The sociobiology of bacteria, largely unappreciated and ignored by the microbiology research community two decades ago is now a major research area, catalyzed to a significant degree by studies of communication and cooperative behavior among the myxobacteria and in quorum sensing (QS) and biofilm formation by pseudomonads and other microbes. Recently, the topic of multicellular cooperative behaviors among bacteria has been increasingly considered in the context of evolutionary biology. Here we discuss the significance of two recent studies1,2 of the phenomenon (...) of “cheating” mutants and their exploitation of cooperating microbial populations of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. BioEssays 30:296–298, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Management plays an important role in reinforcing ethics in organizations. To support this aim, managers must use incentive and goal programs in ethical ways. This study examines experimentally the potential ethical costs associated with incentive-driven and goal-induced employee behavior from a managerial perspective. In a quasi-experimental setting, 243 MBA students with significant professional work experience evaluated a hypothetical employee’s ethical behavior under incentive pay systems modeled on a business case. In the role of the employee’s manager, participants evaluated the ethicality (...) of the employee’s incentive-driven and goal-induced ethical/unethical behavior and the outcomes of behavior, with consequences that were either favorable or unfavorable to the organization. The results indicated that participants discounted the ethical considerations of incentive-driven and goal-induced behavior when consequences were favorable to the organization. Participants’ morals and outcome orientations were also significantly related to their ethical judgments and intentions to intervene. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) consider the possibility that inner speech might be a product of forward production models. Here I consider the idea of inner speech as a forward model in light of empirical work from the past few decades, concluding that, while forward models could contribute to it, inner speech nonetheless requires activity from the implementers.

This paper uses the notion of Galois-connection to examine the relation between valuation-spaces and logics. Every valuation-space gives rise to a logic, and every logic gives rise to a valuation space, where the resulting pair of functions form a Galois-connection, and the composite functions are closure-operators. A valuation-space (resp., logic) is said to be complete precisely if it is Galois-closed. Two theorems are proven. A logic is complete if and only if it is reflexive and transitive. A valuation-space is complete (...) if and only if it is closed under formation of super-valuations. (shrink)

An examination of Plotinus’s treatise on matter, II 4[12], reveals interesting paradoxes. He seems to use Aristotle’s matter to explain Plato’s receptacle. Attention to the text reveals that both matter and the receptacle are, in fact, recast in terms of the otherness of Plato’s Sophist. By this, Plotinus articulates how matter and the receptacle function as the condition of possibility for the sensible cosmos. His analysis of related terms further supports this rapprochement: privation and substrate exclude quality and quantity as (...) attributes of matter; and the indefinite, the unlimited, size and mass echo the paradoxical language of the Timaeus. (shrink)

This article examines happiness as an activity, modeled on pleasure in NE 10, 1-5. Aristotle is not proposing a choice, but defining the formal nature of happiness. Contemplation, as the activity of wisdom, constitutes happiness in the strict and formal sense. It has all the attributes of happiness, highest, most continuous, most pleasant, most self-sufficient, leisured, and an end in itself. Practical virtues are formally secondary, as including elements outside the activity of the best part and having leisure as their (...) end. Thus, amusements, practical activities and contemplation are integrated in the life of the sage, the contribution of each formally defined. (shrink)

Gastrulation is the process of early development that reorganizes cells into the three fundamental tissue types of ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. It is a coordinated series of morphogenetic and molecular changes that exemplify many developmental phenomena. In this review, we explore one of the classic developmental systems, the sea urchin embryo, where investigators from different backgrounds have converged on a common interest to study the origin, morphogenesis, and developmental regulation of the endoderm. The sea urchin embryo is remarkably plastic in (...) its developmental potential, and the endoderm is especially instructive for its morphological and molecular responsiveness to inductive cell interactions. We start by examining and integrating the several models for the morphogenetic mechanisms of invagination and tissue elongation, the basic processes of endoderm morphogenesis in this embryo. We next critique the proposed mechanisms of inductive gene regulation in the endoderm that exemplifies a concept of modular transcriptional regulation. Finally, we end with an examination of the current molecular models to explain cell fate determination of the endoderm. Recent progress at the molecular level should soon allow us to explain the seminal experimental observations made in this embryo over a hundred years ago. BioEssays 21:459–471, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The great age of Russian philosophy spans the century between 1830 and 1930 - from the famous Slavophile-Westernizer controversy of the 1830s and 1840s, through the 'Silver Age' of Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the formation of a Russian 'philosophical emigration' in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This volume is a major history and interpretation of Russian philosophy in this period. Eighteen chapters discuss Russian philosophy's main figures, schools and controversies, while simultaneously pursuing a (...) common central theme: the development of a distinctive Russian tradition of philosophical humanism focused on the defence of human dignity. As this volume shows, the century-long debate over the meaning and grounds of human dignity, freedom and the just society involved thinkers of all backgrounds and positions, transcending easy classification as 'religious' or 'secular'. The debate still resonates strongly today. (shrink)

The great age of Russian philosophy spans the century between 1830 and 1930 - from the famous Slavophile-Westernizer controversy of the 1830s and 1840s, through the 'Silver Age' of Russian culture at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the formation of a Russian 'philosophical emigration' in the wake of the Russian Revolution. This volume is a major history and interpretation of Russian philosophy in this period. Eighteen chapters discuss Russian philosophy's main figures, schools and controversies, while simultaneously pursuing a (...) common central theme: the development of a distinctive Russian tradition of philosophical humanism focused on the defence of human dignity. As this volume shows, the century-long debate over the meaning and grounds of human dignity, freedom and the just society involved thinkers of all backgrounds and positions, transcending easy classification as 'religious' or 'secular'. The debate still resonates strongly today. (shrink)

Logical matrices for orthomodular logic are introduced. The underlying algebraic structures are orthomodular lattices, where the conditional connective is the Sasaki arrow. An axiomatic calculusOMC is proposed for the orthomodular-valid formulas.OMC is based on two primitive connectives — the conditional, and the falsity constant. Of the five axiom schemata and two rules, only one pertains to the falsity constant. Soundness is routine. Completeness is demonstrated using standard algebraic techniques. The Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra ofOMC is constructed, and it is shown to be (...) an orthomodular lattice whose unit element is the equivalence class of theses ofOMC. (shrink)

One group of commentators takes book 10 as determinative and thus tortures the text in book 1 to say the same thing. This position is described as intellectualist or exclusivist and produces certain puzzles in reading Aristotle’s ethical theory. These puzzles are not benign since the privileged position given wisdom in book 10 seems at odds with the discussion of virtue in book 1 and its development in the Nicomachean Ethics as a whole. Indeed, Aristotle appears inconsistent or even contradictory, (...) recommending in these two brief chapters of book 10 a life devoted to contemplation that only grudgingly allows for the necessity of the practical life discussed in such detail in the rest of his ethical works. If this is the case, under what conditions are we expected to forgo contemplation to engage in the various activities of the moral virtues? Since no conditions are spelled out in the text, the range of speculation is confused and ways around the apparent inconsistencies complex. (shrink)