Several groups of large DNA viruses successfully utilise the rich resource provided by insect hosts. Defining the mechanisms that enable these pathogens to optimise their relationships with their hosts is of considerable scientific and practical importance, but our understanding of the processes involved is, as yet, rudimentary. Here we describe an informatics-based approach that uses comparison of viral genomic sequences to identify candidate genes likely to be specifically involved in this process. We hypothesise that such genes should satisfy two essential (...) criteria, namely, that they should be (i) present in those members of a virus family that infect insects, but absent from those that infect other hosts, and (ii) found in at least two unrelated taxa of insect viruses. These criteria currently identify six groups of viral genes, including one that encodes the fusolin/gp37 proteins. Demonstration that the fusolin/gp37 proteins can enhance oral infectivity of insect viruses provides a primary validation of this approach to the examination of insectvirus relationships. BioEssays 23:184–193, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to determine statistical differences in a set of badminton competition matches in five different modalities with regard to competition level (Group Phase versus Eliminatory Phase). Data from 453 sets (125 in men’s singles; 108 sets in women’s singles; 77 sets in men’s doubles; 73 in women’s doubles and 70 in mixed doubles) from the RIO 2016 Olympics Games were recorded and classified in two groups of variables to analyse variables related to match (5) (...) and set (15). A descriptive analysis and univariate test (Mann Whitney U) for non-parametric data were conducted. The results show in men’s and women’s singles all the variables related to match were higher in the Elimination Phase than in the Group Phase (p<0.01). In Sets 1 and 3, the longest set duration, rally and average rally were found in the Elimination Phase than Group Stage (p<0.05). In women’s singles, these differences were also recorded in Set 2. For doubles, the results are more stable among groups. Men’s doubles had a longer duration of the match and set (set 1 and set 2) (p<0.01), and also scored highest for average rally strokes (set 1 and set 3) (p<0.05) and shuttles used in the Elimination Phase versus the Group Phase along the match (p<0.01). In women’s doubles, more shuttles were used in a match in the Elimination than in the Group Phase. Moreover, the same results are established for Set 2, including for average rally. Mixed doubles saw no match going to three sets. However, the greatest differences showed a longer rally and average rally being registered in the Elimination than in the Group Phase. In conclusion, the timing factors of the badminton singles and doubles games were different in the Elimination and Group Phases. This information may help players and coaches prepare and administer different types of workouts or, more specifically, competition schedules adapted to the characteristics of modern badminton. (shrink)

The deductivist ideal of justification is bounded to scepticism respecting the trustability of reasoning. This ideal is supported by a conception of formal validity as a necessary condition for argumentative goodness. In this work, I propose an alternative to formalism in order to make sense of the idea of justification out of the scope of the deductivist ideal.

Immédiates, efficaces et inépuisables comme des sensations, mais indépendantes du dehors et maîtresses de l’espace comme des images, les visions «imaginatives» de Thérèse, pour voisines qu’elles soient de nos visions sensorielles, méritent pourtant une place à part et ne sont ni des hallucinations vulgaires, indiscernables des sensations, ni des hallucinations psychiques. Ce sont les hallucinations thérésiennes. (Pierre Quercy 1930).

I argue for the distinction between presuming that p and maintaining that presumably p. In order to make sense of this distinction, I defend a non-inferentialist conception of presumptions and offer an account of the correctness conditions for both presumptions and presumptive inferences. I characterize presumptions as a type of constative speech-act having certain semantic correctness conditions. In turn, regarding presumptive inferences, my strategy is to provide the correctness conditions for the use of an epistemic modal such as “presumably.” This (...) epistemic modal is characterized as a force indicator for speech-acts of concluding in complex speech-acts of arguing involving presumptive inferences. (shrink)

a recent paper, Fábio Perin Shecaira proposes a defence of Waller’s deductivist schema for moral analogical argumentation. This defence has several flaws, the most important of them being that many good analogical arguments would be deemed bad or deficient. Additionally, Shecaira misrepresents my alternative account as something in between deductivism and non-deductivism. This paper is both an attempt at solving this misunderstanding and an analysis and criticism of Waller and Shecaira’s forms of deductivism.

Our aim is to defend the Precautionary Principle (PP) against the main theoretical and practical criticisms that it has raised by proposing a novel conception and a specific formulation of the principle. We first address the theoretical concerns against the idea of there being a principle of precaution by arguing for a distinctively political conception of the PP as opposed to a moral one. Our claim is that the rationale of the PP is grounded in the fact that contemporary societies (...) wish to avoid morally unacceptable risks while at the same time pursuing other goals, aspirations and values. Following this political conception of the PP, we propose a specific formulation in terms of an argumentation scheme—the Argumentation Scheme for Appealing to Precaution—which is meant to solve, in turn, the main practical concerns that the PP has raised. We explain the advantages of our proposal by analysing appeals to precaution in the cases of (1) the European restrictions on the free movement of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) the discharge of nuclear wastes into the Irish Sea. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and (...) practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

Following a Toulmian account of argument analysis and evaluation, I offer a general unitary schema for, so called, deductive and inductive types of analogical arguments. This schema is able to explain why certain analogical arguments can be said to be deductive, and yet, also defeasible.

According to political minimalism, a debate is considered political when it revolves around the question “What shall we do?” This account suggests that certain issues related to human enhancement technologies (HETs), which have traditionally been addressed in the realm of applied ethics, could be better approached from a political standpoint. However, this raises the question of who constitutes the “we” – the communities that face the political challenges posed by HETs. We argue that there is a global human community that (...) directly faces at least some of these challenges, and this fact underscores the relevance of a cosmopolitan perspective. While some authors have already advocated for a cosmopolitan approach in addressing issues such as poverty or climate change, they often do so from a moral outlook, without adequately distinguishing between ethics and politics. In contrast, we assert that HETs present compelling arguments in favour of cosmopolitanism as a political stance. In support of this claim, we consider two cases: the pills that would allow people to eat at will without gaining weight, and the choice between different types of cognitive enhancers. (shrink)

. There are many types of artistic representations of the legend of Don Juan, i.e. the universal archetype of the seducer who, through deception, conquers a woman and, once she succumbs to his charms, he boasts of his triumph, despises her, and shifts his interest towards another lady. In this work, I compare three of the most famous versions don Juan: The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest by Tirso de Molina, Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo (...) Da Ponte, and Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla. The first and third are theatrical pieces, while the second is an opera. The myth of Don Juan is essentially the same in all three, but the message and the moral vary according to the cultural movement the works belong to, namely the Baroque, the Enlightenment and the Romanticism, respectively. Key words: The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest, Don Giovanni, Don Juan, Tirso de Molina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, José Zorrilla, sin, redemption, sociopath. Resumen. Son muchos los tipos de representación artística —teatro, música, ópera, ballet, literatura, cine, televisión, pintura, escultura, etc.— de la leyenda de Don Juan, el arquetipo universal del seductor que, mediante engaños, conquista a una mujer y, una vez que ella sucumbe a sus encantos, se jacta de su triunfo, las desprecia y reenfoca su interés en otras damas. En este trabajo, comparo a tres de los don Juanes más famosos: El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra de Tirso de Molina, Don Giovanni de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart y Lorenzo Da Ponte, y Don Juan Tenorio de José Zorrilla. La primera y la tercera son piezas teatrales, en tanto que la segunda es una ópera. El mito de Don Juan es, esencialmente, el mismo en estas tres obras, aunque varían el mensaje y la moraleja según el movimiento cultural al que pertenecen: Barroco, Ilustración y Romanticismo, respectivamente. Palabras clave: Burlador de Sevilla, Don Giovanni, Don Juan, Tirso de Molina, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, José Zorrilla, pecado, redención, sociópata. (shrink)

Resumen Este ensayo analiza la manera tan negativa en que Emilia Pardo Bazán representa al matrimonio en Los pazos de Ulloa. Se intenta mostrar que el escepticismo de la autora, al presentar esta institución social como un proyecto fallido, constituye una protesta feminista contra la soflama masculina hegemónica del siglo xix, que aceptaba como válido únicamente el vínculo conyugal bendecido por la Iglesia y/o sancionado por el Estado. Con este objetivo, se estudian algunos factores que afectaban las relaciones maritales de (...) las mujeres de aquella época, tales como la percepción que se tenía de la mujer—como agente civilizador y como inductora del mal—, las expectativas sociales de la mujer casadera y casada, el alto valor atribuido a la virginidad prenupcial y a la maternidad, la doble moral en el ejercicio de la sexualidad, la subordinación de la mujer al hombre y la violencia doméstica física y mental. Palabras clave: Los pazos de Ulloa, Emilia Pardo Bazán, virginidad, maternidad, matrimonio, civilización y barbarie.In this essay, I analyze Emilia Pardo Bazán's negative portrait of marriage in The House of Ulloa. I attempt to show that the author's skepticism of this social institution, which she presents as a failed project, is a feminist protest against the 19thcentury hegemonic masculine discourse that considered Catholic marriage and/or legal marriage as the only acceptable forms of a conjugal bond. With that intention, I comment on several key factors that affected women’s marital relationships at that time. For example, the dual perception of women both as civilizing agents and as a temptation to sin and subsequent perdition, the social expectations from a maiden and from a married woman, the high value attributed to prenuptial virginity and of maternity, the double standards for men and women in the expression of their sexuality, the subordination of women to men, and domestic physical and mental violence, among other. Key words: Los pazos de Ulloa, The House of Ulloa, Emilia Pardo Bazán, virginity, maternity, marriage, civilization and barbarism\e. (shrink)

Intuitions about retractions have been used to motivate truth relativism about certain types of claims. Among these figure epistemic modals, knowledge attributions, or personal taste claims. On MacFarlane’s prominent relativist proposal, sentences like “the ice cream might be in the freezer” or “Pocoyo is funny” are only assigned a truth-value relative to contexts of utterance and contexts of assessment. Retractions play a crucial role in the argument for assessment-relativism. A retraction of a past assertion is supposed to be mandatory whenever (...) the asserted sentence is not true at the context of use and the context of assessment. If retractions were not obligatory in these conditions, there would be no normative difference between assessment-relativism and contextualism. The main goal of this paper is to undermine the claim that retractions reveal this normative difference. To this effect, the paper offers a review of three important objections to the obligatoriness of retractions. Taken together, these objections make a strong case against the alleged support that retractions give to assessment-relativism. The objections are moreover supported by recent experimental results that are also discussed. This will satisfy a further goal, which is to undermine the idea that there is a constitutive retraction rule. The paper also discusses two ways to understand what such a rule would be constitutive of, and concludes with a discussion of how to describe what retractions are. (shrink)

Both because of the vagueness of the word ‘give’ when speaking about giving reasons, and because we lack an adequate definition of ‘reasons’, there is a harmful ambiguity in the expression ‘giving reasons’. Particularly, straightforwardly identifying argumentation with reasons giving would make of virtually any interplay a piece of argumentation. Besides, if we adopt the mainstream definition of reasons as “considerations that count in favour of doing or believing something”, then only good argumentation would count as argumentation. In this paper, (...) I defend a qualified characterization of argumentation as reasons giving that is shown to be fruitful for shedding light on the practice of giving reasons, and an inferentialist conception of reasons that makes room for speaking of “bad reasons” and, consequently, makes it possible to talk of argumentation as reasons giving even if we are talking about bad argumentation. (shrink)

Both because of the vagueness of the word ‘give’ when speaking about giving reasons, and because we lack an adequate definition of ‘reasons’, there is a harmful ambiguity in the expression ‘giving reasons’. Particularly, straightforwardly identifying argumentation with reasons giving would make of virtually any interplay a piece of argumentation. Besides, if we adopt the mainstream definition of reasons as “considerations that count in favour of doing or believing something”, then only good argumentation would count as argumentation. In this paper, (...) I defend a qualified characterization of argumentation as reasons giving that is shown to be fruitful for shedding light on the practice of giving reasons, and an inferentialist conception of reasons that makes room for speaking of “bad reasons” and, consequently, makes it possible to talk of argumentation as reasons giving even if we are talking about bad argumentation. (shrink)

This paper provides a philosophical analysis of the Price equation and its role in evolutionary theory. Traditional models in population genetics postulate simplifying assumptions in order to make the models mathematically tractable. On the contrary, the Price equation implies a very specific way of theorizing, starting with assumptions that we think are true and then deriving from them the mathematical rules of the system. I argue that the Price equation is a generalization-sketch, whose main purpose is to provide a unifying (...) framework for researchers, helping them to develop specific models. The Price equation plays this role because, like other scientific principles, shows features as abstractness, unification and invariance. By underwriting this special role for the Price equation some recent disputes about it could be diverted. (shrink)

The idea that one can 'soak up' someone else's mood or sense the tension in a room is familiar - as in 'negative energy'. This ability to borrow or share states of mind is now pathologized, as the author shows in relation to affective transfer in psychiatric clinics.

Technical and tactical actions are decisive in terms of badminton player competitive performance. The main objective of this research was to design, validate, and estimate the reliability of an observational instrument for the analysis of the tactical and technical actions in individual badminton. The process was carried out in four different steps: first, there was a review of the scientific literature and a preliminary list of variables was made; second, a qualitative and quantitative assessment was completed by 10 badminton expert (...) judges; in the third step, the content validity was estimated using Aiken’s V coefficient; finally, intra-observer reliability and interobserver reliability were tested by two observers specialized in badminton using the Cohen’s Kappa coefficient and the intraclass correlation coefficient. Strokes were used as the unit of measure by our observational instrument; every time badminton players hit the shuttlecock, 22 variables are observed. The minimum Aiken’s value was 0.58, and reliability was 0.63. In spite of these values, none of the variables had to be removed, but there were modifications in terms of drafting in some of them. The main findings confirmed the validity and the usefulness of this instrument. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se abordará el Nuevo Realismo, movimiento filosófico que cada vez goza de mayor popularidad. En primer lugar, se hará un breve análisis de su origen. A continuación, se atenderá a las propuestas de cuatro de los principales referentes de este movimiento: Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, Maurizio Ferraris y Markus Gabriel. El objetivo de esto es encontrar las semejanzas y diferencias entre todas, para poder establecer una clasificación más acertada dentro del nuevo realismo.

How should automated vehicles react in emergency circumstances? Most research projects and scientific literature deal with this question from a moral perspective. In particular, it is customary to treat emergencies involving AVs as instances of moral dilemmas and to use the trolley problem as a framework to address such alleged dilemmas. Some critics have pointed out some shortcomings of this strategy and have urged to focus on mundane traffic situations instead of trolley cases involving AVs. Besides, these authors rightly point (...) out the political nature of the most interesting debates involving AVs. However, in our view, they do not offer an adequate account of the distinction between ethics and politics and still see their proposals as contributions to the ethics of AVs. We argue that many of the interesting questions about how AVs should behave, both in emergency and other situations, are of political, and not moral, nature. This view is based on a conception of politics and political normativity that we have developed elsewhere and that we call “political minimalism.” Additionally, we show that this proposed perspective has significant consequences for the design, management, and regulation of transport systems. (shrink)

I defend a conception of Logic as normative for the sort of activities in which inferences super-vene, namely, reasoning and arguing. Toulmin’s criticism of formal logic will be our framework to shape the idea that in order to make sense of Logic as normative, we should con-ceive it as a discipline devoted to the layout of arguments, understood as the representations of the semantic, truth relevant, properties of the inferences that we make in arguing and reason-ing.

This paper questions the conceptual and pragmatic worth of the category of relational values. Combining philosophical reasoning with ethnographic field-work in Wallmapu/Chile, I analyse a variety of ways in which people think about, value and behave toward the land. I thereby demonstrate that relational-ity is inherent to held, instrumental and intrinsic values. This means that there is no meaningful way in which to distinguish relational values from more familiar types of values. Yet, to be able to argue that a distinct (...) class of relational values exists, those who have proposed the term have been compelled to silence or downplay the relational natures of those other values. This has the perverse effect of confining, rather than promoting, relational thinking. (shrink)

In “Deductivism as an Interpretative Strategy: A Reply to Groarke’s Defense of Reconstructive Deductivism,” David Godden distinguished two notions of deductivism. On the one hand, as an interpretative thesis, deductivism is the view that all-natural language argumentation must be interpreted as being deductive. On the other hand, as an evaluative thesis, deductivism is the view that for a conclusion to follow, it has to follow of necessity from the premises—or, in other words, that being a good inference implies being deductive. (...) The main goal of this paper is to show that evaluative deductivism is wrong. (shrink)

Cultural diversity is an increasingly important phenomenon that affects not only social and political harmony but also the cohesion and efficiency of organisations. The problems that firms have with regard to managing cultural diversity have been abundantly studied in recent decades from the perspectives of management theory and moral philosophy, but there are still open questions that require deeper reflection and broader empirical analysis. Managing cultural diversity in organisations is of prime importance because it involves harmonising different values, beliefs, credos (...) and customs, and, in essence, human identity. Taking into consideration these cultural differences and harmonising them is a human rights issue and a central dimension of corporate social responsibility. Here we are going to focus on theoretical reflection about the ideas that lie behind corporate policies and organisational initiatives that deal with cultural diversity. The aim of our paper is twofold: to present a critical reflection on the ideology of tolerance, and propose an ideology of respect for dealing with cultural diversity. We start by presenting the plurality of interpretations of the concept of ideology, and justify its applicability to the field of cultural diversity. We then reflect on the differences between “tolerance” and “respect” and identifying the practical implications for managing cultural diversity. And finally, we propose a culture of respect that goes beyond tolerance and complements and legitimizes the “business case” perspective for managing cultural diversity in companies. The ideology of respect is based on the Kantian tradition and on the discursive approach where rational dialogue and argumentation are considered the legitimate process for creating a culture of intercultural respect. From this theoretical discussion of the key philosophical concepts we can suggest some general principles for managing cultural diversity in organisations. (shrink)

A descriptive-exploratory analysis of assurance practices is presented in this paper, by analysing the patterns of sustainability assurance reporting in two national contexts with different levels of assurance activity over a period of 11 years. The study is based on theoretical insights drawn from institutional sociology and normativity production. It is framed both in the Italian situation, where assurance statements consistently include a narrow set of formal and procedural communications, and in an unsettled situation in the U.S., where assurance activity (...) is more incipient, but where experimentation in substantial assurance disclosure practices has more room to develop. Its main implication is that the diffusion of sustainability assurance and the creation of sustainability assurance disclosure norms are not without its cost: information quality does not increase with patterned practice. The results also point towards the noteworthy role of specific professionals in the earlier and later stages of assurance practice norms. They reveal a significant influence of non-Big4 firms in the diffusion of sustainability assurance disclosure norms. In contrast, the Big4 firms appear to be positively associated with the narrowing down of the assurance focus to a selected subset of this activity in later stages of the development of the assurance norm. In this regard, this study provides insight into the circumstantial—but relevant—carrier role of the Big4 firms in determining what “assurance” means. (shrink)

I argue that conductions are a special type of inference indeed, but that this does not mean that we need to develop novel standards of inference goodness or specific argument schemes for properly assessing them. Following LNMA’s theoretical framework, I provide a semantic account of conductions and explain the interesting pragmatic properties of a certain type of conductions in terms of the rhetorical dimension of the speech-act of arguing.

In this paper, I argue that hate speech expresses hate, and answer some objections to expressivist views. First, I briefly comment on some limitations of pragmatic accounts of harmful speech. I then present an expressive-normative view of derogatory discourse according to which it is expressive of an affective state by presupposing it. A linguistic act expressive of an affective state inherits the normativity that is constitutive of that state, as directed to its intentional object. If the act is successful, it (...) updates the conversational context with the normative appraisal conditions of the affective state presupposed. I argue that this model can be applied to hate speech. I rely on current research on the psychology of hate to identify the appraisal conditions, action tendencies, and motivational goals characteristic of hate. The account supplements other pragmatic accounts of hate speech. (shrink)

Literature on consumer ethics tends to focus on issues within the public sphere, such as the environment, and treats other drivers of consumption decisions, such as family, as non-moral concerns. Consequently, an attitude–behaviour gap is viewed as a straightforward failure by consumers to act ethically. We argue that this is based upon a view of consumer behaviour as linear and unproblematic, and an approach to moral reasoning, arising from a stereotypically masculine understanding of morality, which foregrounds abstract principles. By demonstrating (...) the importance of context to consumption decisions and articulating the impact of caring relationships, we highlight how such decisions are both complex and situated. This is particularly evident for decisions involving the needs of others, as occurs in family life. We argue that the incorporation of care ethics provides both theoretical insights and a more complete account of consumer ethics. This is explored empirically through an investigation of the ethical dilemmas arising from consumption decisions made by mothers of young children. Such decisions juxtapose an ethical consumption orientation with care for one’s child. Therefore, what has been previously considered a failure to act ethically may in fact be the outcome of complex decision making, which involves competing ethical considerations. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and how this approach to consumer ethics could be applied more widely. (shrink)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and (...) cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. -/- This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle Rules, OK?José M. Villagrán (bio) and Rogelio Luque (bio)KeywordsAristotle, causes, philosophy, psychiatry, psychopathologyPérez-Alvarez, Sass, and García-Montes (2008) propose a theoretical approach to the nature of mental disorders (MD) that attempts to explain the type of reality they constitute. In line with this approach, they argue that (1) MDs should be considered not from within psychology and psychiatry, but rather from the realm of philosophy, so as to (...) avoid what they call the Charcot effect; (2) the resulting theoretical model is in contrast to naturalist models such as that of internal dysfunction, and involves “strong” constructivist assumptions from which they develop an anthropological perspective based on the clinician–patient situation; 3) this model is applicable, in principle, to all MDs (“at least to some extent”); and (4) it is based on the Aristotelian theory of the four causes.We would argue, however, that (1) it is precisely from within psychology and psychiatry that conceptual models accounting for MDs should be proposed; (2) the naturalist–constructivist dichotomy in these models should be deconstructed, and primacy given not to the ontological approach but to the epistemological one; (3) a theoretical model of this scope should account not only for MDs but also for physical disorders; and (4) only in this way would the Aristotelian theory of causes, understood as types of explanation (and therefore as epistemological approaches) be useful.Approaches from within and from WithoutFor Berrios (2006), the theoretical discourse in relation to the conceptualization of MDs in a particular sociocultural context can be formulated in two ways: on the one hand, in a centripetal fashion, using established philosophical systems (be it phenomenology [Jaspers 1977], logical empiricism [Hempel 1994], or analytic philosophy [Fulford, Thornton, and Graham 2006]). This centripetal approach can be used both by professional philosophers and by psychiatrists/psychologists. When developed by professional philosophers, such proposals, despite their possible brilliance, run the risk of being tangential to the psychiatric issues owing to a lack of first-hand experience of them (Murphy 2006). When developed by psychiatrists and psychologists, the majority of the proposals simply mix fragments of different philosophical systems, in either a kind of syncretism or collage that fails to take into account the contradictions between fragments, or a kind of pluralism that reflects, without entering into analysis, a sort of consensus among the different paradigms (Ghaemi 2003; Kendler 2005).A second way of formulating this theoretical discourse (according to Berrios) would employ a centrifugal approach from the very core of the disciplines, through the reflection of professionals (primarily, although not only, psychiatrists/psychologists with philosophical training) who would conceptualize the problems from within and develop a specific metalanguage for analyzing [End Page 265] them (Lanteri-Laura 1991; Reznek 1991; Sass 1992). Not all problems are of the same type. For those that are extrinsic to psychiatry/psychology (definition of the mental, the mind–body relationship, the distinction between causes and reasons, or interdisciplinary reduction), the methods common to the philosophy of science and of the mind can be used. However, issues intrinsic to the disciplines themselves (the nature of mental symptoms and how they are generated, how to explain their heterogeneity, what a MD is, how to diagnose and classify it, or how to implement a psychopathological project) cannot be dealt with using preestablished formulas, and require new and original proposals that take into account the nature of the disciplines and their object of study (Villagrán 2007).The authors of the target article base their preference for the centripetal approach for responding to one of the intrinsic questions of psychiatry (what MDs are) on the consequences of what they call the Charcot effect, a kind of variant of observer bias applied to psychiatric diagnosis. They offer as an example the classic diagnosis ad iuvantibus in its postmodern version, namely, the efficacy of the pharmaceutical industry in contributing to creating nosological entities for which their drugs are indicated. Consequently, clinicians are not only unable to surmount the substantial epistemological obstacles that hamper attempts to theorize, but also find themselves doomed to assuming an ingenuous essentialism that considers MDs as natural kinds (such as apples, trees, or dogs) determined... (shrink)

In History After Lacan, Teresa Brennan argues that Jacques Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. She tells the story of a social psychosis, beginning with a discussion of Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating on Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need a general (...) historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity--ethnocentrism, the relation between the sexes, and ecological catastrophe. A challenging feminist, interdisciplinary study, History After Lacan will be essential reading for social, cultural, and political theorists, historians, psychoanalysts, and literary theorists. (shrink)

A fundamental question in biology is whether phenotypes can be predicted by ecological or genomic rules. At least five cases of convergent evolution of the crab‐like body plan (with a wide and flattened shape, and a bent abdomen) are known in decapod crustaceans, and have, for over 140 years, been known as “carcinization.” The repeated loss of this body plan has been identified as “decarcinization.” In reviewing the field, we offer phylogenetic strategies to include poorly known groups, and direct evidence (...) from fossils, that will resolve the history of crab evolution and the degree of phenotypic variation within crabs. Proposed ecological advantages of the crab body are summarized into a hypothesis of phenotypic integration suggesting correlated evolution of the carapace shape and abdomen. Our premise provides fertile ground for future studies of the genomic and developmental basis, and the predictability, of the crab‐like body form. (shrink)

This article analyzes the view of evolutionary theory as a theory of forces. The analogy with Newtonian mechanics has been challenged due to the alleged mismatch between drift and the other evolutionary forces. Since genetic drift has no direction several authors tried to protect its status as a force: denying its lack of directionality, extending the notion of force and looking for a force in physics which also lacks of direction. I analyse these approaches, and although this strategy finally succeeds, (...) this discussion overlooks the crucial point on the debate between causalists and statisticalists: the causal status of evolutionary theory. (shrink)

Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. Starting from this controversial premiss, Teresa Brennan tells the story of a social psychosis. She begins by recovering Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need general historical explanation. An understanding of historical (...) dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity - ethnocentrism, the relationship between the sexes and ecological catastrophe. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the question whether a mechanistic approach can account for evolutionary causes. The last decade has seen a major attempt to account for natural selection as a mechanism. Nevertheless, we stress the relevance of broadening the debate by including the other evolutionary causes inside the mechanistic approach, in order to be a legitimate conceptual framework on the same footing as other approaches to evolutionary theory. We analyse the current debate on natural selection as a mechanism, and (...) extend it to the rest of the evolutionary causes. We focus on three approaches that we call the stochastic view, the functional view, and the minimalist view. We argue that all of them are unable to account for evolutionary causes as mechanisms. It is concluded that the current mechanistic proposals cannot be accepted as a common framework for evolutionary causes. Finally, we outline some guidelines and requirements that any mechanistic proposal should meet in order to be applied to evolutionary theory. (shrink)

I propose a characterization of the dialectical dimension of argumentation by considering the activity of arguing as involving a “second order intersubjectivity”. I argue that argumentative communication enables this kind of intersubjectivity as a matter of the recursive nature of acts of arguing—both as justificatory and as persuasive devices. Calling attention to this feature is a way to underline that argumentative discourses represent the explicit part of a dynamic activity, “a mechanism of rational validation”, as Rescher showed, which is a (...) practice that presupposes the possibility of attaining objectivity. (shrink)