The concept of scaffolding has wide resonance in several scientific fields. Here we attempt to adopt it for the study of development. In this perspective, the embryo is conceived as an integral whole, comprised of several hierarchical modules as in a recurrent circularity of emerging patterns. Within the developmental hierarchy, each module yields an inter-level relationship that makes it possible for the scaffolding to mediate the production of selectable variations. A wide range of genetic, cellular and morphological mechanisms allows the (...) scaffolding to integrate these modular variations into a functionally coordinate unit. A genetic scaffolding accounts for the inherited invariance of pattern formation during the embryo’s growth. At higher level, cells behave as agents endowed with the capacity to interpret any scaffolding variation as signs. The full hierarchy of a multi-level scaffolding is eventually attained when the embryo acquires the capacity to impose a number of developmental constraints on its constituting parts in a top-down direction. The acquisition of this capacity allows a semiotic threshold to emerge between the living cellular world and the underlying non-living molecular world. As this boundary is gradually defined during development, cells enter into new functional relationships, while, at the same time, are relieved from their physical determinism. The resulting constraints can thus become the driving forces that upgrade embryonic scaffolding from the simple molecular signalling to the complexity of sign recognition proper of a cellular community. In this semiotic perspective, the apparent goal directness of any developmental strategy should no longer be accounted for by a predetermined genetic program, but by the gradual definition of the relationships selected amongst the ones historically explored. (shrink)

Since ancient times, character, virtue, and happiness have been central to thinking about how to live well. Yet until recently, philosophers have thought about these topics in an empirical vacuum. Taking up the general challenge of situationism – that philosophers should pay attention to empirical psychology – this interdisciplinary volume presents new essays from empirically informed perspectives by philosophers and psychologists on western as well as eastern conceptions of character, virtue, and happiness, and related issues such as personality, emotion and (...) cognition, attitudes and automaticity. Researchers at the top of their fields offer exciting work that expands the horizons of empirically informed research on topics central to virtue ethics. (shrink)

Attention and adaptation are both mechanisms that optimize visual performance. Attention optimizes performance by increasing contrast sensitivity for and neural response to attended stimuli while decreasing them for unattended stimuli; adaptation optimizes performance by increasing contrast sensitivity for and neural response to changing stimuli while decreasing them for unchanging stimuli. We investigated whether and how the adaptation state and the attentional effect on contrast sensitivity interact. We measured contrast sensitivity with an orientation-discrimination task, in two adaptation conditions—adapt to 0% or (...) 100% contrast—in focused, distributed, and withdrawn attentional conditions. We used threshold and asymptotic performance to index the magnitude of the attentional effect—enhancement or impairment in contrast sensitivity—before and after adapting to high-contrast stimuli. The results show that attention and adaptation affect the contrast psychometric function in a similar but opposite way: Attention increases stimulus salience, whereas adaptation reduces stimulus salience. An interesting finding is that the adaptation state does not modulate the magnitude of the attentional effect. This suggests that attention affects the normalized signal once the effect of contrast adaptation has taken place and that these two mechanisms act separately to change contrast sensitivity. Attention can overcome adaptation to restore contrast sensitivity. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 29, Issue 1, pp 86 - 102 The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the place that Hobbes assigns to optics in the context of his classification of sciences and disciplinary boundaries. To do this, I will begin with an account of Hobbes’s conception of philosophy or science, and particularly his distinction between true and hypothetical knowledge. I will also show that in his demarcation between mathematics or geometry and natural philosophy Hobbes was (...) influenced by Galileo’s _Dialogue_. I then analyse the consequences of this distinction for optics, and conclude by clarifying its status among the scientific disciplines. (shrink)

Cell communication plays a key role in multicellular organisms. In developing embryos as in adult organisms, cells communicate by coordinating their differentiation through the establishment and/or renewal of a variety of cell communication channels. Under both these conditions, cells interact by either receptor signalling, surface recognition of specific cell adhesion molecules or transfer of cytoplasmic components through junctional coupling. In recent years, it has become apparent that cells may also communicate through the extracellular release of microvesicles. They may originate as (...) either exosomes from the endosomal compartment upon fusion of multivesicular bodies with the plasma membrane or be shed directly from the plasma membrane via extensions of the cell surface. Microvesicles may disperse over long distances through body fluids and deliver their molecular cargo onto a variety of target cells. As a general rule, the metabolic fate of these cells is determined by the molecular nature of the vesicular cargo, while targeting itself depends on the affinity of the molecules expressed on the enclosing membrane. In this paper, we will be arguing that intercellular vesicular transfer is substantially different from other types of cell communication, allowing cells and molecules to interact on varying levels. Cells interacting via ligand signalling owe their specificity to the steric coupling with cognate receptor molecules. As such, it is a pure molecular process that affects target cells only upon integration into their responding repertoire. In this relationship, coupled cells are reciprocally adapted to each other through the selection of their respective signalling capacities, following exploration of their receptor specificity. Interaction by intercellular vesicles realizes a substantially different type of cell communication. Vesicular traffic allows donor cells to carry out a horizontal type of gene transfer and target this information over long distances via independently controlled mechanisms. Because of this independence, cells interacting via vesicular traffic are not expected to adapt their signalling correspondences, but to control instead the efficiency of their cargo delivery irrespective of the receptor repertoire expressed by the target tissue. In this paper, the multifaceted functions of the intercellular vesicular traffic will be discussed in a multilevel biosemiotic perspective with the aim of unravelling the cellular mechanisms devised by nature to accomplish communication. (shrink)

Argumentation Frameworks provide a fruitful basis for exploring issues of defeasible reasoning. Their power largely derives from the abstract nature of the arguments within the framework, where arguments are atomic nodes in an undifferentiated relation of attack. This abstraction conceals different senses of argument, namely a single-step reason to a claim, a series of reasoning steps to a single claim, and reasoning steps for and against a claim. Concrete instantiations encounter difficulties and complexities as a result of conflating these senses. (...) To distinguish them, we provide an approach to instantiating AFs in which the nodes are restricted to literals and rules, encoding the underlying theory directly. Arguments in these senses emerge from this framework as distinctive structures of nodes and paths. As a consequence of the approach, we reduce the effort of computing argumentation extensions, which is in contrast to other approaches. Our framework retains the theoretical and computational bene.. (shrink)

La filosofa de la liberacin latinoamericana es expresin de la realidad social e histrica de Latinoamrica. Los contrastes y la desigualdad se expresan en su discurso, tanto como en el historicismo, la sociologa y la teologa latinoamericanas.

Germ cells are cross-roads of development and evolution. They define the origin of every new generation and, at the same time, represent the biological end-product of any mature organism. Germ cells are endowed with the following capacities: to store a self-descriptive program, to accumulate a protein-synthesizing machinery, and to incorporate enough nourishment to sustain embryonic development. To accomplish this goal, germ cells do not simply unfold a pre-determined program or realize a sole instructive role. On the contrary, due to the (...) complexity of their cytoarchitecture and the nature of the soma-to-germ interactions, they are heavily involved in processes of sign recognition and meaningful tissue exploration. At each stage of their inward migration, germ plasma membranes act as semiotic interfaces allowing cells to interact with the surrounding extracellular milieu and experience the compatibility of selected developmental sequences. The question of which signaling pathways are activated at each developmental stage does not result from a strictly predetermined program instructing germ cell stemness. Rather, each developmental sequence is an open-ended semiotic relationship explored and gradually defined during evolution by the context-dependency of specific cell-to-cell interactions. In this way, any structural and functional novelty that has emerged in the course of germ cell interactions may be interpreted as an exaptation fixed in the species genome in response to specific environmental constraints. (shrink)

: The technologies at the intersection of assisted reproduction and genetics call for a new regulatory approach, say Franco Furger and Francis Fukuyama, authors of the recent report Beyond Bioethics. In the essay below they map out their recommendation. In the following essays, James Fossett argues that regulation is likelier—and would be better—at the state level, Leonard Fleck calls for more robust public involvement, and John Robertson recommends sticking with the status quo. Turning from procedural to substantive issues, Josephine (...) Johnston takes up Furger and Fukuyama’s suggestion that children have a right to a traditional genetic parentage. (shrink)

Il saggio esamina la produzione musicale dell'ultimo trentennio alla luce degli accadimenti più importanti che hanno caratterizzato la recente storia del mondo globalizzato. La molteplicità di proposte offerte dalla scena musicale contemporanea, nei campi popular, 'classica' e jazz, presenta caratteristiche di livellamento estetico e produttivo nonché di reciproca contaminazione e meticciato frutto dell'esaurirsi di una progettualità lineare e chiara sostituita dall'accavallarsi di esperienze individuali, provvisorie e superficialmente seducenti il cui scopo primario è da un lato la comunicazione, dall'altro la conquista (...) del mercato attraverso sconfinamenti e ibridazioni in grado di sollecitare estemporaneo quanto effimero interesse. Il saggio propone una periodizzazione del manifestarsi di questo fenomeno segnata da alcuni eventi epocali, sul piano storico, sociale ed economico che in parte hanno influito sulla produzione musicale del periodo in esame, in parte ne sono stati anche una conseguenza. Al crollo del muro di Berlino del 1989 non è estranea la diffusione globale, tramite emittenti televisive, della popular music di stampo occidentale con messaggi nell'ambito del consumismo e delle libertà individuali che hanno sollecitato lo spirito di omologazione delle giovani generazioni delle nazioni del blocco dell'est; l'estinguersi della guerra fredda a sua volta ha favorito il superamento di ideologie e di programmi estetici formalizzati in favore di libere quanto 'anarchiche' manifestazioni della creatività. A seguito di altri snodi epocali quali il crollo delle Twin towers (2001) e quello del sistema finanziario internazionale (2008) la produzione musicale ha intensificato l'esplorazione di inediti percorsi creativi ed il superamento di confini stilistici e produttivi a compensazione dello smarrimento di linee guida organiche e coerenti ed in risposta alla cresciuta domanda di un uso compulsivo dell'ascolto musicale sollecitato dalle recenti tecnologie digitali. (shrink)

Este artículo pretende restituir y problematizar la lectura que de Nicolás Maquiavelo realiza Louis Althusser en los años 1970 y 1980, guiados por la intuición de que, fruto de esa lectura, Althusser opera un desplazamiento en su propia filosofía marcado por un pasaje de la necesidad de la estructura y de la ciencia hacia la contingencia inherente a la historia. A estos efectos, se realiza una lectura cercana a las obras de Louis Althusser que muestran su particular interpretación de Maquiavelo (...) como filósofo materialista. (shrink)

This volume shows how _The Doctrine of Essence_ intersects with perennial philosophical questions including above all, the relationship between freedom and determinism. _The Doctrine of Essence_ is of central importance, since it is a critical description of traditional categories which also functions as the justification of Hegel's speculative understanding of essence. This study takes an historical approach to build upon Hegel's abstract argument, viewing it as a confrontation with his predecessors, inparticular - Fichte and Schelling.

This volume shows how _The Doctrine of Essence_ intersects with perennial philosophical questions including above all, the relationship between freedom and determinism. _The Doctrine of Essence_ is of central importance, since it is a critical description of traditional categories which also functions as the justification of Hegel's speculative understanding of essence. This study takes an historical approach to build upon Hegel's abstract argument, viewing it as a confrontation with his predecessors, inparticular - Fichte and Schelling.

This volume shows how _The Doctrine of Essence_ intersects with perennial philosophical questions including above all, the relationship between freedom and determinism. _The Doctrine of Essence_ is of central importance, since it is a critical description of traditional categories which also functions as the justification of Hegel's speculative understanding of essence. This study takes an historical approach to build upon Hegel's abstract argument, viewing it as a confrontation with his predecessors, inparticular - Fichte and Schelling.

Meister Eckhart escribió textos en alemán y en latín. Pero, fuera del ámbito de los estudios eckhartianos, es conocido sobre todo por su obra alemana. De la obra latina, los textos menos frecuentados son los llamados “sermones latinos”: una serie de notas o borradores que podrían haber servido como material preparatorio para lo que en el _Prologus generalis in Opus tripartitum_ el mismo Eckhart llama el _Opus sermonum_, del que no tenemos más noticia que la del _Prologus_ mencionado. En castellano, (...) el destino de la obra latina de Eckhart no ha sido hasta ahora demasiado afortunado. Pocas son las traducciones. Y, en cuanto a los “sermones latinos”, ninguno ha sido traducido todavía. Ofrecemos la traducción de uno de estos sermones, el XXXVII, en el que Eckhart comenta un texto de Pablo (Efesios 4, 1-6): _Unus deus et pater omnium_. En el estudio preliminar se ofrece (1) una introducción a la obra latina de Eckhart en general y, en particular, a los “sermones latinos” y (2) un comentario del texto traducido. (shrink)

This dissertation deals with the political uses of anger, focusing on those cases in which anger is mobilized against socially structural forms of injustice (henceforth, “radical anger”). The author provides a philosophical defence of the legitimacy and usefulness of this kind of anger, together with a set of conceptual tools for distinguishing among different instances of anger in the political realm. The text consists of seven chapters, an introduction and a short conclusion. The first chapter offers a genealogy of the (...) pathologization of radical anger, investigating the linguistic and conceptual entanglement of rage and rabies. The following chapter reviews a few cases in which oppressed groups successfully reclaimed radical anger in spite of widespread pathologizing and criminalizing tendencies, drawing mainly from the radical feminist and antiracist traditions. Special attention is also paid to the relationship between anger and violence, as well as to the opportunity for structurally discriminated groups to politically embrace anger. The metaphor of a ballistics of anger is introduced to heuristically distinguish among specific occurrences of political anger. The third chapter outlines the essential features of a political philosophy of radical anger, starting from a re-reading of Michel Foucault’s interpretation of ancient Cynicism which emphasises the angry character of the latter. After asking whether radical anger can be considered philosophically true and reactionary anger defined as untrue, three possible arguments in favour of an affirmative answer are considered. Since the first two arguments, based respectively on the works of Rahel Jaeggi and Giorgio Agamben, prove unsuccessful, a third alternative, relying mainly on the works of Foucault and Hannah Arendt, is proposed by the author. Chapters from 4 to 6 look for contemporary reprises of Cynical anger, proposing a philosophical reading of the lives and works of three figures who angrily confronted several kinds of structural injustice: Valerie Solanas, Malcolm X and Audre Lorde. The dissertation shows that each of them can offer useful additions to the political philosophy of radical anger already sketched. In particular, Solanas can help us thinking the connections between anger, negation, utopia and abolition; X testifies to the importance of the link between radical anger and the notion of care of the self (ἐπιμέλεια ἑαυτοῦ); Lorde allows us to understand the deep implications of the use of radical anger and paves the way for an erotic conception of this feeling. Finally, Chapter 7 presents the international trans-feminist movement Ni Una Menos-Non Una di Meno as an example of the practical and theoretical strengths of radical anger. (shrink)

Se trata de una reseña del libro de Modzelewski, Helena Emociones, educación y democracia: una proyección de las emociones de Martha Nussbaum. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, 368 páginas. ARK: ark:/s18537960/i6kdhhn1o.

A wide-ranging exploration of the present, and the future, of the Unconscious. The Unconscious knows no time, it has no before-and-after, it does not have a history of its own. Yet, it is not always the same. As it emerges in the life of people and societies, the Unconscious is shaped by ever-changing historical conditions: its form depends on the unique 'psychosphere' of each historical age. In the early twentieth century, Freud characterised the Unconscious as the dark side of the (...) well-ordered framework of Progress and Reason. At the end of the past century, Deleuze and Guattari described it as a laboratory: the magmatic force that ceaselessly brings about new possibilities of imagination. Today, at a time of viral pandemics and in the midst of the catastrophic collapse of capitalism, the Unconscious has begun to emerge in yet another form. In this book, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi vividly illustrates the form in which the Unconscious will make itself manifest for decades to come, and the challenges that it will pose to our possibilities of political action, poetic imagination, and therapy."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Volume 16, Issue 4, September 2019, Page 381-388.

In this paper we ask whether approximation for abstract argumentation is useful in practice, and in particular whether reasoning with grounded semantics – which has polynomial runtime – is already an approximation approach sufficient for several practical purposes. While it is clear from theoretical results that reasoning with grounded semantics is different from, for example, skeptical reasoning with preferred semantics, we investigate how significant this difference is in actual argumentation frameworks. As it turns out, in many graphs models, reasoning with (...) grounded semantics actually approximates reasoning with other semantics almost perfectly. An algorithm for grounded reasoning is thus a conceptually simple approximation algorithm that not only does not need a learning phase – like recent approaches – but also approximates well – in practice – several decision problems associated to other semantics. (shrink)