Descartes on fermentation in digestion: iatromechanism, analogy and teleology

Fermentation is a cornerstone phenomenon in Cartesian physiology, accounting for processes such as digestion or blood formation. I argue that the previously unrecognized conceptual tension between the terms ‘fermentation’ and ‘concoction’ reflects Descartes's efforts towards a novel, more thoroughly mechanistic theory of physiology, set up against both Galenism and chymistry. Similarities with chymistry as regards fermentation turn out either epistemologically superficial, or based on shared earlier sources. Descartes tentatively employs ‘fermentation’ as a less teleological alternative to ‘concoction’, later renouncing the explicit use of the term, possibly to avoid chymical overtones. However, his continued use of analogies with fermentative processes in the natural world and in winemaking, coupled with a strong ontological commitment (the stance that the physiological processes are actual fermentations), leads to a reintroduction of natural teleology in his medical system, which I argue may be understood in an Aristotelian sense of ‘simple necessity’. The paper reveals a more nuanced account of Cartesian fermentative medicine, delineating some of its tensions with regard to chymistry as they play out in the dynamics of fermentation and concoction, and linking the analogies to fermentation processes to the difficulties in erasing teleology altogether.

Communicative Congruence and Communicative Dysphoria: A Theory of Communication, Personality, and Identity

Purpose: We present a theoretical framework that formalizes and defines the constructs of communicative congruence and communicative dysphoria that is rooted within a comprehensive and mechanistic theory of personality. Background: Voice therapists have likely encountered a patient who states that a therapeutic target voice “isn’t me.” The ability to accurately convey a person’s sense of self, or identity, through their voice, speech, and communication behaviors seems to have high relevance to both patients and clinicians alike. However, to date, we lack a mechanistic theoretical framework through which to understand and interrogate the phenomenon of congruence between one’s communication behaviors and their sense of self. Results: We review the initial notion of congruence, first proposed by Carl Rogers. We then review several theories on selfhood, identity, and personality. After reviewing these theories, we explain how our proposed constructs fit within our chosen theory, the Cybernetic Big Five Theory of Personality. We then discuss similarities and differences to a similarly named construct, the Vocal Congruence Scale. Next, we review how these constructs may come to bear on an existing theory relevant to voice therapy, the Trans Theoretical Model of Health Behavior Change. Finally, we state testable hypotheses for future exploration, which we hope will establish a foundation for future investigations into communicative congruence. Conclusion: To our knowledge, the present paper is the first to explicitly define communicative congruence and communicative dysphoria. We embed these constructs within a comprehensive and mechanistic theory of personality and, in doing so, hope to provide a rigorous and comprehensive theoretical framework that will allow us to test and better understand these proposed constructs.

Protein domain patterns reveal a functional diversity of the archaeal Cdv system and give insights into the origin of the eukaryotic ESCRT system

SummaryThe archaeal cell division machinery Cdv is closely related to the eukaryotic ESCRT system and it is often suggested that Cdv may represent a simplified functional model of ESCRT. However, experimental data suggests that even amongst archaea Cdv-based mechanisms differ, questioning the idea of a common basic principle. Furthermore, both Cdv and ESCRT have had the same time to evolve since their deviation from a putative common ancestor, a fact which is often ignored when archaea are treated as ‘simpler versions’ of eukaryotes. Here, we use a range of computational methods to elucidate these functional differences and to provide a guide on which Cdv-based mechanisms may or may not be compared to ESCRT. We infer a comprehensive mechanistic theory of Cdv-based cell division based on protein domains that correctly predicts the functional differences found between organisms in experiments and describes the protein evolution that underlies this functional diversity. From these results we infer that there are at least three evolutionary and functionally different Cdv-based systems in archaea, complicating the idea of comparative approaches to ESCRT. However, we describe that the Cdv machinery found in the archaeal super-phylum Asgard probably is functionally highly comparable to the eukaryotic ESCRT system, making it a promising candidate for comparative studies. Taken together, via a novel mechanistic theory of archaeal Cdv-based systems we explain experimental findings of the past and provide a guide for various hypothesis-driven experiments in the future that may lead to a functional model of the highly researched eukaryotic ESCRT system.

Neurocognitive Mechanisms

This book provides the foundations for a neurocomputational explanation of cognition based on contemporary cognitive neuroscience. An ontologically egalitarian account of composition and realization, according to which all levels are equally real, is defended. Multiple realizability and mechanisms are explicated in light of this ontologically egalitarian framework. A goal-contribution account of teleological functions is defended, and so is a mechanistic version of functionalism. This provides the foundation for a mechanistic account of computation, which in turn clarifies the ways in which the computational theory of cognition is a multilevel mechanistic theory supported by contemporary cognitive neuroscience. The book argues that cognition is computational at least in a generic sense. The computational theory of cognition is defended from standard objections yet a priori arguments for the computational theory of cognition are rebutted. The book contends that the typical vehicles of neural computations are representations and that, contrary to the received view, neural representations are observable and manipulable in the laboratory. The book also contends that neural computations are neither digital nor analog; instead, neural computations are sui generis. The book concludes by investigating the relation between computation and consciousness, suggesting that consciousness may have a functional yet not wholly computational nature.

Early Modern Epicureanism

Two fundamental notions of Epicureanism took new life in modern political thought: that of the social contract, the agreed and consensual basis of law and authority, and that of the “state of nature” that precedes it. There is no question that among all ancient traditions the Garden was one of very few to base law and politics on the contract and consent of the contracting parties. Yet, by contrast with the Sophists, who emphasized the conventional aspects so far as to be open to the charge of pure relativism, Epicureans looked for a “weak” but “natural” foundation of the social contract deducing it from an idea or mental anticipation (prolēpsis) of justice based on utility. This approach was revived in the seventeenth-century Neo-Epicureanism of Pierre Gassendi who also reworked Epicurus’s and Lucretius’s outdated psychology, transforming it into a more modern “mechanistic” theory of mind. During the greater part of the 1640s Hobbes and Gassendi both lived in Paris and were in close personal contact. The same period was for both thinkers decisive for the construction of their works: the Syntagma philosophicum for Gassendi, De cive, De motu, loco et tempore, and Leviathan for Hobbes. This chapter explores the complex interplay between them, especially with regards to psychology, the foundations of ethics, legal theory, and political philosophy, stressing the important role that ancient Epicureanism and seventeenth-century Neo-Epicureanism played in the birth of a modern theory of individual rights.

The Chemical Philosophy of Robert Boyle

This book examines the way in which Robert Boyle seeks to accommodate his complex chemical philosophy within the framework of a mechanistic theory of matter. More specifically, the book proposes that Boyle regards chemical qualities as properties that emerge from the mechanistic structure of chymical atoms. Within Boyle’s chemical ontology, chymical atoms are structured concretions of particles that Boyle regards as chemically elementary entities, that is, as chemical wholes that resist experimental analysis. Although this interpretation of Boyle’s chemical philosophy has already been suggested by other Boyle scholars, the present book provides a sustained philosophical argument to demonstrate that, for Boyle, chemical properties are dispositional, relational, emergent, and supervenient properties. This argument is strengthened by a detailed mereological analysis of Boylean chymical atoms that establishes the kind of theory of wholes and parts that is most consistent with his emergentist conception of chemical properties. The emergentist position that is being attributed to Boyle supports his view that chemical reactions resist direct explanation in terms of the mechanistic properties of fundamental particles, as well as his position regarding the scientific autonomy of chemistry from mechanics and physics.