Whether or not conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is affected in schizophrenia is unknown. The aim of this study was to address this issue using an experiential approach. An autobiographical memory enquiry was used in combination with the Remember/Know procedure. Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 22 normal subjects were asked to recall specific autobiographical memories from four lifetime periods and to indicate the subjective states of awareness associated with the recall of what happened, when and where. They gave Remember, Know (...) or Guess responses according to whether they recalled these aspects of the event on the basis of conscious recollection, simply knowing, or guessing. Results showed that the frequency and consistency of Remember responses was significantly lower in patients than in comparison subjects. In contrast, the frequency of Know responses was not significantly different, whereas the frequency of patients’ Guess responses was significantly enhanced. It is concluded that the frequency and consistency of conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is reduced in patients with schizophrenia. (shrink)

Disturbances of perception of subjective time have been described in schizophrenia but have not been experimentally studied until now. We investigated how patients with schizophrenia estimate the subjective temporal distance of past personal events, i.e. how these events are perceived as subjectively close or distant in time. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 control participants recalled 24 autobiographical memories from four different life periods. They estimated the subjective TD and rated the amount of detail of each memory. Results showed that (...) patients with schizophrenia had a distorted perception of subjective TD. Their memories were significantly less detailed than those of controls and, unlike control participants, the amount of memory detail was not significantly correlated with subjective TD. Poor access to memory detail may account for distortions of perception of subjective time in patients with schizophrenia. (shrink)

How does one testify and, moreover, testify philosophically to the experience of receiving an organ transplant? What kinds of survival or forms of living are being fostered by newly emerging conjunctions between philosophy and biomedicine? Focusing on transplantation and immunology, we are going to reflect on some of the ways and styles in which motifs drawn from these biomedical fields have come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in recent philosophy expressing and formulating different concerns and paradigms. Spurred on by (...) Francisco J. Varela and Jean-Luc Nancy's autobiographical reflections on transplantation, we are going to consider distinct moments and preoccupations at work in the motifs of immunity, autoimmunity, the pharmakon and the graft in the thought of Jacques Derrida, Roberto Esposito and Bernard Stiegler. (shrink)

This paper argues for a largely unnoted distinction between relational and modal components in the lexical semantics of verbs. Wehypothesize that many verbs encode two kinds of semantic information:a relationship among participants in a situation and a subset ofcircumstances or time indices at which this relationship isevaluated. The latter we term sublexical modality.We show that linking regularities between semantic arguments andsyntactic functions provide corroborating evidence in favor of thissemantic distinction, noting cases in which the semantic groundingof linking through participant-role properties (...) apparently fails. Thissemantic grounding can be preserved, however, once we abstractaway from sublexical modality in lexical semantic representations.Semantically-based linking constraints are insensitive to the sublexicalmodality component of lexical entries and depend only on informationin a predicator's situational core. (shrink)

Numerous countries are heading toward digital infrastructures. In particular this new technology promises to help support methods for elections. However, one should be careful that such an infrastructure does not hinder the voting and representation issues. On the contrary, it should support those issues and help citizens have a clearer picture of the underlying mechanisms. This paper deals with the limits of voting procedures as they are described in classical collective choice theory and reflects on ways to aggregate electronic votes (...) stemming from various individuals that would be at the same time democratic, decisive and rational which is not feasible when candidate rankings alone are taken into account. This paper shows how electronic voting procedures could improve the situation by introducing preference-based votes. (shrink)

The mathematical dynamic model of oxidative phosphorylation in muscle mitochondria developed previously was used to calculate the flux control coefficients of particular steps of this process in isolated mitochondria at different amounts of hexokinase and oxygen concentrations. The pattern of control was completely different under different conditions. For normoxic concentration, the main controlling steps in state 4, state 3.5 and state 3 were proton leak, ATP usage (hexokinase) and complex III, respectively. The pattern of control in state 4 was not (...) changed at hypoxic oxygen concentration, while in state 3.5 and state 3 much of the control was shifted from other steps to cytochrome oxidase. The implications of the theoretical results obtained for the regulation of oxidative phosphorylation in intact muscle are discussed. (shrink)

Michèle Stanton-Jean | : Le bien commun est un concept fréquemment utilisé pour aborder la question du vivre ensemble. Rarement défini, on l’utilise pour le critiquer comme le fruit d’une vision occidentale et chrétienne non applicable sur le plan universel ou encore pour en proposer une vision moderne affranchie de sa rigidité traditionnelle. Le texte qui suit se base sur une thèse qui a examiné les principes et les valeurs qui pourraient fonder une vision renouvelée du bien commun, susceptible (...) d’être utilisée dans tous les contextes culturels et historiques, en prenant comme exemple l’élaboration de la Déclaration universelle sur la bioéthique et les droits de l’homme adoptée à la conférence générale de l’UNESCO en 2005. | : Common good is frequently mentioned to discuss how we can live together. Rarely defined, it is often described as a concept based on a Western and Christian vision that cannot be applied universally, or as a concept that could be revisited to develop a modern and non-rigid vision of it. The following text is based on a PhD thesis that studied what principles and values could contribute to the development of a renewed vision of common good that could be used in every cultural and historical context, taking as an example the elaboration of the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights adopted at the General Conference of UNESCO in 2005. (shrink)

The hypothesis that the particular linear tracks appearing in the measurement of a spherically-emitting radioactive source in a cloud chamber are determined by the positions of atoms or molecules inside the chamber is further explored in the framework of a recently established one-dimensional model. In this model, meshes of localized spins 1/2 play the role of the cloud-chamber atoms and the spherical wave is replaced by a linear superposition of two wave packets moving from the origin to the left and (...) to the right, evolving deterministically according to the Schrödinger equation. We first revisit these results using a time-dependent approach, where the wave packets impinge on a symmetric two-sided detector. We discuss the evolution of the wave function in the configuration space and stress the interest of a non-symmetric detector in a quantum-measurement perspective. Next we use a time-independent approach to study the scattering of a plane wave on a single-sided detector. Preliminary results are obtained, analytically for the single-spin case and numerically for up to 8 spins. They show that the spin-excitation probabilities are sometimes very sensitive to the parameters of the model, which corroborates the idea that the measurement result could be determined by the atom positions. The possible origin of decoherence and entropy increase in future models is finally discussed. (shrink)

This collection of essays brings together an international roster of contributors to provide historical insight into women’s agency and activism in education throughout from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Topics discussed range from the strategies adopted by individual women to achieve a personal education and the influence of educated women upon their social environment, to the organized efforts of groups of women to pursue broader feminist goals in an educational context. The collection is designed to recover the variety of (...) the voices of women inhabiting different geographical and social contexts while highlighting commonality and continuity with reference to creativity, achievement, and the management and transgression of structures of gender inequality. (shrink)

Ao colocar em evidência a legitimidade de uma instituição defendida por Locke, ou seja, o direito genérico que todos os membros da espécie humana têm de utilizar os recursos da natureza para preservar a sua existência, fca nítido que a propriedade privada exclusiva só é justifcável com o acréscimo de obrigações sociais rigorosas, apresentadas pelo próprio autor, para garantir que ela não prejudique a preservação da existência de qualquer dos membro da espécie, pelo simples fato de que a realidade de (...) uma instituição não pode contradizer o fundamento que lhe confere legitimidade. A partir disso, este texto se propõe a contestar a conclusão de Matthew Kramer de que a tentativa de Locke de estabelecer a legitimidade da propriedade privada no estado de natureza está fadada ao fracasso. (shrink)

En historien des mots, des idées et des littératures, J. Starobinski met en lumière les grands épisodes de la vie du couple action/réaction, depuis le rôle que lui attribua la scolastique jusqu'aux interrogations qui entourent aujourd'hui la notion de progrès, sans laquelle la réaction politique ne peut être pensée.

The present study tested the impact of attention training on cognition; secondary appraisal of perceived stress, and on metacognition; meta-worry in stressed students. Theoretically derived from the Self-Regulatory Executive Function model (S-REF model; Wells & Matthews, 1994a; 1996), the Attention Training Technique (ATT; Wells, 1990) is intended to promote flexible, voluntary external attention and has been shown to reduce symptoms of psychological distress. The present experimental study explored the effects of ATT on cognitive and metacognitive levels of appraisal, namely perceived (...) stress (primary outcome) and meta-worry (secondary outcome). Stressed students were randomized to an experimental ATT group (n = 23) or a control group (n = 23). The ATT group attended an initial training session followed by four weeks of individual (12 minutes) daily ATT practice. The control group waited for four weeks before receiving the intervention. The outcomes were scores on the Perceived Stress Scale 14 (PSS-14) and the Meta-Worry Questionnaire (MWQ) frequency and belief subscales at post study. Both measures decreased significantly following ATT with large pre to post effect sizes but there were minimal changes in the control group. The between group differences were statistically significant. The results add to the literature on the potential effects of ATT by demonstrating effects on the content of cognitive stress appraisals and on meta-worry in an academic setting in a stressed student sample. (shrink)

From the 1980s onward income inequality increased in many advanced countries. It is very difficult to account for the rise in income inequality using the standard labour supply/demand explanation. Fiscal redistribution has become less effective in compensating increasing inequalities since the 1990s. Some of the basic features of redistribution can be explained through the optimal tax framework developed by J.A. Mirrlees in 1971. This Element surveys some of the earlier results in linear and nonlinear taxation and produces some new numerical (...) results. Given the key role of capital income in the overall income inequality it also considers the optimal taxation of capital income. It examines empirically the relationship between the extent of redistribution and the components of the Mirrlees framework. The redistributive role of factors such as publicly provided private goods, public employment, endogenous wages in the overlapping generations model and income uncertainty are analysed. (shrink)

In this interview, Jean-Luc Marion recalls the intellectual world of Paris in 1970s, reflecting on how his engagement with the ubiquitous “death of God” question led to the sketches of God without Being first presented at this 1979 Colloquium, and discusses the criticism it provoked not only from Heideggerians but also from Thomists. He discusses the reception history of phenomenology in France the reasons for the particular power it gained among thinkers of his generation. Finally, he recounts how his (...) work has led from the 1979 Colloquium through the “Theological Turn” and up to his forthcoming D’ ailleurs, la révélation, which he briefly previews here. Marion closes with words on originality, criticism, and the particular challenges of the contemporary world that await philosophical thinking today. (shrink)

Scholarship on Pentecostal potential and practice forms a significant part of the debate on religion and development, not least when the focus is on sub-Saharan Africa. Yet in this debate African Pentecostal migrant communities have scarcely been represented. The article focuses on two such communities in South Africa, arguing that they may be regarded as developmental agents in the context of racialized xenophobia, even if they do not portray themselves as such. The argument is based on ethnographic fieldwork and shaped (...) through employing the concept of transformational development that centers on restoring relationships. The article concludes that the two communities – living in a context affected by racialized xenophobia – contribute meaningfully towards restoring relationships between people and God, one's relationship with oneself, relationships within the church community as well as relationships between the church community and the neighborhood. (shrink)

In this interview, Jean Greisch discusses the 1979 Colloquium Heidegger et la Question de Dieu, his original contribution to the published volume, and its impact on his later work. Greisch first situates the conference within the reception history of Heidegger as well as the critical advancements of Levinas and Derrida that made such a questioning of God palatable within the French philosophical context. He argues that theological thinking delivers an important challenge to philosophical thinking, and reflects on what such (...) a meeting point could mean. Finally he voices a double challenge to Heidegger, not only in his forgetting of the Hebraic tradition, but his complicity with Nazi antisemitism, while yet advising against a wholesale rejection of Heidegger’s insights. (shrink)

Résumé Le Liber de natura et origine animae d’Albert le Grand semble avoir exercé une influence sur la Théologie platonicienne de l’immortalité des âmes de Marsile Ficin sur, au moins, deux points-clefs de la doctrine métaphysique et cosmologique exposée dans cet ouvrage : d’une part, l’inchoation des formes dans la matière, – formes actualisées par la puissance formatrice qui n’est autre que l’effet de l’influx du ciel et des éléments prenant sa source en Dieu et guidé par la raison de (...) l’intelligence divine –, d’autre part, la triplicité de la forme, dans son statut général (en Dieu, dans son « canal » : le ciel, dans la matière inférieure) et, encore plus, dans sa production effective qui la conduit à être soit plus proche de la matière, soit plus proche de l’agent, soit à mi-distance entre l’agent et la matière. (shrink)