The Impossibility of “Freedom as Independence”

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Carter ◽  
Ronen Shnayderman

Most of the recent work on freedom is concerned with the liberal-republican debate. The latest move in this debate has been made by List and Valentini who argue in favor of a conception of freedom (called “freedom as independence”) that is located midway between the liberal and republican conceptions. In this article, we review some key aspects of the debate that led to List and Valentini’s move and then argue that their midway position is untenable. We first show how the debate has given rise to List and Valentini’s (republican-inspired) view that unfreedom is created not merely by more or less probable constraints (as liberals have claimed) but by the sheer possibility of constraints. We then argue that this position on possible-but-improbable constraints makes unfreedom ubiquitous and that “freedom as independence” is therefore an impossible ideal. In the course of our argument, we rebut some possible rejoinders that appeal to the difference between positive normative and non-normative constraints and to the ways in which “freedom as independence” is an open and versatile concept.

Blood ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (25) ◽  
pp. 6499-6505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edgardo D. Carosella ◽  
Silvia Gregori ◽  
Joel LeMaoult

Abstract Myeloid antigen-presenting cells (APCs), regulatory cells, and the HLA-G molecule are involved in modulating immune responses and promoting tolerance. APCs are known to induce regulatory cells and to express HLA-G as well as 2 of its receptors; regulatory T cells can express and act through HLA-G; and HLA-G has been directly involved in the generation of regulatory cells. Thus, interplay(s) among HLA-G, APCs, and regulatory cells can be easily envisaged. However, despite a large body of evidence on the tolerogenic properties of HLA-G, APCs, and regulatory cells, little is known on how these tolerogenic players cooperate. In this review, we first focus on key aspects of the individual relationships between HLA-G, myeloid APCs, and regulatory cells. In its second part, we highlight recent work that gathers individual effects and demonstrates how intertwined the HLA-G/myeloid APCs/regulatory cell relationship is.


Konturen ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Jonathan Monroe

Opening questions about “things” onto the bureaucratically-maintained, compartmentalized discursive, disciplinary claims of “philosophy,” “theory,” and “poetry,” “Urgent Matter” explores these three terms in relation to one another through attention to recent work by Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Rancière, the German-American poet Rosmarie Waldrop, and the German poet Ulf Stolterfoht, whose fachsprachen. Gedichte. I-IX (Lingos I-IX. Poems) Waldrop rendered into English in an award-winning translation. The difference between the "things" called "poetry" and "philosophy," as now institutionalized within the academy, is not epistemological, ontological, ahistorical, but a matter of linguistic domains, of so-called concrete "images" as the policed domain of the former and of "abstraction" as the policed domain of the latter. Challenging the binary logics that dominate language use in diverse discursive/disciplinary cultures, Waldrop’s linguistically self-referential, appositional procedures develop ways to use language that are neither linear, nor so much without direction, as multi-directional, offering complexes of adjacency, of asides, of digression, of errancy, of being “alongside,” in lieu of being “opposed to,” that constitute at once a poetics, an aesthetics, an ethics, and a politics. Elaborating a complementary understanding of poetry as “the most philosophic of all writing,” a medium of being “contemporary,” Waldrop and Stolterfoht question poetry’s purposes as one kind of language apparatus among others in the general economy. Whatever poetry might be, it aspires to be in their hands not a thing in itself but a form of self-questioning, of all discourses, all disciplines, that “thing” that binds “poetry” and “philosophy” together, as urgent matter, in continuing.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Biantong JIANG ◽  
Zhigang ZHANG ◽  
Xiu JIN ◽  
Haiye WANG ◽  
Yuchen WU ◽  
...  

Abstract Background When regional citrate anticoagulation used in continuous renal replacement therapy, one of the key aspects to achieve safe and effective extracorporeal circulation is the management of calcium ions. For calcium-free RCA-CVVH, the anticoagulant effects of different calcium supplementation pathways have not yet been explored. In this trial, we would test our hypothesis that compared with the SCV, when calcium was infused through the VL-FV, the arterial iCa2+ was lower. Methods This is a prospective randomized cross-over trial involving 24 patients undergoing RCA-CVVH. The patients were randomly divided into two groups: VL-FV—SCV group and SCV—VL-FV group. The difference of iCa2+ between arterial iCa2+ and post-filtration iCa2+ was compared. Secondary indicators included the incidence rates of catheter dysfunction and hypocalcemia. Discussion This is the first trial on the anticoagulant effects of calcium-free RCA-CVVH through different calcium supplement routes. We will confirm that the arterial iCa2 + level is slightly lower when calcium is infused in the VL-FV than in the SCV, and the incidence rates of catheter dysfunction and hypocalcemia will help us to determine which site is safer. Trial Registration CHiCTR registry: ChiCTR1800020046. Registered on 12 December 2018. (http://www.chictr.org.cn/listbycreater.aspx). Keywords: Continuous venous-venous hemofiltration, regional citrate anticoagulation, calcium, effect, safety, cross-over trial


2019 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas K Jones

Abstract There are two broad approaches to theorizing about ontological categories. Quineans use first-order quantifiers to generalize over entities of each category, whereas type theorists use quantification on variables of different semantic types to generalize over different categories. Does anything of import turn on the difference between these approaches? If so, are there good reasons to go type-theoretic? I argue for positive answers to both questions concerning the category of propositions. I also discuss two prominent arguments for a Quinean conception of propositions, concerning their role in natural language semantics and apparent quantification over propositions within natural language. It will emerge that even if these arguments are sound, there need be no deep question about Quinean propositions’ true nature, contrary to much recent work on the metaphysics of propositions.


Author(s):  
Ryan Amelon ◽  
Kai Ding ◽  
Kunlin Cao ◽  
Gary E. Christensen ◽  
Joseph M. Reinhardt ◽  
...  

The mechanics of lung deformation is traditionally assessed at a whole-lung or lobar level. We submit that key aspects of lung mechanics maybe better understood by studying regional patterns of lung deformation by leveraging recent developments in tomographic imaging and image processing techniques. Our group has developed an inverse consistent registration technique for estimating local displacement distributions from paired lung CT volumes [1,2]. This facilitates the estimation of strain distributions and consequently, the regional patterns in volume change and its preferential directionalities (anisotropy in deformation). In this study, we use this novel method to compare regional deformation in the lungs between static and dynamic inflations in an adult sheep. Much of our research has focused on registration of static lung images at different positive end-expiratory pressures (PEEP). More recently, respiratory-gated CT scans of supine, positive-pressure inflated sheep lungs have been gathered in order to compare the displacement fields of a dynamically inflating lung to the static lung scans. The theory is that scanning a dynamically inflating lung will more accurately reflect natural deformation during breathing by realizing time-dependent mechanical properties (viscoelasticity). The downside to human dynamic lung imaging is the increased radiation dose necessary to acquire the image data across the respiratory cycle, though low-dose CT scans are an option [3]. This experiment observed the difference in strain distribution between dynamically inflated lungs versus static apneic lungs using the inverse consistent image registration developed in our lab.


Curationis ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. I. L. Brink

Validity and reliability are key aspects of all research. Meticulous attention to these two aspects can make the difference between good research and poor research and can help to assure that fellow scientists accept findings as credible and trustworthy. This is particularly vital in qualitative work, where the researcher’s subjectivity can so readily cloud the interpretation of the data, and where research findings are often questioned or viewed with scepticism by the scientific community.


Recent work on the osmotic pressure of the hen’s egg has introduced a sense of uncertainty as to the value of the many comparisons which have been made between osmotic pressures of the blood, body fluids, and surrounding media. The uncertainty pertains not to theory but to a simple matter of fact and, as this involves that most fundamental datum for biological theory—viz., the state of the water in the living cell—there is urgent need to have it cleared up. The fact in dispute is the freezing point of the yolk and white of the bird’s egg. Atkins in 1909 by measurements, obviously made with the greatest care, found “no difference between the freezing point of white and yolk of the same egg and a mixture of white and yolk gave the same depression.” Atkins (1909) used the ordinary Beckmann technique and so, too, did Straub (1929) twenty years later, but with a surprisingly different result for he found a constant difference between white and yolk of the hen’s egg amounting on the average to —0·15° C. A. V. Hill (1930) confirmed Straub’s (1929) finding by a different method. He compared the fall in temperature caused by evaporation with that of water and from the difference calculated the osmotic pressure. Howard (1932) using the Beckmann method again found no difference in the freezing point of white and yolk. In these measurements the yolk was puddled by stirring so that at sometime or another the structure was broken down. Yolk is not only a chemical complex but it is alive, gross mechanical disturbance might, therefore, have the effect it usually has on living cells and cause chemical breakdown with consequent fall of the freezing point. Hale’s experiments were designed to explore this possibility by observing directly the freezing point of intact yolk and white.


2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Salkie

Some recent work on French tenses has proposed a new analysis of the difference between the imperfect and the passé simple/passé composé. The imperfect is said to be a relative or anaphoric tense, while the PS/PC are absolute or deictic tenses. A number of studies have argued against the more widely accepted analysis which sees the difference between these tenses in terms of aspect. This paper argues that the new analysis is fundamentally incorrect as an account of the meaning of the French past tenses, although it has brought to light a range of phenomena which need to be included in a full account of the behaviour of the tenses in discourse. I argue that an enriched version of the traditional analysis can account for all the relevant data.


1881 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-283
Author(s):  
Cargill G. Knott

At the surface of separation of any two different substances in contact, there exists in general an electromotive force tending to maintain a certain difference of potential between them. This principle, established for metals by Volta in 1796, has been extended by later investigators to other substances, including liquids and gases. From these early researches of Volta, and the later more elaborate inquiries of Kohlrausch, Hankel, and Gerland, there have been deduced certain fundamental laws, which have been fully corroborated by the recent work of Clifton, and Ayrton and Perry. If, of a number of conductors set serially in contact, the difference of potential between each successive pair is quantitatively estimated and reckoned positive or negative, according as the first member of the pair is at a higher or lower potential than its successor, then the difference of potential between the first and last members of the chain is equal to the algebraic sum of the potential differences between the successive contiguous pairs.


Author(s):  
Ian R. Smith ◽  
Kyle N. Hess ◽  
Anna A. Bakhtina ◽  
Anthony S. Valente ◽  
Ricard A. Rodríguez-Mias ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTProteomics has enabled the cataloguing of 100,000s of protein phosphorylation sites 1, however we lack methods to systematically annotate their function. Phosphorylation has numerous biological functions, yet biochemically all involve changes in protein structure and interactions. These biochemical changes can be recapitulated by measuring the difference in stability between the protein and the phosphoprotein. Building on recent work, we present a method to infer phosphosite functionality by reliably measuring such differences at the proteomic scale.


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