In “Raymond Ruyer and cybernetics”, Alix Veilhan sheds light on Ruyer’s reading of cybernetic theories, and especially on how a dialogue with the views of Norbert Wiener allows Ruyer to support the hypothesis of a “trans-spatial” origin of the information, and to demonstrate once again the inadequacy of mechanism in the explanation of the living world. Ruyer thus calls for the development of a renewed cybernetics, in conformity with his “neo-finalism”.

Recent scientific advances in the field of gene editing have led to a renewed discussion on the moral acceptability of human germline modifications. Gene editing methods can be used on human embryos and gametes in order to change DNA sequences that are associated with diseases. Modifying the human germline, however, is currently illegal in many countries but has been suggested as a ‘last resort’ option in some reports. In contrast, preimplantation genetic diagnosis is now a well-established practice within reproductive medicine. (...) Both methods can be used to prevent children from being born with severe genetic diseases. This paper focuses on four moral concerns raised in the debate about germline gene editing and applies them to the practice of PGD for comparison: Violation of human dignity, disrespect of the autonomy and the physical integrity of the future child, discrimination of people living with a disability and the fear of slippery slope towards immoral usage of the technology, e.g. designing children for specific third party interests. Our analysis did not reveal any fundamental differences with regard to the four concerns. We argue that with regard to the four arguments analyzed in this paper germline gene editing should be considered morally as acceptable as the selection of genomes on the basis of PGD. However, we also argue that any application of GGE in reproductive medicine should be put on hold until thorough and comprehensive laws have been implemented to prevent the abuse of GGE for non-medical enhancement. (shrink)

This is a descriptive and detailed revision of qualitative investigations of coping styles and strategies; academic performance of adolescent students. It considered both, independent and correlational studies among the two variables. Different data bases were revised like Dialnet, Redalyc, Scielo y Science Direct. 479 articles were obtained from these, 46 of these responded to the selection criteria that entailed (research article, indexed journal, adolescents). Alongside this search there was a prevalence of the studies related to different variables and their relationship (...) with coping styles and strategies. The studies present common results in terms of positive correlations between active coping styles and well being. (shrink)

Posner & Raichle'sImages of mindis an excellent educational book and very well written. Some flaws as a scientific publication are: (a) the accuracy of the linear subtraction method used in PET is subject to scrutiny by further research at finer spatial-temporal resolutions; (b) lack of accuracy of the experimental paradigm used for EEG complementary studies.

This commentary focuses on how bottom-up neocortical models can be developed into eigenfunction expansions of probability distributions appropriate to describe short-term memory in the context of scalp EEG. The mathematics of eigenfunctions are similar to the top-down eigenfunctions developed by Nunez, despite different physical manifestations. The bottom-up eigenfunctions are at the local mesocolumnar scale, whereas the top-down eigenfunctions are at the global regional scale. Our respective approaches have regions of substantial overlap, and future studies may expand top-down eigenfunctions into the (...) bottom-up eigenfunctions, yielding a model of scalp EEG expressed in terms of columnar states of neocortical processing of attention and short-term memory. Footnotes1 The author is also affiliated with DRW Investments LLC, 311 S. Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606. (shrink)

This article discusses the revival of Polish national thought from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I demonstrate how the so-called Jewish question influenced the debate and the vision of Jewry in Poland after 1989 and how it was used to create a new national identity. I outline why the so-called Jewish question was so crucial in Polish national debates. Furthermore, I demon- strate how the Polish Jewish past was portrayed and commemorated in the Third Polish Republic. This research focuses (...) upon the period of Aleksander Kwasniewski’s presidency, during which the famous debate about the pogrom in Jedwabne took place. The original version of this article was presented as a paper in January 2019 at a conference in Stockholm entitled ‘Jews in Middle Eastern Europe after the Downfall of the Wall in 1989’, organised by Paideia, The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden. (shrink)

When Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, the book exploded into women's consciousness. Before the decade was out, what had begun as a campaign for women's civil rights transformed into a diverse and revolutionary movement for freedom and social justice that challenged many aspects of everyday life long accepted as fixed: work, birth control and abortion, childcare and housework, gender, class, and race, art and literature, sexuality and identity, rape and domestic violence, sexual harassment, pornography, and more. This (...) was the women's liberation movement, and writing--powerful, personal, and prophetic--was its beating heart. Fifty years on, in the age of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, this visionary and radical writing is as relevant and urgently needed as ever, ready to inspire a new generation of feminists. Activists and writers Alix Kates Shulman and Honor Moore have gathered an unprecedented collection of works--many long out-of-print and hard to find--that catalyzed and propelled the women's liberation movement. Ranging from Friedan's Feminine Mystique to Backlash, Susan Faludi's Reagan-era requiem, and framed by Shulman and Moore with an introduction and headnotes that provide historical and personal context, the anthology reveals the crucial role of Black feminists and other women of color in a decades long mass movement that not only brought about fundamental changes in American life--changes too often taken for granted today--but envisioned a thoroughgoing revolution in society and consciousness still to be achieved"--Back cover. (shrink)

En France, Lukács est considéré aussi bien comme un représentant de l’orthodoxie marxiste que comme un auteur subversif fondateur de la tradition du marxisme hétérodoxe. Cet article revient sur la genèse de cette appréciation ambivalente, qui trouve ses sources dans les années 1940 et 1950. C’est durant ces années que s’élaborent les cadres et présupposés de la réception française de son œuvre, à travers une série d’épisodes dont les enjeux sont à la fois théoriques, éditoriaux et politiques : l’intervention de (...) Lukács en France dans la bataille idéologique de la Guerre froide en 1948-1949 et sa polémique menée avec l’existentialisme français, l’éclatement international de « l’affaire Lukács » en 1949-1950 et ses retombées hexagonales, enfin le changement de statut de Lukács au cours des années 1950. (shrink)

A comparative method of studying the biological bases of personality compares human trait dimensions with likely animal models in terms of genetic determination and common biological correlates. The approach is applied to the trait of sensation seeking, which is defined on the human level by a questionnaire, reports of experience, and observations of behavior, and on the animal level by general activity, behavior in novel situations, and certain types of naturalistic behavior in animal colonies. Moderately high genetic determination has been (...) found for human sensation seeking, and marked strain differences in rodents have been found in open-field behavior that may be related to basic differences in brain neurochemistry. Agonistic and sociable behaviors in both animals and humans and the trait measure of sensation seeking in humans have been related to certain common biological correlates such as gonadal hormones, monoamine oxidase (MAO), and augmenting of the cortical evoked potential.The monoamine systems in the rodent brain are involved in general activity, exploratory behavior, emotionality, socialization, dominance, sexual and consummately behaviors, and intracranial self-stimulation. Preliminary studies have related norepinephrine and enzymes involved in its production and degradation to human sensation seeking. A model is suggested that relates mood, behavioral activity, sociability, and clinical states to activity of the central catecholamine neurotransmitters and to neuroregulators and other transmitters that act in opposite ways on behavior or stabilize activity in the arousal systems. Stimulation and behavioral activity act on the catecholamine systems in a brain–behavior feedback loop. At optimal levels of catecholamine systems activity (CSA) mood is positive and activity and sociability are adaptive. At very low or very high levels of CSA mood is dysphoric, activity is restricted or stereotyped, and the organism is unsocial or aggressively antisocial. Novelty, in the absence of threat, may be rewarding through activation of noradrenergic neurons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:604 Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Alix Genter Appearances Can Be Deceiving: Butch-Femme Fashion and Queer Legibility in New York City, 1945–1969 The 1956 image of Sunny and Doris (figure 1) is a typical one when conjuring images of butch-femme lesbianism in the post-World War II era: a femme looking glamorous in a dress, makeup, and heels, and a dapper butch sporting (...) a man’s suit and tie and a slick D.A. haircut with a pompadour and one casual curl in front.1 The butch’s masculine appearance and the sharp gendered contrast between the two make their queerness highly legible, a standard feature in images of postwar butch-femme lesbians in both the public and scholarly imagination.2 Indeed, lesbian visibility at midcentury was almost entirely dependent on gender transgressions in the form of “mannishness,” demarcating butches as the public face of lesbianism—a role that scholars such as Joan Nestle, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline Davis, and Donna Penn argue had powerful political implications. Butches not only challenged normative conceptions of gender and claimed lesbian social space, they also defiantly announced their queerness through their looks, thereby expressing women’s sexual autonomy and acting as vehicles for introducing others to gay life. Alongside them, femmes, while generally undetectable by 1. D.A. refers to “duck’s ass,” a popular hairstyle from the 1950s. The hair was slicked back into a point at the nape of the neck that resembled a duck’s tail. 2. In addition to dress and appearance, postwar butch-femme lesbianism was defined by gendered behaviors and mannerisms, and by roles in courtship, relationships, and sex. Alix Genter 605 themselves, proclaimed their own lesbianism and contributed to these modes of visual resistance.3 In these analyses, femmes are incorporated into lesbian rebellion by association with butches—their willingness to stand beside butches and be read as queer and to provide love and support for their partners who bore the brunt of homophobic abuse because of their overt gender expression. Butch visibility remains the foundation of butch-femme resistance, and legible butch masculinity remains an idealized icon of subversive lesbian power. But what if butches in postwar America were not as visible as commonly believed? Consider Miriam Wolfson and May Brown, for example (figure 2), both butches in New York City in the 1950s. Wolfson sees herself as a shy-but-aggressive butch who has always felt masculine, and she sees her friend May Brown as “the butch of the century.”4 Yet, the image shows two women in skirts with feminine hairdos and hints of lipstick. Photographs such as this one demonstrate the visual disconnect between what one might expect butchness to look like and what it did look like for some women during this era. While New York City’s butches certainly employed the classic suit-and-tie and jeans-and-T-shirt looks, they also conveyed their identities through alternate means that included clandestine codes and plays on women’s fashions. In doing so, they offered a range of ways of interpreting butchness in their everyday lives that did not necessarily rely on the men’s clothing and styling that made lesbians visible in larger US culture. This article interrogates the relationship between masculine style and lesbian self-presentation during the postwar period. Queer legibility could enable entrance into lesbian communities and attract one’s next lover as well as provoke hostility, violence, and arrest. In this context, appearance carried tremendous significance, and butches and femmes employed diverse strategies to both convey and conceal their queerness, 3. See Joan Nestle, “Butch-Femme Relationships: Sexual Courage in the 1950s,” in her A Restricted Country, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2003), 92–102; Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (New York: Routledge, 1993); Donna Penn, “The Meanings of Lesbianism in Postwar America,” in Gender and American History since 1890, ed. Barbara Melosh (New York: Routledge, 1993), 106–24. 4. Miriam Wolfson, interview with author, New York, NY, July 1, 2010. 606 Alix Genter knowing that the consequences varied by time, place, and... (shrink)

Kant famously identified 'What is man?' as the fundamental question that encompasses the whole of philosophy. Yet surprisingly, there has been no concerted effort amongst Kant scholars to examine Kant's actual philosophy of man. This book, which is inspired by, and part of, the recent movement that focuses on the empirical dimension of Kant's works, is the first sustained attempt to extract from his writings on biology, anthropology and history an account of the human sciences, their underlying unity, their presuppositions (...) as well as their methodology. In exploring his philosophical and epistemological foundation of the human sciences, it reveals an unexpected picture of Kant, a picture of a thinker who is profoundly attentive to the diversity, detail and complexity of the human world. (shrink)

La defense d'un profond humanisme dont les racines puisent dans la Renaissance ainsi que le souci permanent d'une pedagogie exemplaire ont guide Genevieve Giudicelli-Delage durant toute sa carriere. Professeur emerite de l'Universite Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, ou elle a notamment dirige pendant de nombreuses annees le DEA devenu Master II de droit penal et politique criminelle en Europe, redactrice en chef de la Revue de science criminelle et de droit penal compare pour les editions Dalloz, presidente de l'Association de recherches penales (...) europeennes (ARPE), directrice de l'Ecole du Centre Ouest des avocats a Poitiers, Genevieve Giudicelli-Delage n'a cesse d'oeuvrer pour un depassement des frontieres disciplinaires et geographiques dans l'approche du phenomene criminel, ce dont temoignent en particulier son engagement en faveur du developpement du droit compare et son attachement a repousser les lignes d'horizons juridiques. Son regard sur le droit penal a profondement marque des generations d'etudiants et de doctorants. Par ses recherches individuelles, comme par les recherches collectives qu'elle mene admirablement, elle a egalement contribue au rayonnement doctrinal du droit penal en general, et de certaines de ses disciplines telles que le droit penal des affaires, le droit international penal, le droit penal europeen ou la procedure penale. C'est donc au chercheur comme au pedagogue que nous avons souhaite rendre hommage par ces Melanges regroupant une soixantaine d'auteurs, anciens eleves/collegues/amis, universitaires et/ou praticiens reunis autour du theme Humanisme et justice, que le Professeur Giudicelli-Delage a, par un soin constant, nourri et questionne durant toutes ses annees d'exercice. (shrink)

À travers la présentation clinique du cas de Caroline, une jeune femme sourde suivie en psychothérapie, ce texte réfléchit à la question de la triangulation, à ses spécificités et achoppements. Du fait des besoins spécifiques de l’enfant, la situation de handicap peut accentuer la situation de dépendance de l’enfant et prolonger la préoccupation maternelle. De même, le handicap sensoriel risque d’engendrer un retard dans l’adaptation des parents à leur enfant et de créer une vulnérabilité dans le lien aux autres, notamment (...) lors des séparations. Ces spécificités intensifieraient la menace de castration, fantasmatiquement attribuée au père, et favoriseraient la fixation à la mère. Une approche psychodynamique permet d’être attentif à la dimension défensive en jeu dans la mise au premier plan d’imagos parentales clivées, avec d’un côté une mère idéale, de l’autre un père qui focalise l’agressivité. (shrink)

This essay presents a scenario of the origin of life that is based on analysis of biological architecture and mechanical design at the microstructural level. My thesis is that the same architectural and energetic constraints that shape cells today also guided the evolution of the first cells and that the molecular scaffolds that support solid-phase biochemistry in modern cells represent living microfossils of past life forms. This concept emerged from the discovery that cells mechanically stabilize themselves using tensegrity architecture and (...) that these same building rules guide hierarchical self-assembly at all size scales (Sci Amer 278:48–57;1998). When combined with other fundamental design principles (e.g., energy minimization, topological constraints, structural hierarchies, autocatalytic sets, solid-state biochemistry), tensegrity provides a physical basis to explain how atomic and molecular elements progressively self-assembled to create hierarchical structures with increasingly complex functions, including living cells that can self-reproduce. BioEssays 22:1160–1170, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that Kant's philosophy of biology has crucial implications for our understanding of his philosophy of history, and that overlooking these implications leads to a fundamental misconstruction of his views. More precisely, I will show that Kant's philosophy of history is modelled on his philosophy of biology due to the fact that the development of the human species shares a number of peculiar features with the functioning of organisms, these features entailing important methodological (...) characteristics. From this main claim will follow three further claims: (1) Kant's teleological view of history is not simply based on ethical considerations that have to do with the moral progress of the human species; rather, it stems from his conception of teleology as developed in his philosophy of biology. (2) Kant's philosophy of history allows for the practice of scientific history. In this sense, Kant's view of history is not merely teleological but involves a mechanical (and thus empirical) element. (3) Just as teleology is useful for furthering mechanical accounts of biological phenomena, teleological history is useful for scientific history. (shrink)

This paper examines Kant’s anthropological project and its relationship to his conception of ‘man’ in order to show that Kant’s answer to the question ‘what is man?’ entails a decisive re-evaluation of traditional conceptions of human nature. I argue that Kant redirects the question ‘what is man?’ away from defining man in terms of what he is, and towards defining him in terms of what he does, in particular through the distinction between three levels of what I will call ‘man’s (...) praxis’: the levels of technicality, prudence, and morality. As soon as man is understood in terms of what he makes of himself rather than in terms of what he is, two crucial issues arise: what is the purpose of his making? And how can he reach this destination? My claim is that whilst the first question is answered by ethics and a doctrine of prudence, the second question is answered by anthropology. In this sense, anthropology plays the crucial role of identifying the worldly helps and hindrances to the realisation of man’s purposes—and this is the reason why it should be understood as a ‘pragmatic’ discipline.Keywords: Immanuel; Kant; Pragmatic; Anthropology; Praxis; Aliens; Human nature. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to extract from Kant's writings an account of the nature of the emotions and their function – and to do so despite the fact that Kant neither uses the term ‘emotion’ nor offers a systematic treatment of it. Kant's position, as I interpret it, challenges the contemporary trends that define emotions in terms of other mental states and defines them instead first and foremost as ‘feelings’. Although Kant's views on the nature of feelings have (...) drawn surprisingly little attention, I argue that the faculty of feeling has the distinct role of making us aware of the way our faculties relate to each other and to the world. As I show, feelings are affective appraisals of our activity, and as such they play an indispensable orientational function in the Kantian mind. After spelling out Kant's distinction between feeling and desire, I turn to the distinction between feeling and cognition and show that while feelings are non-cognitive states, they have a form of derived-intentionality. §4 argues that what feelings are about, in this derived sense, is our relationship to ourselves and the world: they function as affective appraisals of the state of our agency. §5 shows that this function is necessary to the activity of the mind insofar as it is orientational. Finally, §6 discusses the examples of epistemic pleasure and moral contentment and argues that they manifest the conditions of cognitive and moral agency respectively. (shrink)

Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, an array of off-label interventions has been used to treat patients, either provided as compassionate care or tested in clinical trials. There is a challenge in determining the justification for conducting randomised controlled trials over providing compassionate use in an emergency setting. A rapid and more accurate evaluation tool is needed to assess the effect of these treatments. Given the similarity to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) pandemic in Africa in 2014, we suggest (...) using a tool designed by the WHO committee in the aftermath of the EVD pandemic: Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered and Investigational Interventions (MEURI). Considering the uncertainty around SARS-CoV-2, we propose using an improved MEURI including the Plan–Do–Study–Act tool. This combined tool may facilitate dynamic monitoring, analysing, re-evaluating and re-authorising emergency use of unproven treatments and repeat it in cycles. It will enable adjustment and application of outcomes to clinical practice according to changing circumstances and increase the production of valuable data to promote the best standard of care and high-quality research—even during a pandemic. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

À travers la présentation clinique du cas de Caroline, une jeune femme sourde suivie en psychothérapie, ce texte réfléchit à la question de la triangulation, à ses spécificités et achoppements. Du fait des besoins spécifiques de l’enfant, la situation de handicap peut accentuer la situation de dépendance de l’enfant et prolonger la préoccupation maternelle. De même, le handicap sensoriel risque d’engendrer un retard dans l’adaptation des parents à leur enfant et de créer une vulnérabilité dans le lien aux autres, notamment (...) lors des séparations. Ces spécificités intensifieraient la menace de castration, fantasmatiquement attribuée au père, et favoriseraient la fixation à la mère. Une approche psychodynamique permet d’être attentif à la dimension défensive en jeu dans la mise au premier plan d’imagos parentales clivées, avec d’un côté une mère idéale, de l’autre un père qui focalise l’agressivité. (shrink)

En tant qu’idéologie, le communisme promeut l’égalité entre femmes et hommes. Cependant celles-ci sont régulièrement un objet de méfiance de la part des cadres des partis communistes parce qu’elles sont considérées comme plus proches des traditions religieuses et difficiles à intégrer dans les rangs des partis. Elles ne représentent jamais la moitié des effectifs de ceux-ci. En Europe de l’Est et à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la création des Démocraties Populaires permet aux partis...

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is considered by many to have made the most sweeping changes affecting corporate governance since the Securities and Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934. About 4 years after its passing, however, many governance experts question whether the time and expense of compliance engender any real reforms. This article examines whether corporations have restructured their boards in response to the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley and finds evidence that companies are implementing changes that should strengthen the monitoring ability (...) of their boards. (shrink)