Search

What is the fundamental purpose that justifies the existence of the modern university? The answer proposed in this essay is the promotion of social freedom. The essay begins by distinguishing social freedom from negative freedom and reflective freedom along the lines proposed by other theorists of social freedom, such as Frederick Neuhouser and Axel Honneth. After noting the need for a more developed account of the university than has so far been provided by these other theorists, the essay analyses the various dimensions in which universities have, at their best, promoted social freedom. The essay then explains why it is through the promotion of social, as distinct from negative or reflective freedom, that universities fulfil their purpose. It concludes with some reflections on how this understanding of the purpose of the university fits an “immanent” model of social criticism.

Unlike for DNA and RNA, accurate and high-throughput sequencing methods for proteins are lacking, hindering the utility of proteomics in applications where the sequences are unknown including variant calling, neoepitope identification, and metaproteomics. We introduce Spectralis, a new de novo peptide sequencing method for tandem mass spectrometry. Spectralis leverages several innovations including a new convolutional neural network layer connecting peaks in spectra spaced by amino acid masses, proposing fragment ion series classification as a pivotal task for de novo peptide sequencing, and a new peptide-spectrum confidence score. On spectra for which database search provided a ground truth, Spectralis surpassed 40% sensitivity at 90% precision, nearly doubling state-of-the-art sensitivity. Application to unidentified spectra confirmed its superiority and showcased its applicability to variant calling. Altogether, these algorithmic innovations and the substantial sensitivity increase in the high-precision range constitute an important step toward broadly applicable peptide sequencing.

The paper argues that we should read Taylor’s philosophy as a philosophy of liberation and that it is as a philosopher of liberation that Taylor distinguishes himself as a critical theorist. It beg...

The wind energy industry needs accurate forecasts of wind speeds at turbine hub height and in the rotor layer to accurately predict power output from a wind farm. Current numerical weather prediction (NWP) models struggle to accurately predict low-level winds, partially due to systematic errors within the models due to deficiencies in physics parameterization schemes. These types of errors are addressed in this study with two statistical postprocessing techniques—model output statistics (MOS) and the analog ensemble (AnEn)—to understand the value of each technique in improving rotor-layer wind forecasts. This study is unique in that it compares the techniques using a sonic detection and ranging (SODAR) wind speed dataset that spans the entire turbine rotor layer. This study uses reforecasts from the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model and observations in west Texas over periods of up to two years to examine the skill added to forecasts when applying both MOS and the AnEn. Different aspects of the techniques are tested, including model horizontal and vertical resolution, number of predictors, and training set length. Both MOS and the AnEn are applied to several levels representing heights in the turbine rotor layer (40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 m). This study demonstrates the degree of improvement that different configurations of each technique provides to raw WRF forecasts, to help guide their use for low-level wind speed forecasts. It was found that both AnEn and MOS show significant improvement over the raw WRF forecasts, but the two methods do not differ significantly from each other.

This work investigates the sensitivity of wind speed forecasts during wind ramp events to parameters within a numerical weather prediction model boundary layer physics scheme. In a novel way, it explores how these sensitivities vary across 1) ensemble members with different initial conditions, 2) different times during the events, 3) different types of ramp-causing events, and 4) different horizontal grid spacing. Previous research finds that a small number of parameters in the surface layer and boundary layer schemes are responsible for the majority of the forecast uncertainty. In this study, the values of parameters within the Mellor–Yamada–Nakahishi–Niino (MYNN) boundary layer scheme and the MM5 surface layer scheme of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model are perturbed in a systematic way to evaluate parametric sensitivity for two types of specific ramp-causing phenomena: marine pushes and stable mix-out events. This work is part of the Department of Energy’s Second Wind Forecast Improvement Project (WFIP2). A major finding of this study is that there are large differences in parametric sensitivity between members of the same initial condition ensemble for all cases. These variations in sensitivity are the result of differences in the atmospheric state within the initial condition ensemble, and the parametric sensitivity changes over the course of each forecast. Finally, parametric sensitivity changes between event type and with model resolution. These conclusions are particularly relevant for future sensitivity studies and efforts at model tuning.

This article argues that a pragmatist ambition to transcendence undergirds Richard Rorty’s metaphilosophy. That transcendence might play a positive role in Rorty’s work might seem implausible given his well-known rejection of the idea that human practices are accountable to some external, Archimedean standpoint, and his endorsement of the historicist view that standards of rationality are products of time and chance. It is true that Rorty’s contributions to epistemology, philosophy of mind and metaphysics have this anti-transcendentalist character. But in his metaphilosophy, Rorty shows great respect for pre-philosophical impulses aimed at transcendence of some kind, in particular the romantic (and indeed religious) experience of awe at something greater than oneself, and the utopian striving for a radically better world. These impulses do not disappear in Rorty’s metaphilosophy but are reshaped in a pragmatist iteration of transcendence which, we argue, can be characterised as horizontal (rather than vertical) and weak (rather strong). We use this characterization to distinguish Rorty’s metaphilosophy from other accounts that share a postmetaphysical ambition to transcendence.

This paper examines the justice of unconditional basic income (UBI) through the lens of the Hegel-inspired recognition-theory of justice. As explained in the first part of the paper, this theory ta...

BackgroundLack of functional evidence hampers variant interpretation, leaving a large proportion of cases with a suspected Mendelian disorder without genetic diagnosis after genome or whole exome sequencing (WES). Research studies advocate to further sequence transcriptomes to directly and systematically probe gene expression defects. However, collection of additional biopsies, and establishment of lab workflows, analytical pipelines, and defined concepts in clinical interpretation of aberrant gene expression are still needed for adopting RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) in routine diagnostics.MethodsWe implemented an automated RNA-seq protocol and a computational workflow with which we analyzed skin fibroblasts of 303 individuals with a suspected mitochondrial disease which previously underwent WES.ResultsWe detected on average 12,500 genes per sample including around 60% disease genes - a coverage substantially higher than with whole blood, supporting the use of skin biopsies. We prioritized genes demonstrating aberrant expression, aberrant splicing, or mono-allelic expression. The pipeline required less than one week from sample preparation to result reporting and provided a median of eight disease-associated genes per patient for inspection. A genetic diagnosis was established for 16% of the 205 WES-inconclusive cases. Detection of aberrant expression was a major contributor to diagnosis including instances of 50% reduction, which, together with mono-allelic expression, allowed for the diagnosis of dominant disorders caused by haploinsufficiency. Moreover, calling aberrant splicing and variants from RNA-seq data enabled detecting and validating splice-disrupting variants, of which the majority fell outside WES-covered regions.ConclusionTogether, these results show that streamlined experimental and computational processes can accelerate the implementation of RNA-seq in routine diagnostics.One sentence summaryImplementation of RNA-seq as a complementary tool in standard diagnostics achieves a 16% in diagnosis rate over whole exome sequencing.

The aim of this article is to situate Arendt’s account of labour as a critical response to humanisms of labour, or put otherwise, to situate it as an anti-humanism of labour. It compares Arendt’s account of labour with that of the most prominent humanist theorist of labour at the time of the composition of The Human Condition: Georges Friedmann. Arendt’s and Friedmann’s accounts of labour are compared specifically with respect to the range of capacities, social relations, and possibilities of fulfilment at stake in the activity of labour. The comparison provides a previously unexplored context for understanding Arendt’s account of labour and her distinction between labour and work. The relevance of Arendt’s and Friedmann’s theories of labour for the contemporary debate about the meaning of work in an age of automation is also briefly discussed.

Wind ramps present a significant challenge to the wind energy industry and are a source of inefficiency for wind farm owners and power grid operators. One approach to investigating wind ramp predictability is ensemble sensitivity analysis (ESA), which relates a scalar response function to an atmospheric variable at an earlier time. Applying ESA to wind ramps is challenging because the transient nature of the events makes it difficult to capture the ramp with a traditional response function that is fixed in space and time. This study introduces four response functions that are allowed to vary in space and time in order to identify key features of the wind ramp, such as the timing of the ramp and the largest horizontal extent of the ramp. Comparing these event-based response functions to a traditional response function reveals key differences in the sensitivity, which indicates that different aspects of the wind ramp event are sensitive to different atmospheric features. The use of multiple response functions is shown to provide a more complete understanding of the ramp event when compared to using only a traditional response function. Observation targeting is addressed by manipulating the ESA fields of six synoptically driven wind ramp events, with results showing that the horizontal location of the optimal target region varies widely between cases and a single observation location likely would not provide benefit to each case. These results indicate that a dynamic observing system would be preferable to a fixed observation for improving wind ramp forecasts.

McDowell taught philosophy at Oxford from 1967 to 1986, where he established himself as a key figure in analytic philosophy, mounting forceful arguments in favour of a realist stance in the theory of meaning, philosophy of mind and metaethics, and challenging a variety of noncognitivist and antirealist positions that had become orthodox in those fields. In 1986 he took up a position at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has worked since. In his most highly acclaimed work, Mind and World (1994), McDowell sought to diagnose a transcendental anxiety, characteristic of modern philosophy, in which it seems mysterious that thought is answerable to reality at all. McDowell’s proposed cure for the anxiety turned on embracing the idea that there is no gap between reality and the reach of thought, no contact with reality that does not bring conceptual capacities into play, capacities that are acquired not by magic but naturally through education into a form of life. Much of McDowell’s work since Mind and World has been aimed at clarifying and refining the idea that conceptual capacities permeate the human life form. Increasingly, he has turned to Sellars, Kant and Hegel for guidance in pursuing that task.

Le travail comme expressionCet article replace la conception du travail developpee par la psychodynamique du travail dans la tradition philosophique de l’expressivisme et soutient la primaute de la conception expressiviste du travail sur la conception classique du travail comme poiesis. A l’issue d’une reconstruction des arguments principaux portant sur l’opposition entre poiesis (travail de production) et praxis (action morale), l’attention sera portee sur les limites de ce modele de conceptualisation du travail. Un modele alternatif est introduit a partir de la prise en compte de plusieurs dimensions du concept d’expression utilise dans le langage courant. Cela nous permet de mettre en evidence ce qui, dans le modele psychodynamique de C. Dejours, est precisement « expressiviste ». Une fois l’origine expressiviste de la theorie de Dejours etablie, plusieurs interpretations des normes d’expression sont presentees, en lien avec l’evaluation des organisations du travail contemporaines.

Cet article replace la conception du travail developpee par la psychodynamique du travail dans la tradition philosophique de l’expressivisme et soutient la primaute de la conception expressiviste du travail sur la conception classique du travail comme poiesis. A l’issue d’une reconstruction des arguments principaux portant sur l’opposition entre poiesis (travail de production) et praxis (action morale), l’attention sera portee sur les limites de ce modele de conceptualisation du travail. Un modele alternatif est introduit a partir de la prise en compte de plusieurs dimensions du concept d’expression utilise dans le langage courant. Cela nous permet de mettre en evidence ce qui, dans le modele psychodynamique de C. Dejours, est precisement « expressiviste ». Une fois l’origine expressiviste de la theorie de Dejours etablie, plusieurs interpretations des normes d’expression sont presentees, en lien avec l’evaluation des organisations du travail contemporaines. Summary, p. 85. Resumen, p. 86.

The article examines John McDowell's attempt to rehabilitate the classical idea of the rational animal and Hubert Dreyfus's criticisms of that attempt. After outlining the ‘engaged’ conception of rationality which, in McDowell's view, enables the idea of the rational animal to shake off its intellectualist appearance, the objections posed by Dreyfus are presented that such a conception of rationality is inconsistent with the phenomena of everyday coping, characterised by non-conceptual ‘involvement’, and expertise, characterised by non-conceptual ‘absorption’. Drawing on Michael Fried's reflections on the representation of absorption in Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's film Zidane, and invoking other considerations concerning the ‘mindedness’ of skilful activity, the sharp contrast between conceptuality and rationality on the one side and absorption and skilled coping on the other that frames Dreyfus's position in the debate is questioned. The paper concludes by suggesting that in order to see why Dreyfus is so firmly committed to that contrast, we need to widen the lens so that a broader range of philosophical motivations comes into view. For it is not just that there are phenomena that go missing or are mis-described in McDowell's account, according to Dreyfus; there are ideals and excellences that go missing too.

In this article we examine the idea of a politics of misrecognition of working activity. We begin by introducing a distinction between the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one’s identity, and the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one’s activity. We then consider the political significance of the latter kind of recognition and misrecognition in the context of work. Drawing first on empirical research undertaken by sociologists at the Institut fur Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, we argue for a differentiated concept of recognition that shows the politics of misrecognition at work to be as much a matter of conflict between modes of recognition as it is a struggle for recognition as opposed to non-recognition. The differentiated concept of recognition which allows for this empirical insight owes much to Axel Honneth’s theory. But as we argue in the section that follows, this theory is ambiguous about the normative content of the expectations of recognition that are bound up with the activity of working. This in turn makes it unclear how we should understand the normative basis of the politics of the misrecognition of what one does at work. In the final sections of the article, we suggest that the psychodynamic model of work elaborated by Christophe Dejours and others at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris can shed light on this matter; that is to say, it can help to clarify the normative significance and political stakes of the misrecognition of working activity.

After characterizing Taylor’s general approach to the problems of solidarity, we distinguish and reconstruct three contexts of solidarity in which this approach is developed: the civic, the socio-economic, and the moral. We argue that Taylor’s distinctive move in each of these contexts of solidarity is to claim that the relationship at stake poses normatively justified demands, which are motivationally demanding, but insufficiently motivating on their own. On Taylor’s conception, we need some understanding of extra motivational sources which explain why people do (or would) live up to the exacting demands. Taylor accepts that our self-understanding as members of either particular communities or humanity at large has some motivational power, but he suspects that in many cases the memberships are too thin to resonate deeply and enduringly within us. In Taylor’s view, a realistic picture of what moves people to solidarity has to account for the extra motivation, when it happens. We propose an alternative view in which morality, democracy and socio-economic cooperation can be seen as separate spheres or relations which are normatively justified, motivationally demanding, but also sufficiently motivating on their own.

This article examines a neglected but crucial feature of Honneth's critical theory: its use of a concept of recognition to articulate the norms that are apposite for the contemporary world of work. The article shows that from his first writings on the structure of critical social theory in the early 1980s to the recent exchange with Nancy Fraser on recognition and redistribution, the problem of grounding a substantive critique of work under capitalism has been central to Honneth's enterprise. This answers the routine objection that the recognition paradigm fails to take into account economic or material realities. At the same time, Honneth's approach to the critique of work has undergone significant shifts, and it is yet to be fully developed. The article traces these changes in direction, and it proposes an expressivist conception of work that builds upon the `normative content' of the concept of work described by Honneth in his 1980 essay `Work and Instrumental Action'.

This article examines Levinas as if he were a participant in what Habermas has called `the philosophical discourse of modernity'. It begins by comparing Levinas' and Habermas' articulations of the philosophical problems of modernity. It then turns to how certain key motifs in Levinas' later work give philosophical expression to the needs of the times as Levinas diagnoses them. In particular it examines how Levinas interweaves a modern, post-ontological conception of `the religious' or `the sacred' into his account of subjectivity. Finally, the article looks at some problems that arise for Levinas once his position in the philosophical discourse on modernity is made explicit.

The paper attempts to situate Sennett philosophically by placing him in the tradition of ontological hermeneutics. This way of reading Sennett is justified not only by the core principles that govern Sennett's social anthropology, but is also useful for tracing the trajectory of Sennett's philosophically informed diagnoses of the times. These diagnoses focus on the role of work in shaping subjectivity. After reconstructing the basic conceptual shape of Sennett's diagnoses of the work-related maladies of the "old" and the "new" capitalism, the paper presents some broader reflections on the philosophical presuppositions of social criticism that takes its departure from the centrality of work.

In the first part of the paper I consider the relative neglect of hope in the tradition of critical theory. I attribute this neglect to a low estimation of the cognitive, aesthetic, and moral value of hope, and to the strong—but, argue, contingent—association that holds between hope and religion. I then distinguish three strategies for thinking about the justification of social hope; one which appeals to a notion of unfulfilled or frustrated natural human capacities, another which invokes a providential order, and a third which questions the very appropriateness of justification, turning instead to a notion of ungroundable hope. Different senses of ungroundable hope are distinguished and by way of conclusion I briefly consider their relevance for the project of critique today.

The article considers how Richard Rorty's writings on religion dovetail with his views on the philosophical significance of hope. It begins with a reconstruction of the central features of Rorty's philosophy of religion, including its critique of theism and its attempt to rehabilitate religion within a pragmatist philosophical framework. It then presents some criticisms of Rorty's proposal. It is argued first that Rorty's “redescription” of the fulfilment of the religious impulse is so radical that it is hard to see what remains of its specifically religious content. This casts doubt on Rorty's claim to have made pragmatism and religion compatible. The article then offers an analysis of Rorty's key notion of “unjustifiable hope”. Different senses of unjustifiable hope are distinguished, in the course of which a tension between the “romantic” and “utilitarian” aspects of Rorty's pragmatist philosophy of religion comes into view.

One of the key functions of social theory is to provide a ‘framework’ for undertaking empirical social research (Taylor 1967). It does this by equipping the researcher with a vocabulary for describing social phenomena, together with a related set of assumptions about how to go about explaining them. Amongst these assumptions will be views about the fundamental goals and purposes that human beings strive to realize through their actions. These goals and purposes might be consciously and deliberately aimed at by individuals or groups, or they might operate behind their backs, as it were, through some sub- or supra-personal mechanism: the reproductive strategy of a gene, the striving for satisfaction of an instinct, a system’s tendency towards equilibrium, and so forth. To give an example, research into the rise of teenage pregnancies will typically be ‘framed’ by a set of assumptions about the salient motivations capable of explaining the behaviour, such as conformity to increasingly sexualized self-images, or the perception of economic benefit. To give another example, researchers investigating changing levels and types of incarceration typically have to rely on assumptions about the overarching purposes served by these practices — such as the exercise of power over life, or the maximization of utility under conditions of heightened risk — and to that extent are dependent on a theoretical framework.

One of the distinctive features of the post-Hegelian tradition of social philosophy is the connection it forges between normative criticism and historical understanding. This chapter discusses the normative models of work which are frameworks for normative criticism in this post-Hegelian sense. According to the first model, the instrumental model, the core norms of work are those of means-ends rationality. The second model, the expressive model, takes the core norms of work to be internal to working activity. According to the third model, the recognition model, the core norms of work concern with the norms that relate to individual achievement or contribution through work or the conditions that must in place for individuals to participate in the exchange of services by which market societies reproduce themselves. The appropriateness of a normative model of work depends in part on its responsiveness to the dominant social pathologies and malaises of work. Keywords:contemporary malaise; expressive model; instrumental model; normative models; post-Hegelian tradition; recognition model

The linguistic turn in post-Hegelian thought is a response to another way of carrying out the post-Hegelian agenda. Two developments in particular call for brief consideration: first, the transition from a production paradigm to a language paradigm; and second, the shift from the language paradigm to a recognition paradigm. Only when the basic features of the recognition paradigm are in view will we be able to see the opportunity it presents for renewed reflection on the significance of work. Institutionalism and recognition theory share basic methodological, epistemic, ontological and normative commitments. At the methodological level, both are committed to "field research" that aims to shed light on the phenomena by way of revealing how they are experienced. Voswinkel and Wagner provide insight into the ways in which recent mutations of capitalism have altered the experience of work and the social bonds that develop in and through that experience. Keywords:capitalism; institutionalism; language paradigm; post-Hegelian agenda; production paradigm; recognition paradigm; social bonds

Anticipations of recognition, and the demands and struggles that may follow when recognition is refused, are an abiding feature of the social world. But it is only in the past couple of decades that they have become an explicit focus of philosophical and scientific inquiry.1 Reflecting the rising visibility of struggles for recognition in the public sphere of late modern societies, two publications, both appearing in 1992, got the current academic discussion around recognition going: Charles Taylor’s essay ‘The Politics of Recognition’ and Axel Honneth’s book Kampf um Anerkennung (The Struggle for Recognition) (Honneth 1992, Taylor 1992). While the main aim of Taylor’s essay was to defend a version of liberal pluralism that was not hamstrung by a defective conception of the neutrality of the state, it suggested a thesis about the political recognition of cultures that was taken up, often highly critically, in much of the subsequent literature on recognition in political theory (Smith 2010a). Taylor’s apparent claim that states ought to recognize and give material support to cultures as a whole, even in cases where that recognition abrogated certain individual rights, was widely seen as an inadequate basis not just of multiculturalism in the sense Taylor sought to endorse, but also of the rights to recognition of individual members of cultural minorities (Habermas 1993, Cooke 1997, Benhabib 2002).