In the flowering of Red-Green Thought over the past two decades, metabolic rift thinking is surely one of its most colorful varieties. The metabolic rift has captured the imagination of critical environmental scholars, becoming a shorthand for capitalism’s troubled relations in the web of life. This article pursues an entwined critique and reconstruction: of metabolic rift thinking and the possibilities for a post-Cartesian perspective on historical change, the world-ecology conversation. Far from dismissing metabolic rift thinking, my (...) intention is to affirm its dialectical core. At stake is not merely the mode of explanation within environmental sociology. The impasse of metabolic rift thinking is suggestive of wider problems across the environmental social sciences, now confronted by a double challenge. One of course is the widespread—and reasonable—sense of urgency to evolve modes of thought appropriate to an era of deepening biospheric instability. The second is the widely recognized—but inadequately internalized—understanding that humans are part of nature. (shrink)

BackgroundPositive psychosocial factors can play an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease. Among them, psychological resilience is defined as the capacity of responding positively to stressful events. Our aim was to assess whether PR is associated with CVD or metabolic disturbances through a systematic review.MethodsWe gathered articles from PubMed, Web of Science, PsycInfo, and Google Scholar up to October 28, 2021. We included articles that were in English, were observational, and had PR examined as exposure. The CVD (...) outcomes were either clinical or metabolic outcomes.ResultsOur literature search identified 3,800 studies, of which 17 met the inclusion criteria. Of them, seven were longitudinal and 10 cross-sectional, and 13 were on adults and four on children. The exposure assessment was heterogeneous, i.e., 12 studies used different kinds of self-administered questionnaires and five used interviews with a psychologist. Regarding outcomes, five studies investigated CVD, seven obesity, one metabolic syndrome, two hypertension, four dyslipidemia, and four diabetes. In longitudinal studies, PR was found to have an inverse association with included outcomes in five studies from the Swedish military conscription cohort but had no association with CVD in a study on African-American women and was associated with slower progression of diabetes in a general population. The cross-sectional studies showed that the prevalence of disease was not associated with PR in many cases but the progression of disease was associated with PR.ConclusionPR seems to have a possibly favorable association with CVD and metabolic disturbances that differs according to the type of outcome and population. Our study limitations are given by the small number of studies available and the heterogeneity in PR measurement.Systematic Review Registration[https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=237109], identifier [CRD42021237109]. (shrink)

There are many ways of describing and explaining the properties of living systems; causal, functional, and reductive accounts are necessary but no one account has primacy. The history of biology as a discipline has given excessive authority to reductionism, which collapses higher level accounts, such as social or behavioural ones, into molecular ones. Such reductionism becomes crudely ideological when applied to the human condition, with its claims for genes everything from sexual orientation to compulsive shopping. The current enthusiasm for genetics (...) and ultra-Darwinist accounts, with their selfish-gene metaphors for living processes, misunderstand both the phenomena of development and the interactive role that DNA and the fluid genome play in the cellular orchestra. DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand. Both developmental and evolutionary processes are more than merely instructive or selective; the organism constructs itself, a process known as autopoiesis, through a lifeline trajectory. Because organisms are thermodynamically open systems, living processes are homeodynamic, not homeostatic. The self-organising membrane-bound and energy-utilising metabolic web of the cell must have evolved prior to so-called naked replicators. Evolution is constrained by physics, chemistry, and structure; not all change is powered by natural selection, and not all phenotypes are adaptive. Finally, therefore, living processes are radically indeterminate; like all other living organisms, but to an even greater degree, we make our own future, though in circumstances not of our own choosing. (shrink)

Reductionism--understanding complex processes by breaking them into simpler elements--dominates scientific thinking around the world and has certainly proved a powerful tool, leading to major discoveries in every field of science. But reductionism can be taken too far, especially in the life sciences, where sociobiological thinking has bordered on biological determinism. Thus popular science writers such as Richard Dawkins, author of the highly influential The Selfish Gene, can write that human beings are just "robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish (...) molecules known as genes." Indeed, for many in science, genes have become the fundamental unit for understanding human existence: genes determine every aspect of our lives, from personal success to existential despair: genes for health and illness, genes for criminality, violence, and sexual orientation. Others would say that this is reductionism with a vengeance. In Lifelines, biologist Steven Rose offers a powerful alternative to the ultradarwinist claims of Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett and others. Rose argues against an extreme reductionist approach that would make the gene the key to understanding human nature, in favor of a more complex and richer vision of life. He urges instead that we focus on the organism and in particular on the organism's lifeline: the trajectory it takes through time and space. Our personal lifeline, Rose points out, is unique--even identical twins, with identical genes at birth, will differ over time. These differences are obviously not embedded in our genes, but come about through our developmental trajectory in which genes, as part of the biochemical orchestra of trillions of cells in each human body, have an important part--but only a part--to play. To illustrate this idea, Rose examines recent research in modern biology, and especially two disciplines--genetics (which looks at the impact of genes on form) and developmental biology (which examines the interaction between the organism and the environment)--and he explores new ideas on biological complexity proposed by scientists such as Stuart Kauffman. He shows how our lifelines are constructed through the interplay of physical forces--such as the intrinsic chemistry of lipids and proteins, and the self-organizing and stabilizing properties of complex metabolic webs--and he reaches a startling conclusion: that organisms are active players in their own fate, not simply the playthings of the gods, nature, or the inevitable workings out of gene-driven natural selection. The organism is both the weaver and the pattern it weaves. Lifelines will be a rallying point for all who seek an alternative to the currently fashionable, deeply determinist accounts which dominate popular science writing and, in fact, crowd the pages of some of the major scientific journals. Based on solid, state-of-the-art research, it not only makes important contributions to our understanding of Darwin and natural selection, but will swing the pendulum back to a richer, more complex view of human nature and of life. (shrink)

The search for a systems‐level picture of metabolism as a web of molecular interactions provides a paradigmatic example of how the methods used to characterize a system can bias the interpretation of its functional meaning. Metabolic maps have been analyzed using novel techniques from network theory, revealing some non‐trivial, functionally relevant properties. These include a small‐world structure and hierarchical modularity. However, as discussed here, some of these properties might actually result from an inappropriate way of defining network interactions. Starting (...) from the so‐called bipartite organization of metabolism, where the two meaningful subsets (reactions and metabolites) are considered, most current works use only one of the subsets by means of so‐called graph projections. Unfortunately, projected graphs often ignore relevant biological and chemical constraints, thus leading to statistical artifacts. Some of these drawbacks and alternative approaches need to be properly addressed. (shrink)

Ecology is usually described as the study of organisms interacting with one another and their environments. From this view of ecology, viruses – not usually considered to be organisms – would merely be part of the environment. Since the late 1980s, however, a growing stream of micrographic, experimental, molecular, and model-based (theoretical) research has been investigating how and why viruses should be understood as ecological actors of the most important sort. Viruses, especially phage, have been revealed as participants in the (...) planet's most crucial food webs, even though viruses technically consume nothing (they do not metabolize by themselves). Even more impressively, viruses have been identified as regulators of planetary biogeochemistry, in which they control cycles such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus – cycles on which all life depends. Although much biogeochemical research black-boxes the entities filling functional roles, it is useful to focus a little more closely to understand how viruses can be held responsible for the global processes of life. This paper will give a brief overview of the history of virus ecology and tease out the implications of large-scale ecological modelling with viruses. This analysis suggests that viruses should be conceptualized as ecological actors that are at least comparable and possibly equal to organismal actors. Ecological agency can therefore be distinguished from standard interpretations of biological agency. (shrink)

1. The Naturalistic Turn in Philosophy of Science 2. The Framework of Mechanistic Explanation: Parts, Operations, and Organization 3. Representing and Reasoning About Mechanisms 4. Mental Mechanisms: Mechanisms that Process Information 5. Discovering Mental Mechanisms 6 . Summary.

FD-Diss., Uppsala: University Printers, 2000 (ix+225 pages).

Cognitive enhancements in the context of converging technologies. [Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 1093, pp. 201-207] [with Anders Sandberg] [pdf].

PLoS ONE 3(3): e1897. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.

Routledge (New Media and Cyberculture Series), July 2007.

Journal of Philosophical Logic 34, 97-119, 2005.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted body image which usually leads to low caloric intake and hyperactivity. The underlying mechanism and pathogenesis of anorexia nervosa is still poorly understood. In order to learn more about the underlying pathophysiology of anorexia nervosa and to find further possible treatment options, several animal models mimicking anorexia nervosa have been developed. The aim of this review is to systematically search different databases and provide an (...) overview of existing animal models and to discuss the current knowledge gained from animal models of anorexia nervosa. For the systematic data search, the Pubmed—Medline database, Embase database, and Web of Science database were searched. After removal of duplicates and the systematic process of selection, 108 original research papers were included in this systematic review. One hundred and six studies were performed with rodents and 2 on monkeys. Eighteen different animal models for anorexia nervosa were used in these studies. Parameters assessed in many studies were body weight, food intake, physical activity, cessation of the estrous cycle in female animals, behavioral changes, metabolic and hormonal alterations. The most commonly used animal model is the activity-based anorexia model in which typically young rodents are exposed to time-reduced access to food with unrestricted access to a running wheel. Of the genetic animal models, one that is of particular interest is the anx/anx mice model. Animal models have so far contributed many findings to the understanding of mechanisms of hunger and satiety, physical activity and cognition in an underweight state and other mechanisms relevant for anorexia nervosa in humans. (shrink)

In this paper, we study the parameters that come into play when assessing the truth conditions of say reports and contrast them with belief attributions. We argue that these conditions are sensitive in intricate ways to the connection between the interpretation of the complement of say and the properties of the reported speech act. There are three general areas this exercise is relevant to, besides the immediate issue of understanding the meaning of say: (i) the discussion shows the need to (...) go beyond the simplest view of propositional attitudes, which treats them as restricted quantifiers over worlds; (ii) the complex connections that must exist between the say report and its source speech act show that one has to be able to differentiate between various layers of meaning for the antecedent sentences; (iii) finally, this paper is a small step towards a typology of propositional attitudes that allows us to uncover the complex web of relationships that grammatical mood is sensitive to. (shrink)

In Moran, D. (ed.): Routledge Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Routledge, 2008.

The cell assembly model of language posits that words are laid down in the cortex by discrete sets of neurons distributed over specific parts of the brain. The strong internal links of these “word webs” may not only bind articulatory and acoustic knowledge of a lexical item, they may also link word and meaning; for example, by connecting neuron populations related to word forms to those of actions and perceptions to which the words refer. Therefore, the cortical activation elicited (...) by words should reflect aspects of word meaning, a postulate that has received strong support from recent work using neurophysiological and metabolic imaging. Segalowitz & Lane make the point that this neurobiological model can also be used to predict reaction times in behavioral experiments, using the behavioral distinction between content and function words as an example. We acclaim their view, but warn that response times might be related to different mechanisms at the neuronal level, including the cortical distribution and internal connectivity of cell assemblies along with their mutual connections in the grammatical (syntactic and semantic) network. (shrink)

The paper proposes an account of the contrast (noticed in Karttunen 1976) between the interpretations of the following two discourses: Harvey courts a girl at every convention. {She is very pretty. vs. She always comes to the banquet with him.}. The initial sentence is ambiguous between two quantifier scopings, but the first discourse as a whole allows only for the wide-scope indefinite reading, while the second allows for both. This cross-sentential interaction between quantifier scope and anaphora is captured by means (...) of a new dynamic system couched in classical type logic, which extends Compositional DRT (Muskens 1996) with plural information states (modeled, following van den Berg 1996, as sets of variable assignments). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics become available. The paper also shows that modal subordination (A wolf might come in. It would eat Harvey first) can be analyzed in a parallel way, i.e. the system captures the anaphoric and quantificational parallels between the individual and modal domains argued for in Stone (1999) (among others). In the process, we see that modal / individual-level quantifiers enter anaphoric connections as a matter of course, usually functioning simultaneously as both indefinites and pronouns. (shrink)

The first clinical symptoms focused on the presentation of coronavirus disease 2019 have been respiratory failure, however, accumulating evidence also points to its presentation with neuropsychiatric symptoms, the exact mechanisms of which are not well known. By using a computational methodology, we aimed to explain the molecular paths of COVID-19 associated neuropsychiatric symptoms, based on the mimicry of the human protein interactions with SARS-CoV-2 proteins.Methods: Available 11 of the 29 SARS-CoV-2 proteins’ structures have been extracted from Protein Data Bank. HMI-PRED, (...) a recently developed web server for structural PREDiction of protein-protein interactions between host and any microbial species, was used to find the “interface mimicry” through which the microbial proteins hijack host binding surfaces. Classification of the found interactions was conducted using the PANTHER Classification System.Results: Predicted Human-SARS-CoV-2 protein interactions have been extensively compared with the literature. Based on the analysis of the molecular functions, cellular localizations and pathways related to human proteins, SARS-CoV-2 proteins are found to possibly interact with human proteins linked to synaptic vesicle trafficking, endocytosis, axonal transport, neurotransmission, growth factors, mitochondrial and blood-brain barrier elements, in addition to its peripheral interactions with proteins linked to thrombosis, inflammation and metabolic control.Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2-human protein interactions may lead to the development of delirium, psychosis, seizures, encephalitis, stroke, sensory impairments, peripheral nerve diseases, and autoimmune disorders. Our findings are also supported by the previous in vivo and in vitro studies from other viruses. Further in vivo and in vitro studies using the proteins that are pointed here, could pave new targets both for avoiding and reversing neuropsychiatric presentations. (shrink)

Forthcoming in Lana Trick & Don Dedrick , Cognition, Computation, and Pylyshyn. MIT Press. Presented at the Zenon Pylyshyn Conference , University of Guelph, 1 May 2005.

This paper argues that we need to look beyond Bayesian decision theory for an answer to the general problem of making rational decisions under uncertainty. The view that Bayesian decision theory is only genuinely valid in a small world was asserted very firmly by Leonard Savage [18] when laying down the principles of the theory in his path-breaking Foundations of Statistics. He makes the distinction between small and large worlds in a folksy way by quoting the proverbs ”Look before you (...) leap” and ”Cross that bridge when you come to it”. You are in a small world if it is feasible always to look before you leap. You are in a large world if there are some bridges that you cannot cross before you come to them. As Savage comments, when proverbs conflict, it is proverbially true that there is some truth in both—that they apply in different contexts. He then argues that some decision situations are best modeled in terms of a small world, but others are not. He explicitly rejects the idea that all worlds can be treated as small as both ”ridiculous” and ”preposterous”. The first half of his book is then devoted to a very successful development of the set of ideas now known as Bayesian decision theory for use in small worlds. The second half of the book is an attempt to develop a quite different set of ideas for use in large worlds, but this part of the book is usually said to be a failure by those who are aware of its existence.2 Frank Knight [15] draws a similar distinction between making decision under risk or uncertainty.3 The pioneering work of Gilboa and Schmeidler [7] on making.. (shrink)

In: M. Carrier, D. Howard & J. Kourany (eds), Science and the Social: Knowledge, Epistemic Demands, and Social Values, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press (im Erscheinen).

My answer to the question why? is relatively uncontroversial among anthropologists. Sharing food makes good evolutionary sense, because animals who share food thereby insure themselves against hunger. It is for this reason that sharing food is thought to be so common in the natural world. The vampire bat is a particularly exotic example of a food-sharing species. The bats roost in caves in large numbers during the day. At night, they forage for prey, from whom they suck blood if they (...) can, but they aren’t always successful. If they fail to obtain blood for several successive nights, they die. The evolutionary pressure to share blood is therefore strong. The biologist Wilkinson [59] reports that a hungry bat begs for blood from a roostmate, who will sometimes respond by regurgitating some of the blood it is carrying in its own stomach. This isn’t too surprising when the roostmates are related, but the bats also share blood with roostmates who aren’t relatives. The behaviour is nevertheless evolutionarily stable, because the sharing is done on a reciprocal basis, which means that a bat is much more likely to help out a roostmate that has helped it out in the past. Bats that refuse to help out their fellows therefore risk not being helped out themselves in the future. Vampire bats have their own way of sharing, and we have ours. We call our way of sharing “fairness”. If the accidents of our evolutionary history had led to our sharing in some other way, it would not occur to us to attribute some special role to our current fairness norms. Whatever alternative norms we then.. (shrink)

The defining insight of evolutionary psychology consists of bringing considerations drawn from evolutionary biology to bear on the study of human psychology. So characterized, evolutionary psychology encompasses a large range of views about the nature and evolution of human psychology as well as diverging opinions about the proper method for studying them.¹ In this article, I propose to clarify and evaluate various aspects of evolutionary psychologists’ methodology, with a special focus on their heuristics of discovery—i.e., their methods for developing plausible (...) hypotheses—and their strategies of confirmation—i.e., their methods for providing empirical support for these hypotheses.² I will also evaluate several well-known objections raised against evolutionary psychology. Note that because views about psychology and evolution differ among evolutionary psychologists, I do not pretend to cover every method used in evolutionary psychology.³. (shrink)

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44, 2-9.

Recognition that biological systems are stabilized far from equilibrium by self-organizing, informed, autocatalytic cycles and structures that dissipate unusable energy and matter has led to recent attempts to reformulate evolutionary theory. We hold that such insights are consistent with the broad development of the Darwinian Tradition and with the concept of natural selection. Biological systems are selected that re not only more efficient than competitors but also enhance the integrity of the web of energetic relations in which they are embedded. (...) But the expansion of the informational phase space, upon which selection acts, is also guaranteed by the properties of open informational-energetic systems. This provides a directionality and irreversibility to evolutionary processes that are not reflected in current theory.For this thermodynamically-based program to progress, we believe that biological information should not be treated in isolation from energy flows, and that the ecological perspective must be given descriptive and explanatory primacy. Levels of the ecological hierarchy are relational parts of ecological systems in which there are stable, informed patterns of energy flow and entropic dissipation. Isomorphies between developmental patterns and ecological succession are revealing because they suggest that much of the encoded metabolic information in biological systems is internalized ecological information. The geneological hierarchy, to the extent that its information content reflects internalized ecological information, can therefore be redescribed as an ecological hierarchy. (shrink)

in Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2007.

What are the relations between preattentive feature-placing and states of perceptual awareness? For the purposes of this paper, states of "perceptual awareness" are confined to the simplest possible exemplars: states in which one is aware of some aspect of the appearance of something one perceives. Subjective contours are used as an example. Early visual processing seems to employ independent, high-bandwidth, preattentive feature "channels", followed by a selective process that directs selective attention. The mechanisms that yield subjective contours are found very (...) early in this processing. An experiment by Greg Davis and Jon Driver is described; it seems to show that multiple subjective figures can be coded in these preattentive, parallel stages of visual processing. I propose that some of these preattentive states might register the very same differences that, were one aware of them, would be phenomenal differences. Some arguments pro and con on this possibility are assessed. (shrink)

University Abstract Philosophers have sought to improve upon the logical empiricists’ model of scientific reduction. While opportunities for integration between the cognitive and the neural sciences have increased, most philosophers, appealing to the multiple realizability of mental states and the irreducibility of consciousness, object to psychoneural reduction. New Wave reductionists offer a continuum of comparative goodness of intertheoretic mapping for assessing reductions. Their insistence on a unified view of intertheoretic relations obscures epistemically significant crossscientific relations and engenders dismissive conclusions about (...) psychology. Richer, more sensitive accounts of explanatory pluralism and mechanistic explanation in science advocate multi-level approaches in cross-scientific settings and criticize the distance of the standard philosophical objections from working scientists’ practices and discoveries. The Heuristic Identity Theory, a new, scientifically informed version of the psycho-physical identity theory, incorporates these insights, showing how multiple realizability is an argument for (not against) identities in science and why, therefore, consciousness is not irreducible. (shrink)

It has been known for quite a while that traditional ethical theories have very counterintuitive and paradoxical implications for questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future generations. Classical Utilitarianism, for example, seems to imply that we have a moral duty to procreate and that we should try to have as many off-springs as possible. More disturbingly, it implies Derek Parfit’s well-known Repugnant Conclusion.