Epigenetic control of gene expression by chromatin remodeling is critical for adult stem cell function. A decline in stem cell function is observed during aging, which is accompanied by changes in the chromatin structure that are currently unexplained. Here, we hypothesize that these epigenetic changes originate from the limited cellular capability to inherit epigenetic information. We suggest that spontaneous loss of histone modification, due to fluctuations over short time scales, gives rise to long‐term changes in DNA methylation and, accordingly, in (...) gene expression. These changes are assumed to impair stem cell function and, thus, to contribute to aging. We discuss cell replication as a major source of fluctuations in histone modification patterns. Gene silencing by our proposed mechanism can be interpreted as a manifestation of the conflict between the stem cell plasticity required for tissue regeneration and the permanent silencing of potentially deleterious genomic sequences. (shrink)

It is widely known that Hegel is a proponent and defender of the market economy. But why exactly does Hegel think that the market economy is superior to other economic systems? In this paper, I argue that Hegel's answer to this question has not been sufficiently understood. Commentators, or so I want to claim, have only identified one part of Hegel's argument—but have left out the most original and surprising dimension of his view: namely, Hegel's conviction that we should embrace (...) the market economy for its educational impact. Indeed, Hegel thinks that the market, by creating a sphere of life apart from traditional norms and expectations, teaches us something about ourselves, about others, and about the world we inhabit together—something that we could not learn anywhere else, but that we inevitably need to live well as individuals. (shrink)

It is widely known that Hegel's Philosophy of Right recognizes poverty as one of the central problems of modern civil society. What is much less well known, however, is that Hegel sees yet another structural problem at the opposite side of the economic spectrum: a problem of affluence. Indeed, as I show in this essay, Hegel's text contains a detailed—yet sometimes overlooked—discussion of the detrimental psychological and sociological effects of great wealth and how to counter them. By bringing this discussion (...) to the fore, we get a more complete picture of Hegel's theory of civil society and shed light on an aspect of Hegel's social philosophy that speaks to problems we face today. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that Hegel holds the view that a rational social order needs to reconcile us to our status as natural beings, with bodily needs and desires. But while this general view is...

In this paper, I argue that Kant’s philosophy of history underwent a significant change be- tween his 1784 Idea for a Universal History and his 1790 Third Critique. My proposal is that in between these two texts Kant decisively revised his conception of the sources of historical, i. e. cultural and political, progress: In 1784, he conceived of historical progress as primarily accomplished through social antagonism among human beings, whereas beginning in 1790, he elevates ethical cooperation into a second, significant (...) source of progress. Between 1784 and the 1790s, in other words, Kant re-conceived the collaboration between moral agents as a driving force of history and of the progressing cultivation of humankind. In this paper I offer evidence for this change and suggest reasons why it might have occurred. (shrink)

To us today, it seems intuitive that an ideal society would secure for its citizens some time for leisure that is, some time to do “whatever they want” after having attended to their various responsibilities and natural needs. But, in this essay, I argue that—in 19th century social philosophy—the status of leisure (Muße) in an ideal society was actually surprisingly controversial: whereas J.G. Fichte makes a strong case for leisure as part of an ideal society (going even so far as (...) considering it its central good), G.W.F. Hegel implicitly argues against this idea. For him, leisure is a crook that we only need as long as the social conditions are not sufficiently ideal—whereas a truly rational society would create a new type of work that subsumes the benefits of leisure into work itself. In this essay, I reconstruct this largely forgotten disagreement and argue that although both positions contain an important overstatement, each includes an important lesson for the contemporary debate on leisure and society. (shrink)

Philosophers today do not think of Goethe’s Faust as an important contribution to the philosophy of money. But to discount the work in this way is a mistake, I argue. Underneath Faust’s lyrical form, Goethe develops a comprehensive view of money that came to be an important influence on left-wing (Karl Marx) and right-wing (Oswald Spengler) discussions of money. Centrally, Goethe argues that modern economic practices have transformed money obsession (long conceived of primarily as an individual vice) into a structural (...) problem: social structures are now set up to systematically require individuals to engage in quasi-obsessive behaviors towards money (e.g. persistently talking about/sacrificing for money) independently, to a significant degree, from their individual choices. This structural power, Goethe proposes, requires a rethinking of how behavior towards money should be morally evaluated – and, importantly, a critique of moral attitudes that individualize what is, in truth, a social problem. (shrink)

Much attention has been paid to the role that Hegel, in his mature ethical theory, attributes to what he calls the social or political body i.e. to the institutions of the social order. Ironically, by comparison, much less attention has been paid to the role the physical body plays in the same theory. This paper attempts to level the scale, by reconstructing Hegel’s ethical theory of the physical body from the Philosophy of Right and the Encyclopedia. Hegel’s leading thesis here, (...) I argue, is that developing and maintaining a good relationship with one’s physical body is not only rather demanding, but also requires the right kind of social institutions – and that absent these institutions, individuals will (for the most part) be unable to see and to treat their body in the right kind of way. Achieving a good relationship to their body, hence, is something that individuals cannot just do on their own, on Hegel’s view, but something that requires them to collaborate with others, creating and sustaining social institutions that help them be at home in their bodies. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant’s philosophy of history underwent a significant change between his 1784 Idea for a Universal History and his 1790 Third Critique. My proposal is that in between these two texts Kant decisively revised his conception of the sources of historical, i. e. cultural and political, progress: In 1784, he conceived of historical progress as primarily accomplished through social antagonism among human beings, whereas beginning in 1790, he elevates ethical cooperation into a second, significant source (...) of progress. Between 1784 and the 1790s, in other words, Kant re-conceived the collaboration between moral agents as a driving force of history and of the progressing cultivation of humankind. In this paper I offer evidence for this change and suggest reasons why it might have occurred. (shrink)

The economic principle of communication, according to which successful communication can be reached by least effort, has been studied for verbal communication. With respect to nonverbal behavior, it implies that forms of iconic gestures change over the course of communication and become reduced in the sense of less pronounced. These changes and their effects on learning are currently unexplored in relevant literature. Addressing this research gap, we conducted a word learning study to test the effects of changing gestures on children’s (...) slow mapping. We applied a within-subject design and tested 51 children, aged 6.7 years, who learned unknown words from a story. The storyteller acted on the basis of two conditions: In one condition, in which half of the target words were presented, the story presentation was enhanced with progressively reduced iconic gestures ; in the other condition, half of the target words were accompanied by fully executed iconic gestures. To ensure a reliable gesture presentation, children were exposed to a recorded person telling a story in both conditions. We tested the slow mapping effects on children’s productive and receptive word knowledge three minutes as well as two to three days after being presented the story. The results suggest that children’s production of the target words, but not their understanding thereof, was enhanced by PRG. (shrink)

Language comprehension of action verbs recruits embodied representations in the brain that are assumed to invoke a mental simulation. This extends to abstract concepts, as well. We, therefore, argue that mental simulation works across levels of abstractness and involves higher-level schematic structures that subsume a generic structure of actions and events.

It has been proposed that the design of robots might benefit from interactions that are similar to caregiver-child interactions, which is tailored to children's respective capacities to a high degree. However, so far little is known about how people adapt their tutoring behaviour to robots and whether robots can evoke input that is similar to child-directed interaction. The paper presents detailed analyses of speakers' linguistic behaviour and non-linguistic behaviour, such as action demonstration, in two comparable situations: In one experiment, parents (...) described and explained to their nonverbal infants the use of certain everyday objects; in the other experiment, participants tutored a simulated robot on the same objects. The results, which show considerable differences between the two situations on almost all measures, are discussed in the light of the computer-as-social-actor paradigm and the register hypothesis. Keywords: child-directed speech (CDS); motherese; robotese; motionese; register theory; social communication; human-robot interaction (HRI); computers-as-social-actors; mindless transfer. (shrink)

It has been proposed that the design of robots might benefit from interactions that are similar to caregiver–child interactions, which is tailored to children’s respective capacities to a high degree. However, so far little is known about how people adapt their tutoring behaviour to robots and whether robots can evoke input that is similar to child-directed interaction. The paper presents detailed analyses of speakers’ linguistic behaviour and non-linguistic behaviour, such as action demonstration, in two comparable situations: In one experiment, parents (...) described and explained to their nonverbal infants the use of certain everyday objects; in the other experiment, participants tutored a simulated robot on the same objects. The results, which show considerable differences between the two situations on almost all measures, are discussed in the light of the computer-as-social-actor paradigm and the register hypothesis. Keywords: child-directed speech ; motherese; robotese; motionese; register theory; social communication; human–robot interaction ; computers-as-social-actors; mindless transfer. (shrink)

It has been proposed that the design of robots might benefit from interactions that are similar to caregiver–child interactions, which is tailored to children’s respective capacities to a high degree. However, so far little is known about how people adapt their tutoring behaviour to robots and whether robots can evoke input that is similar to child-directed interaction. The paper presents detailed analyses of speakers’ linguistic behaviour and non-linguistic behaviour, such as action demonstration, in two comparable situations: In one experiment, parents (...) described and explained to their nonverbal infants the use of certain everyday objects; in the other experiment, participants tutored a simulated robot on the same objects. The results, which show considerable differences between the two situations on almost all measures, are discussed in the light of the computer-as-social-actor paradigm and the register hypothesis. Keywords: child-directed speech ; motherese; robotese; motionese; register theory; social communication; human–robot interaction ; computers-as-social-actors; mindless transfer. (shrink)

On one common reading of Kant, emotional states that he calls feelings, desires, and inclinations are thoroughly non-cognitive and play no positive role in the moral life, which is instead about subduing our sensible nature through a discipline of reason. Against this common reading, this paper argues that Kant actually holds a weak cognitivist view of at least some emotions, according to which emotions are responses to judgments – or to what Kant calls maxims – that are about what makes (...) an action right or wrong. Moreover, this paper also argues that a full understanding of Kant’s view of emotions and their role in the moral life requires assessing their relation to his theory about the radical evil of human nature, because he holds that emotions can be responses to the fundamental maxim that reflects our propensity to prioritize self-love over the moral law. Even emotions that are not directly corrupted by evil in this way must be seen in the context of Kant’s view that the moral life is essentially a struggle against the propensity to evil in human nature. So rather than reading Kant as a non-cognitivist about emotion, this paper reads him as a weak cognitivist whose suspicion of emotion reflects the significance he assigns to the human propensity to evil. (shrink)

This paper develops an interpretation of the relationship between Kant's various formulations of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork that steers a middle course between the formal and substantive poles of the interpretive spectrum, represented by John Rawls and Barbara Herman, respectively. Accepting and rejecting key aspects of both Rawls's and Herman's interpretations, I argue that the first formulation, understood correctly, does suffice to determine all Kantian moral duties, but only if duties are regarded as situation-specific rather than standing obligations. (...) I also argue, however, that the second and third formulations provide information that is necessary for understanding and applying the first formulation to determine one's duty correctly, and that the formulations are in a sense equivalent even though each plays a distinctive and important role. (shrink)

Georg Simon Ohm's work in the field of electricity led to what is now considered to be the most fundamental law of electrical circuits, Ohm's Law. Much less known is that only months earlier, Ohm had published another law—one that differed significantly from the now accepted one. The latter entailed a logarithmic relation between the length of the conductor and a parameter that Ohm called “loss of force.” This paper discusses how Ohm came up with an initial law that he (...) felt compelled to correct a few months later. We analyze Ohm's publication as well as his laboratory notes, relating them to our own laboratory experiences while using the replication method to study his work. We also discuss the conceptual background of Ohm's work. We conclude that he was significantly influenced by French studies in the field of electricity, most notably the ones by Charles Augustin Coulomb. (shrink)

We argue that some sports test athletes’ capacities to endure specific types of suffering, and in such cases the suffering is constitutive of the sport: the sporting contest would not be a good sporting contest if that capacity were not tested. We then argue that it is morally acceptable for athletes to experience pleasure (Schadenfreude) in response to the constitutive suffering of competitors insofar as that pleasure is compatible with pity or sympathy for non-constitutive suffering. We use the case of (...) morally acceptable pleasure in the constitutive suffering of a competitor to clarify the sense of Schadenfreude. We defend a little recognised distinction of Aristotelian provenance between benign and malignant Schadenfreude, and, in contrast to the prevailing scholarly assessment, we show that Schadenfreude is not necessarily a passive emotion. (shrink)

Nuclear weapons are different from every other type of weapons technology. Their awesome destructive potential and the unparalleled consequences of their use oblige us to think critically about the ethics of nuclear possession, planning, and use. Joe Nye has given the ethics of nuclear weapons deep consideration. He posits that we have a basic moral obligation to future generations to preserve roughly equal access to important values, including equal chances of survival, and proposes criteria for achieving conditional or “just deterrence” (...) to minimize the risk of nuclear use and help preserve these values. While Nye's conditions are laudable, they are not achievable. They rely on flawed assumptions about the nature of nuclear weapons and the inherent risks of the nuclear deterrence system. Since the Cold War ended, the strategy and practice of nuclear deterrence has grown riskier, more urgent, more dangerous, and less stable. It is time to rethink how we manage nuclear risks. A new nuclear security system must be built on the design principle that the consequences of system failure cannot threaten to end or fundamentally disrupt civilization. We owe the future a new nuclear security strategy that can prevent an existential global nuclear event. (shrink)

What is the modern turn in philosophy? In other words, what are the features that make modern philosophy distinctively ""modern"" in contrast with the pre-modern philosophy from which it emerged? The twelve essays in this volume seek to address this question, and in doing so, exemplify and contribute to a rich debate about the nature and value of modern philosophy.

In a longitudinal naturalistic study, we observed German mothers interacting with their infants when they were 3 and 6 months old. Pursuing the idea that infants’ attention is socialized in everyday interactions, we explored whether eye contact is reinforced selectively by behavioral modification in the input provided to infants. Applying a microanalytical approach focusing on the sequential organization of interaction, we explored how the mother draws the infant’s attention to herself and how she tries to maintain attention when the infant (...) is looking at her. Results showed that eye contact is reinforced by specific infant-directed practices: interrogatives and conversational openings, multimodal stimulation, repetition, and imitation. In addition, these practices are contingent on the infant’s own behavior. By comparing the two data points (3 and 6 months), we showed how the education of attention evolves hand-in-hand with the developing capacities of the infant. Keywords: multimodal input; eye contact; interactional adaptation; ecology of attention; social learning. (shrink)

In a longitudinal naturalistic study, we observed German mothers interacting with their infants when they were 3 and 6 months old. Pursuing the idea that infants’ attention is socialized in everyday interactions, we explored whether eye contact is reinforced selectively by behavioral modification in the input provided to infants. Applying a microanalytical approach focusing on the sequential organization of interaction, we explored how the mother draws the infant’s attention to herself and how she tries to maintain attention when the infant (...) is looking at her. Results showed that eye contact is reinforced by specific infant-directed practices: interrogatives and conversational openings, multimodal stimulation, repetition, and imitation. In addition, these practices are contingent on the infant’s own behavior. By comparing the two data points, we showed how the education of attention evolves hand-in-hand with the developing capacities of the infant. Keywords: multimodal input; eye contact; interactional adaptation; ecology of attention; social learning. (shrink)

This article presents results from a multidisciplinary research project on the integration and transfer of language knowledge into robots as an empirical paradigm for the study of language development in both humans and humanoid robots. Within the framework of human linguistic and cognitive development, we focus on how three central types of learning interact and co-develop: individual learning about one's own embodiment and the environment, social learning (learning from others), and learning of linguistic capability. Our primary concern is how these (...) capabilities can scaffold each other's development in a continuous feedback cycle as their interactions yield increasingly sophisticated competencies in the agent's capacity to interact with others and manipulate its world. Experimental results are summarized in relation to milestones in human linguistic and cognitive development and show that the mutual scaffolding of social learning, individual learning, and linguistic capabilities creates the context, conditions, and requisites for learning in each domain. Challenges and insights identified as a result of this research program are discussed with regard to possible and actual contributions to cognitive science and language ontogeny. In conclusion, directions for future work are suggested that continue to develop this approach toward an integrated framework for understanding these mutually scaffolding processes as a basis for language development in humans and robots. (shrink)

Research of tutoring in parent-infant interaction has shown that tutors – when presenting some action – modify both their verbal and manual performance for the learner. Investigating the sources and effects of the tutors’ action modifications, we suggest an interactional account of ‘motionese’. Using video-data from a semi-experimental study in which parents taught their 8- to 11-month old infants how to nest a set of differently sized cups, we found that the tutors’ action modifications functioned as an orienting device to (...) guide the infant’s visual attention. Action modification and the recipient’s gaze can be seen to have a reciprocal sequential relationship and to constitute a constant loop of mutual adjustments. Implications are discussed for developmental research and for robotic ‘Social Learning’. We argue that a robot system could use on-line feedback strategies to pro-actively shape a tutor’s action presentation as it emerges. (shrink)