This introduction to a special issue of Topoi introduces and summarises the relationship between three main varieties of 'enactivist' theorising about the mind: 'autopoietic', 'sensorimotor', and 'radical' enactivism. It includes a brief discussion of the philosophical and cognitive scientific precursors to enactivist theories, and the relationship of enactivism to other trends in embodied cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

In this wide-ranging interview, Dave Elder-Vass discusses his main contributions to critical realist theory over two decades. In the first half, he explains his early work on emergence, agency, str...

Based on our respective research programs (psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, public health, HIV/AIDS, harm reduction) this article aims to use purposely non‐conventional means to present the substantial contribution of poststructuralist perspectives to knowledge development in nursing science in general and in our current research in particular. More specifically, we call on the work of Michel Foucault and Deleuze & Guattari to politicize nursing science using examples from our empirical research programs with marginal and often highly marginalized populations. We discuss the concepts (...) of power, discourse, and resistance to illustrate the essential contribution of poststructuralism to marginal, even “nomadic”, nursing research. (shrink)

How should accounts that stress the embodied, embedded and engaged character of human minds accommodate the role of rationality in human subjectivity? Drawing on Matthew Boyle’s contrast between ‘additive’ and ‘transformative’ conceptions of rationality, I argue that contemporary work on embodied cognition tends towards a problematic ‘additivism’ about the relationship between mature human capacities to think and act for reasons, and sensorimotor capacities to skillfully engage with salient features of the environment. Additivists view rational capacities to reason and reflect as (...) a distinct ‘layer’ or ‘storey’ of human cognition, with a normative structure that differs from that of the sensorimotor coping skills which support it. I argue that emphasizing the embodied and engaged character of human minds is better combined with a ‘transformative’ conception of rationality – one which holds that acquiring abilities to give and ask for reasons transforms the normative structure of our unreflective embodied dealings with the environment. And I argue that a transformative embodied cognitive science of human rationality is not only possible, but underway. Integrating existing work on embodied cognition with work on the cultural and developmental contexts that shape human minds suggests how human immersion in culture transforms the structure of sensorimotor engagements by bringing about the communicability and negotiability of the meanings to which those engagements attune us. (shrink)

Mark Coeckelbergh argues that Romanticism and the Enlightenment philosophies are not that far apart when it comes to philosophy of technology.

Reviews work on moral judgment motivational internalism from the last two decades.

An eye-opening tour of the political tricks that subvert scientific progress. The Butter-Up and Undercut. The Certain Uncertainty. The Straight-Up Fabrication. Dave Levitan dismantles all of these deceptive arguments, and many more, in this probing and hilarious examination of the ways our elected officials attack scientific findings that conflict with their political agendas. The next time you hear a politician say, "Well, I’m not a scientist, but…," you’ll be ready.

In this richly argued and provocative book, David Davies elaborates and defends a broad conceptual framework for thinking about the arts that reveals important continuities and discontinuities between traditional and modern art, and between different artistic disciplines. Elaborates and defends a broad conceptual framework for thinking about the arts. Offers a provocative view about the kinds of things that artworks are and how they are to be understood. Reveals important continuities and discontinuities between traditional and modern art. Highlights core topics (...) in aesthetics and art theory, including traditional theories about the nature of art, aesthetic appreciation, artistic intentions, performance, and artistic meaning. (shrink)

The power of algorithms has become a familiar topic in society, media, and the social sciences. It is increasingly common to argue that, for instance, algorithms automate inequality, that they are biased black boxes that reproduce racism, or that they control our money and information. Implicit in many of these discussions is that algorithms are permeated with normativities, and that these normativities shape society. The aim of this editorial is double: First, it contributes to a more nuanced discussion about algorithms (...) by discussing how we, as social scientists, think about algorithms in relation to five theoretical ideal types. For instance, what does it mean to go under the hood of the algorithm and what does it mean to stay above it? Second, it introduces the contributions to this special theme by situating them in relation to these five ideal types. By doing this, the editorial aims to contribute to an increased analytical awareness of how algorithms are theorized in society and culture. The articles in the special theme deal with algorithms in different settings, ranging from farming, schools, and self-tracking to AIDS, nuclear power plants, and surveillance. The contributions thus explore, both theoretically and empirically, different settings where algorithms are intertwined with normativities. (shrink)

Shows how ethical subjectivity is not based on individual morals but contemporary cultureTaking his lead from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, and engaging with a number of ethical thinkers, Dave Boothroyd addresses a number of key contemporary ethical subjects. In doing so, he reveals how responsibility is grounded in the everyday encounters and situations we are all familiar with.

The view from inside : gendered embodiment and the medical representation of sex / Shelley Wall -- The politics of medico-legal recognition : the terms of gendered subjectivity in the UK Gender Recognition Act / Sarah Burgess -- Journeys of choice? : abortion, travel, and women's autonomy / Christabelle Sethna and Marion Doull -- The code of ethics in medicine : intertextuality and meaning in Plato's Sophist and Hippocrates' oath / Twyla Gibson -- Sleeping ethics : gene, episteme, and the (...) body politic / Deborah Lynn Steinberg -- The last temptation of Marion Woodman : the anorexic remainder in bone : dying into life / David L. Clark. (shrink)

Meyer and Brancazio make an important distinction between two enactivist projects: “utopian” and “scientific.” I agree that contemporary enactivists would benefit from more clearly distinguishing these projects and their success conditions. However, I wonder whether there are times when letting these projects merge with each other might be helpful, or even necessary.

Social and linguistic perceptions are linked. On one hand, talker identity affects speech perception. On the other hand, speech itself provides information about a talker's identity. Here, we propose that the same probabilistic knowledge might underlie both socially conditioned linguistic inferences and linguistically conditioned social inferences. Our computational–level approach—the ideal adapter—starts from the idea that listeners use probabilistic knowledge of covariation between social, linguistic, and acoustic cues in order to infer the most likely explanation of the speech signals they hear. (...) As a first step toward understanding social inferences in this framework, we use a simple ideal observer model to show that it would be possible to infer aspects of a talker's identity using cue distributions based on actual speech production data. This suggests the possibility of a single formal framework for social and linguistic inferences and the interactions between them. (shrink)

‘Cosmetic psychopharmacology’ is a term coined by Peter Kramer in his 1993 best‐seller, Listening to Prozac. It has come to refer to the use of psychoactive substances to effect changes in function for conditions that are either normal or subclinical variants. In this paper, I ask: What distinguishes an existential ailment from clinical depression, or either of those from normal depressed mood, melancholic temperament, dysthymia or other depressive disorders? Can we reliably distinguish one from the other? Are the boundaries of (...) illness and disorder really so distinct? If not, how can we know that treatment of ‘depression’ with Prozac in any given instance constitutes a cosmetic as opposed to, say, a medical or clinical use of psychopharmacology – a distinction that seems to turn on our ability to clearly differentiate the clinical from the cosmetic. If we cannot reliably distinguish between such conditions, can we even have a cosmetic psychopharmacology that is not a form of malpractice, broadly speaking? What if we unplugged Prozac from all the amplitude and hype that resulted in Listening to Prozac becoming an instant best‐seller and simply asked whether or not we can clearly distinguish an appropriate cosmetic use of Prozac for ‘depression’ from an inappropriate cosmetic use of Prozac, and both of those from Prozac's appropriate clinical, that is, non‐cosmetic uses? If we cannot make these distinctions, perhaps it is too early to say there can be such a thing as a cosmetic psychopharmacology. (shrink)

Skepticism about the limits of online learning is as old as online learning itself. As with other technologically-driven innovations in pedagogy, there are deep-seated worries that important educational goods might be effaced or obscured by the ways of teaching and learning that online methods allow. One family of such worries is inspired by reflections on the bodily basis of an important kind of understanding, and skepticism over whether this bodily basis can be inculcated in the absence of actual, flesh-and-blood, classroom (...) interactions. This paper focuses on the ways in which such worries arise in the influential work of Hubert Dreyfus. The negative conclusion for which I argue is that endorsing Dreyfus's Merleau-Pontian picture of the relationship between bodily skill and understanding does not commit us to his general pessimism concerning online learning—bodily, emotional, and interactive dimensions might be essential to learning, but we lack reasons to think that online learning necessarily lacks these dimensions. The negative argument motivates a positive claim: rather than giving up on online learning we should focus on designing courses and pedagogies that scaffold the bodily, affective and interactive dynamics constitutive of understanding in a particular domain. (shrink)

Although inquiry-based instruction has been a centerpiece of progressive visions of social studies education almost since its inception as a school subject a century ago, teachers often struggle to conceptualize it in ways that make true inquiry possible for their students. In this essay I suggest that social educators strengthen their connection with John Dewey’s pragmatic epistemology as the foundation of inquiry-based teaching in social studies, arguing in support of an approach that holds the promise of advancing goals associated with (...) meaningful democratic citizenship education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and Power: An Inquiry into Foucault’s Critique of ConfessionDave TellOn October 10, 1979, Michel Foucault revised his thesis on confession. On that day, some three years after the publication of his magisterial treatment of confession in the first volume of The History of Sexuality, Foucault argued that the Pythagoreans, Stoics, and Epicureans had, before the advent of Christianity, their own practices of confession. Yet these practices, unlike their (...) Christian variants, were not complicit with practices of domination (OS 310, 312). In the context of Foucault’s thought theretofore, in which the confession consistently figured as an essential component in the exercise of modern power, this is a radical shift. In lectures given at both Berkeley and Dartmouth in the fall of 1980, Foucault made similar arguments. On these occasions he argued that Seneca’s De ira constituted a “stoic confession,” the object of which was to enable the subject to “live differently, better, more happily, than other people” (AB 210, 205). Judith Butler captures the gravity of the shift: “In the last years of his life, Foucault returned to the question of confession, reversing his earlier critique in the first volume of the History of Sexuality, where he indicts confession as a forcible extraction of sexual truth, a practice in the service of a regulatory power” (2005, 112).This reversal was short lived. Although Foucault would celebrate ancient Greek techniques of the self for the rest of his life, he would not [End Page 95] long refer to these techniques in terms of confession. Thus, in another reading of De ira, this one in March 1982, Foucault again noted that the Stoics have “confessional practices” that are “very close to what is found in Christianity” (Herm 482). This time, however, he insisted that the Stoic practices were fundamentally different: “However, all these elements seem to me to be profoundly different from what we should call ‘confession’ in the strict, or anyway, spiritual sense of the word” (Herm 365). In The Care of the Self, Foucault again conceded that De ira—what he now called “the most detailed description” of antique practices of the self—looked “at first glance” like a Christian confession, but he again maintained that it is something quite different: “The purpose of the examination is not therefore to discover one’s own guilt, down to its most trifling forms” (CS 61–62). Foucault concluded that the various “discourses of the self”—the confession and the Greek techniques of the self—could not be placed into a single category (see GE 250). Indeed, the “profound difference” (Herm 299) between these two discourses of the self was perhaps Foucault’s most repeated claim of the 1980s (see Herm 222, 237–44, 299, 308; GE 247–48; WS 237; AB 207–8; RFT 27; UP 89; CS 239; SS 5; FI 5, 12; FS 30, 35, 44, 87, 96, 97, 143–45, 147).It is worth asking why Foucault returned so consistently to the distinction between these two discursive forms. This question gains even more relevance for readers of this journal when we remember that, on at least two occasions, Foucault defined one of these forms, the ancient techniques of the self, in terms of its opposition to rhetoric: the techniques of the self, he claimed, are “nonrhetorical” (Herm 368; FS 20). Thus the question that drives this essay is not so much why Foucault attached such importance to the distinction but rather how rhetoric itself might differentiate the confession from the techniques of the self. Stated differently, Foucault’s work on the confession vis-à-vis the technologies of the self provides a valuable opportunity to study the role of rhetoric in Foucault’s thought—not because they are both rhetorical forms but, curiously, because Foucault insists that one is not.In order to foreground the work of rhetoric in Foucault’s thought, I situate his discourses of the self in the context of Nietzsche’s critique of metonymy. Although this may seem arbitrary, it gains initial plausibility from three facts. First, we know that Foucault understood rhetoric in terms of tropes (OT 84; Cooper 1988, 4). Second, we know too that Foucault had a deep... (shrink)

I argue that the phenomenal properties of conscious visual experiences are properties of the mind-independent objects to which the subject is perceptually related, mediated by the subject's practical understanding of their sensorimotor relation to those properties. This position conjoins two existing strategies for explaining the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences: accounts appealing to perceivers’ limited, non-inferential access to the details of their sensory relation to the environment, and the relationalist conception of phenomenal properties. Bringing these two positions together by emphasizing (...) their sensorimotor common ground allows each one to respond to damaging objections using the resources of the other. The resulting ‘sensorimotor relationalism’ about conscious vision provides a promising schema for explaining phenomenal properties of perceptual states, replacing ‘Hard’ questions with tractable ones about the perceptual relation and its sensorimotor underpinnings. (shrink)

Traditional health sciences (including nursing) paradigms, conceptual models, and theories have relied heavily upon notions of the ‘person’ or ‘patient’ that are deeply rooted in humanistic principles. Our intention here, as a collective academic assemblage, is to question taken‐for‐granted definitions and assumptions of the ‘person’ from a critical posthumanist perspective. To do so, the cinematic works of filmmaker David Cronenberg offer a radical perspective to revisit our understanding of the ‘person’ in nursing and beyond. Cronenberg's work explores bodily transformation and (...) mutation, with the body as a fragile and malleable vessel. Cronenberg's work allows us to interrogate the body in all its complexity, contingency, and hybridity and provides avenues of rupture within current understandings of ‘the person’. Reinventing the definition of what it means to be human, critical posthumanism offers opportunities to both critique humanist theories and build affirmative futurities. Also drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically, their concept of becoming, we propose a critical posthumanist alternative to the conceptualization of the person in the health sciences, that of the becoming‐mutant, so frequently explored in Cronenberg's films. Such a conceptualization permits the inclusion of various technological interventions of the contemporary subject: The postperson. This position offers the health science disciplines a radical reconceptualization of the conceptual and theoretical approaches, extending beyond those trapped within the quagmire of humanistic principles. (shrink)

Group sex among men who have sex with men may be understood as a ‘radical’ practice insofar as it transgresses dominant social discourses around appropriate sexual relations—prioritizing heteronormative, monogamous and risk‐averse sex. These practices are generally defined as steeped in risk, most commonly due to the potential for transmitting human immunodeficiency virus and sexually transmitted infections and accompanied by the possibility of legal and social repercussions. Our ethnographic research study explored the desires, practices and contexts of group sex participants (n (...) = 10) within a popular group sex party destination located in the United States. We employ a poststructuralist perspective (utilizing the work of Deleuze and Guattari) to understand group sex events with the pretext that bodies have no inherent ethics, meaning or essence: they are ‘bodies without organs’. We identify group sex as a form of boundary play, in which participants pursue new limits to what their bodies can do but within a carefully constructed environment that establishes norms of interaction meant to secure trust and safety between participants. A variety of risk reduction practices are shown to be promoted and honoured within these eventful sexual(ized) spaces. The application of poststructuralist concepts of ‘boundary play’ and ‘bodies without organs’ helped to depict the construction and navigation of pleasure, safety and risk among group sex participants. (shrink)

Recently, a review regarding the mechanics and evolution of mitochondrial fission appeared in Nature. Surprisingly, it stated authoritatively that the mitochondrial outer membrane, in contrast with the inner membrane of bacterial descent, was acquired from the host, presumably during uptake. However, it has been known for quite some time that this membrane was also derived from the Gram‐negative, alpha‐proteobacterium related precursor of present‐day mitochondria. The zombie idea of the host membrane still surrounding the endosymbiont is not only wrong, but more (...) importantly, might hamper the proper conception of possible scenarios of eukaryogenesis. Why? Because it steers the imagination not only with regard to possible uptake mechanisms, but also regarding what went on before. Here I critically discuss both the evidence for the continuity of the bacterial outer membrane, the reasons for the persistence of the erroneous host membrane hypothesis and the wider implications of these misconceptions for the ideas regarding events occurring during the first steps towards the evolution of the eukaryotes and later major eukaryotic differentiations. I will also highlight some of the latest insights regarding different instances of endosymbiont evolution. (shrink)

We review the state of the art in moral psychology to answer 6 questions: 1) Where do moral beliefs and motivations come from? 2) How does moral judgment work? 3) What is the evidence for the social intuitionist model? 4) What exactly are the moral intuitions? 5) How does morality develop? And 6) Why do people vary in their morality? We describe the intuitionist approach to moral psychology. The mind makes rapid affective evaluations of everything it encounters, and these evaluations (...) (intuitions) shape and push subsequent moral reasoning. This approach to moral judgment has a variety of implications for moral philosophy and for the law in that it questions common assumptions about the reliability and causal efficacy of private, conscious reasoning. (shrink)

This paper considers the ontological and political implications of the concept of the subject within structuralism. I turn first to Balibar in order to articulate structuralism as a tendency or movement rather than fixed set of positions, using some indications he has provided in order to demonstrate how thoroughly embedded the subject is as a problem within this tendency. I argue that Laclau and Mouffe’s work on hegemony deepens the political stakes of this problem while also introducing the grammar of (...) strategy in an ambivalent and underdefined manner. Considering some possible options for understanding strategy within a structuralist framework, I contend that a stronger theoretical account of strategy is necessary. In order to provide some outlines for such a project, I conclude the analysis by emphasizing the contribution that George Jackson’s writings can provide to this framework, suggesting that the role of the subject should be assigned to tactics.Cet article analyse les implications ontologiques et politiques du concept structuraliste de sujet. En me tournant dans un premier temps vers les indications de Balibar concernant l’intrication profonde du problème du sujet au sein du structuralisme, je montre que ce dernier devrait être compris comme une tendance ou un mouvement plutôt que comme une position philosophique définitive. Je montre ensuite que le travail de Laclau et Mouffe sur l’hégémonie permet d’approfondir les enjeux politiques de ce problème, tout en introduisant de manière ambivalente et prédéfinie la grammaire de la stratégie. En considérant quelques options possibles pour comprendre la stratégie dans une perspective structuraliste, je soutiens la nécessité de l’approcher théoriquement de manière plus puissante. En guise d’esquisse d’un tel projet, je conclus mon analyse avec la contribution qu’y apportent les écrits de George Jackson, en suggérant que le rôle du sujet devrait revenir à la tactique. (shrink)

We present a specific elaboration and partial defense of the claims that cognition is enactive, embodied, embedded, affective and (potentially) extended. According to the view we will defend, the enactivist claim that perception and cognition essentially depend upon the cognizer’s interactions with their environment is fundamental. If a particular instance of this kind of dependence obtains, we will argue, then it follows that cognition is essentially embodied and embedded, that the underpinnings of cognition are inextricable from those of affect, that (...) the phenomenon of cognition itself is essentially bound up with affect, and that the possibility of cognitive extension depends upon the instantiation of a specific mode of skillful interrelation between cognizer and environment. Thus, if cognition is enactive then it is also embodied, embedded, affective and potentially extended. (shrink)

In at least a few of his formulations of the pragmatic maxim around 1905—those in which he sought to inoculate his brand of pragmatism against misappropriation by other pragmatists and also to supply a demonstration of its truth—Charles Peirce instructs us to look not only at the consequences of affirming some claim or concept, but also at the consequences of denying it. Referring to himself in the third person as "the author," Peirce writes: Endeavoring, as a man of that type (...) naturally would, to formulate what he so approved, he framed the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing on the conduct of life; so that, since... (shrink)

Cognitive dissonance has been studied for more than sixty years and many insightful findings have come from this research. However, some important theoretical and methodological issues are yet to be resolved, particularly regarding dissonance reduction. In this paper, we place dissonance theory in the larger framework of appraisal theories of emotion, emotion regulation, and coping. The basic premise of dissonance theory is that people experience negative affect (to varying degrees) following the detection of cognitive conflict. The individual will be motivated (...) to alleviate these emotional reactions and could do so by reducing dissonance in some manner. We argue that detection of dissonance will follow the same principles as when people interpret any other stimuli as emotionally significant. Thus, appraisal theory of emotion, which argues that emotions are generated via the cognitive evaluation of surrounding stimuli, should be applicable to the dissonance-detection process. In short, we argue that dissonance-reduction strategies (attitude change, trivialization, denial of responsibility, etc.) can be understood as emotion-regulation strategies. We further argue that this perspective contributes to reconciling fragmented (and sometimes contrary) viewpoints present in the literature on dissonance reduction. In addition to proposing the general model of dissonance reduction, we illustrate at the hand of empirical data how research on dissonance reduction can be performed without relying on experimental paradigms that focus on a specific reduction strategy. (shrink)

Aspects of peroxisome evolution, uncoupling, carnitine shuttles, supercomplex formation, and missing neuronal fatty acid oxidation (FAO) are linked to reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation in respiratory chains. Oxidation of substrates with high FADH2/NADH (F/N) ratios (e.g., FAs) initiate ROS formation in Complex I due to insufficient availability of its electron acceptor (Q) and reverse electron transport from QH2, e.g., during FAO or glycerol‐3‐phosphate shuttle use. Here it is proposed that the Q‐cycle of Complex III contributes to enhanced ROS formation going (...) from low F/N ratio substrates (glucose) to high F/N substrates. This contribution is twofold: 1) Complex III uses Q as substrate, thus also competing with Complex I; 2) Complex III itself will produce more ROS under these conditions. I link this scenario to the universally observed Complex III dimerization. The Q‐cycle of Complex III thus again illustrates the tension between efficient ATP generation and endogenous ROS formation. This model can explain recent findings concerning succinate and ROS‐induced uncoupling. (shrink)

Clinical research with adults who are unable to provide informed consent has the potential to improve understanding and care of a number of devastating conditions. This research also has the potential to exploit some of society's most vulnerable members. Recently, a number of task forces and individual writers have proposed guidelines to ensure that such research is both possible and ethical. Yet, there is widespread disagreement over which safeguards should be adopted. In the present paper, I consider to what extent (...) these disagreements can be resolved by appeal to a general account of the interests of subjects who are unable to consent and the conditions that must be satisfied for research enrollment to constitute exploitation of their inability to make their own decisions. (shrink)

This essay charts the outlines of the historical transition from the artisanal workshop to the artist’s studio and the transition from the artisan to the artist, not through the transition from patronage to the art market but through an analysis of the transformation of labour’s social division of labour. The essay reassesses the discourses on the artist as genius and the artist as worker through a reinterpretation of the elevation of the Fine Arts above handicraft. This sheds new light, also, (...) on the discourse of deskilling in art. This essay argues that the transition from the artisan to the artist is an effect of the social division of labour in which the knowledge, skills and privileges of the master artisan are distributed among a set of specialists. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to argue alongside Clayton Crockett that Timothy Morton’s hyperobjects can be extended to encompass every object, not merely those that are large in comparison to human beings. However, unlike Crockett who uses the works of Derrida and Lacan to achieve this goal, I turn to Husserl’s underdeveloped theory of hyletic phenomenology and hyle. Despite Husserl’s articulation of hyletic phenomenology ending as quickly as it is announced, I argue that three lessons can be learned from what (...) Husserl does have to say about hyle. Specifically, hyle is non-intentional, it is co-constitutive of intentionality, and hyle contains the possibility of broadening our traditional understanding of objects. Taken together, I suggest that Husserl’s understanding of hyle caries considerable overlap with both Crockett and Morton’s understanding of hyperobjects. (shrink)

Humanity is in a tight race between planetary catastrophe and enlightenment. It’s not clear which will prevail. The old paradigm, that of materialism, individualism, and fierce competition, is failing at all levels—economic, social, political, and environmental—and bringing life as we know it to the edge of a precipice. At the same time, a “new” paradigm is emerging, one that emphasizes interconnectedness, the sacredness of all creation, universal consciousness, and cooperation. In truth, the “new” paradigm is anything but new. What’s new (...) is that scientific discoveries are now beginning to resonate with and reinforce ancient wisdom, wisdom that has been imbedded in indigenous mythologies for millennia. It’s incumbent upon those who have already transitioned to a more sustainable “myth of meaning” to find ways to encourage others along the path. A demographic naturally resonant to holistic worldviews, but largely untapped, is that of undergraduate Honors students. This paper describes a pioneering Honors course at James Madison University that, by many measures, has succeeded in integrating science and spirituality into a new way of thinking and being. (shrink)

Of two contending models for eukaryotic evolution the “archezoan“ has an amitochondriate eukaryote take up an endosymbiont, while “symbiogenesis“ states that an Archaeon became a eukaryote as the result of this uptake. If so, organelle formation resulting from new engulfments is simplified by the primordial symbiogenesis, and less informative regarding the bacterium‐to‐mitochondrion conversion. Gradualist archezoan visions still permeate evolutionary thinking, but are much less likely than symbiogenesis. Genuine amitochondriate eukaryotes have never been found and rapid, explosive adaptive periods characteristic of (...) symbiogenetic models explain this. Mitochondrial proteomes, encoded by genes of “eukaryotic origin“ not easily linked to host or endosymbiont, can be understood in light of rapid adjustments to new evolutionary pressures. Symbiogenesis allows “expensive” eukaryotic inventions via efficient ATP generation by nascent mitochondria. However, efficient ATP production equals enhanced toxic internal ROS formation. The synergistic combination of these two driving forces gave rise to the rapid evolution of eukaryotes.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

In the metaethical debate on moral internalism and externalism, appeal is constantly made to people’s intuitions about the connection between moral judgments and motivation. However, internalists and externalists disagree considerably about their content. In this paper, we present an empirical study of laymen’s intuitions about this connection. We found that they lend surprisingly little support to the most celebrated versions of internalism, which provide reasons to be skeptical of the evidential basis for these views.

Dragon days: introduction to the new edition -- Enter the dragon: on the vernacular of beauty 1 -- Nothing like the son: on Robert Mapplethorpe's X portfolio -- Prom night in flatland: on the gender of works of art -- After the great tsunami: on beauty and the therapeutic institution -- American beauty.

Many teacher candidates get their first taste of life as a full-time teacher in their practicums, during which they confront a host of challenges, pedagogical and ethical. Because ethics is fundamental to the connection between teachers and students, teacher candidates are often required to negotiate dilemmas in ways that keep with the ethical ideals espoused both by the professional body and the community at large. Presenting the case of a teacher candidate who finds herself emotionally depleted in her devotion to (...) students, we look to the ethics of care and virtue for clarifying insights. Care ethics extols intersubjectivity and reciprocity, while virtue ethics enjoins commitment to a noble ideal for its own sake; both perspectives offer useful insights for our case. We argue that the perspectives and practices of contemplative traditions can facilitate the integration of care and virtue ethics, mitigating the risk of disruption in caring relations while minimizing the possibility of a personal p... (shrink)

An expanded edition of Hickey's controversial and exquisitely written apologia for beauty--championed by artists, reviled by art critics, and as powerful as ever 30 years on 1993: the AIDS pandemic rages through yet another decade, leaving society and the arts devastated and bereft. Dave Hickey sits down to produce a slim volume, The Invisible Dragon. The book ignites a firestorm, and from its ashes "beauty" again rises as a dominant force in artistic life. Academics argue about theoretical minutiae. Artists (...) pass the book around like a samizdat. This 30th-anniversary edition brings back into print Dragon's four essays on beauty and commingles them with five previously uncollected essays. Hickey's 1974 profile of Dolly Parton anticipates Dolly's longevity as a cultural and feminist icon; his appreciation of Richard Pryor weaves an elegiac tapestry; his review of John Rechy's seminal gay novel Numbers outs its literary innovation in the face of a homophobia that otherwise ghettoized it; and his singular essay on Ed Ruscha, a paragon of arts writing by an extraordinary prose stylist, enjoins us to listen to art, not just look at it. An afterword by Hickey's friend and Dragon's editor "queers" the brash, heterosexual gambler as it situates the creation of Dragon squarely within the AIDS pandemic. The book was in part an attempt to make beauty visible under the looming presence of death and bodily decay. Only now can we fully appreciate how artists continue to harness beauty as a source of meaning and joy. Dave Hickey (1938-2021) was one of the preeminent arts and cultural writers of the turn of the 21st century. A MacArthur "Genius" Fellow known as the "beauty guy" in the popular press, Hickey opened A Clean, Well-Lighted Place gallery in Austin, Texas, in the 1960s, before becoming executive editor at Art in America magazine. In the 1970s, he was a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, where he coined and helped create the "Outlaw country" music movement. By the 1990s, Hickey had made a home in Las Vegas, from where he regularly traveled to speak with audiences worldwide. (shrink)

As free‐living organisms, alpha‐proteobacteria produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) that diffuse into the surroundings; once constrained inside the archaeal ancestor of eukaryotes, however, ROS production presented evolutionary pressures – especially because the alpha‐proteobacterial symbiont made more ROS, from a variety of substrates. I previously proposed that ratios of electrons coming from FADH2 and NADH (F/N ratios) correlate with ROS production levels during respiration, glucose breakdown having a much lower F/N ratio than longer fatty acid (FA) breakdown. Evidently, higher endogenous ROS (...) formation did not hinder eukaryotic evolution, so how were its disadvantages mitigated? I propose that the resulting selection pressures favoured the evolution of a variety of eukaryotic ‘innovations’: peroxisomes for FA breakdown, carnitine shuttles, the linkage of beta‐oxidation to antioxidant properties, uncoupling proteins (UCPs) and using mitochondrial uncoupling during beta‐oxidation to reduce ROS. Recently observed relationships between peroxisomes and mitochondria further support the model. (shrink)

Psychologists are paying increasing attention to a distinction between two ways of thinking. Cognitive psychologists discern between non-reflective “intuitive” and critical reflective “analytic” thinking. Cultural psychologists discern between context-focused “holistic” and object-focused “analytic” thinking. Both find the former strongly correlated with religious beliefs and Asian cultures, the latter with secular beliefs and Euro-American cultures. Yet, recent studies convincingly suggest: first, that analytic thinking does not just relate to secular beliefs but also to alternative beliefs that straddle the boundaries between secular (...) and religious worldviews; second, that critical reflective thinking includes both the holistic context-focus of Asian religions and the analytic object-focus of European philosophies and sciences. This article supports these recent studies in the psychology of religion based on recent studies from the history and sociology of religion and a discourse analysis of interviews with members of a small-scale twenty-first-century spiritual group, as an example. We show that people who identify as spiritual in a metamodern context use both holistic and analytic thinking in creating alternative worldviews, which dialectically reconcile beliefs that many within modern western cultures would consider contradictory. We conclude that this both/and logic challenges theories and stereotypes about “secular versus religious” and “eastern versus western” thinking. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to bring to the attention of the international nursing community the discrepancy between a pervasive ‘caring’ nursing discourse and a most unethical nursing practice in the United States. In this article, we present a duality: the conflict in American prisons between nursing ethics and the killing machinery. The US penal system is a setting in which trained healthcare personnel practice the extermination of life. We look upon the sanitization of deathwork as an application of (...) healthcare professionals’ skills and knowledge and their appropriation by the state to serve its ends. A review of the states’ death penalty statutes shows that healthcare workers are involved in the capital punishment process and shielded by American laws (and to a certain extent by professional boards through their inaction). We also argue that the law's language often masks that involvement; and explain how states further that duplicity behind legal formalisms. In considering the important role healthcare providers, namely nurses and physicians, play in administering death to the condemned, we assert that nurses and physicians are part of the states’ penal machinery in America. Nurses and physicians (as carriers of scientific knowledge, and also as agents of care) are intrinsic to the American killing enterprise. Healthcare professionals who take part in execution protocols are state functionaries who approach the condemned body as angels of death: they constitute an extension of the state which exercises its sovereign power over captive prisoners. (shrink)

Eukaryotic origins are heavily debated. The author as well as others have proposed that they are inextricably linked with the arrival of a pre‐mitochondrion of alphaproteobacterial‐like ancestry, in a so‐called symbiogenic scenario. The ensuing mutual adaptation of archaeal host and endosymbiont seems to have been a defining influence during the processes leading to the last eukaryotic common ancestor. An unresolved question in this scenario deals with the means by which the bacterium ends up inside. Older hypotheses revolve around the application (...) of known antagonistic interactions, the bacterium being prey or parasite. Here, in reviewing the field, the author argues that such models share flaws, hence making them less likely, and that a “pre‐symbiotic stage” would have eased ongoing metabolic integration. Based on this the author will speculate about the nature of the (endo) symbiosis that started eukaryotic evolution–in the context of bacterial entry being a relatively “early” event–and stress the differences between this uptake and subsequent ones. He will also briefly discuss how the mutual adaptation following the merger progressed and how many eukaryotic hallmarks can be understood in light of coadaptation. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/ekqtNleVJpU. (shrink)

Eukaryotic origins are inextricably linked with the arrival of a pre‐mitochondrion of alphaproteobacterial‐like ancestry. However, the nature of the “host” cell and the mode of entry are subject to heavy debate. It is becoming clear that the mutual adaptation of a relatively simple, archaeal host and the endosymbiont has been the defining influence at the beginning of the eukaryotic lineage; however, many still resist such symbiogenic models. In part 1, it is posited that a symbiotic stage before uptake (“pre‐symbiosis”) seems (...) essential to allow further metabolic integration of the two partners ending in endosymbiosis. Thus, the author argued against phagocytic mechanisms (in which the bacterium is prey or parasite) as the mode of entry. Such positions are still broadly unpopular. Here it is explained why. Evolutionary thinking, especially in the case of eukaryogenesis, is still dominated by anachronistic reasoning, in which highly derived protozoan organisms are seen as in some way representative of intermediate steps during eukaryotic evolution, hence poisoning the debate. This reasoning reflects a mind‐set that ignores that Darwinian evolution is a fundamentally historic process. Numerous examples of this kind of erroneous reasoning are given, and some basic precautions against its use are formulated. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/ekqtNleVJpU. (shrink)