theories of Schreber's two psychiatrists, (...) Paul Flechsig and Guido Weber, Zvi Lothane offers a stunning reappraisal of the Schreber case that overturns virtually all previous opinion. Lothane examines both the man and his milieu in a way that allows the reader fresh access not only to the tragedy of Schreber's illness but also to his heroic, if doomed, attempts to come to terms with his condition through writing. In the process, he persuasively demonstrates that important issues of both psychiatric diagnosis and psychoanalytic interpretation have heretofore been compromised by a failure to pay sufficient attention to Schreber's interpersonal, cultural, and historical contexts. (shrink)

In these challenging times, connectedness has become more necessary than ever before. Meanwhile, research in organizations highlighted the importance of entrainment, a process of synchronizing rhythms over time that drives connectedness within, between, and across rhythmic activities. It is also suggested that an inner life and spiritual leadership coherence can play a key role in this process, out of which spiritual well-being emerges. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the conditions for entrainment through the revised model of spiritual (...) leadership at a professional services company that employs multiple teams simultaneously, as presented by Sandra & Nandram (Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion 17(4):316–332, 2020 ). It verifies if inner life and spiritual leadership coherence are jointly sufficient to foster the emergence of spiritual well-being, both at the individual and at the group level. Next, it seeks to understand how teams differ on these variables. To generate a more holistic insight, it uses an explanatory sequential research design as mixed methods approach, integrating and comparing quantitative data from eighty-six participants across fourteen teams with qualitative data from five team leaders. The findings support that inner life and spiritual leadership coherence can be usefully deployed in a consistent way to understand the emergence of spiritual well-being through entrainment. It further supports that developing personal spiritual leadership directly influences the level of spiritual leadership of the group to which the individual belongs. Finally, better performing teams pay more attention to inner life practices, while taking care of their team members. (shrink)

The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber ), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways—by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility behavior by local firms (...) and the social distancing of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were long-established, isomorphic in their CSR, and major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities. (shrink)

In this paper, the process for firms to decide whether or not to invest in corporate social responsibility is treated from a real option perspective. We extend the Husted framework with an important extra parameter that allows us to understand the timing of CSR investment and explain why some companies drag their feet over CSR investments. Our model explicitly allows for the impact of the opportunity cost of delaying the CSR investment decision, providing firms with tools to determine the optimal (...) moment of exercising the CSR investment option. We illustrate our timing model through a case study and analyze governmental support strategies for CSR from a real options perspective. (shrink)

This article argues that standard causal and functionalist definitions of realization fail to account for the realization of entities that cannot be individuated in causal or functional terms. By modifying such definitions to require that realizers also logically suffice for any historical properties of the entities they realize, one can provide for the realization of entities whose resistance to causal/functional individuation stems from their possession of individuative historical properties. But if qualia cannot be causally or functionally individuated, then qualia can (...) be physically realized only if the thesis that all things are physical or physically realized is insufficient for physicalism. (shrink)

Chalmers’ meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining “problem reports”; i.e. reports to the effect that phenomenal consciousness has the various features that give rise to the hard problem. Chalmers suggests that solving the meta-problem will likely “shed significant light on the hard problem.” Against this, I argue that work on the meta-problem will likely fail to make the hard problem any easier. For each of the main stances on the hard problem can provide an account of problem reports, (...) and we have no way of deciding which of these accounts gives the correct explanation of an individual’s problem reports without presupposing a stance on the hard problem. We thus cannot determine which of the available solutions to the meta-problem is correct without having already solved the hard problem. (shrink)

All families are political, each in its own way. Nevertheless, the diversity of family politics has not negated, by and large, patriarchal influence on the Political Family. This Article introduces the Political Family as a key concept in a scholarly and activist movement in family law studies which I identify as Critical Family Law. In Part I a reminder is offered that “alternative families” have existed since the dawn of history. However, I argue that despite constant changes in the configuration (...) of the family, for the most part all family forms have adhered to patriarchy. Part II offers a brief overview of some of the central themes in contemporary critical study of family law. I show how dichotomies such as private/public and intervention/autonomy have lain at the basis of the definition of the family since antiquity, constantly shifting the very meaning of the family across time, cultures and legal traditions, but rarely challenging its patriarchal ideology. Such challenges necessitate a critical look at the language of rights and obligations within the family, in acknowledgment that this very discourse is already saturated with ideology and biased preconceptions. Under the umbrella of “Critical Family Law,” I explore the potential for promoting such a shift, discussing articles in this issue. In memory of Paula Ettelbrick, 1955-2011. (shrink)

Recently there has been a lively revival of interest in implicatures, particularly scalar implicatures. Building on the resulting literature, our main goal in the present paper is to establish an empirical generalization, namely that SIs can occur systematically and freely in arbitrarily embedded positions. We are not so much concerned with the question whether drawing implicatures is a costly option (in terms of semantic processing, or of some other markedness measure). Nor are we specifically concerned with how implicatures come about (...) (even though, to get going, we will have to make some specific assumptions on this matter). The focus of our discussion is testing the claim of the pervasive embeddability of SIs in just about any context, a claim that remains so far controversial. While our main goal is the establishment of an empirical generalization, if we succeed, a predominant view on the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics will have to be revised. A secondary goal of this paper is to hint at evidence that a revision is needed on independent grounds. But let us first present, in a rather impressionistic way, the reasons why a revision would be required if our main generalization on embedded SIs turns out to be correct. In the tradition stemming from Grice (1989), implicatures are considered a wholly pragmatic phenomenon and SIs are often used as paramount examples. Within such a tradition, 㳊 semantics is taken to deal with the compositional construction of sentence meaning (a term which we are using for now in a loose, non technical way), while pragmatics deals with how sentence meaning is actually put to use (i.e. enriched and possibly modified through reasoning about speakers’ intentions, contextually relevant information, etc.). Simply put, on this view pragmatics takes place at the level of complete utterances and pragmatic enrichments are a root phenomenon (something that happens globally to sentences) rather than a compositional one.. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse visited Israel in late December 1971 . Summing up his political conclusions at the end of his visit, he published an article in the English-language Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post under the title “Israel is Strong Enough to Concede.”1 A Hebrew translation of that article appeared concurrently in the Israeli daily Haaretz under the title “My Opinions on the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Israel Must Accept the Existence of a Palestinian State.”2 A few days prior to the publication of his (...) article in the Israeli press, Marcuse met with journalists and other guests…. (shrink)

Evolution, mathematics, and the evolution of mathematics -- Mathematics and the Greeks' view of the world -- Mathematics and the view of the world in early modern times -- Mathematics and the modern view of the world -- The mathematics of randomness -- The mathematics of human behavior -- computations and computers -- Is there really no doubt? -- The nature of research in mathematics -- Why is teaching and learning mathematics so hard?

This book provides a succinct, student-friendly outline of the principles, approaches, and issues in participant observation. An examination of these basic tenets is important for clarifying the philosophical rationale for conducting participant observation, making important research decisions, and appreciating the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches within the method. Participant observation as a formal means of inquiry is developed in close relation with the competing approaches of reality (ontology), truthfully apprehending reality (epistemology), and formal research (methodology). In this volume Jorgensen (...) discusses the resulting methodologies of positivism, humanism, and most recently postmodernism in relation to principles, approaches, and issues in participant observation. Specific features of participant observation, as exemplified in a wide range of classic and contemporary studies, are examined by way of these methodological approaches along with the troublesome complexities of values, politics, ethics, and contemporary debates over appropriate representations of the resulting findings about human life. This concise primer is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines such as anthropology, religious studies, sociology and nursing. (shrink)

Theories of phenomenal intentionality have been claimed to resolve certain worries about the indeterminacy of mental content that rival, externalist theories face. Thus far, however, such claims have been largely programmatic. This paper aims to improve on prior arguments in favor of phenomenal intentionality by using attention and Gestalt principles as specific examples of factors that influence the phenomenal character of perceptual experience in ways that thereby help determine perceptual content. Some reasons are then offered for rejecting an alternative interpretation (...) of these examples, according to which the phenomenal effects of attention and Gestalt principles play no role in the determination of perceptual content. (shrink)

Focusing on Correspondence from the Double-Cassia Studio (Shuanggui xuan chidu 雙桂軒尺牘), a collection of letters by a gentlewoman named Ding Shanyi 丁善儀 (1799–after 1861), this paper examines how elite women in mid-nine- teenth-century China applied epistolary conventions in their social life. Com- pared to other literary collections of individual women in late imperial China, Ding’s letter collection is exceptional in recording the life of its author through the epistolary genre and in revealing the sociopolitical dynamics that underlay elite women’s epistolary (...) gentility. Ding’s letters are indicative of the noticeable concerns shared by gentlewomen in mid-nineteenth-century China and provide specific contexts for understanding some of the epistolary techniques used by lit- erary women to facilitate social networking. This paper uncovers Ding’s life and explores three major themes in her epistolary collection: her responses to crises, concerns about health, and cultivation of friendship. Ding’s letters show how elite women evinced sophistication and erudition in their epistolary composition, which was an important way for them to express themselves and demonstrate their mas- tery of language and rhetorical tradition. (shrink)