Recurrent, unvarying, and seemingly purposeless patterns of action and cognition are part of normal development, but also feature prominently in several neuropsychiatric conditions. Repetitive stereotyped behaviors can be viewed as exaggerated forms of learned habits and frequently correlate with alterations in motor, limbic, and associative basal ganglia circuits. However, it is still unclear how altered basal ganglia feedback signals actually relate to the phenomenological variability of RSBs. Why do behaviorally overlapping phenomena sometimes require different treatment approaches−for example, sensory shielding strategies (...) versus exposure therapy for autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, respectively? Certain clues may be found in recent models of basal ganglia function that extend well beyond action selection and motivational control, and have implications for sensorimotor integration, prediction, learning under uncertainty, as well as aesthetic learning. In this paper, we systematically compare three exemplary conditions with basal ganglia involvement, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and autism spectrum conditions, to gain a new understanding of RSBs. We integrate clinical observations and neuroanatomical and neurophysiological alterations with accounts employing the predictive processing framework. Based on this review, we suggest that basal ganglia feedback plays a central role in preconditioning cortical networks to anticipate self-generated, movement-related perception. In this way, basal ganglia feedback appears ideally situated to adjust the salience of sensory signals through precision weighting of new sensory information, relative to the precision of predictions based on prior generated models. Accordingly, behavioral policies may preferentially rely on new data versus existing knowledge, in a spectrum spanning between novelty and stability. RSBs may then represent compensatory or reactive responses, respectively, at the opposite ends of this spectrum. This view places an important role of aesthetic learning on basal ganglia feedback, may account for observed changes in creativity and aesthetic experience in basal ganglia disorders, is empirically testable, and may inform creative art therapies in conditions characterized by stereotyped behaviors. (shrink)

We design an agent based Monte Carlo model of antibiotics research and development to explore the effects of the policy intervention known as Market Entry Reward on the likelihood that an antibiotic entering pre-clinical development reaches the market. By means of sensitivity analysis we explore the interaction between the MER and four key parameters: projected net revenues, R&D costs, venture capitalists discount rates, and large pharmaceutical organizations' financial thresholds. We show that improving revenues may be more efficient than reducing costs, (...) and thus confirm that this pull-based policy intervention effectively stimulates antibiotics R&D. (shrink)

We offer a novel argument for one-boxing in Newcomb’s Problem. The intentional states of a rational person are psychologically coherent across time, and rational decisions are made against this backdrop. We compare this coherence constraint with a golf swing, which to be effective must include a follow-through after the ball is in flight. Decisions, like golf swings, are extended processes, and their coherence with other psychological states of a player in the Newcomb scenario links her choice with the way she (...) is predicted in a common cause structure. As a result, the standard argument for two-boxing is mistaken. (shrink)

Reorienting the Political examines the reception of two controversial German philosophers, Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, in the Chinese-speaking world. This volume explores the powerful resonance of both thinkers in Chinese political thought from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective.

Web-based platforms play an increasingly important role in managing and sharing research data of all types and sizes. This article presents a case study of the data storage, sharing, and management platform Figshare. We argue that such platforms are displacing and reconfiguring the infrastructure of norms, technologies, and institutions that underlies traditional scholarly communication. Using a theoretical framework that combines infrastructure studies with platform studies, we show that Figshare leverages the platform logic of core and complementary components to re-integrate a (...) presently splintered scholarly infrastructure. By means of this logic, platforms may provide the path to bring data inside a scholarly communication system still optimized mainly for text publications. Yet the platform strategy also risks turning over critical scientific functions to private firms whose longevity, openness, and corporate goals remain uncertain. It may amplify the existing trend of splintering infrastructures, with attendant effects on equity of service. (shrink)

Michael Peters, Sonja Arndt & Marek TesarThis is a collective writing experiment of PESA members, including its Executive Committee, asking questions of the Philosophy of Education in a New Key. Co...

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

The increased usage of questionable environmental marketing claims has become an issue of concern for academics, policy makers and consumers. Much of the research to date, has focused on the accuracy of environmental claims in advertisements, with the information on product packaging being largely ignored. This study uses a content analysis to examine the environmental information on packaging. More specifically it examines the packaging of the population of dishwashing liquid bottles available in grocery stores in a large city in Australia. (...) Evaluation criteria are developed to classify the various types of information and the degree to which the information is "misleading". Seven different informational categories and four accuracy categories are developed. These criteria are developed based on the existing environmental advertising literature and environmental marketing regulations in the U.S. and Australia. It was found that a majority of the packaging information can be classified as being not accurate. (shrink)

Preface 1. Fighting Terrorism 1:1. A new Discourse on War? 1:2. Richard Rorty and the Ethics of War 2. Etiquettes of Atrocity 2:1. Etiquettes of Atrocity 2:2. Discourses on War 2:3. Keeping the discourse: the United States and Vietnam 2.4. Carl Schmitt and the theory of the Partisan 3. Changing the Discourse 3:1 Germany and the Eastern Front 1941-5 3:2 France and Algeria 1955-8 3:3 Israel and the Intifada 3:4 Conclusion 4. A New Discourse? 4:1. The War on Terror -- (...) Is it a War? 4:2. Excluding Unlawful Combatants 4:3. Network Warfare 4:4. Networked Ethics 5. Grammars of Killing 5:1 Grammars of Killing 5:2 Respecting our enemies 5: 3 Non-Lethal Weapons 6. The Unconditional Imperative 6:1 Jaspers and the Warrior Ethos 6:2 The Micromanagement of the Battlefield 6:3 Corporate Warriors? 6:4 Asimov's Children 7. Back to the Greeks 7:1 Back to the Greeks? 7:2 Simone Weil and The Iliad 7:3 Thucydides and the Melian Dialogue 7:4 What's he to Hecuba? 8 The Heuristics of Fear. (shrink)

Das Buch beschreibt die Transformation des Diskurses der Kulturwissenschaft, der seit seinem Entstehen um die Jahrhundertwende auch die deutsch-jüdische Interkulturalität retten sollte, in einem Diskurs der politischen Theologie (Carl Schmitt und Gerschom Scholem), über den sich der katastrophale Trennungsprozess beider Kulturen vollstreckt.

One of the most historically recent and damaging blows to the reputation of utopianism came from its association with the totalitarian regimes of Hitler’s Third Reich and Mussolini’s Fascist party in World War II and the prewar era. Being an apologist for utopianism, it seemed to some, was tantamount to being an apologist for Nazism and all of its concomitant horrors. The fantasy principle of utopia was viewed as irretrievably bound up with the irrationalism of modern dictatorship. While these conclusions (...) are somewhat understandable given the broad strokes that definitions of utopia are typically painted with, I will show in this paper that the link between the mythos of fascism and the constructs of utopianism results from an unfortunate conflation at the theoretical level. The irrationalism of any mass ethos and the rationalism of the thoughtful utopian planner are, indeed, completely at odds with each other. I arrive at this conclusion via an analysis of the concepts of myth and narrative, and the relationships these have with the concept of utopia. (shrink)

Religion has become a vital resource for attempts to rethink the meaning of the political. This article rehearses the efforts of two recent figures, René Girard and Giorgio Agamben, to transform the political by renewing its connection to religion. Both thinkers struggle to escape politics as defined by Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. Girard and Agamben do clash ideologically, but their inquiries into sacrifice and messianism take similar courses. Regarding origins, Girard argues for the sacrificial crisis as the common parent to (...) religion and politics. Conversely, for Agamben, the Roman figure of homo sacer distinguishes politics from religion. With respect to the future, Girard's messianism installs Christian belief as the only way to move beyond violence. By contrast, Agamben steers Pauline messianism toward the efforts to displace sovereignty and reopen the political. I conclude that Agamben breaks with Schmitt while Girard reinscribes his politics at a higher level. Key Words: Giorgio Agamben • Rey Chow • Christianity • René Girard • homo sacer • messianism • politics • sacred • sacrifice • Carl Schmitt. (shrink)

Mentionné à plusieurs reprises bien qu’aucun de ses écrits ne soit cité, Bakounine occupe une place particulière dans quelques-uns des principaux textes de Carl Schmitt (Théologie politique, La dictature, Le concept de politique). Les thèmes que Schmitt choisit de repérer chez Bakounine (satanisme, naturalisme, nature religieuse de l’autorité, refus de la médiation), s’ils sont l’indice d’une connaissance précise de l’œuvre du révolutionnaire russe, permettent également de l’inscrire dans une opposition terme à terme avec les théoriciens de la contre-révolution. La lecture (...) attentive que Schmitt semble avoir faite des textes de Bakounine ne doit donc pas masquer que dans l’œuvre du théoricien allemand, Bakounine est avant tout une figure : celle de l’anarchiste russe, ennemi par excellence qui prétend en finir avec le politique. Apparemment adventice, la convocation de cette figure partiellement mythique touche dès lors à un thème central chez Schmitt, celui de la conception de la politique. (shrink)

The notion of how-possibly explanations emerged with William Dray in response to Carl Hempel’s influential deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation. Dray’s aim was to distinguish explanations of states of affairs that might occur, in contrast to the aim of D-N explanations working to establish that states of affairs must actually occur. More recently, interest in how-possibly explanations has been particularly keen among philosophers of biology. One of the concerns philosophers of biology have focused on is whether how-possibly explanations are “complete” (...) explanations. Dray considered how-possibly explanations to be complete explanations, but the view that they are incomplete explanations became prominent with Robert Brandon’s articulation of successful adaptation explanation in evolutionary biology. According to Brandon, how-possibly adaptation explanations are incomplete, since they lack the requisite empirical evidence. Moreover, Brandon’s characterization of how-possibly explanation can be seen as having set the stage for thinking broadly about how-possibly explanations in biology. Echoing Brandon’s account for adaptation explanations, for example, David Resnik contends that how-possibly explanations are inherently incomplete, and yet they serve an important heuristic role throughout biology by setting out an agenda for future research. (shrink)

Christophe Gripon Cet article présente certains liens entre le processus de sanctification de P. Tillich et des éléments importants de la psychanalyse de C.G. Jung. La posture adoptée, différente de celle de J.P. Dourley, est tillichienne. L’accent est ainsi mis sur la différence entre l’approche de Dieu qu’a le psychologue, qui relève de symboles émergeants de la psyché, et celle du théologien, pour qui Dieu comme fondement transcendant de l’Être est ce que visent les symboles religieux.

The problem of ceteris paribus clauses and Hempel’s problem of provisos are closely-related difficulties. Both challenge advocates of accounts of scientific theories involving laws understood as universal generalizations, and they have been treated as identical problems. Earman and Roberts argue that the problems are distinct. Towards arguing against them, I characterize the relationship between Hempel’s provisos and one way of expressing ceteris paribus clauses. I then describe the relationship between the problems attributed to the clauses, suggesting that they form a (...) single problem-cluster. However, Hempel’s way of formulating provisos and discussing what they involve entangles provisos with the problem of skepticism. This creates a departure in Hempel’s discussion of provisos from the distinctive problem of vacuity which characterizes the problem of ceteris paribus clauses, though for different reasons than Earman and Roberts suggest. (shrink)

This paper presents some connections between the sanctification process of P. Tillich and important elements of the psychoanalysis of C.G. Jung. The position adopted, different from that of J.P. Dourley, is tillichian. Thus emphasis is laid upon the difference between the psychologist’s approach to God, which is based on emerging symbols of the psyche, and that of the theologian, for whom God is the transcendent ground of Being to which religious symbols point.

Like his fellow first-generation Peripatetic Theophrastus, Aristoxenus wrote an extraordinary number of works. Many concerned music; one on Socrates contained evidence independent of Plato and Xenophon. At least five concerned Pythagoreanism: The Life of Pythagoras, On Pythagoras and His Associates, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, Life of Archytas, and the Pythagorean Precepts. This last one, as Carl Huffman...

Christophe Gripon Nous proposons une interprétation de la Sagesse biblique personnifiée comme figure d’anima, la part inconsciente féminine d’un homme, en nous appuyant sur le modèle de la psyché de Carl Gustav Jung tout en discutant de façon critique la sophiologie qu’il présente dans Réponse à Job. Cette approche psychologique de Sophia peut contribuer au débat sur son caractère insaisissable et sur l’articulation entre la Sagesse transcendante et la sagesse immanente.

I Die vermeintliche „Überwindung“ der politischen Theologie Die Geschichte der politischen Theologie in der Moderne erweist sich vorläufig immer noch als die Geschichte ihrer misslungenen Überwindungen. Trotz ihrer vielfachen Erledigungen zeigt die politische Theologie, entgegen Hans Blumenbergs Prognose, eine erstaunliche Fähigkeit zur „Selbstbehauptung“. Ihre Resistenz verdankt sie dabei nicht zum Geringsten der Prätention all derjenigen Gegner, die meinten, man könne, indem man eine spezifische Form von politischer Theologie kritisiert, gleich mit allen Spielarten des politisch-theologischen Diskurses aufräumen. Ohnehin werden die meisten (...) Überwindungen der politischen Theologie im Namen einer anderen politischen Theologie vorgenommen. So die berühmteste, von Erik Peterson stammende Widerlegung, die als Fazit der Untersuchung zum „Monotheismus als politisches Problem“ gegen Carl Schmitts politische Theologie gewendet war und den eher anstößigen Sprachgebrauch von der „Erledigung“ in Umlauf gebracht hat. Sie wurde von Peterson jedenfalls im Namen der trinitarischen Theologie des Augustinus vorgenommen, wobei Peterson eine solche Erledigung schon im Rahmen einer an Paulus' Römerbrief orientierten Theopolitik erprobt hatte. Darüber hinaus muss der Begriff der politischen Theologie nicht notwendig gegen die „Legitimität der Moderne“ eingesetzt sein, sondern versteht sich oft genug als deren dialektische Kritik, wie etwa bei Martin Buber, Paul Tillich oder später bei Jürgen Moltmann und Johann Baptist Metz. (shrink)

We offer an interpretation of Biblical Wisdom personified as an anima figure, the unconscious feminine part of a man, drawing on the model of Carl Gustav Jung’s psyche, while critically discussing the sophiology he presents in Answer to Job. This Sophia’s psychological approach can contribute to the debate about her elusiveness and the articulation between transcendent Wisdom and immanent wisdom.

https://revistes.uab.cat/enrahonar/article/view/v25-menke.

Hans Kelsen has recently been praised as a defender of democracy but that defense has a long history of being criticized. Kelsen’s most famous critic was Carl Schmitt and commentators have often re...