The cellular capacity to internalise objects, involving attachment, engulfment and uptake, exists in virtually all organisms. Many uptake reactions are associated with cell signalling. However, the mechanical forces that form endocytotic vesicles are not known. We propose a ‘leverage‐mediated’ uptake mechanism involving lateral cross‐linking processes on the cell surface that can generate the configurational energy to create an inverse curvature of the membrane. BioEssays 26:1344–1350, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Insect endoparasitoids are able to circumvent the defense reactions of their habitual hosts. In a hymenopteran wasp species, virus‐like particles, found on the egg surface are responsible for the protection against the encapsulation reaction of the host caterpillar. Some of the particle proteins are structurally and probably functionally related to host protein(s). Biological properties of some of the host proteins suggest that they might be involved in the insect defense reaction.

Recent studies suggest that insects use pattern recognition molecules to distinguish prokaryotic pathogens and fungi from “self” structures. Less understood is how the innate immune system of insects recognizes endoparasitic Hymenoptera and other eukaryotic invaders as foreign. Here we discuss candidate recognition factors and the strategies used by parasitoids to overcome host defense responses. We suggest that host–parasitoid systems are important experimental models for studying how the innate immune system of insects recognizes foreign invaders that are phylogenetically more closely related (...) to their hosts. The strategies used by parasitoids suggest that insects may employ “hidden-self” recognition molecules for attacking foreign objects intruding the open circulatory system. BioEssays 23:344–351, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Die Gefühlsmoral ist ein Auszug aus der "Phänomenologie des sittlichen Bewußtseins", dem Hauptwerk zur Ethik des preußischen Philosophen Eduard von Hartmann (1842–1906). Sie verweist nicht nur zurück auf die Herkunft der Ethik aus dem Unbewußten, sondern auch voraus auf die allmähliche Evolution der moralischen Autonomie im Bereich der Gefühle. Nach Hartmann gibt es keinen einheitlichen moral sense, sondern eine irreduzible Vielfalt moralischer Gefühle. Reine Vernunftmoral bleibt abstrakt und unzulänglich auf der Ebene der Motivation. Reine Gefühlsmoral, welche einzelne Gefühle wie (...) Stolz, Ehre, Vergeltung oder Dankbarkeit, Geselligkeit, Mitleid, Pietät oder Treue verabsolutiert, führt dagegen zu einer Unterbestimmung oder Verirrung der ethischen Urteilsfindung. Gegen den methodischen Isolationismus, der ein einziges Gefühlsprinzip zum Fundament der Ethik erhebt, legt Hartmann dar, wie sich diverse Gefühle gegenseitig stützen und modifizieren. Kündigt sich in den einzelnen moralischen Gefühlen bereits eine unbewußte Struktur und Zweckorientierung an, so muß diese in späteren Teilen der Ethik explizit gemacht und begründet werden. Der Abschnitt über die Gefühlsmoral bietet einen leicht verständlichen Zugang zu Hartmanns Ethik und ist besonders geeignet, seine Bedeutung als Anreger und Wegbereiter einer phänomenologisch und kulturphilosophisch orientierten Ethik, die im 20. Jahrhundert von Max Scheler, Albert Schweitzer und Otto Friedrich Bollnow fortgeführt wurde, zu verdeutlichen. (shrink)

Religionskritik wird gerade in der jungeren Vergangenheit bevorzugt als Kritik an der vermeintlichen Irrationalitat religiosen Glaubens artikuliert. Die Autoren der im vorliegenden Konferenzband versammelten Beitrage fragen zunachst anhand exemplarischer Studien zu Hamann, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche und Rudolf Otto nach der Bedeutung und Funktion des Irrationalen in rezeptionsgeschichtlich massgeblichen religionsphilosophischen Entwurfen der (Nach-)Aufklarung. Erganzt und zugespitzt wird der historische Abschnitt des Bandes durch Analysen zu Werk und Wirkung Soren Kierkegaards, dem neuzeitlichen Irrationalitatstheoretiker par excellence. Daruber hinaus wird aus systematischer Perspektive (...) nach der kritischen und/oder konstruktiven Funktion des Irrationalitatsthemas fur Religionsphilosophie und Theologie gefragt, wobei nicht nur semantische, sondern auch fundamentaltheologische und ethische Aspekte Berucksichtigung finden. Mit Beitragen von: Daniel Conway, Istvan Czako, Dario Gonzalez, Todd Gooch, Zoltan Gyenge, Gesche Linde, William McDonald, Peter Sajda, Jochen Schmidt, Heiko Schulz, Harald Steffes, Jon Stewart, Curtis Thompson, Knut Wenzel, Oliver Wiertz. (shrink)

On the basis of recently discovered documents, the paper discusses the family tree of the Jewish Lasker dynasty, originating from Lask in Poland, formerly Prussia. The common forefather of all Laskers was Rabbi Meier Hindels, who lived around 1700. In Germany, the most successful of his descendants was Dr. Eduard Lasker. He was a lawyer, co-founder of the National Liberal party, and in his lifetime the most conspicuous parliamentary opponent to Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Germany owes him (...) a considerable part of its present day legal structures in criminal, civil and public law. His younger brother Moritz/Morris settled in Texas and became a prominent figure both in business and society. The Lasker family branch that he established in the United States is still flourishing today and has produced a number of personalities of public renown. While visiting his brother, Eduard Lasker died in New York in January 1884. Edward Lasker, a prominent US-based chess champion, descended from another family branch. One of his nieces, Anita Wallfisch-Lasker, wrote an autobiography that describes her ordeal as a member of the camp orchestra at Auschwitz. (shrink)

This essay examines the argumentative context in which early Neo-Kantian philosophers defined and defended "epistemology." The paper defends Richard Rorty's claim that the priority of epistemology influenced how the history of modern philosophy was written but corrects his story by showing that epistemology was defended mainly via antifoundational arguments. The essay begins with a few programmatic arguments by Kuno Fischer and Eduard Zeller but focuses mainly on Otto Liebmann's Kant und die Epigonen. I argue that Liebmann completes the (...) agenda of Fischer and Zeller by giving a detailed account of how a metaphysical system is impossible for anyone who begins with modest, Kantian epistemological principles. (shrink)

This book offers a rich introduction to Heidegger that reveals Poggeler's sound scholarship and philosophical criticism.

"Like Hanslick, Professor Payzant is both musician and philosopher; and he has brought the knowledge and insights of both disciplines to this large undertaking." --Gordon Epperson, _Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism_.

A well known paragraph in Mill's 'Utilitarianism' has standardly been misread. Mill does not claim that if some pleasure is of 'higher quality', then it will be (or ought to be) chosen over the pleasure of lower quality regardless of their respective quantities. Instead he says that if some pleasure will be chosen over another available in larger quantity, then we are justified in saying that the pleasure so chosen is of higher quality than the other. This assertion is unproblematic.

In the context of «reassessing the relationship between explanation and phenomenology», the paper discusses the question in what ways Husserlian phenomenology as a descriptive science of consciousness has an explanatory potential in consciousness studies. It takes a very limited approach to the wide-ranging themes that may come to mind on this topic. At the center is an exploration of consciousness as an explanandum in its own right, building on Husserl's reflective-eidetic analyses of conscious experiences. It will concentrate on explicating acts (...) of intuitive representification ( anschauliche Vergegenwärtigungen) as intentional modifications of perception, making up higher, radical novel levels of intentionality. Acts of remembering, imagining, depicting something, as well as iterations and combinations of such acts, will serve as examples. A formal notation will be used with the intention to make the reflection-based theoretical language of phenomenology more precise and easier to survey. (shrink)