Disputes in the "metaphysics" of ethico-political transformation: a re-assessment of the speculative philosophies of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas.

My thesis contests a putative congruity between Derrida and Levinas concerning discussions of responsibility, ethics and otherness. It attends to the fundamental `metaphysical' differences between the two with respect to ontology, language and historicity. Consequently, it foregrounds two distinct conceptions of philosophy, which differ with respect to task, strategy and presentational form. Since Levinas's key notion of the `face' [le visage], which cannot be equated to any actual countenance, breaks with phenomenality - no small issue for an avowed phenomenology - this thesis will begin by treating the category of the other (or. Other) in Levinas's writings as a conundrum. By analysing the two major topographies of the Other developed by Levinas in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being (with particular attention to their differences), I ask: who or what counts as the other for Levinas? Concurrently, I track Derrida's writings across his career to see if he can be held to subscribe to either of these models, noting the transformations that Derrida effects upon Levinas. By analysing them in tandem, the metaphysical and speculative contours of both thinkers (which if not neglected in the secondary literature are transformed into quasi-theological positions) come to the fore. Thereby, this thesis seeks to revive questions of speculative thought in contemporary philosophy, whilst simultaneously asking how this speculative dimension preserves its status as philosophy despite its break with norms of written form and argumentation. Crucially, this is the terrain on which Derrida, in `Violence and Metaphysics', had first criticised Levinas - his lack of attention to language and presentation meant his writing remained non-philosophical. `... exteriority and alterity are concepts which themselves have never surprised philosophical discourse. Philosophy by itself has always been concerned with them. These are not conceptual headings under which philosophy's border can be overflowed: the overflow is its object. Instead of determining some other circumscription, recognizing it, practicing it, bringing it to light, forming it, in a word producing it (and today this word serves as the crudest "new clothes" of the metaphysical denigration which accommodates itself very well to all these projects), in question will be, but according to a movement unheard of by philosophy, an other which is no longer its other. ' Jacques Derrida `Tympan' [1972] translated by Alan Bass in Margins of Philosophy (Brighton, Harvester Press, 1982), pp. ix-xxix; pp. xiii-xiv. `As has often been remarked, one of the gravest misfortunes that can affect a writer of great intellectual seriousness and strong ethical passions is to have his ideas "naturalized" by the English. ' Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin Wittgenstein's Vienna (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1973), p. 19

Justify or die? - using contingent valuation of service provision in a UK public library

The public library service in the UK is currently under pressure to justify its existence. An Audit Commission report suggested that if current borrowing rates for libraries continue into the future, libraries would be effectively issuing no books by 2020. Recently the Coates Report asserted about book loans that, "in simple terms, if a service is without separate charge and the public decides not to use it, then the service is de facto without any value to these individuals". Yet Coates' simplistic notions of the services public libraries provide lies at the heart of the problem. Performance indicators based on book loans are unable to assess 'the totality of library effectiveness'. Conversely, qualitative analysis, interviewing users about service impact, shows that libraries 'promote social cohesion and community confidence'. However qualitative findings are by nature not quantitative and not comparable. To try to produce a measure for service quality, contingent valuation was chosen. It elicits economic value judgements from users on both services they use and services they do not use. A major independent study using contingent valuation was conducted by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde on East Renfrewshire Library Services, near Glasgow, which is recognised as an exemplary public library service. The study revealed the inability of contingent valuation to adequately assess the complex mix of services provided. The study concludes that an urgent rethink is required regarding measures for public library service evaluation

Commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day in East Renfrewshire libraries

This paper discusses the implementation of a community portal and CD-ROM in East Renfrewshire Council, Scotland, aimed at commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day. The area has one of the largest Jewish populations in Scotland and with some residents being Holocaust survivors, their own testimonies were used to ensure the portal was relevant to the local community. The site, which was runner-up in the CILIP/LiS Libraries Change Lives Award, also discusses other Holocausts throughout the world, and stands as a testament to all who have suffered in such atrocities. The site has been well received by the community and reflects how local immigrant communities can contribute to resources that can inform their local community and the world

EXPRESS: Instrumental learning in social interactions: trait learning from faces and voices

Recent research suggests that reinforcement learning may underlie trait formation in social interactions with faces (Hackel, Doll, & Amodio, 2015; Hackel, Mende-Siedlecki, & Amodio, 2020). The current study investigated whether the same learning mechanisms could be engaged for trait learning from voices. On each trial of a training phase, participants (N = 192) chose from pairs of human or slot machine targets that varied in the 1) reward value and 2) generosity of their payouts. Targets were either auditory (voices or tones; Experiment 1) or visual (faces or icons; Experiment 2), and were presented sequentially before payout feedback. A test phase measured participant choice behaviour, and a post-test recorded their target preference ratings. For auditory targets, we found no effect of reward or generosity on target choices, but saw higher preference ratings for generous humans and slot machines. For visual targets, participants learned about both generosity and reward, but generosity was prioritised in the human condition. These findings demonstrate that (1) reinforcement learning of trait information with visual stimuli remains intact even when sequential presentation introduces a delay in feedback and (2) learning about traits and reward in such paradigms is weakened when auditory stimuli are used

Use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs That Elevate Cardiovascular Risk: An Examination of Sales and Essential Medicines Lists in Low-, Middle-, and High-Income Countries

PMCID: PMC3570554This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Use of Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) Drugs in India: Central Regulatory Approval and Sales of FDCs Containing Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs), Metformin, or Psychotropic Drugs.

In 2012, an Indian parliamentary committee reported that manufacturing licenses for large numbers of fixed dose combination (FDC) drugs had been issued by state authorities without prior approval of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) in violation of rules, and considered that some ambiguity until 1 May 2002 about states' powers might have contributed. To our knowledge, no systematic enquiry has been undertaken to determine if evidence existed to support these findings. We investigated CDSCO approvals for and availability of oral FDC drugs in four therapeutic areas: analgesia (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs]), diabetes (metformin), depression/anxiety (anti-depressants/benzodiazepines), and psychosis (anti-psychotics)

Inferior frontal gyrus activation predicts individual differences in perceptual learning of cochlear-implant simulations

This study investigated the neural plasticity associated with perceptual learning of a cochlear implant (CI) simulation. Normal-hearing listeners were trained with vocoded and spectrally-shifted speech simulating a CI while cortical responses were measured with fMRI. A condition in which the vocoded speech was spectrally inverted provided a control for learnability and adaptation. Behavioral measures showed considerable individual variability both in the ability to learn to understand the degraded speech, and in phonological working memory capacity. Neurally, left-lateralized regions in superior temporal sulcus and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were sensitive to the learnability of the simulations, but only the activity in prefrontal cortex correlated with inter-individual variation in intelligibility scores and phonological working memory. A region in left angular gyrus (AG) showed an activation pattern that reflected learning over the course of the experiment, and co-variation of activity in AG and IFG was modulated by the learnability of the stimuli. These results suggest that variation in listeners' ability to adjust to vocoded and spectrally-shifted speech is partly reflected in differences in the recruitment of higher-level language processes in prefrontal cortex, and that this variability may further depend on functional links between the left inferior frontal gyrus and angular gyrus. Differences in the engagement of left inferior prefrontal cortex, and its co-variation with posterior parietal areas, may thus underlie some of the variation in speech perception skills that have been observed in clinical populations of CI users

Human larynx motor cortices coordinate respiration for vocal-motor control.

Vocal flexibility is a hallmark of the human species, most particularly the capacity to speak and sing. This ability is supported in part by the evolution of a direct neural pathway linking the motor cortex to the brainstem nucleus that controls the larynx the primary sound source for communication. Early brain imaging studies demonstrated that larynx motor cortex at the dorsal end of the orofacial division of motor cortex (dLMC) integrated laryngeal and respiratory control, thereby coordinating two major muscular systems that are necessary for vocalization. Neurosurgical studies have since demonstrated the existence of a second larynx motor area at the ventral extent of the orofacial motor division (vLMC) of motor cortex. The vLMC has been presumed to be less relevant to speech motor control, but its functional role remains unknown. We employed a novel ultra-high field (7T) magnetic resonance imaging paradigm that combined singing and whistling simple melodies to localise the larynx motor cortices and test their involvement in respiratory motor control. Surprisingly, whistling activated both 'larynx areas' more strongly than singing despite the reduced involvement of the larynx during whistling. We provide further evidence for the existence of two larynx motor areas in the human brain, and the first evidence that laryngeal-respiratory integration is a shared property of both larynx motor areas. We outline explicit predictions about the descending motor pathways that give these cortical areas access to both the laryngeal and respiratory systems and discuss the implications for the evolution of speech

Regulatory enforcement of the marketing of fixed-dose combinations in India: a case study of systemic antibiotics

\ua9 2023, The Author(s).Background: In India, states have licensed the manufacture of large numbers of fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs without the required prior approval of the central regulator. This paper describes two major regulatory initiatives to address the problem, which began in 2007 and 2013, and examines whether they have been sufficient to remove centrally unapproved systemic antibiotic FDCs from the market. Methods: Information was extracted from documents published by the central regulator and the ministry of health, including the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), and court judgments, and analysed alongside sales volume data for 2008–2020 using PharmaTrac market dataset. Results: The regulatory initiatives permitted 68 formulations to be given de facto approvals (‘No Objection Certificates’) outside the statutory regime, banned 46 FDCs and restricted one FDC. Market data show that FDCs as a proportion of total antibiotic sales increased from 32.9 in 2008 to 37.3% in 2020. The total number of antibiotic FDC formulations on the market fell from 574 (2008) to 395 (2020). Formulations with a record of prior central approval increased from 86 (2008) to 94 (2020) and their share of the antibiotic FDC sales increased from 32.0 to 55.3%. In 2020, an additional 23 formulations had been permitted de facto approval, accounting for 10.6% of the antibiotic FDC sales. Even in 2020, most marketed formulations (70.4%, 278/395) were unapproved or banned, and comprised a 15.9% share of the antibiotic FDC sales. The share of NLEM-listed antibiotic FDC sales increased from 21.2 (2008) to 26.7% (2020). Conclusion: The initiatives had limited impact. Regulatory enforcement has been slow and weak, with many unapproved, and even banned, FDCs remaining on the market