Abnormalities in the ability of cells to properly degrade proteins have been identified in many neurodegenerative diseases. Recent work has implicated synaptojanin 1 (SynJ1) in Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, although the role of this polyphosphoinositide phosphatase in protein degradation has not been thoroughly described. Here, we dissected in vivo the role of SynJ1 in endolysosomal trafficking in zebrafish cone photoreceptors using a SynJ1‐deficient zebrafish mutant, nrca14. We found that loss of SynJ1 leads to specific accumulation of late endosomes and (...) autophagosomes early in photoreceptor development. An analysis of autophagic flux revealed that autophagosomes accumulate because of a defect in maturation. In addition we found an increase in vesicles that are highly enriched for PI(3)P, but negative for an early endosome marker in nrca14 cones. A mutational analysis of SynJ1 enzymatic domains found that activity of the 5'phosphatase, but not the Sac1 domain, is required to rescue both aberrant late endosomes and autophagosomes. Finally, modulating activity of the PI(4,5)P2 regulator, Arf6, rescued the disrupted trafficking pathways in nrca14 cones. Our study describes a specific role for SynJ1 in autophagosomal and endosomal trafficking and provides evidence that PI(4,5)P2 participates in autophagy in a neuronal cell type. -/- . (shrink)

William Sidney Allen, 1918B2004 George Wishart Anderson, 1913B2002 Albinia Catherine de la Mare, 1932B2001 John Stanton Flemming, 1941B2003 Patrick Gardiner James William Harris, 1940B2004 John Gilbert Hurst, 1927B2003 Casimir Lewy, 1919B1991 George Donald Alastair MacDougall, 1912B2004 Henry Colin Gray Matthew, 1941B1999 Edward Miller, 1915B2000 Michio Morishima, 1923B2004 William Brian Reddaway, 1913B2002 Marjorie Ethel Reeves, 1905B2003 Charles Martin Robertson, 1911B2004 Conrad Sebastian Robert Russell, 1937B2004 Arnold Joseph Taylor, 1911B2002 Kathleen Mary Tillotson, 1906B2001 Glanmor Williams, 1920-2005.

We discuss and respond to the contributions of Tatjana Hörnle, John Kleinig, and John Stanton-Ife, and clarify some aspects of the arguments made in Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs.

We discuss and respond to the contributions of Tatjana Hörnle, John Kleinig, and John Stanton-Ife, and clarify some aspects of the arguments made in Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs.

A vaccine for hepatitis B became available in the UK from 1982, but it did not solve the public health dilemmas presented by the disease. In the decade that followed, epidemiologically important groups such as intravenous drug users and gay men were not targetted, while the groups of health workers at the centre of policy concern received little vaccine. This paper draws on models of diffusion, the pattern of the disease, and previous policies on screening, to explain the restricted vaccine (...) policy which was a field for contention through the 1980s and into the 1990s. (shrink)

Cameron and Williamson have provided a provocative and timely review of the ethical questions prompted by the birth of Dolly. The question Cameron and Williamson seek to address is “In the world of Dolly, when does a human embryo acquire respect?”. Their initial discussion sets the scene by providing a valuable overview of attitudes towards the embryo, summarising various religious, scientific, and philosophical viewpoints. They then ask, “What has Dolly changed?” and identify five changes, the first being that fertilisation is (...) no longer required to create an embryo. Following this analysis they then ask when an embryo created other than by fertilisation begins to acquire respect. This paper explores the ethical and legal issues highlighted by Cameron and Williamson’s paper. (shrink)

We explore the implications of a hierarchical structure, consisting of the higher order dimensions of nonspecific Positive Activation and Negative Activation and multiple specific negative affects and positive affects at the lower level. Emotional blends of the same valence are an essential part of this structure and form the basis of the higher order Negative and Positive Activation dimensions. Mixed cross-valence emotions are not central to this hierarchical scheme but are compatible with it. We examine the frequency of pure emotional (...) states, same-valence emotional blends, and cross-valence mixed emotions in a large momentary mood sample. (shrink)

What is data? That question is the fundamental investigation of this dissertation. I have developed a methodology from social-scientific processes to explore how different people understand the concept of data, rather than to rely on my own philosophical intuitions or thought experiments about the “nature” of data. The evidence I have gathered as to different individuals' constructions of data can be used to inform further inquiry of data and the design of information systems. My research demonstrates that people have different (...) constructions of data. The methodology of the SDFN, created for this dissertation, has proven able to probe those understandings. The SDFN, loosely based on a DFD and combined with ideas from SNA, provides a way of discovering practical definitions of hard-to-operationalize terms like data. The process of repeatedly categorizing various items as data allows the methodology to explore how participants actually use the term, rather than relying on theoretical dictionary-based definitions. Analysis of the interviews found three different constructions of data: data as communications, a container for meaning; data as subjective observations, sense-impressions filtered by knowledge; and data as objective facts, measurements revealing the relationships of reality. (shrink)

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

This paper explores the transformation of Twitter from the traditional developer based command and control into something strangely democratic: a social construction of utility, a twisting of this once unique service to serve the needs and desires, ever evolving, of its users. We explore changes in the social constructions of Twitter and use recent research in the Philosophy of Data to suggest potential explanations.

This paper explores recent research done into the philosophy of data. The research utilizes experimental philosophy ideas combined with Information Technology methodologies to assess participants' philosophies of data. Reusing the concept of the Data Flow Diagram, I suggest a methodology of experimental philosophy that allows participants to categorize flows into data, information, and knowledge in order to explore their practical understanding instead of their theoretical understanding. My research has found three distinct philosophies: "data as bits" "data as hard numbers," and (...) "data as recorded observations. (shrink)

In this document, we explore the Philosophy of Data and its roots amongst other disciplines. The Philosophy of Data seeks to understand the nature of data through experimental philosophy. In order to understand the many different ontologies of data, information, and knowledge out there, this paper will describe part of the problem space in terms of other disciplines and make an argument for the establishment of this new philosophical field. Furthermore, we will show how the PoD is very important to (...) IS scholars and practitioners. (shrink)

Psychology in its intellectual context -- The work of integration and a Christian view of persons -- Neuroscience, embodiment and mind -- Behavior genetics and responsible personhood -- Positive and applied psychology and sanctification -- Psychology of religion and truth.

Social psychologists have been in the forefront of the development of modern theories of cigarette smoking and obesity. These theories are reductionist: they account for behavior in purely physiological terms and regard cognitive, value, personality, and social class factors as secondary or irrelevant. Yet, from their beginnings, these theories have failed to account for major aspects of the behaviors under investigation, aspects apparently related to personal intention and social background. While it may seem suprising that work by social psychologists denies (...) social and psychological reality, the theories discussed here actually reflect broader trends in social psychology, trends with rather large implications for our ideas about individual and social efforts at change. (shrink)

In this review essay Stanton Wortham explores how philosophy of education should both turn inward, engaging with concepts and arguments developed in academic philosophy, and outward, encouraging educational publics to apply philosophical approaches to educational policy and practice. He develops his account with reference to two recent ambitious projects: The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, edited by Harvey Siegel, and the two-volume yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education (NSSE), titled Why Do We Educate? edited (...) by Gary Fenstermacher (series editor), David Coulter and John Wiens (volume 1), and Mark Smylie (volume 2). These two projects initially appear to be opposed, with the Handbook emphasizing elite philosophy and the Yearbook emphasizing public engagement. Wortham argues that each project is in fact more complex, and that they are in some respects complementary. He concludes by making a case against a simple hierarchy of basic and applied knowledge and calling for a more heterogeneous philosophy of education. (shrink)

This article illustrates one way in which philosophical inquiry and empirical research can be combined to illuminate processes like learning and social identification. Over the past 20 years, my empirical work in classrooms and communities has drawn on philosophical discussions about how knowledge is interconnected with social relationships and how we should conceptualize multiple levels of explanation. Both empirical research and philosophy can be done in various ways, and I offer no comprehensive account of how the two relate. I focus (...) instead on one central goal of my work—to clear away assumptions that commonly limit our view of human activity and to offer alternative conceptualizations that open new pathways for thought and action. In pursuing this goal I have drawn on philosophical accounts of knowledge, identity and scientific explanation, as well as on philosophical methods for interrogating assumptions. My empirical analyses also provide philosophers useful cases to think with. Empirical research enriched by philosophical insights and methods can combine tools from both traditions to clear away unproductive assumptions and advance our understandings of the human world. (shrink)

According to situated cognition theory, cognitive accomplishments rely in part on structures and processes outside the individual. This article argues that interactional structures—particularly those created through language use—can make essential contributions to situated cognition in rational academic discourse. Most cognitive accomplishments rely in part on language, and language in use always has both representational and interactional functions. The article analyzes one classroom conversation, in order to illustrate how the interactional functions of speech can facilitate the cognitive accomplishments speakers make through (...) that speech. By showing how closely cognition and interaction can interrelate, the article both supports theories of situated cognition and shows how cognition in at least some educational contexts cannot be extricated from enduring social structures and the construction of social identity. (shrink)

This essay investigates whether the term national signification may serve better than the more common national identity to describe how sports people variously enrol and reference the nation to position themselves and their practice. Taking the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu as a ground for analysis, this essay investigates four cases involving elite athletes from Norway to situate them within the field of sports culture and the larger fields of power and class relations. For Bourdieu actors’ ‘practical sense’ mediated between (...) their subjective striving for autonomy and the objective weight of structured class relations. This essay shows how these athletes’ struggle for relative autonomy is differently expressed by the way they enlist the nation to position themselves within the field of power. An athlete’s positions within the larger, structured fields circumscribe their articulatory space, and realising this state of affairs can aid our understanding of how these elite practitioners differently enlist the national sign in their specific quest for cultural autonomy. The analysis shows athletes that are better placed in economic terms can afford to take greater risks when it comes to the national signifier. Conversely, a relative smaller access to economic gain appears to correlate with an increase in the importance granted to the national signifier. Thus, the nation becomes a sign that can be actively enlisted in an ongoing struggle for relative autonomy from the field of class relations, rather than an attribute that is passively endorsed by them. What this suggests is that a term such as national identity is less descriptive for the actual work of these elite players; instead, we propose that an active national signification more aptly describe how these cultural actors enlist a highly coveted sign to achieve their specific aim. (shrink)

En esta introducción, enunciamos algunas de las preguntas principales que surgen de la reflexión sobre los lugares del conflicto en la filosofía política. Apoyándonos en los artículos del dossier, nos centramos, por un lado, en las interrogaciones referidas al topos de la política, en particular, en los rasgos distintivos de los espacios de conflictividad, sus condiciones, configuraciones y riesgos. Por otro lado, en los desafíos que imponen al pensamiento filosófico la elección de ciertos lugares concretos del conflicto o la preferencia (...) por determinadas escenas de antagonismo. (shrink)

Essai sur l'évolution de la pensée du philosophe, et de son approche du concept d'égalité, égalité intellectuelle, égalité politique et égalité sensible. Electre 2018.

In what arrived belatedly as an announced, but delayed, preface to Marquis de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom, Jacques Lacan interrogates the relations Sade could be said to have had with, on the one hand, Sigmund Freud, and, on the other, Immanuel Kant.1 Despite the presuppositions at the time of its writing, the text was first published as “Kant avec Sade” in the journal Critique in 1963 and only later reappeared as the preface it had been conceived as: announcing the (...) dogma of de Sade as an introduction to one of his key works. What had happened in the meantime, Lacan cryptically suggests, is that his – Lacan’s – collection of lectures and essays, Écrits, had arrived with a certain acclaim on the French cultural scene, and what had at first appeared to the publisher as inconsequential ravings had morphed into a profound and potentially significant enframing of de Sade’s “philosophy.” -/- What is it we find here? It is stupid, says Lacan, to pronounce – as too many “literary types” do – that de Sade’s perversions prefigured Freud’s interrogation of sexual mores. True, they both have the appearance of schooling, and so serve to prepare, Lacan informs us, the way for a new science. To understand the difference between them we need to arrive at some conception of Freud’s ethics of pleasure. -/- With what is known as the pleasure principle – announced in 1911 – Freud ordained a mechanism whereby pleasure is maintained at the lowest possible level.2 Lacan elsewhere referred to this principle as a homeostatic device, since it seeks to secure the functioning of the organism with as little excitement as possible. -/- Freud’s principle is different from traditional ethics in that it doesn’t disallow some sexual practices that had hitherto been condemned as wrong. However, such a realization doesn’t relieve us from approaching the principle as ethical. To Lacan, Freud’s homeostatic device is what “preordains the creature to its good.” In other words, it is by indulging in just enough pleasure to avoid unpleasure, either by becoming abstinent or consumptive, that we maintain our experience of goodwill. -/- What is remarkable, Lacan notes in his foreword to de Sade, is that Freud did not find it necessary to explicitly refer to this principle as an ethical prerogative. The only reason we can find for this, Lacan claims, is the 19th century obsession with the theme of “happiness in evil.” -/- The “happiness in evil” – or, as we should say, happiness in the will – has its precursor in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, which was published eight years prior to de Sade’s Philosophy in the Bedroom.3 To Lacan, de Sade subverts the Enlightenment directive inaugurated by Kant, and it is as such that it is possible to say that de Sade offers the truth of Kant’s Critique. -/- This “happiness in evil” becomes de Sade’s Being-Supreme-in-Wickedness. Recall that this is quite a different notion of perversion – of which the Marquis figures as the first and predominant example in Lacan – from that which reigned in the “literary” epoch, i.e., prior to Freud, as well as from Freud’s own inflection of the term. Perversion is no longer reducible to a catalogue of abominations – whipping, homosexuality, you name it – such as was the case prior to Freud, nor to a more select line of such – Freud famously excluded homosexual love from the list, while retaining sadomasochism. Lacan would draw the conclusion of Freud’s tentative first step by positing that perversion is a position, and specifically a location in relation to the phallus. -/- The novelty and force of this perspective should become clear to those who study the present volume. It is not a clinical attempt, nor the final word on a philosophy of mind without psychoanalysis. Rather, it should be regarded as situated in between these two domains, and with eyes to both. (shrink)

Is the creative act like a volcano: an outburst that lights up the universe? This volume connects reason with desire and the arts in ways that enable us to imagine how creativity can bring us closer to the truth. The artistic quest for freedom stands in stark contrast to philosophy's call to subordinate art to reason and tradition. The struggle between them has culminated in artistic attempts to subsume philosophical matters within the domain of art. One central question in this (...) study is what the consequences will be of a final dissolution of the boundary between the two domains: will all that remains of the artwork be an abstract howl of the rock – our rock, the planet – itself? (shrink)

This essay discusses how spectacular sports are framed in an national, epic world of fathers, firsts and bests, and put to use in regulating desire by narrating the fundamental fantasies that hold the subject together. Spectacular sports provide allegories of the excessive body, and these embodied narratives are meticulously produced through an individualizing training machine designed to deliver moments of excess. Sports produce phantasms of peak moments and phallic dominance, and symbolize a conquest of youth, women and the working population. (...) We ask if the subject may experience a kind of subjective destitution by the loss of a fundamental fantasy from watching sports and what the effects of such an experience may be. Can televised football induce in the viewer a sense that these images are mistaken as objects of desire, and give rise to the truth effects of "full speech"? (shrink)

The present study is an interrogation of theories of culture and nation in the context of spectacular sports. It proposes a view of nationalism as discourses that articulate and produce nations through narrative acts. A wide array of concepts and tools are drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and contrasted with methods and notions from discursive and semiotic analysis to interrogate a national-sports nexus in which sports are vehicles to embody nations, their matrices of thought and perception, and their (...) dominant order of masculinity and heteronormativity in the national subject, so that this order appears natural and commonsensical. Particular attention is given to the case of South Africa’s participation in the 1998 World Cup, and the way the epic genre was employed to frame the event and produce a particular kind of national body. -/- Spectacular sports events provide nations with opportunities to disseminate narratives that regulate desire and conjure a particular kind of national fantasy – what Bourdieu referred to as illusio – in subjects. This work makes a distinction between an epic body of nationalism, a body enmeshed in "the natural and authentic," and an excessive body. However, mediations of sports are never merely reflections of social events but themselves participate in producing these events as meaningful and anchor them as national. Furthermore, an actively interpreting subject is required for the production of meaning, and in this regard the thesis offers a critique of Bourdieu’s limited view on what it entails for a recipient of nationalist discourse to be active. The questions addressed by this study is twofold: how and what kind of national order of the body and desire is manufactured through spectacular sports events, and how are mediations of such events made meaningful in subjects? -/- The open-ended character of signification means that beneath the level of nationalist anchorage of spectacular sports events other articulations are possible. Drawing on Bourdieu’s view of sports as forms of silent dressage, the thesis suggests that there is a potential excess of meaning that enables such events to become potential sites of subjective truth: as viewers realise the fantasmatic character of such mediations they may come to question the notion that spectacular sports are something more than just a game. (shrink)

I discuss how the scientificity characterizing Adam Smith’s political economy has to exteriorize social conflict in order to sustain its objectivation of social interaction in terms of regulative laws. I claim that this exteriorization constitutes an internal point of subversion, not only because it resists economic objectivation, but first and foremost because it forces Smith to employ political strategies that both contradict and guarantee the scientificity of his theory. I show how the place of conflict in modern economy, according to (...) Smith, can actually be determined in three different ways: as a concrete place when it comes to the confrontations between workers and capitalists; as a theoretical place in the sense of being an arbitrary disturbance of the spontaneous organization of the market; and as a place that, as being the intersection between economic naturalization and social contingency, problematizes the scientificity of Smith’s political economy. In this sense, I develop three cases where Smith invokes an argumentative circularity that reveals the paradoxical politics of his economic scientificity, beyond its official laissez-faire politics: State coercion, monetary power and capitalist competition. (shrink)

I discuss how the scientificity characterizing Adam Smith’s political economy has to exteriorize social conflict in order to sustain its objectivation of social interaction in terms of regulative laws. I claim that this exteriorization constitutes an internal point of subversion, not only because it resists economic objectivation, but first and foremost because it forces Smith to employ political strategies that both contradict and guarantee the scientificity of his theory. I show how the place of conflict in modern economy, according to (...) Smith, can actually be determined in three different ways: as a concrete place when it comes to the confrontations between workers and capitalists; as a theoretical place in the sense of being an arbitrary disturbance of the spontaneous organization of the market; and as a place that, as being the intersection between economic naturalization and social contingency, problematizes the scientificity of Smith’s political economy. In this sense, I develop three cases where Smith invokes an argumentative circularity that reveals the paradoxical politics of his economic scientificity, beyond its official laissez-faire politics: State coercion, monetary power and capitalist competition. (shrink)

Ronald Preston wrote little of feminism, and feminism appears to have ignored Preston. There is much, however, in Preston's work which feminists would have found sympathetic, as well as some areas for acute disagreement. This article discusses what Preston did write about feminism, and goes on to examine areas of common approach: the hermeneutic of suspicion, social ethics, and a priori commitments. It also, briefly, discusses areas of disagreement: common consensus, universalism, and eschatological realism. It ends with the question of (...) why Preston did not engage more fully with the radical changes in the position of women which occurred during his lifetime. (shrink)

This book provides a unique scientific contribution to the debate on Marx's legacy in proposing to critically articulate two “lines of discussion” which are most often kept apart. On the one hand, it reassesses the place of Marxian thought in the construction of Europe, seeking to revitalize the European political debate. On the other, it situates Marx' thought in the perspective of postcolonial and decolonial studies, with particular attention to their effort to overcome the indisputable limits of the Marxian legacy. (...) In asking whether Marx’ thought was too European or not European enough, the book examines internationalist emancipatory politics and eurocentrism, class struggle and finance in the shaping of the European institutions, migration, identity and violence, as well as Marxian critiques of colonialism both within and beyond Europe. At a time of extreme tension, also within leftist politics, this book provides a precise and rigorous argument on what continues to make Marx's thought relevant, in grappling with social domination in the era of global capitalism, while also exploring the limits of Marxism today, both at the European level and worldwide. (shrink)