It is a standing temptation for philosophers to find anticipations of their own views in the great thinkers of the past, but few have been so bold in the search for precursors, and so utterly mistaken, as Berkeley when he claimed Plato and Aristotle as allies to his immaterialist idealism. InSiris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, which Berkeley published in his old age in 1744, he reviews the leading philosophies of antiquity and finds (...) them on the whole a good deal more sympathetic to his own ideas than the ‘modern atheism’, as he calls it, of Hobbes and Spinoza or the objectionable principles of ‘the mechanic and geometrical philosophers’ such as Newton. But his strongest and, I think, his most interesting claim is that neither Plato nor Aristotle admitted ‘an absolute actual existence of sensible or corporeal things’. (shrink)

The multistep pathway of eukaryotic gene expression involves a series of highly regulated events in the nucleus and cytoplasm. In the nucleus, genes are transcribed into pre‐messenger RNAs which undergo a series of nuclear processing steps. Mature mRNAs are then transported to the cytoplasm, where they are translated into protein and degraded at a rate dictated by transcript‐ and cell‐type‐specific cues. Until recently, these individual nuclear and cytoplasmic events were thought to be primarily regulated by different RNA‐ and DNA‐binding proteins (...) that are localized either only in the nucleus or only the cytoplasm. Here, we describe multifunctional proteins that control both nuclear and cytoplasmic steps of gene expression. One such class of multifunctional proteins (e.g., Bicoid and Y‐box proteins) regulates both transcription and translation whereas another class (e.g., Sex‐lethal) regulates both nuclear RNA processing and translation. Other events controlled by multifunctional proteins include assembly of spliceosome components, spliceosome recycling, RNA editing, cytoplasmic mRNA localization, and cytoplasmic RNA stability. The existence of multifunctional proteins may explain the paradoxical involvement of the nucleus in an RNA surveillance pathway (nonsense‐mediated decay) that detects cytoplasmic signals (premature termination codons). We speculate that shuttling multifunctional proteins serve to efficiently link RNA metabolism in the cytoplasmic and nuclear compartments. BioEssays 23:775–787, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Many kinds of multifunctional regulatory proteins have been identified that perform distinct biochemical functions in the nucleus, the cytoplasm, or both. Here we describe the recent discovery by Hall et al. (2004)1 of a new type of multifunctional protein: a metabolic enzyme that doubles as a transcription factor. This enzyme, Arg5,6, functions as a catalytic enzyme in ornithine biosynthesis and also binds and regulates the promoters of nuclear and mitochondrial genes. It may also regulate precursor mRNA metabolism. We discuss how (...) proteins that serve as both metabolic enzymes and transcription factors might have evolved. BioEssays 27:467–471, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This article is detective work, not philosophy. J. S. Mill's Autobiography records that at the age of seven he read, in Greek, ‘the first six dialogues of Plato, from the Euthyphron to the Theaetetus inclusive’. Which were the other dialogues? On the arrangement common today, it would be Crito, Apology, Phaedo, Cratylus. On the arrangement common then, Theages and Erastai replace Cratylus, which makes seven dialogues. I show that this must be the answer by the evidence of James Mill's commonplace (...) books and his writings on Plato. These reveal which collected edition of Plato he owned and which he would want to own. Conditions for studying Plato in the original were much harder than we are used to. The inquiry highlights both the ideological purity of the education James Mill designed for his son, and the difficulties he faced in realizing his plan. (shrink)

High-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation is used to treat some advanced malignancies. It is a traumatic procedure, with a high complication rate and significant mortality. ASCT patients and their carers draw on many sources of information as they seek to understand the procedure and its consequences. Some seek information from beyond orthodox medicine. Alternative beliefs and practices may conflict with conventional understanding of the theory and practice of ASCT, and ‘contested understandings’ might interfere with patient adherence to the (...) strict and demanding protocols required for successful ASCT.The present study, conducted in Sydney, Australia, examines narrative-style interviews with 10 sequentially recruited ASCT patients and nine of their carers conducted at the time of transplant and three months later. Transcripts were read for instances of mention of alternative advice, and for instances of contested understanding of information relevant to the transplant.Patients and carer pairs expressed closely concordant views about alternative advice. Five pairs were consulting alternative practitioners. Contested understanding was expressed in four domains—understandings of the transplant itself and its underlying theory, of the relationship between the components of the ‘transplant’, of the nature and role of stem cells, and of beliefs about bodily function and life-style. Contested understandings of the transplant treatment were expressed as predominantly personal interpretations of orthodox informationPatients and carers seemed to recognise that alternative and conventional systems were discordant, yet they were able to separate the two, and adhere to each practice without prejudicing their medical treatment. A single case of late, post-transplant repudiation of Western medicine is discussed to emphasise some of the possible determinants of dissonance when it does occur. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Putnam-Nussbaum thesis that modern functionalism is Aristotelian is false. It fails as an interpretation of Aristotle since it fails to notice that Aristotle’s conception of the material or physical side of the soul-body relation is one which no modern functionalist could share. The Putnam-Nussbaum thesis is examined within the context of the theory of perception. This involves the need to understand one of the most mysterious Aristotelian doctrines – the doctrine that in perception, the sense-organ (...) assumes the sensible form of the object perceived without its matter. (shrink)

The RNA-binding protein, UPF1, is best known for its central role in the nonsense-mediated RNA decay pathway. Feng et al. now report a new function for UPF1—it is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that specifically promotes the decay of a key pro-muscle transcription factor: MYOD. UPF1 achieves this through its RING-like domain, which confers ubiquitin E3 ligase activity. Feng et al. provide evidence that the ability of UPF1 to destabilize MYOD represses myogenesis. In the future, it will be important to define (...) other protein substrates of UPF1-driven ubiquitination and to determine whether this biochemical activity is responsible for some of UPF1's previously defined biological functions, including in development and stress responses. The exciting findings presented by Feng et al. open up the possibility that protein turnover and RNA turnover are coupled processes. The RNA-binding protein, UPF1, is best known for its central role in the nonsense-mediated RNA decay pathway. Here we discuss a new role for UPF1—it is directly involved in protein decay. This hidden talent raises the possibility that protein turnover and RNA turnover are coupled processes. (shrink)

The RNA-binding protein, UPF1, is best known for its central role in the nonsense-mediated RNA decay pathway. Feng et al. now report a new function for UPF1—it is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that specifically promotes the decay of a key pro-muscle transcription factor: MYOD. UPF1 achieves this through its RING-like domain, which confers ubiquitin E3 ligase activity. Feng et al. provide evidence that the ability of UPF1 to destabilize MYOD represses myogenesis. In the future, it will be important to define (...) other protein substrates of UPF1-driven ubiquitination and to determine whether this biochemical activity is responsible for some of UPF1's previously defined biological functions, including in development and stress responses. The exciting findings presented by Feng et al. open up the possibility that protein turnover and RNA turnover are coupled processes. The RNA-binding protein, UPF1, is best known for its central role in the nonsense-mediated RNA decay pathway. Here we discuss a new role for UPF1—it is directly involved in protein decay. This hidden talent raises the possibility that protein turnover and RNA turnover are coupled processes. (shrink)

This is a close scrutiny of "De Anima II 5", led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: (i) that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming (...) like the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, (ii) that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim (i) is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim (ii) is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from "Physics" III 1-3 and "De Generatione et Corruptione" I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of (proper object) perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

M. F. Burnyeat; XII—Belief in Speech, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 227–248, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

Narrative analysis is well established as a means of examining the subjective experience of those who suffer chronic illness and cancer. In a study of perceptions of the outcomes of treatment of cancer of the colon, we have been struck by the consistency with which patients record three particular observations of their subjective experience: the immediate impact of the cancer diagnosis and a persisting identification as a cancer patient, regardless of the time since treatment and of the presence or absence (...) of persistent or recurrent disease; a state of variable alienation from social familiars, expressed as an inability to communicate the nature of the experience of the illness, its diagnosis and treatment; and a persistent sense of boundedness, an awareness of limits to space, empowerment and available time. These subjectivities were experienced in varying degree by all patients in our study. Individual responses to these experiences were complex and variable. The experiences are best understood under the rubric of a category we call “liminality”. We believe that all cancer patients enter and experience liminality as a process which begins with the first manifestations of their malignancy. An initial acute phase of liminality is marked by disorientation, a sense of loss and of loss of control, and a sense of uncertainty. An adaptive, enduring phase of suspended liminality supervenes, in which each patient constructs and reconstructs meaning for their experience by means of narrative. This phase persists, probably for the rest of the cancer patient’s life. The experience of liminality is firmly grounded in the changing and experiencing body that houses both the disease and the self. Insights into the nature of the experience can be gained from the Existentialist philosophers and from the history of attitudes to death. Understanding liminality helps us to understand what it is that patients with cancer seek from the system to which they turn for help. Its explication should therefore be important for those who provide health care, those who educate health care workers and those concerned to study and use outcomes as administrative and policy making instruments. (shrink)

This is a close scrutiny of De Anima II 5, led by two questions. First, what can be learned from so long and intricate a discussion about the neglected problem of how to read an Aristotelian chapter? Second, what can the chapter, properly read, teach us about some widely debated issues in Aristotle's theory of perception? I argue that it refutes two claims defended by Martha Nussbaum, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Sorabji: that when Aristotle speaks of the perceiver becoming like (...) the object perceived, the assimilation he has in mind is ordinary alteration of the type exemplified when fire heats the surrounding air, that this alteration stands to perceptual awareness as matter to form. Claim is wrong because the assimilation that perceiving is is not ordinary alteration. Claim is wrong because the special type of alteration that perceiving is is not its underlying material realisation. Indeed, there is no mention in the text of any underlying material realisation for perceiving. The positive aim of II 5 is to introduce the distinction between first and second potentiality, each with their own type of actuality. In both cases the actuality is an alteration different from ordinary alteration. Perception exemplifies one of these new types of alteration, another is found in the acquisition of knowledge and in an embryo's first acquisition of the power of perception. The introduction of suitably refined meanings of 'alteration' allows Aristotle to explain perception and learning within the framework of his physics, which by definition is the study of things that change. He adapts his standard notion of alteration, familiar from Physics III 1-3 and De Generatione et Corruptione I, to the task of accounting for the cognitive accuracy of perception and second potentiality knowledge: both are achievements of a natural, inborn receptivity to objective truth. Throughout the paper I pay special attention to issues of text and translation, and to Aristotle's cross-referencing, and I emphasise what the chapter does not say as well as what it does. In particular, the last section argues that the textual absence of any underlying material realisation for perceiving supports a view I have defended elsewhere, that Aristotelian perception involves no material processes, only standing material conditions. This absence is as telling as others noted earlier. Our reading must respect the spirit of the text as Aristotle wrote it. (shrink)

The question contrasts two ways of expressing the role of the sense organ in perception. In one the expression referring to the sense organ is put into the dative case ; the other is a construction with the preposition δiá governing the genitive case of the word for the sense organ.

M. F. Burnyeat; XII—Belief in Speech, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 227–248, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotel.

It is a standing temptation for philosophers to find anticipations of their own views in the great thinkers of the past, but few have been so bold in the search for precursors, and so utterly mistaken, as Berkeley when he claimed Plato and Aristotle as allies to his immaterialist idealism. InSiris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, which Berkeley published in his old age in 1744, he reviews the leading philosophies of antiquity and finds (...) them on the whole a good deal more sympathetic to his own ideas than the ‘modern atheism’, as he calls it, of Hobbes and Spinoza or the objectionable principles of ‘the mechanic and geometrical philosophers’ such as Newton. But his strongest and, I think, his most interesting claim is that neither Plato nor Aristotle admitted ‘an absolute actual existence of sensible or corporeal things’. (shrink)

M. F. Burnyeat taught for 14 years in the Philosophy Department of University College London, then for 18 years in the Classics Faculty at Cambridge, 12 of them as the Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, before migrating to Oxford in 1996 to become a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College. The studies, articles and reviews collected in these two volumes of Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy were all written, and all but two published, before that (...) decisive change. Whether designed for a scholarly audience or for a wider public, they range from the Presocratics to Augustine, from Descartes and Bishop Berkeley to Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Their subject-matter falls under four main headings: 'Logic and Dialectic' and 'Scepticism Ancient and Modern', which are contained in this first volume; 'Knowledge' and 'Philosophy and the Good Life' make up the second volume. The title 'Explorations' well expresses Burnyeat's ability to discover new aspects of familiar texts, new ways of solving old problems. In his hands the history of philosophy becomes itself a philosophical activity. (shrink)

M. F. Burnyeat taught for 14 years in the Philosophy Department of University College London, then for 18 years in the Classics Faculty at Cambridge, 12 of them as the Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy, before migrating to Oxford in 1996 to become a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College. The studies, articles and reviews collected in these two volumes of Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy were all written, and all but two published, before that (...) decisive change. Whether designed for a scholarly audience or for a wider public, they range from the Presocratics to Augustine, from Descartes and Bishop Berkeley to Wittgenstein and G. E. Moore. Their subject-matter falls under four main headings: 'Logic and Dialectic' and 'Scepticism Ancient and Modern', which make up the first volume, with 'Knowledge' and 'Philosophy and the Good Life' contained in this, the second volume. The title 'Explorations' well expresses Burnyeat's ability to discover new aspects of familiar texts, new ways of solving old problems. In his hands the history of philosophy becomes itself a philosophical activity. (shrink)

Discourse communities are groups of people who share common ideologies, and common ways of speaking about things. They can be sharply or loosely defined. We are each members of multiple discourse communities. Discourse can colonize the members of discourse communities, taking over domains of thought by means of ideology. The development of new discourse communities can serve positive ends, but discourse communities create risks as well. In our own work on the narratives of people with interests in health care, for (...) example, we find that patients speak of their illness experiences as victims of circumstance; policy makers construct adverse experiences and challenges as opportunities to be taken; health care workers speak from a mixed perspective, seeing themselves as both victims and opportunists depending on context. To be trapped within the discourse of a particular community is to put at risk the ability to communicate across discourses. Membership of a discourse community can impair the habit of critique, and deny opportunities for heteroglossic discourse. Privileging critique as a mode of discourse perhaps might define the ethical community, suggesting that ethical community may be an antidote to the constraining effects of conventional discourse community. (shrink)

Theaetetus, asked what knowledge is, replies that geometry and the other mathematical disciplines are knowledge, and so are crafts like cobbling. Socrates points out that it does not help him to be told how many kinds of knowledge there are when his problem is to know what knowledge itself is, what it means to call geometry or a craft knowledge in the first place—he insists on the generality of his question in the way he often does when his interlocutor, asked (...) for a definition, cites instead cases of the concept to be defined. (shrink)