This study focused on the significant relationship between Creative Thinking Skills and Problem-Solving Skills in Mathematics among Grade 6 pupils. The study's respondents were thirty (30) Grade 6 pupils from one of the elementary schools in the District of Sta. Ana, Pampanga. The respondents were selected using simple random sampling techniques. The study used a survey questionnaire comprising the Creative Thinking Skills Test (Pentang et al., 2022) and a researcher-made word problem-solving written test and rubrics. The researchers found a high (...) level of Creative Thinking Skills among the Grade 6 pupils, while the respondents' problem-solving skills were categorized as competent. The study revealed that the Creative Thinking Skills and Problem-Solving Skills in Mathematics of the Grade 6 pupils were very lowly correlated. Still, creative thinking and problem-solving in the applied subject are recommended to help students acquire the 21st-century skills that empower them to develop holistically and career ready. (shrink)

Theorists in various scientific disciplines offer radically different accounts of the origin of violent behavior in humans, but it is not clear how the study of violence is to be scientifically grounded. This problem is made more complicated because both what sorts of acts constitute violence and what needs to be appealed to in explaining violence differs according to social scientists, biologists, anthropologists and neurophysiologists, and this generates serious problems with respect to even attempting to ascertain the differential bona fides (...) of these various explanatory programs. As a consequence, there is little theoretical reason to suspect that efforts to prevent violence will have any appreciable effect. In this paper we investigate the general issue of whether any of the general theoretical approaches to violent behavior can reasonably be taken to be the best approach to the explanation of seriously violent behavior. Our more specific aim is to examine the controversial explanation of violent behavior offered by Lonnie Athens in order to ascertain whether it can be seriously considered to be the best explanation of violent behavior. (shrink)

Reading, even when silent and individual, is a social phenomenon and has often been studied as such. Complementary to this view, research has begun to explore how reading is embodied beyond simply being ‘wired’ in the brain. This article brings the social and embodied perspectives together in a very literal sense. Reporting a qualitative study of reading practices across student focus groups from six European countries, it identifies an underexplored factor in reading behaviour and experience. This factor is the sheer (...) physical presence, and concurrent activity, of other people in the environment where one engages in individual silent reading. The primary goal of the study was to explore the role and possible associations of a number of variables (text type, purpose, device) in selecting generic (e.g. indoors vs outdoors) as well as specific (e.g. home vs library) reading environments. Across all six samples included in the study, participants spontaneously attested to varied, and partly surprising, forms of sensitivity to company and social space in their daily efforts to align body with mind for reading. The article reports these emergent trends and discusses their potential implications for research and practice. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variety of groups who develop and use ontologies and (...) terminologies in biomedicine. The centerpiece of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a web-based resource known as BioPortal. BioPortal makes available for research in computationally useful forms more than 270 of the world's biomedical ontologies and terminologies, and supports a wide range of web services that enable investigators to use the ontologies to annotate and retrieve data, to generate value sets and special-purpose lexicons, and to perform advanced analytics on a wide range of biomedical data. (shrink)

Anne TIHON, Théorie et réalité : l’exemple de l’astronomie an­cienne (pp. 7-23) ; Isabelle DRAELANTS, Les encyclopédies com­me sommes des connaissances, d’Isidore de Séville au XIIIe siè­cle, avec les fondements antiques (pp. 25-50) ; Andrée COLINET, Alchimie antique et médiévale avant 1300 : mystères et réalités (pp. 51-70) ; Baudouin VAN DEN ABEELE, Quelques pas de grue à travers l’histoire naturelle médiévale : un regard diversifié sur le réel (pp. 71-98) ; Régine LEURQUIN, L’astrolabe plan (pp. 99- 117) ; (...) class='Hi'>Patricia RADELET-DE GRAVE, Copernic, Stevin, Galilée et la réalité des orbites célestes (pp. 119-151) ; Brigitte VAN TIGGELEN, Étiqueter ou définir : le réalisme dans la nomen­cla­ture chimique aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (pp. 153-183) ; Michel GHINS, L’existence de l’espace et du temps selon Leon­hard Euler (pp. 185-193) ; Chantal TILMANS-CABIAUX, Le rap­port de l’idée théorique à l’expérimentation chez Hahnemann : le système homéo­pathique naissant et le réalisme (pp. 195-214) ; Jean MAWHIN, La Terre tourne-t-elle ? À propos de la philosophie scientifique de Poincaré (pp. 215-252) ; Michel WILLEM, Paul Lévy et les fondements du calcul des probabilités (pp. 253-263). (shrink)

VAN PRAAG (Paul), Introduction : le Père Henri Bosmans, histo­rien des mathématiques (pp. 7-16). SAUVAGE (Pierre), Notice biographique du Père Henri Bosmans (pp. 17-25). HERMANS (Michel), Henri Bosmans : sa formation et ses réseaux de rela­tions (pp. 27-72). DELANGHE (Richard), Quelques aspects de la vie et de l’œuvre de Paul Mansion (1844-1919) (pp. 73-82). BRIGAGLIA (Aldo), Saccheri vu par Corrado Segre en Italie et par Mansion et Bosmans en Belgique / traduit de l’italien par Bruna GAINO et Patricia RADELET-DE (...) GRAVE (pp. 83-104). MAWHIN (Jean), La tentative belge d’édition des œuvres complètes d’Euler vue par Henri Bos­mans (pp. 105-133). GOLVERS (Noël), Henri Bosmans, s.j., et la mission jésuite en Chine / traduit du néerlandais par Anne-Sophie MEURICE (pp. 135-152). ROMANO (Antonella), Henri Bosmans, jésuite et historien des mathéma­tiques dans la Belgique du premier XXe siècle (pp. 153-168). SAUVAGE (Pierre), Le Père Henri Bosmans et l’historiographie au tournant du XXe siècle (pp. 169-187). RADELET-DE GRAVE (Patricia), Le fonds Henri Bos­mans / avec un ajout de Michel HERMANS (pp. 189-215). MANSION (Paul), Correspondance de Paul Mansion adres­sée à Henri Bosmans / introduction, trans­cription et annotation par Michel HERMANS (pp. 217-251). HEEFFER (Albrecht) – HERMANS (Michel) – STOFFEL (Jean-François), Bibliographie d’Henri Bosmans (pp. 253-298). (shrink)

This special issue of HYPATIA: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy entitled "Women, Art, and Aesthetics" highlights the expanded range of topics at center stage in feminist philosophical inquiry to date (2003): recontextualizing women artists (essays by Patricia Locke, Eleanor Heartney, and Michelle Meagher), bodies and beauty (Ann J. Cahill, Sheila Lintott, Janell Hobson, Richard Shusterman, Joanna Frueh), art, ethics, politics, law (A. W. Eaton, Amy Mullin, L. Ryan Musgrave, Teresa Winterhalter), and review essays by Estella Lauter and Flo Leibowitz. (...) Annotated bibliography by Joshua Shaw. (shrink)

In The Women of Grub Street (1998), Paula McDowell highlighted the fact that the overwhelming majority of women’s texts in early modern England were polemical or religio-political in nature rather than literary in content. Since that time, the study of early modern women’s political ideas has dramatically increased, and there have been a number of recent anthologies, modern editions, and critical analyses of female political writings. As a result of Patricia Springborg’s research, Mary Astell (1668-1731) has risen to prominence (...) as one of the most astute female political commentators of her day. Springborg argues for Astell’s importance as one of the first systematic critics of the philosopher John Locke, and she interprets Astell’s political thought as a reaction to Lockean Whig politics in the early reign of Queen Anne. But some scholars claim that it is a mistake to think that Astell was chiefly preoccupied with Locke, and others suggest that reading Astell in relation to Locke alone can distort our understanding of her larger political theory. In this chapter, I argue that a more accurate picture of Astell’s political outlook emerges by examining a little studied essay, ‘A Prefatory Discourse to Dr D’Aveanant’ in her 1704 work Moderation Truly Stated. In this critique of Charles Davenant’s Essays upon Peace at Home, and War Abroad (1704), Astell provides a commentary on the political ruthlessness of Niccolo Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy. Astell’s comments reveal that, in an age in which the political vocabulary was turning to the language of rights, property, and liberty, she still subscribed to the ancient world view, and the ethical-political language of virtue and the good. My intention is to show that these ethical dimensions of Astell’s political thought are consonant with her wider philosophy. (shrink)

DESENVOLVIMENTO EMBRIONÁRIO E DIFERENCIAÇÃO SEXUAL -/- E. I. C. da Silva Departamento de Agropecuária – IFPE Campus Belo Jardim Departamento de Zootecnia – UFRPE sede -/- 1.1 INTRODUÇÃO O sexo foi definido como a soma das diferenças morfológicas, fisiológicas e psicológicas que distinguem o macho da fêmea permitindo a reprodução sexual e assegurando a continuidade das espécies. Os processos de diferenciação sexual são realizados durante o desenvolvimento embrionário, onde ocorre a proliferação, diferenciação e maturação das células germinativas e primordiais, precursoras (...) de ovócitos e espermatozoides em fêmeas e machos, respectivamente. Assim, os embriões machos e fêmeas iniciam o seu desenvolvimento de forma semelhante, de modo que em ambos os sexos se estabelecem em estruturas idênticas a partir das quais se formarão os órgãos reprodutores correspondentes a cada sexo. O conhecimento da origem e do desenvolvimento do aparelho genital é indispensável para entender sua função e as alterações que produzem infertilidade ou esterilidade. 1.2 DETERMINAÇÃO DO SEXO CROMOSSÔMICO Nos mamíferos, o sexo cromossômico é determinado no momento da fertilização, quando um óvulo, que contém um cromossomo X, é fecundado por um espermatozoide portador de um cromossomo X ou um cromossomo Y. No primeiro caso, o complemento cromossômico seria XX, o que originaria uma fêmea (sexo homogamético), e no segundo daria como resultado um macho com a fórmula cromossômica XY (sexo heterogâmico). 1.3 A GÔNADA INDIFERENCIADA A primeira manifestação das gônadas se aprecia no embrião em forma de um par de eminências longitudinais chamadas cristas ou dobras gonodais, situadas em ambos os lados da linha média entre os mesonefros (rins em desenvolvimento) e do mesentério dorsal. Nos embriões dos mamíferos, as células germinativas primordiais (CGP) manifestam-se em estágios precoces do desenvolvimento, podendo ser detectadas pela primeira vez na metade da gastrulação. As CGP são células grandes, de citoplasma claro e núcleo grande e redondo, localizadas na parede do saco vitelino, perto do alantoide. Essas células possuem grande capacidade de proliferação e vão migrar desde o endoderma do intestino e o epitélio do saco vitelino, através do mesentério, até as cristas gonodais. Isso ocorre por volta do 26° dia da gestação no bovino. Sua migração realiza-se graças aos movimentos de translocação passiva e deslocamento ameboide ativo. Desconhece-se o mecanismo pelo qual estas células são dirigidas para as cristas gonodais, porém foram estudadas algumas moléculas que se expressam durante sua migração e que poderiam desempenhar um papel importante na diferenciação deste tipo celular. A fosfatase alcalina é uma enzima que tem sido usada como marcador de CGP para determinar a sua origem e migração. Num estudo recente, foi inserido um marcador fluorescente que se exprime unicamente nas células germinativas primordiais de embriões transgênicos, e utilizando este marcador e a fosfatase alcalina determinou-se a origem e o padrão de migração destas células. O primeiro sinal de diferenciação das células germinativas primordiais é a expressão de fosfatase alcalina, e esta apareceu pela primeira vez na parte mais posterior da linha primitiva. No sétimo dia de desenvolvimento no embrião do camundongo, o endoderma visceral (AF+) é substituído pelo endoderma definitivo (AF-) originado na parte anterior da linha primitiva. O fator de transcrição Oct-4 é expresso nas CGP de ambos os sexos, pelo que acredita-se estar envolvido na mantença a totipotêncialidade das células. O receptor tirosina quinase, cujo ligante é o fator de Steel, é outra das moléculas que expressam as CGP. Tem sido demonstrado que este receptor possui um papel muito importante na sobrevivência deste tipo celular. Existem outros fatores que promovem a sobrevivência e/ou proliferação de CGP in vitro. Em experiências realizadas com o fator de transformação beta I (TGFβ-I), observou-se que este tem um efeito negativo sobre a proliferação das CGP. Outra atividade que tem sido postulada a este fator é o de um agente quimioatraente que possivelmente possa direcionar a migração destas células para a gônada. a) Um formado pelas células germinativas primordiais (precursoras dos gametas masculinos ou femininos), rodeadas de células somáticas das quais posteriormente se derivarão as células de Sertoli no macho e as células da granulosa na fêmea. b) O tecido que formará o estroma da gônada: tecido conjuntivo, vasos sanguíneos e as células intersticiais com atividade esteroidogênica (células de Leydig no testículo e a teca interna do ovário). As células somáticas do primórdio gonodal originam-se do mesoderma. Inicialmente são de três tipos: mesenquimáticas, mesoteliais e endoteliais. As células mesenquimáticas e mesoteliais iniciam grande atividade proliferativa ao chegar as CGP. Observa-se então uma condensação de células de origem mesotelial e mesenquimatoso que forma um agregado compacto denominado "blastema gonodal". A partir deste primórdio embrionário, diferenciam-se dois tecidos gonodais: os cordões sexuais e o estroma. Os cordões sexuais são arranjos epiteliais que se encontram delimitados por uma folha basal, e dentro deles encontramos as CGP. Por sua vez, no estroma encontram-se células do tipo mesenquimático e vasos sanguíneos. Neste momento, as gônadas são indiferenciadas e bipotencialmente sexuais, sendo impossível diferenciar, morfologicamente, uma gônada masculina de uma feminina, mas no caso dos machos genéticos já existe uma diferenciação da gônada a nível molecular. Nesta fase já se encontram presentes as estruturas das quais se desenvolvem os dutos mesonéfricos ou de Wolff precursores do aparelho genital masculino e os dutos paramesonéfricos ou de Müller que darão origem ao aparelho reprodutor feminino. Há uma série de fatores envolvidos no desenvolvimento precoce da gônada, entre os quais o fator esteroidogênico I (SFI: Steroidogenic fator l), que é um membro da subfamília de receptores nucleares, receptores órfãos. Este fator de transcrição tem um local de ligação ao DNA composto por dois dedos-de-Zinc. O SFI foi identificado como um ativador de genes envolvidos na biossíntese de esteroides em diferentes células. O SFI está presente durante o desenvolvimento embrionário em regiões associadas com funções endócrinas como gônadas, adrenais, pituitárias e hipotálamos. Os animais homozigotos para o gene SFI defeituoso, necessitam de gônadas e adrenais e têm a função gonadotrófica alterada. Os ratos sem SFI carecem de gonadotrofos e têm um desenvolvimento anormal do núcleo ventro-medial do hipotálamo; em particular as gônadas deixam de se desenvolver entre os dias 11 a 15 e degeneram-se por apoptose. No entanto, a crista genital forma-se e é colonizada pelas células germinativas, o que indica que estas continuam a receber o sinal adequado para a sua migração. Portanto, o SFI não está envolvido no desenvolvimento precoce da gônada e do sistema urogenital, mas parece estar envolvido na manutenção do crescimento das células somáticas presentes na gônada indiferenciada. O gene associado ao tumor de Wilms (WTI: Wilm's tumor Associated) está envolvido no desenvolvimento da gônada e do rim. Durante o desenvolvimento embrionário, WTI se expressa em todo o mesoderma intermediário e posteriormente na gônada indiferenciada, bem como no rim em formação. WTI regula o sinal indutivo do mesênquima para o epitélio celômico dos mesonefros. Se este for o caso, então WTI é responsável pelo crescimento da crista genital ao dirigir a entrada do epitélio celômico. Dado que estas células darão origem às células de Sertoli, a carência de WTI pode causar o desenvolvimento de embriões XY como fêmeas simplesmente porque não se formam as células de Sertoli. Em geral, todos os genes importantes na diferenciação do mesoderma intermediário e do sistema urogenital intervêm no desenvolvimento da gônada precoce. 1.4 DIFERENCIAÇÃO GONODAL O desenvolvimento das gônadas e ductos genitais descritos até o momento, é o mesmo para ambos os sexos. Igualmente, os genes descritos, que estão envolvidos no desenvolvimento das gônadas, ductos genitais e migração das células germinativas, afetam igualmente os embriões com genótipo XX ou XY. A gônada primitiva consiste anatomicamente de uma medula (interna) e uma crosta (externa), e de acordo com o local onde ocorre a colonização das células germinativas, diferenciara em testículo ou um ovário, respectivamente. Nos mamíferos, a primeira manifestação estrutural de diferenciação sexual é detectada na gônada dos machos, onde as células germinativas estão localizadas na medula. A diferenciação do testículo inicia-se quando os cordões sexuais se separam do epitélio celômico como consequência dos arranjos produzidos por uma invasão do mesênquima e vasos sanguíneos que provoca a compactação dos cordões, agora denominados cordões testiculares. As células que rodeiam os cordões se achatam e formam as células mioides, que são responsáveis pela formação das membranas basais. As células do epitélio interno, ou seja, as células de Sertoli, têm duas funções principais: o suporte das CGP e a síntese da hormona antimulleriana, responsável pela regressão dos ductos de Müller e secretada durante o período de diferenciação sexual. As células do estroma que rodeiam os cordões testiculares diferenciam-se para formar vários tipos de células: células mioides, fibroblastos, endotélio e células de Leydig, que são as mais importantes pela sua atividade endócrina. Posteriormente, os cordões testiculares dão origem aos túbulos seminíferos, que contêm o epitélio que produzirá os espermatozoides ao chegar à puberdade. Na fêmea, durante os estágios iniciais de diferenciação gonodal, não se observam mudanças em relação à gônada indiferenciada, só pode-se observar um certo crescimento devido à proliferação de células somáticas e germinativas. As células germinativas iniciam um período de proliferação, que termina com o início da meiose. Iniciada a meiose, dá-se o processo de foliculogênese; neste momento os cordões epiteliais se fragmentam, de tal maneira que cada ovócito fica rodeado de células epiteliais cobertas por uma folha basal fina (figura 1). Para que a gônada primitiva se desenvolva em testículo é indispensável a presença do cromossoma Y, independentemente do número de cromossomas X que contenha o genoma de um indivíduo. O gene determinante do testículo encontra-se localizado no cromossoma Y, denominado sry em ratos e SRY em humanos. O gene sry se expressa durante o desenvolvimento embrionário na crista genital de embriões de camundongos. A expressão é detectável no dia 10,5, pouco depois do aparecimento das cristas genitais, atinge o seu máximo durante o dia 11,5 e mantém-se até pouco depois de ocorrerem os primeiros sinais morfológicos de diferenciação testicular no dia 12,5. Este padrão de expressão é compatível com a teoria de que sry atua induzindo a ativação dos genes (figura 2) que conduzem ao desenvolvimento testicular, sem que exista a necessidade da expressão contínua de sry para manter a diferenciação do testículo após o dia 12,5. Como mencionado anteriormente, a gônada primitiva é composta por vários tipos de células. No entanto, as células germinativas primordiais não são o local de expressão do sry, já que os embriões que necessitam de células germinativas mantêm a expressão de sry e desenvolvem o sexo gonodal normalmente. As células somáticas na gônada em desenvolvimento incluem também as células de suporte. Sabe-se que é nestas células que o sry é expresso para que se diferenciem em células de Sertoli, e a expressão transitória de sry indica que deve ativar a outros genes para a manutenção das células de Sertoli. Uma vez diferenciadas as células de Sertoli, elas se encarregarão da diferenciação do resto das células na gônada. -/- Figura 1: Representação da diferenciação dos órgãos genitais internos. Adaptado de BRONSON, 1989. Figura 2: Cascada de genes envolvidos na diferenciação sexual, adaptado de KOOPMAN, 1999. O fator sry é necessário para a diferenciação do testículo. Embora não se conheçam os genes que provavelmente regulam esse gene, estudos realizados em camundongos demonstram que este gene parece coordenar-se com certos genes autossômicos. Entre estes genes autossômicos, o sox9, que é produzido pelas células de Sertoli uma vez que são estimuladas por sry, de modo que sox9 é um dos genes relacionados estruturalmente com sry. O Sox9 funciona como um fator de transcrição, mas não se sabe se a proteína tem qualquer outra função estrutural; este gene exprime-se abundantemente nos condrócitos e está relacionado com defeitos do aparelho ósseo chamados displasia campomélica. Curiosamente, os pacientes XY com esta condição sofrem frequentemente de reversão do sexo. O Sox9 é um dos poucos genes, além do SRY, do qual as mutações demonstraram interferir com a determinação sexual masculina. No entanto, apenas 75% dos pacientes com anomalias esqueléticas de tipo displasia campomélica têm reversão sexual e não foram encontrados casos de reversão sexual devido a um defeito de Sox9 que não seja acompanhado de defeitos esqueléticos. Isso indica que o Sox9 é apenas um membro da rede de genes que são ativados para determinar a diferenciação sexual, enquanto a rota que rege a condrogênese é mais sensível a perturbações deste. O momento em que se detecta a expressão do gene Sox9 (11dpc em ratos) coincide com a máxima expressão de sry, o que poderia indicar a possibilidade de que sry regule positivamente a Sox9. De fato, na região do promotor de Sox9 há um local de união ao que potencialmente se pode unir o sry. A expressão de Sox9 durante a diferenciação sexual sugere um papel abaixo de sry na diferenciação das células de Sertoli. O cromossoma X também é importante na diferenciação gonodal. O gene DAX-I foi isolado do lócus DSS (Dosage sensitive sex reversal) do cromossoma X. DAX-I é parte da cascata de determinação sexual, mas não é necessário para a formação do testículo. DAX-I é um membro dos receptores nucleares conhecidos como receptores órfãos. Este gene demonstrou ser um poderoso repressor da transcrição de SFI e de vários genes. Os padrões de expressão de DAX-I são complementares daqueles de SFI, ambos expressos nas cristas genitais. Em resumo, dada a evidência exposta, desenvolveu-se a hipótese de que DAX-I é um antagonista de sry; esse antagonismo é dependente dos níveis relativos de DAX-I e sry e de um limiar que varia de espécie para espécie. A DAX-I foi classificada como o gene antitestículo. Na fêmea (cariótipo XX) é importante que ocorra a inativação de um dos cromossomas sexuais X para que se mantenha o equilíbrio genético ao igualar o conteúdo de DNA dos cromossomas. Esse cromossoma inativado constitui o chamado corpúsculo de Barr. No entanto, para que a meiose se realize, é necessário dos dois cromossomas X ativos nos ovócitos para assegurar a diferenciação ovárica e a fertilidade. 1.5 DIFERENCIAÇÃO DOS DUCTOS SEXUAIS O embrião possui, além das gônadas indiferenciadas, dois sistemas de ductos: os de potencialidade masculina denominam-se ductos de Wolff ou mesonéfricos, e os de potencialidade feminina se chamam ductos de Müller ou paramesonéfricos (figura 1). Se a diferenciação gonodal levou à formação de um testículo, a partir do ducto mesonéfrico ou de Wolff se desenvolverão os ductos eferentes, o epidídimo, os ductos deferentes e as vesículas seminais. As hormonas importantes no desenvolvimento do aparelho genital masculino são a testosterona, produzida pelas células de Leydig, e sua forma 5α reduzida, a 5α di-hidrotestosterona. Acredita-se que a testosterona é responsável pela virilização dos ductos de Wolff, e a di-hidrotestosterona dos órgãos genitais externos. No macho, os canais de Müller atrofiam-se devido à ação de uma hormona fetal de origem testicular denominada hormona inibidora das estruturas de Müller (HIM) ou hormona antimulleriana. Este processo começa assim que os cordões espermáticos se formam e se diferenciam as células de Sertoli. A existência de HIM foi proposta baseada em estudos realizados em bezerras freemartin, devido à existência de uma hormona responsável pela atresia dos ductos de Müller que na fêmea dá origem ao útero e aos ovidutos. Essa hormona provoca a involução do aparelho genital do bovino nas gestações gemelares nas quais os produtos de diferente sexo têm comunicação sanguínea por ter ocorrido a anastomose dos vasos de ambas as placentas (figura 3). A HIM é uma glicoproteína pertencente à subfamília de TGFβ, é expressa pelas células que darão origem às células de Sertoli e é um dos primeiros marcadores de diferenciação nestas células. A HIM é secretada na vida adulta pelas células de Sertoli no testículo e por células da granulosa no ovário. No rato a HIM é expressa-se no 12° dia em um teste padrão que segue muito de perto o aumento na expressão de sry. No macho, esta secreção de HIM continua durante a vida fetal e adulta, contudo os níveis de HIM declinam na puberdade devido a um aumento na secreção de testosterona. Vários fatores intervêm na regulação do gene de HIM, incluindo os acima descritos SFI e Sox9. O gene HIM contém segmentos de DNA que são conservados em várias espécies de vertebrados. Existe um nexo de ligação para SFI, que ativa a transcrição de HIM. A mutação no local de ligação de SFI resulta em reversão do sexo em indivíduos XY incluindo genitais femininos normais, presença de um útero formado enfatizando a importância de SFI na determinação sexual e na expressão de HIM. Embora SFI seja um bom candidato como regulador de HIM, é expresso em outras células, como as de Leydig e adrenais, que não expressam HIM. Em contrapartida, Sox9 é expresso unicamente nas células de Sertoli que são as produtoras de HIM. O gene HIM também tem um nexo de ligação para Sox9. Além disso, Sox9 pode atuar sinergicamente com SFI para promover a secreção de HIM. Ao contrário destes dois fatores de transcrição, DAX-I antagoniza a ação de Sox9 e provavelmente SFI sobre o promotor de HIM. Assim, para que as células de Sertoli secretem HIM, a transcrição de DAX-I deve diminuir. Figura 3: Representação da diferenciação dos órgãos genitais externos. Adaptado de BRONSON, 1989. Os ductos de Wolff tornam-se o sistema de ejaculação do macho. A porção mais próxima dos testículos dá origem ao epidídimo, a parte central ao ducto deferente e a porção mais distal às vesículas seminais. A próstata e a parte membranosa da uretra do macho desenvolvem-se a partir da porção pélvica do seio urogenital. A virilização e diferenciação dos ductos de Wolff dependem da produção de testosterona pelo testículo. Quanto aos órgãos genitais externos do macho, o tubérculo genital é ampliado e as dobras uretrais se fundem para formar a uretra peniana. A fusão das dobras uretrais aproxima os tubérculos genitais para formar o escroto (figura 4). Figura 4: Diferenciação do aparelho genital da fêmea e do macho. Adaptado de KOOPMAN, 1989. A diferenciação dos órgãos genitais da fêmea ocorre de forma passiva, já que a ausência de testículos e por isso da hormona inibidora dos ductos de Müller (HIM), assim como dos andrógenos virilizantes, favorece o desenvolvimento dos ductos de Müller, enquanto os de Wolff sofrem atrofia. A porção cefálica dos ductos de Müller dá origem aos ovidutos, que na sua terminação caudal se fundem com o útero. O contato dos ductos de Müller com o seio urogenital induz uma intensa proliferação celular que resulta na formação da área uterovaginal localizado entre o seio urogenital e os ductos de Müller. As células do prato uterovaginal proliferam e aumentam a distância entre as duas estruturas criando o espaço que formará a vagina quando o prato é canalizado e forma um lúmen. Em contraste com o que ocorre no macho, na fêmea a maior parte do seio urogenital se mantém exposta na superfície da abertura onde desembocam a vagina e a uretra. O tubérculo urogenital da fêmea tem um crescimento limitado e forma o clitóris. A sequência de passos da diferenciação sexual do aparelho genital é resumida na tabela 1. Tabela 1: Destino em desenvolvimento dos rudimentos sexuais dos fetos macho e fêmea dos mamíferos -/- Rudimento sexual Macho Fêmea Gônada Testículo Ovário Ductos de Müller (Paramesonéfricos) Vestígios Útero, parte da vagina, ovidutos Ductos de Wolff (Mesonéfricos) Ductos eferentes deferentes, epidídimo, vesículas seminais Vestígios Seio urogenital Uretra, próstata, glândulas bulbouretrais Parte da vagina, uretra, vestíbulo, glândulas vestibulares Tubérculo genital Pênis Clitóris Pregas vestibulares Escroto Lábios vulvares Fonte: HAFEZ, 2004. 1.6 DIFERENCIAÇÃO SEXUAL DO HIPOTÁLAMO Os processos de diferenciação sexual não se limitam apenas às células somáticas do organismo do feto, mas incluem também os centros nervosos superiores do cérebro. Assim, da mesma maneira que a gônada e os ductos sexuais se desenvolvem para o tipo feminino ou masculino, propôs-se que o cérebro pode ser "masculinizado" ou permanecer "Feminizado". A diferenciação do hipotálamo vai depender do ambiente esteroidal do neonato e ocorre na fase perinatal. Estes eventos serão de grande transcendência na vida reprodutiva do indivíduo. Tanto a fêmea como o macho nascem com a capacidade de secreção de gonadotropinas de acordo com um padrão cíclico; contudo, no macho, a exposição do hipotálamo à ação dos andrógenos testiculares durante os primeiros dias da vida extrauterina provoca a masculinização, com o qual o hipotálamo do macho é programado para que a secreção de gonadotropinas se realize a um ritmo relativamente constante por parte da hipófise (secreção tônica). Na fêmea, tanto a secreção tônica como a cíclica se conservam. No entanto, observou-se que a injeção de testosterona ou o transplante de testículo na rata fêmea durante os primeiros dias de vida, suprime a sua futura atividade estral (secreção cíclica). Por outro lado, se os ovários forem transplantados para o rato macho normal castrado na idade adulta, o animal não desenvolve qualquer atividade cíclica, mas se os machos transplantados forem castrados ao nascer, o ovário é capaz de efetuar mudanças cíclicas e ovulações. Isto foi demonstrado em roedores, mas não em animais domésticos ou na espécie humana. Portanto, o padrão de secreção de gonadotropinas, seja cíclico ou tônico, não depende da hipófise, mas do hipotálamo e sua correta diferenciação. 1.7 CONCLUSÕES A maioria dos conhecimentos no campo da biologia do desenvolvimento e, muito especificamente, dos processos de diferenciação sexual têm sido originados de estudos relacionados com desordens congênitas, que na sua maioria devem-se a defeitos de genes específicos. A análise detalhada destas desordens permitiu entender alguns mecanismos endócrinos, moleculares e genéticos envolvidos na diferenciação sexual. A identificação do gene sry como determinante do testículo foi uma contribuição crucial e abriu as portas à compreensão dos mecanismos moleculares e celulares relacionados com o desenvolvimento do testículo. Se este gene não estiver presente, é criado um programa genético alternativo para levar a cabo a diferenciação gonodal para o ovário. Finalmente, devemos ter presente que é necessária uma correlação entre mudanças morfológicas e expressão de genes durante o desenvolvimento para entender os mecanismos relacionados com a diferenciação. -/- Apoio -/- Realização -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS ANDERSON, Robert et al. The onset of germ cell migration in the mouse embryo. Mechanisms of development, v. 91, n. 1-2, p. 61-68, 2000. AUSTIN, Colin Russell; SHORT, R. V. Reproduction in Mammals: Volume 1, Germ Cells and Fertilization. Londres: Cambridge University Press, 1972. BRONSON, Franklin H. Mammalian reproductive biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. BUEHR, Mia. The primordial germ cells of mammals: some current perspectives. Experimental cell research, v. 232, n. 2, p. 194-207, 1997. BYSKOV, Anne G. Differentiation of mammalian embryonic gonad. Physiological reviews, v. 66, n. 1, p. 71-117, 1986. CAPEL, Blanche et al. Migration of mesonephric cells into the mammalian gonad depends on Sry. Mechanisms of development, v. 84, n. 1-2, p. 127-131, 1999. CAPEL, Blanche. The battle of the sexes. Mechanisms of development, v. 92, n. 1, p. 89-103, 2000. DERIVAUX, Jules; BARNABÉ, Renato Campanarut. Reprodução dos animais domésticos. Zaragoza: Acribia, 1980. DOMENICE, Sorahia et al. Aspectos moleculares da determinação e diferenciação sexual. Arquivos Brasileiros de Endocrinologia & Metabologia, v. 46, n. 4, p. 433-443, 2002. DONAHOE, Patricia K. et al. Mullerian inhibiting substance activity in bovine fetal, newborn and prepubertal testes. Biology of reproduction, v. 16, n. 2, p. 238-243, 1977. HAFEZ, Elsayed Saad Eldin; HAFEZ, B. Reprodução animal. São Paulo: Manole, 2004. HANLEY, Neil A. et al. Steroidogenic factor 1 (SF-1) is essential for ovarian development and function. Molecular and cellular endocrinology, v. 163, n. 1-2, p. 27-32, 2000. HIORT, Olaf; PAUL-MARTIN, H. The molecular basis of male sexual differentiation. European journal of endocrinology, v. 142, n. 2, p. 101-110, 2000. HOLY, Lubos; MARTÍNEZ JÚSTIZ, G. Colab. Biología de la reproducción bovina. Havana: Revolucionária, 1975. JOSSO, Nathalie et al. The role of anti-Müllerian hormone in gonadal development. Molecular and cellular endocrinology, v. 145, n. 1-2, p. 3-7, 1998. JOST, Alfred et al. Studies on sex differentiation in mammals. In: Proceedings of the 1972 Laurentian Hormone Conference. Londres: Academic Press, 1973. p. 1-41. KNOBIL, Ernst. Knobil and Neill's physiology of reproduction. EUA: Gulf Professional Publishing, 2006. KOFMAN ALFARO, S.; MERCHANT LARIOS, H.; PEREZ PALACIOS, G. Diferenciacion sexual. I. Bases biologicas del dimorfismo sexual. Rev. invest. clín, p. 349-59, 1982. KOOPMAN, Peter. Sry and Sox9: mammalian testis-determining genes. Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences CMLS, v. 55, n. 6-7, p. 839-856, 1999. MCDONALD, L. E. Veterinary endocrinology. Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia, Pa, 1969. MEIZEL, S.; JOHNSON, M. H. Development in mammals. MH Johnson, Ed, v. 3, p. 1-64, 1978. MELLO, Maricilda Palandi de; ASSUMPÇÃO, Juliana de G.; HACKEL, Christine. Genes envolvidos na determinação e diferenciação do sexo. Arquivos Brasileiros de Endocrinologia & Metabologia, v. 49, n. 1, p. 14-25, 2005. -/- REFERÊNCIAS BIBLIOGRÁFICAS MERCHANT-LARIOS, H. Ovarian differentiation. The Vertebrate Ovary, p. 47-81, 1978. MIES FILHO, Antonio. Reprodução dos animais. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 1987. NEF, Serge; PARADA, Luis F. Hormones in male sexual development. Genes & Development, v. 14, n. 24, p. 3075-3086, 2000. PARKER, Keith L.; SCHEDL, Andreas; SCHIMMER, Bernard P. Gene interactions in gonadal development. Annual review of physiology, v. 61, n. 1, p. 417-433, 1999. SWAIN, Amanda; LOVELL-BADGE, Robin. Mammalian sex determination: a molecular drama. Genes & development, v. 13, n. 7, p. 755-767, 1999. WILHELM, Dagmar; PALMER, Stephen; KOOPMAN, Peter. Sex determination and gonadal development in mammals. Physiological reviews, v. 87, n. 1, p. 1-28, 2007. WILSON, Jean D.; GRIFFIN, James E.; GEORGE, Fredrick W. Sexual differentiation: early hormone synthesis and action. Biology of reproduction, v. 22, n. 1, p. 9-17, 1980. -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva Belo Jardim, 07 de Maio de 2020. (shrink)

Anydomainofscientificresearchhasitssustainingorthodoxy. Thatis, research on a problem, whether in astronomy, physics, or biology, is con- ducted against a backdrop of broadly shared assumptions. It is these as- sumptionsthatguideinquiryandprovidethecanonofwhatisreasonable-- of what "makes sense." And it is these shared assumptions that constitute a framework for the interpretation of research results. Research on the problem of how we see is likewise sustained by broadly shared assump- tions, where the current orthodoxy embraces the very general idea that the business of the visual system is to (...) create a detailed replica of the visual world, and that it accomplishes its business via hierarchical organization and by operatingessentiallyindependently of other sensorymodalitiesas well as independently of previous learning, goals, motor planning, and motor execution. (shrink)

This paper brings new work to bear on the perennial question about Hobbes's atheism to show that as a debate about scepticism it is falsely framed. Hobbes, like fellow members of the Mersenne circle, Descartes and Gassendi, was no sceptic, but rather concerned to rescue physics and metaphysics from radical scepticism by exploring corporealism. In his early letter of November 1640, Hobbes had issued a provocative challenge to Descartes to abandon metaphysical dualism and subscribe to a ?corporeal God?; a provocation (...) to which the Frenchman angrily responded, but was perhaps importantly influenced. Hobbes's minimal realism was consonant with atheism, to which Descartes felt he was being forced. Moreover, Hobbes was unrelenting in his battle against Cartesian dualism, for which he saw Robert Boyle's experimental science as a surrogate. (shrink)

This essay, published in Political Theory in 1975, was one of the first to address the subject of the last two long books of Hobbes's Leviathan on religion. It addresses the purpose of these books and the relation between Hobbes's philosophy, ecclesiology and theology and the problems they raise.

Reformation commentators were well aware of the allegorical referents for Leviathan and Behemoth in the book of Job, representing the powerful states of Ancient Egypt and Assyria, but played them down. Hobbes did not.

Quentin Skinner’s dedication to investigating Hobbes’s concept of liberty in a number of essays and books has born some unusual fruit. Not only do we see the enormous problems that Hobbes set himself by proceeding as he did, but Skinner’s careful analysis allows us to chart Hobbes’ ingenuity as he tried to steer a path between the Charybdis of determinism and the Scylla of voluntarism – not very successfully, as we shall see. The upshot is a theory of individual freedom (...) and civil liberty to challenge the classical republican traditionThis Article does not have an abstract. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Hobbes belonged to philosophical and scientific circles grappling with the big question at the dawn of modern physics: materialism and its consequences for morality. ‘Matter in motion’ may be a core principle of this materialism but it is certainly inadequate to capture the whole project. In wave after wave of this debate the Epicurean view of a fully determined universe governed by natural laws, that nevertheless allows to humans a sphere of libertas, but does not require a creator god (...) or teleology to explain it, comes up against monotheism and its insistence on the incoherence of an ordered world in the absence of a God and his purposes. The following questions were central to this debate: Can we understand the universe as law-governed in the absence of a god? If so, what room is there in a fully determined mechanical universe for human freedom? If humans do enjoy freedom, does the same hold for other animals? Is this freedom compatible with standard views of morality? (shrink)

Buddhist philosophy asserts that human suffering is caused by ignorance regarding the true nature of reality. According to this, perceptions and thoughts are largely fabrications of our own minds, based on conditioned tendencies which often involve problematic fears, aversions, compulsions, etc. In Buddhist psychology, these tendencies reside in a portion of mind known as Store consciousness. Here, I suggest a correspondence between this Buddhist Store consciousness and the neuroscientific idea of stored synaptic weights. These weights are strong synaptic connections built (...) in through experience. Buddhist philosophy claims that humans can find relief from suffering through a process in which the Store consciousness is transformed. Here, I argue that this Buddhist 'transformation at the base' corresponds to a loosening of the learned synaptic connections. I will argue that Buddhist meditation practices create conditions in the brain which are optimal for diminishing the strength of our conditioned perceptual and behavioural tendencies. (shrink)

Hegel's interpretation of Sophocles' play Antigone is central to an understanding of woman's role in the Hegelian system. Hegel is fascinated by this play and uses it in both the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right to demonstrate that familial ethical life is woman's unique responsibility. Antigone is revealed as the paradigmatic figure of womanhood and family life in both the ancient and modern worlds, although there are fundamental differences between these two worlds for Hegel. Through an immanent critique of (...) both the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of Right which focuses on the role of woman as presented by Hegel in the figure of Antigone, my analysis reveals the limitations of Hegel’s dialectical theory. (shrink)

WINNER BEST SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY BOOK IN 2021 / NASSP BOOK AWARD 2022 -/- Together we can often achieve things that are impossible to do on our own. We can prevent something bad from happening or we can produce something good, even if none of us could do it by herself. But when are we morally required to do something of moral importance together with others? This book develops an original theory of collective moral obligations. These are obligations that individual moral (...) agents hold jointly, but not as unified collective agents. To think of some of our obligations as joint or collective is the best way of making sense of our intuitions regarding collective moral action problems. Where we have reason to believe that our efforts are most efficient as part of a collective endeavor we may incur collective obligations together with others who are similarly placed as long as we are able to establish compossible individual contributory strategies towards that goal. The book concludes with a discussion of “massively shared obligations” to large-scale moral problems such as global poverty. (shrink)

The development of the Functional Genomics Investigation Ontology (FuGO) is a collaborative, international effort that will provide a resource for annotating functional genomics investigations, including the study design, protocols and instrumentation used, the data generated and the types of analysis performed on the data. FuGO will contain both terms that are universal to all functional genomics investigations and those that are domain specific. In this way, the ontology will serve as the “semantic glue” to provide a common understanding of data (...) from across these disparate data sources. In addition, FuGO will reference out to existing mature ontologies to avoid the need to duplicate these resources, and will do so in such a way as to enable their ease of use in annotation. This project is in the early stages of development; the paper will describe efforts to initiate the project, the scope and organization of the project, the work accomplished to date, and the challenges encountered, as well as future plans. (shrink)

Together we can achieve things that we could never do on our own. In fact, there are sheer endless opportunities for producing morally desirable outcomes together with others. Unsurprisingly, scholars have been finding the idea of collective moral obligations intriguing. Yet, there is little agreement among scholars on the nature of such obligations and on the extent to which their existence might force us to adjust existing theories of moral obligation. What interests me in this paper is the perspective of (...) the moral deliberating agent who faces a collective action problem, i.e. the type of reasoning she employs when deciding how to act. I hope to show that agents have collective obligations precisely when they are required to employ ‘we-reasoning’, a type of reasoning that differs from I-mode, best response reasoning, as I shall explain below. More precisely, two (or more) individual agents have a collective moral obligation to do x if x is an option for action that is only collectively available (more on that later) and each has sufficient reason to rank x highest out of the options available to them. (shrink)

As a representative of the papacy Bellarmine was an extremely moderate one. In fact Sixtus V in 1590 had the first volume of his Disputations placed on the Index because it contained so cautious a theory of papal power, denying the Pope temporal hegemony. Bellarmine did not represent all that Hobbes required of him either. On the contrary, he proved the argument of those who championed the temporal powers of the Pope faulty. As a Jesuit he tended to maintain the (...) relative autonomy of the state, denying the temporal powers ascribed by radical papalists and Augustinians. Their argument was generally framed as a syllogism: Christ, who possessed direct temporal power as both God and man, exercised it on earth; the Pope is the vicar of Christ; therefore the Pope possesses and may exercise direct temporal jurisdiction. Bellarmine simply denied that Christ had exercised the temporal power, which as God, it is true, he possessed. Moreover, he drew up and circulated a list of patristic passages collected under the title De Regno Christi quale sit, to prove to the Pope the orthodoxy of his position. (shrink)

It is often argued that our obligations to address structural injustice are collective in character. But what exactly does it mean for ‘ordinary citizens’ to have collective obligations visà- vis large-scale injustice? In this paper, I propose to pay closer attention to the different kinds of collective action needed in addressing some of these structural injustices and the extent to which these are available to large, unorganised groups of people. I argue that large, dispersed and unorganised groups of people are (...) often in a position to perform distributive collective actions. As such, ordinary citizens can have massively shared obligations to address structural injustice through distributive action, but, ultimately, such obligations are ‘collective’ only in a fairly weak sense. (shrink)

BioPortal is a Web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies developed in OWL, RDF(S), OBO format, Protégé frames, and Rich Release Format. BioPortal functionality, driven by a service-oriented architecture, includes the ability to browse, search and visualize ontologies (Figure 1). The Web interface also facilitates community-based participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content.

Humans are prone to producing morally suboptimal and even disastrous outcomes out of ignorance. Ignorance is generally thought to excuse agents from wrongdoing, but little attention has been paid to group-based ignorance as the reason for some of our collective failings. I distinguish between different types of first-order and higher order group-based ignorance and examine how these can variously lead to problematic inaction. I will make two suggestions regarding our epistemic obligations vis-a-vis collective (in)action problems: (1) that our epistemic obligations (...) concern not just our own knowledge and beliefs but those of others, too and (2) that our epistemic obligations can be held collectively where the epistemic tasks cannot be performed by individuals acting in isolation, for example, when we are required to produce joint epistemic goods. (shrink)

In recent decades, concepts of group agency and the morality of groups have increasingly been discussed by philosophers. Notions of collective or joint duties have been invoked especially in the debates on global justice, world poverty and climate change. This paper enquires into the possibility and potential nature of moral duties individuals in unstructured groups may hold together. It distinguishes between group agents and groups of people which – while not constituting a collective agent – are nonetheless capable of performing (...) a joint action. It attempts to defend a notion of joint duties which are neither duties of a group agent nor duties of individual agents, but duties held jointly by individuals in unstructured groups. Furthermore, it seeks to illuminate the relation between such joint duties on the one hand and individual duties on the other hand. Rebutting an argument brought forward by Wringe, the paper concludes that it is not plausible to assume that all humans on earth can together hold a duty to mitigate climate change or to combat global poverty given that the members of that group are not capable of joint action. (shrink)

Moral duties concerning climate change mitigation are – for good reasons – conventionally construed as duties of institutional agents, usually states. Yet, in both scholarly debate and political discourse, it has occasionally been argued that the moral duties lie not only with states and institutional agents, but also with individual citizens. This argument has been made with regard to mitigation efforts, especially those reducing greenhouse gases. This paper focuses on the question of whether individuals in industrialized countries have duties to (...) reduce their individual carbon footprint. To this end it will examine three kinds of arguments that have been brought forward against individuals having such duties: the view that individual emissions cause no harm; the view that individual mitigation efforts would have no morally significant effect; and the view that lifestyle changes would be overly-demanding. The paper shows how all three arguments fail to convince. While collective endeavours may be most efficient and effective in bringing about significant changes, there are still good reasons to contribute individually to reducing emission. After all, for most people the choice is between reducing one’s individual emissions and not doing anything. The author hopes this paper shows that one should not opt for the latter. (shrink)

Despite considerable growth in understanding of various aspects of sporting and exercise embodiment over the last decade, in-depth investigations of embodied affectual experiences in running remain limited. Furthermore, within the corpus of literature investigating pleasure and the hedonic dimension in running, much of this research has focused on experiences of pleasure in relation to performance and achievement, or on specific affective states, such as enjoyment, derived after completing a run. We directly address this gap in the qualitative literature on sporting (...) and exercise embodiment by contributing novel insights on the mind-body pleasures of running via focusing analytic attention towards the pleasures recalled by runners as experienced during positive, rewarding running experiences. Applying conceptual insights drawn from sociological phenomenology, we analyse data from an in-depth, event-focused interview study with distance runners who reported positive, rewarding experiences in recent recreational runs. Through reflexive thematic analysis, we present findings in relation to three themes: (1) ‘running feels like it should’; (2) sensory engagements; and (3) time out. The study contributes fresh perspectives, both conceptually and in relation to data-collection approach, to a small literature on the lived experience of pleasure in sport, exercise and physical cultures. (shrink)

This paper is a critical discussion of Simon Blackburn’s recent work on lust. Blackburn develops a view on which lust is decent only when part of a pure mutuality in sex, and is best left alone—we ought not tamper with its “freedom of flow.” I argue that this treatment, which I believe reflects commonly held views, fails in several ways. First, it does not square with the fact that we pursue lust as a good in itself. Second, pure mutuality is (...) hard to come by and almost impossible to recognize, so Blackburn’s account is more restrictive than it may seem. Third, on such a view, masturbation is morally sanctioned only insofar as it mimics real sex; this doesn’t seem right. Finally, such a perspective fits ill with some recent research on the biology of lust in women. (shrink)

We can often achieve together what we could not have achieved on our own. Many times these outcomes and actions will be morally valuable; sometimes they may be of substantial moral value. However, when can we be under an obligation to perform some morally valuable action together with others, or to jointly produce a morally significant outcome? Can there be collective moral obligations, and if so, under what circumstances do we acquire them? These are questions to which philosophers are increasingly (...) turning their attention. It is fair to say that traditional ethical theories cannot give a satisfying answer to the questions, focusing as they do on the actions and attitudes of discreet individual agents. It should also be noted that the debate surrounding collective moral obligations is ongoing and by no means settled. This chapter discusses and compares the different attempts to date to answer the above questions. It proposes a set of meta-criteria—or desiderata— for arbitrating between the various proposals. (shrink)

This is part 1 of 6 of the dossier What Do We Talk about when We Talk about Queer Death?, edited by M. Petricola. The contributions collected in this article sit at the crossroads between thanatology and queer theory and tackle questions such as: how can we define queer death studies as a research field? How can queer death studies problematize and rethink the life-death binary? Which notions and hermeneutic tools could be borrowed from other disciplines in order to better (...) define queer death studies? The present article includes the following contributions: – MacCormack P., What does queer death studies mean?; – Radomska M., On queering death studies; – Lykke N., Death as vibrancy; – Hillerup Hansen I., What concreteness will do to resolve the uncertain; – Olson P., Queer objectivity as a response to denials of death; – Manganas N., The queer lack of a chthonic instinct. (shrink)

This chapter provides a high-level introduction to the topic of propaganda. We survey a number of the most influential accounts of propaganda, from the earliest institutional studies in the 1920s to contemporary academic work. We propose that these accounts, as well as the various examples of propaganda which we discuss, all converge around a key feature: persuasion which bypasses audiences’ rational faculties. In practice, propaganda can take different forms, serve various interests, and produce a variety of effects. Propaganda can aim (...) to affect not only audiences’ beliefs and attitudes, but also their emotions and moods, and in turn how audiences subsequently reason or act. While propaganda is often thought of as false or misinformation, it can instead involve framing effects (“The war on drugs”), covert messaging (“There are Muslims among us”), emotionally charged slogans (“Make America Great Again”), or myths (“The American dream”). These forms of propaganda mislead audiences, not by introducing false information, but by making some beliefs and values, rather than others, salient. In fact, propaganda can even employ straightforwardly true claims (again, as in “There are Muslims among us”) and seemingly objective bureaucratic reports (“Crime has risen 4.2%”). To understand how these and other mechanisms enable propaganda to persuade by arational means, further study is needed. To that end, throughout the chapter we identify a number of places where the study of meaning and communication can help elucidate propaganda, as well as the places where propaganda issues challenges for the study of meaning. (shrink)

Democracy is the central political issue of our age, yet debates over its nature and goals rarely engage with feminist concerns. Now that women have the right to vote, they are thought to present no special problems of their own. But despite the seemingly gender-neutral categories of individual or citizen, democratic theory and practice continues to privilege the male. This book reconsiders dominant strands in democratic thinking - focusing on liberal democracy, participatory democracy, and twentieth century versions of civic republicanism (...) - and approaches these from a feminist perspective. Anne Phillips explores the under-representation of women in politics, the crucial relationship between public and private spheres, and the lessons of the contemporary women's movement as an experience in participatory democracy. (shrink)

This article explores the ‘lack of meaning’ in contemporary society as a consequence of Western dualist thought paradigms and ontologies, via Gilles Deleuze’s concept of ‘reactive nihilism’ following the colloquial murder of God. The article then explores processual and new materialist approaches in the understanding of the lived and carnal self, arguing for immanent and senseful materiality as an ethical platform for religious, environmental, and societal solidarity for tomorrow. For the theoretical justification of the processual approach in understanding the enfleshed (...) self, the article employs John Dupré’s processual approach in the philosophy of biology, as well as Astrida Neimani’s critical posthumanism, and contextualizes these considerations with Erich Fromm’s ethical distinction of being and having. (shrink)

When he gave his first political work the title The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, Hobbes signalled an agenda to revise and incorporate continental Roman and Natural Law traditions for use in Great Britain, and from first to last he remained faithful to this agenda, which it took his entire corpus to complete. The success of his project is registered in the impact Hobbes had upon the continental legal system in turn, specific aspects of his theory, as for instance (...) the right to punish, entering the European civil code through Pufendorf, and remaining to this day. This is a topic of considerable importance at a time at which the UK is considering scrapping the European Union, with all the attendant the legal ramifications. But strangely, despite some acknowledgement of Hobbes’s contribution to European civil law, and specifically the German civil code, the larger legal context for his thought has not thus far been systematically addressed. -/- Key words: Hobbes, civil law, common law, jurisprudence, ‘artificial reason’, natural law, sovereignty,. (shrink)

Hobbes in Leviathan, chapter xv, 4, makes the startling claim: “The fool hath said in his heart, ‘there is no such thing as justice,’” paraphrasing Psalm 52:1: “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” These are charges of which Hobbes himself could stand accused. His parable of the fool is about the exchange of obedience for protection, the backslider, regime change, and the tyrant; but given that Hobbes was himself likely an oath-breaker, it is also self-reflexive (...) and self-justificatory. For, Hobbes’s fool is not a windbag, or one of the dumb mob, led astray by priests. He is, in the terminology of Psalm 52, an insipiens, a madman or raving lunatic, whose rebellion against God the King is his own destruction and that of his people. A long iconographic tradition portraying the fool as insipiens, Antichrist, heretical impostor and tyrant king, was at Hobbes’s disposal. (shrink)

Attention has turned from Hobbes the systematic thinker to his inconsistencies, as the essays in the Hobbes symposium published in the recent volume of Political Theory suggest. Deborah Baumgold, in “The Difficulties of Hobbes Interpretation,” shifted the focus to “the history of the book,” and Hobbes’s method of serial composition and peripatetic insertion, as a major source of his inconsistency. Accepting Baumgold’s method, the author argues that the manner of composition does not necessarily determine content and that fundamental paradoxes in (...) Hobbes’s work have a different provenance, for which there are also contextual answers. Hobbes was a courtier’s client, but one committed early to a materialist ontology and epistemology, and these commitments shackled him in treating the immediate political questions with which he was required to deal, leading to systemic paradoxes in his treatment of natural law, liberty, authorization, and consent. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes's 'Historia Ecclesiastica' presents his views on religion and aims to divert the attention of the public from charges against his being a heretic to placing heresy in pagan history, claiming that Greek philosophers were responsible for introducing heresy in the Christian Church. His book reveals his interest in religious history and the growth of hermeticism and Cabalism in England in his age.

This book engages with the most urgent philosophical questions pertaining to the problem of terrorism. What is terrorism? Could it ever be justified? Assuming that terrorism is just one of many kinds of political violence, the book denies that it is necessarily wrong and worse than war. In fact, it may be justifiable under certain circumstances.

Our moral obligations can sometimes be collective in nature: They can jointly attach to two or more agents in that neither agent has that obligation on their own, but they – in some sense – share it or have it in common. In order for two or more agents to jointly hold an obligation to address some joint necessity problem they must have joint ability to address that problem. Joint ability is highly context-dependent and particularly sensitive to shared (or even (...) common) beliefs. As such, joint ability can be deliberately generated in a given collection of agents by providing information related to collective goals and contributory actions. As moral agents, we regularly face problems wherein the outcome of our actions depends on how others choose. There are two ways of deliberating about our own choices in such cases. We can either think of our choices as best responses to others’ choices (I-mode reasoning). Or we can think of our own choices as contributions to the collectively best option (even when we do not know how others are (likely) to choose) (we-mode reasoning). In deliberating about the right (individual) course of action vis-à-vis collective action problems, agents regularly we-frame the case at hand, that is, they include options in their deliberation that are only collectively available, and they we-reason with regard to their individual contributory actions. It is a necessary condition for collective obligations that potential collaborators facing a joint necessity case have grounds to privilege we-reasoning over reasoning in I-mode. (shrink)

COVID-19 vaccine refusal seems like a paradigm case of irrationality. Vaccines are supposed to be the best way to get us out of the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet many people believe that they should not be vaccinated even though they are dissatisfied with the current situation. In this paper, we analyze COVID-19 vaccine refusal with the tools of contemporary philosophical theories of responsibility and rationality. The main outcome of this analysis is that many vaccine-refusers are responsible for the belief that (...) they should not be vaccinated and epistemically rational in holding it. This is an important result because it provides insights into the legitimacy of certain public health policies. In particular, this result shows that a public health policy that would abandon the project of convincing certain vaccine-refusers with reasons – e.g., by simply making vaccination compulsory – is prima facie illegitimate. (shrink)

In Group Duties, Stephanie Collins proposes a ‘tripartite’ social ontology of groups as obligation-bearers. Producing a unified theory of group obligations that reflects our messy social reality is challenging and this ‘three-sizes-fit-all’ approach promises clarity but does not always keep that promise. I suggest considering the epistemic level as primary in determining collective obligations, allowing for more fluidity than the proposed tripartite ontology of collectives, coalitions and combinations.

The mathematician Georg Cantor strongly believed in the existence of actually infinite numbers and sets. Cantor’s “actualism” went against the Aristotelian tradition in metaphysics and mathematics. Under the pressures to defend his theory, his metaphysics changed from Spinozistic monism to Leibnizian voluntarist dualism. The factor motivating this change was two-fold: the desire to avoid antinomies associated with the notion of a universal collection and the desire to avoid the heresy of necessitarian pantheism. We document the changes in Cantor’s thought with (...) reference to his main philosophical-mathematical treatise, the Grundlagen (1883) as well as with reference to his article, “Über die verschiedenen Standpunkte in bezug auf das aktuelle Unendliche” (“Concerning Various Perspectives on the Actual Infinite”) (1885). (shrink)

Dog whistling—speech that seems ordinary but sends a hidden, often derogatory message to a subset of the audience—is troubling not just for our political ideals, but also for our theories of communication. On the one hand, it seems possible to dog whistle unintentionally, merely by uttering certain expressions. On the other hand, the intention is typically assumed or even inferred from the act, and perhaps for good reason, for dog whistles seem misleading by design, not just by chance. In this (...) paper, I argue that, to understand when and why it’s possible to dog-whistle unintentionally (and indeed, intentionally), we’ll need to recognize the structure of our linguistic practices. For dog whistles and for covertly coded speech more generally, this structure is a pair of practices, one shared by all competent speakers and the other known only to some, but deployable in the same contexts. In trying to identify these enabling conditions, we’ll discover what existing theories of communicated content overlook by focusing on particular utterances in isolation, or on individual speakers’ mental states. The remedy, I argue, lies in attending to the ways in which what is said is shaped by the temporally extended, socio-politically structured linguistic practices that utterances instantiate. (shrink)

"Justice according to Need" is an old socialist slogan and Marxism embraced an ancient theory of true and false needs. But Aristotle also formulated "justice according to need", although in different terms, where "need" is often translated as "demand".

This paper focuses on the interpretation of the Italian approximative adverb quasi 'almost' by primarily looking at cases in which it modifies temporal connectives, a domain which, to our knowledge, has been largely unexplored thus far. Consideration of this domain supports the need for a scalar account of the semantics of quasi (close in spirit to Hitzeman's semantic analysis of almost, in: Canakis et al. (eds) Papers from the 28th regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 1992). When paired with (...) suitable analyses of temporal connectives, such an account can provide a simple explanation of the patterns of implication that are observed when quasi modifies locational (e. g. quando 'when'), directional (e. g. fino 'until' and da 'since'), and event-sequencing temporal connectives (e. g. prima 'before' and dopo ' after'). A challenging empirical phenomenon that is observed is a contrast between the modification of fino and da by quasi, on the one hand, and the modification of prima and dopo by the same adverb, on the other. While quasi fino and quasi da behave symmetrically, a puzzling asymmetry is observed between quasi prima and quasi dopo. To explain the asymmetry, we propose an analysis of prima and dopo on which the former has the meaning of the temporal comparative più presto 'earlier', while the latter is seen as an atomic predicate denoting temporal succession between events (Del Prete, Nat Lang Semantics 16: 157-203, 2008). We show that the same pattern of implication observed for quasi prima is attested when quasi modifies overt comparatives, and propose a pragmatic analysis of this pattern that uniformly applies to both cases, thus providing new evidence for the claim that prima is underlyingly a comparative. A major point of this paper is a discussion of the notion of scale which is relevant for the semantics of quasi', in particular, we show that the notion of Horn (entailment-based) scale is not well-suited for handling modification of temporal connectives, and that a more general notion of scale is required in order to provide a uniform analysis of quasi as a cross-categorial modifier. (shrink)

Genevieve Lloyd’s Spinoza is quite a different thinker from the arch rationalist caricature of some undergraduate philosophy courses devoted to “The Continental Rationalists”. Lloyd’s Spinoza does not see reason as a complete source of knowledge, nor is deductive rational thought productive of the highest grade of knowledge. Instead, that honour goes to a third kind of knowledge—intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva), which provides an immediate, non-discursive knowledge of its singular object. To the embarrassment of some hard-nosed philosophers, intellectual intuition has an (...) affective component; it is a form of love, and ultimately given that human beings are finite modes of God/Nature (Deus sive Natura), it is a form of the intellectual love of God (amor Dei intellectualis). Some philosophers do not know what to make of this mysterious aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy, which is nonetheless firmly anchored in a reading of Part V of the Ethics. Nonetheless, this note will insist with Lloyd’s “Reconsidering Spinoza’s Rationalism” that such doctrine is an integral part of Spinoza’s philosophy. Moreover, it will be shown that Spinoza is well aware of the limitations of reason (ratio) in gaining scientific knowledge of the world and requires intuition precisely because of the inability of reason to represent individuals in their full particularity. Imagination too has a role to play in shaping scientific knowledge, although reason performs a vital critical role in disciplining and liberating the human mind from inadequate imaginary ideas. The result is an interpretation of Spinoza’s epistemology as both rationalist and intuitionist. DOI: 10.1080/24740500.2021.1962652. (shrink)

It is my thesis that Renaissance classical translations and imitations were often works of political surrogacy in a literary environment characterized by harsh censorship. So, for instance, the works of Homer, Virgil, and Lucan were read as coded texts, that ranged across the political spectrum.

ABSTRACTIn this paper I defend a form of epistocracy I call limited epistocracy – rule by institutions housing expertise in non-political areas that become politically relevant. This kind of limited epistocracy, I argue, isn't a far-off fiction. With increasing frequency, governments are outsourcing political power to expert institutions to solve urgent, multidimensional problems because they outperform ordinary democratic decision-making. I consider the objection that limited epistocracy, while more effective than its competitors, lacks a fundamental intrinsic value that its competitors have; (...) namely, political inclusion. After explaining this challenge, I suggest that limited epistocracies can be made compatible with robust political inclusion if specialized institutions are confined to issuing directives that give citizens multiple actionable options. I explain how this safeguards citizens’ inclusion through rational deliberation, choice, and contestation. (shrink)