פרסומים

Can incorporating expectations-based-reference-dependence (EBRD) considerations reduce seemingly dominated choices in the Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism? We run two experiments (total N = 500) where participants are randomly assigned into one of four DA variants—{static, dynamic} × {student proposing, student receiving}—and play ten simulated large-market school assignment problems. While a standard, reference-independent model predicts the same straightforward behavior across all problems and variants, a news-utility EBRD model predicts stark differences across variants and problems. As the EBRD model predicts, we find that (i) across variants, dynamic student receiving leads to significantly fewer deviations from straightforward behavior, (ii) across problems, deviations increase with competitiveness, and (iii) within specific problems, the specific deviations predicted by the EBRD model are indeed those commonly observed in the data.

This article is grounded in ideas about defining commitment and the development of self that stem from the writings by Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s view that the self develops in relation to three existential stages or “realms” — the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious sheds light on Nicole Krauss’s novels The History of Love (2005) and Forest Dark (2017). Leo Gursky in the former shares the commitment to romantic love of the young swain in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling; but for Krauss’s character this commitment is displaced in favor of a commitment to writing itself. In Forest Dark the notion of writing as defining commitment reemerges through the character Nicole. A transition from the esthetic to the ethical dimension occurs in Jules Epstein’s newfound commitment to the dead. Ultimately, however, Krauss’s characters in these two novels are characterized as lacking the “inwardness” that in Kierkegaard’s writings is necessary for becoming a self that is able to access the religious realm.

March 2023: Nicholas O. Pagan is a visiting professor of English at the University of Malaya. He specializes in literary theory and writes about literature (particularly American literature) in relation to philosophy, mind, and spirituality. His publications include Theory of Mind and Science Fiction (2014). He has also published in journals including Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal; Religion & Literature; Literature and Theology, Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture; and Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory.

BACKGROUND: Myelin that surrounds axons breaks in trauma and disease; e.g., peripheral nerve and spinal cord injuries (PNI and SCI) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Resulting myelin debris hinders repair if not effectively scavenged by Schwann cells and macrophages in PNI and by microglia in SCI and MS. We showed previously that myelin debris evades phagocytosis as CD47 on myelin ligates SIRPα (signal regulatory protein-α) on macrophages and microglia, triggering SIRPα to inhibit phagocytosis in phagocytes. Using PNI as a model, we tested the in vivo significance of SIRPα-dependent phagocytosis inhibition in SIRPα null mice, showing that SIRPα deletion leads to accelerated myelin debris clearance, axon regeneration and recovery of function from PNI. Herein, we tested how deletion of CD47, a SIRPα ligand and a cell surface receptor on Schwann cells and phagocytes, affects recovery from PNI.

METHODS: Using CD47 null (CD47-/-) and wild type mice, we studied myelin disruption/dismantling and debris clearance, axon regeneration and recovery of function from PNI.

RESULTS: As expected from CD47 on myelin acting as a SIRPα ligand that normally triggers SIRPα-dependent phagocytosis inhibition in phagocytes, myelin debris clearance, axon regeneration and function recovery were all faster in CD47-/- mice than in wild type mice. Unexpectedly compared with wild type mice, myelin debris clearance started sooner and CD47-deleted Schwann cells displayed enhanced disruption/dismantling and scavenging of myelin in CD47-/- mice. Furthermore, CD47-deleted macrophages from CD47-/- mice phagocytosed more myelin debris than CD47-expressing phagocytes from wild type mice.

CONCLUSIONS: This study reveals two novel normally occurring CD47-dependent mechanisms that impede myelin debris clearance. First, CD47 expressed on Schwann cells inhibits myelin disruption/dismantling and debris scavenging in Schwann cells. Second, CD47 expressed on macrophages inhibits myelin debris phagocytosis in phagocytes. The two add to a third mechanism that we previously documented whereby CD47 on myelin ligates SIRPα on macrophages and microglia, triggering SIRPα-dependent phagocytosis inhibition in phagocytes. Thus, CD47 plays multiple inhibitory roles that combined impede myelin debris clearance, leading to delayed recovery from PNI. Similar inhibitory roles in microglia may hinder recovery from other pathologies in which repair depends on efficient phagocytosis (e.g., SCI and MS).

After a traumatic childhood in Europe during the Second World War, I found that scientific research in Israel was a pleasure beyond my expectations. Over the last 65 year, I have worked on the chemistry and pharmacology of natural products. During the last few decades, most of my research has been on plant cannabinoids, the endogenous cannabinoids arachidonoyl ethanolamide (anandamide) and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol, and endogenous anandamide-like compounds, all of which are involved in a wide spectrum of physiological reactions. Two plant cannabinoids, Δ-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol, are approved drugs. However, the endogenous cannabinoids and the anandamide-like constituents have not yet been well investigated in humans. For me, intellectual freedom-the ability to do research based on my own scientific interests-has been the most satisfying part of my working life. Looking back over the 91 years of my long life, I conclude that I have been lucky, very lucky, both personally and scientifically.

Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade” tackles the subject of mortality with technical facility and unsparing candour. It has a reputation for profoundly affecting its readers. Yet poets Seamus Heaney and Czeslaw Milosz think “Aubade” is bad for us and for poetry: it lures us into the underworld and traps us there, and betrays poetry’s purpose by transcribing rather than transforming the depressing facts of reality. Philosophers, however, quite like it. “Aubade” crops up repeatedly in contemporary philosophy of death. I examine the various appeals that philosophers have made to Larkin’s poem with a view to drawing out subtleties in the poem and the philosophical texts, before turning my attention to broader questions of its merit. At first glance, philosophy’s affinity for “Aubade” may seem to confirm Heaney and Milosz’s contention that the poem is somehow against poetry and on the side of “reason, science, and science-inspired philosophy” (Milosz). I argue that the philosophical uses of the poem help to undercut if not entirely dissolve Heaney’s and Milosz’s polarizing efforts; they are mistaken in their views about the different purposes of poetry and philosophy, but there is some philosophical support for their commitment to averting mortal despair.

September 2022:  Kathy Behrendt is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.  She received her DPhil. from the University of Oxford, where she also taught for several years.  Behrendt has published in the areas of neo-Kantian and Parfitian reductionist theories of personal identity, narrative and anti-narrative views of the self, death, fear of death, illness, literature, and meaning in life.  She is co-founder of the International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying. Her current research is focused on longevity and change-intolerance, and the limits of our concern for future generations.