This chapter investigates the different definitions of immunology, in particular the dominant definition stating that immunology is the discipline that studies the defense of organisms against pathogens. The different steps towards the autonomy of immunology as a discipline are examined, from immunization to the elaboration of a theory of immunity, and eventually the institutionalization of the domain. I propose my own definition of immunology as the discipline that studies specific interactions between immune receptors and antigenic patterns, triggering mechanisms that destroy (...) or prevent the destruction of target antigens. I show that, contrary to what has long been believed, every organism has an immune system. I describe several examples of immune systems (in mammals, insects, plants, and even unicellulars). I close this chapter by an analysis of the concepts generally considered as central in immunology, those of “self” and “nonself.”. (shrink)

In this commentary of Koonin’s target paper, we defend an extended view of CRISPR-Cas immunity by arguing that CRISPR-Cas includes, but cannot be reduced to, defence against nonself. CRISPR-Cas systems can target endogenous elements and tolerate exogenous elements. We conclude that the vocabulary of “defence” and “nonself” might be misleading when describing CRISPR-Cas systems.

According to René Girard, mimetic theory and philosophy cannot go together; mimetic theory must go beyond philosophy. More than an ideological disagreement, there is here an actual methodological divergence. Philosophy, he argues, tends to remain at the superficial level of pure intellectual understanding, whereas other human faculties must be accessed to overcome the illusions of an independent desire: In reality, no purely intellectual process and no experience of a purely philosophical nature can secure the individual the slightest victory over mimetic (...) desire and its victimage delusions. Intellection can achieve only displacement and substitution, though these may give individuals the sense of having.. (shrink)

Commentary to the article, “The Essence of Immunity — Self-Nonself Discrimination” by Barbara Plytycz and Rolf Seljelid, published in this issue of Dialogue and Universalism. The author points out that Plytycz and Seljelid pose important questions relating to the nature of pathogens and their possible evolution. Their interpretation of self-nonself discrimination places them close to the ideas contained in Stanisław Lem’s Challenging New World.

This chapter aims at clarifying the notions of self and nonself through a historical analysis. I show that the relationship between immunity and the identity of the organism, as well as the idea that an immune response is due to the penetration in the organism of foreign bodies, both preexist Burnet’s self-nonself framework. The crucial step accomplished by Burnet is that he transformed these apparently self-evident observations in a scientific problem, asking how the organism learns to not attack (...) its own constituents. Explaining the tolerance to the self is thus the starting point of the self-nonself theory. Thanks to a detailed analysis of Burnet’s scientific writings, I demonstrate the link between the self-nonself framework and Burnet’s famous clonal selection theory. I make clear how the very conception of the self changed significantly throughout Burnet’s scientific reflection. Finally, I show that the self-nonself theory is still dominant in today’s immunology. (shrink)

This chapter offers a critique of the self-nonself theory. I first analyze data on autoreactivity and normal autoimmunity, in particular phagocytosis and regulatory cells, in order to reject the idea that self constituents do not trigger immune responses. In a second step, thanks to a description of immune tolerance to genetically foreign entities, including the fetus and huge amounts of commensal and symbiotic bacteria, I reject the idea that every nonself triggers an immune response of rejection. I show (...) that every organism is “impure” in so far as it contains a great number of “nonself” constituents. I conclude that the self-nonself theory is experimentally inadequate, and conceptually too vague to still be used as a satisfying scientific framework to explain the triggering of immune responses. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Theoretical Perspectives Challenges Conclusion References Further Reading.

This article engages with the immuno-political juxtaposition of the healthy self and the pathogenic other to critically examine the representation of Nazis and Jews in Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel _Maus_ (1996). Written as a postmemory narrative, _Maus_ recounts the horrors experienced by the author’s father Vladek Spiegelman as a survivor of the Holocaust that claimed an approximate six million Jewish lives. Beginning with the years leading up to World War II, Spiegelman’s novel reimagines the discrimination, dislocation, and dehumanization (...) suffered by Vladek and his family at various prison camps in Nazi-occupied Poland before being transferred to Auschwitz. Deploying an immuno-political reading of _Maus_, this article investigates how the Third Reich undertook a systematic extermination of the Jewish race by construing them as _immunological nonself_ or pathogenic others. It further argues that Nazism’s fantasy of constructing a racially aseptic German identity by eradicating the Jews as vermin or parasites was reinforced by the late nineteenth-century eugenicist ideologies of racial hygiene. This article finally considers how policies of excessive immunization that was deployed by Nazi biopolitics against the Jewish community, as well as exercised by the Jews to survive the Holocaust, eventually assumed the form of an autoimmune pathology that culminated with the attempted destruction of the entire medico-juridical infrastructure of the German Reich on the one hand and the fostering of suicidal tendencies by the Jewish survivors on the other. (shrink)

All multicellular organisms, both invertebrates and vertebrates, are monitored for the presence of nonself (i.e., foreign or altered self) molecules by phagocytic cells which can recognise and eliminate them. Only in vertebrates is this ancient and efficient mechanism supplemented by cells (the lymphocytes) and molecules (antibodies and MHC molecules) designed for a very subtle discrimination of an enormous number of foreign entities. Due to slow but very effective lymphocyte-mediated immunity, the organism gradually learns to recognise and eliminate the microbes (...) most common in its surroundings, a process that facilitates a gradual adaptation to the environment. On an evolutionary scale of time, lymphocyte-mediated immunity, operating in vertebrates, is a very new achievement, being still in statu nascendi, with some advantages and disadvantages. The human immune system can learn to fight and remember pathogens (which is beneficial) but also allergens and self components (which is harmful). One can imagine that the further evolution of the immune system will lead to a more precise distinction of harmful antigens from innocent ones.In nature there is a constant coevolution of pathogens and their hosts as evidenced by changes in the virulence of micro-organisms and the emergence of new diseases. The enormous diversity of micro-organisms with a variety of deceptive strategies makes total victory over all of them impossible. Therefore, even if bioengineering strategies will overcome the putative biological limitation of the lifespan of our descendants, they shall coexist with other living species including those that are potentially harmful. The great challenge of biomedical sciences will be to make them as benign as possible. (shrink)

본 논문은 힘의 논리가 기능하는 위계적인 형태의 소통구조가 갖는 제한성을 인간 정신 의 활동성에 대한 제한성과 연계하여 고찰하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 디지털 미디어를 매개로 하는 소통방식의 확대는 우리의 생활세계 속에서 기능하는 새 로운 일상의 공간(場)을 창출하게 된다. 그리고 이것은 인공지능과 사물인터넷으로 대변 되는 새로운 차원의 네트워크 세계로 우리의 일상을 이끌어 가고 있다. 이 점에서 디지털 미디어를 포함하여 현대의 의사소통 방식이 갖는 제한성을 비판하는 논의들은 현실적으로 설득력을 갖지 못하는 진부한 논의로 인식되어지는 한편 그 결과 우 리은 생활세계에서 일어나는 위계적인 형태의 소통행위로 (...) 인한 인간소외의 여러 양상들에 대해 무감각해지고 있는 실정이다. 하지만, 문제는 민주적인 형태의 소통구조를 가능하게 만든다는 디지털 미디어를 매개 로 하는 소통방식에도 여전히 정치적인 힘의 논리가 기능하는 위계적인 형태의 담론화 과 정이 기능한다는 점이다. 그리고 이것은 사회적 의미체로 인간의 의사소통 행위뿐만 아니 라 인간의 정신활동이 갖는 문화의 의미 또한 쇠퇴하게 만드는 원인이 된다. 그러므로 인간의 자기의식이 강화되어 가는 것에 대해 사회의 가치와 질서의 관념 속에 기능하는 정치적인 측면의 목적론적인 사고에 대한 비판을 통해 설명한 장자의 철학사상 은 오늘날 우리사회가 주목하고, 해결해 나아가야할 디지털 미디어 사회의 소통행위에 대 한 문제의 본질을 해명하고, 대안을 모색할 수 있는 논의의 토대가 된다. 그리고 이것은 일상의 생활세계를 기반으로 새롭게 재편되고 있는 디지털 미디어 사회 의 의사소통행위가 갖는 위계적인 형태의 담론화 과정이 갖는 제한성을 자기의식의 강화 와 함께 하는 주체 분열의 문제와 연계하여 고찰하는 논의가 된다. (shrink)

This paper aims to return Wittgenstein's Tractatus to its original stature by showing that it is not the self-repudiating work commentators take it to be, but the consistent masterpiece its author believed it was at the time he wrote it. The Tractatus has been considered self-repudiating for two reasons: it refers to its own propositions as ‘nonsensical’, and it makes what Peter Hacker calls ‘paradoxical ineffability claims’ – that is, its remarks are themselves instances of what it says cannot be (...) said. I address the first problem by showing that, on Wittgenstein's view, nonsense is primarily a technically descriptive, not a defamatory, qualification, and is not indicative of Wittgenstein rejecting or disavowing his own Tractarian ‘propositions’. I then dissolve the paradoxical ineffability claim by making a technical distinction, based on Wittgenstein's own theory and practice, between saying and speaking. (shrink)

It has long been taken for granted that the immune system’s capacity to protect an individual from infection and disease depends on the power of the system to distinguish between self and nonself. However, accumulating data have undermined this fundamental concept. Evidence against the self/nonself discrimination model left researchers in need of a new overarching framework able to capture the immune system’s reactivity. Here, I highlight that along with the self/nonself model, another powerful representation of the immune (...) system’s reactivity has been developed in the twentieth century immunology. According to this alternative view, the immune system is not a killer of nonself strangers but a peace-maker helping to establish harmony with the environment. The balance view of the system has never become part of the dominant paradigm. However, it is gaining more and more currency as new research develops. Advances in mucosal immunology confirm that instead of distinguishing between self and foreign the immune system reacts to microbial, chemical and self-induced alterations to produce responses that counterbalance effects of these changes. (shrink)

The general question of biological identity has two main aspects, uniqueness (what makes each living thing unique?), and individuality (what ensures that a living thing remain “itself” while constantly changing?). Contemporary immunology, dominated by the concepts of self and nonself, considers these two questions as its province. An important task is to assess this assertion. This chapter defines the two questions of uniqueness and individuality, and explains how immunologists claim to respond them. It emphasizes the necessity to define more (...) precisely the notions of self and nonself, and to articulate the immunological perspective on biological uniqueness and individuality with other biological perspectives, in particular the evolutionary one. (shrink)

The language of self and nonself has had a prominent place inimmunology. This paper examines Frank Macfarlane Burnet's introductionof the language of selfhood into the science. The distinction betweenself and nonself was an integral part of Burnet's biological outlook– of his interest in the living organism in its totality, itsactivities, and interactions. We show the empirical and conceptualwork of the language of selfhood in the science. The relation betweenself and nonself tied into Burnet's ecological vision of host-parasiteinteraction. (...) The idiom of selfhood also enabled Burnet to organizeand unify a diversity of immune phenomena. Rather than approach thelanguage of self and nonself as a bluntly imposed metaphor, we focuson its endogenous origins and immanent uses in immunology. (shrink)

With his idiotypic network theory, Niels Jerne offered an alternative theory to Burnet’s model of self/nonself discrimination. Jerne modeled the immune system as an interconnected latticework of antibodies recognizing and binding to each other. The network was thus constituted as a continuous web-like structure. The model predicted that introduction of antigen disrupted the resting order of the lattice and thereby initiated immune activation. The antigen carried no meaning of its own but, rather, assumed its “foreign” character by its interruption (...) of normal connections. Despite promising early research, the network hypothesis soon fell into disfavor, but the basic idea that an antigen’s meaning is determined by the context of presentation and that immune activation is a collective property of the system-as-a-whole has appeared in new guises, which are reviewed in this chapter. (shrink)

What counts as an individual in the living world? What does it mean for a living thing to remain the same through time, while constantly changing? Immunology answers these questions with its theory of "self" and "nonself" which has dominated the field since the 1940s. Thomas Pradeu argues that this theory is inadequate, because immune responses to self constituents and immune tolerance of foreign entities are the rule, not the exception.

How is it that many schizophrenics identify certain instances of verbal imagery as hallucinatory? Most investigators have assumed that alterations in sensory features of imagery explain this. This approach, however, has not yielded a definitive picture of the nature of verbal hallucinations. An alternative perspective suggests itself if one allows the possibility that the nonself quality of hallucinations is inferred on the basis of the experience of unintendedness that accompanies imagery production. Information-processing models of “intentional” cognitive processes call for (...) abstract planning representations that are linked to goals and beliefs. Unintended actions - and imagery - can reflect planning disruptions whereby cognitive products do not cohere with concurrent goals. A model of schizophrenic speech disorganization is presented that postulates a disturbance of discourse planning. Insofar as verbal imagery can be viewed as inwardly directed speech, a consequence of such planning disturbances could be the production of unintended imagery. This link between the outward disorganization of schizophrenic speech and unintended verbal imagery is statistically supported by comparing the speech behavior of hallucinating and nonhallucinating schizophrenics. Studies of “borderline” hallucinations during normal, “goal-less” relaxation and drowsiness suggest that experiential unintendedness leads to a nonpathological variant of hallucinatory otherness that is correctable upon emerging from such passive cognitive states. This contrasts with the schizophrenic case, where nonconcordance with cognitive goals reinforces the unintendedness of verbal images and sustains the conviction of an external source. This model compares favorably with earlier models of verbal hallucinations and provides further evidence for a language production disorder in many schizophrenics.Short Abstract: How is it that many schizophrenics identify certain instances of verbal imagery as hallucinatory? This paper proposes that the critical feature identifying hallucinations is the experience of unintendedness. This experience is nonpathological during passive conscious states but pathological if occurring during goal-directed cognitive processing. A model of schizophrenic speech disorganization is presented that postulates a disturbance of discourse planning that specifies communicative intentions. These alterations could generate unintended verbal imagery as well. Statistical data are offered to support the model, and relevant empirical studies are reviewed. (shrink)

A simple definition of consciousness is sensory awareness of the body, the self, and the world. The fetus may be aware of the body, for example by perceiving pain. It reacts to touch, smell, and sound, and shows facial expressions responding to exter- nal stimuli. However, these reactions are probably preprogrammed and have a subcortical nonconscious origin. Furthermore, the fetus is almost continuously asleep and unconscious partially due to endog- enous sedation. Conversely, the newborn infant can be awake, exhibit sensory (...) awareness, and process memorized mental representations. It is also able to differentiate between self and nonself touch, express emotions, and show signs of shared feelings. Yet, it is unreflective, present oriented, and makes little reference to concept of him/herself. Newborn infants display features characteristic of what may be referred to as basic consciousness and they still have to undergo considerable maturation to reach the level of adult consciousness. The preterm infant, ex utero, may open its eyes and establish minimal eye contact with its mother. It also shows avoidance reactions to harmful stimuli. However, the thalamocortical connections are not yet fully established, which is why it can only reach a minimal level of consciousness. (shrink)

The traditional conception of immune function is that of a system which differentiates the organism’s own tissues (the self) from any foreign invaders (nonself), preserving the former by rejecting the latter. In a mammalian pregnancy, however, the immunologically foreign foetus is accepted by the gestator’s immune system. This presents a serious challenge to the self–nonself theory which has sometimes been called the immunological paradox of pregnancy. In this paper I shall defend the self–nonself theory against the critique (...) posed by Thomas Pradeu. In addition I critically examine the alternative he proposes—the continuity theory. The main problem I will raise for any theory of immunology is that the phenomenon to be explained in pregnancy is the non-rejection of the foetus despite the triggering of the gestator’s immune system. I will argue that contemporary modified versions of the self–nonself theory can rise to this challenge but that continuity theory cannot. As such, the immunology of pregnancy gives us a good reason to favour contemporary self–nonself theory over the continuity theory. (shrink)

The main objective of immunology is to establish why and when an immune response occurs, that is, to determine a criterion of immunogenicity. According to the consensus view, the proper criterion of immunogenicity lies in the discrimination between self and nonself. Here we challenge this consensus by suggesting a simpler and more comprehensive criterion, the criterion of continuity. Moreover, we show that this criterion may be considered as an interpretation of the immune 'self'. We conclude that immunologists can continue (...) to speak of the self, provided that they admit that the self/nonself discrimination is not an adequate criterion of immunogenicity. (shrink)

According to immunology’s prevailing paradigm, immunity is based on self/nonself discrimination and thus requires a construction of identity. Two orientations vie for dominance: The original conception, conceived in the context of infectious diseases, regards the organism as insular and autonomous, an entity that requires defense of its borders. An alternate view places the organism firmly in its environment in which both benign and onerous encounters occur. On this latter relational account, active tolerance allows for cooperative relationships with other organisms (...) in the larger ecological economy. These contending orientations —one derived from biomedicine and the other from the ecological sciences— have drawn the attention of social scientists and culture critics. On the one hand, feminists have portrayed immune theory as based upon borrowed social notions of identity that reflect male aggressive values and thus distort more balanced accounts of immunity; and, on the other hand, other commentary projects immune theory as a framework in which analysis of Western societies putatively reveals analogous patterns of ‘self’ and ‘other’ interactions, where autoimmunity and immunization are understood as expressions of the insular understanding of identity. Here, a meta-interpretation is presented that shows how these critiques place the immune self on a spectrum stretching from its formulation as an autonomous agent, a modernist conception of the independent individual, to a postmodern portrayal in which this conception of selfhood has been deconstructed. Accordingly, immunology is drawn into a wide-ranging debate about agency, where differing interpretations of immunity serves as a template in which competing understandings of human social intercourse is modeled.Según el paradigma dominante en inmunología, la inmunidad está basada en la discriminación entre yo/noyo y requiere, por tanto, una construcción de la identidad. Dos orientaciones compiten por dominar: la concepción original, concebida en el contexto de las enfermedades infecciosas contempla al organismo como aislado y autónomo, como una entidad que necesita defender sus fronteras. Una visión alternativa sitúa firmemente al organismo en su entorno, en el cual suceden tanto encuentros beneficiosos como costosos. En este enfoque relacional, la tolerancia activa permite relaciones cooperativas con otros organismos en una economía ecológica más amplia. Estas orientaciones en liza —una derivada de la biomedicina y otra de las ciencias ecológicas— han llamado la atención de los científicos sociales y de los críticos de la cultura. Por una parte, el feminismo ha descrito la teoría inmunológica como basada en nociones sociales prestadas de identidad que reflejan los valores agresivos del macho y que, de este modo, impiden una explicación más equilibrada de la inmunidad. Por otra parte, otro comentario proyecta la teoría inmunológica como un marco en el que el análisis de las sociedades occidentales revela aparentemente patrones análogos de interacciones ‘yo’ y ‘otros’, en las que la autoinmunidad y la inmunización son entendidas como expresiones de la comprensión insular de la identidad. Se ofrece aquí una meta-representación que muestra cómo estas críticas sitúan al yo inmune en un espectro que va desde su formulación cómo un agente autónomo, una concepción modernista del individuo independiente, a una visión postmoderna en la que esta concepción de la identidad ha sido deconstruida. De acuerdo con esto, la inmunología recoge un amplio debate sobre la agencia en el que diferentes interpretaciones de la inmunidad sirven como molde en el que se modelan comprensiones competidoras de la comprensión de las relaciones sociales humanas. (shrink)

In order to make strategic decisions and improve their firm’s performance, top management teams must have information on the competitive context in general, and the firm’s competitors in particular. During the decision-making process, top managers can have access to “privileged information”—i.e., information of a confidential and potentially strategic nature that could ultimately confer a decisional advantage over competing parties. However, obtaining and using privileged information in a business context is often illegal—and if not, is usually deemed unethical or “against the (...) rules.” Using a quasi-experimental design, this study explores the reasons why an individual might engage in such unethical behavior. We assess the extent to which managers use privileged information with respect to perceived team cohesion and peers’ ethicality. More specifically, our results show that the use of privileged information is predicted by the decision-maker’s perceptions of their team cohesion and their peers’ ethicality. Moreover, we find that team performance, as a group-level nonself-reported factor, moderates the relationship between cohesion and the use of privileged information. The relationship between cohesion, ethical behavior, and team performance is also discussed. We draw on these findings to make some practical suggestions on how to incorporate practices that could better prevent the unethical use of privileged information in strategic decision-making processes. (shrink)

An historical review of the concepts of self-consciousness is presented, highlighting the important role of the body (particularly, body perception but also body action) and the social other in the construction of self-consciousness. More precisely, body perception, especially intermodal sensory perception including kinesthetic perception, is involved in the construction of a sense of self allowing self-nonself differentiation. Furthermore, the social other, through very early social and emotional interactions, provides meaning to the infant’s perception and contributes to the development of (...) his/her symbolization capacities. This is a necessary condition for body image representation and awareness of a permanent self in a time-space continuum (invariant over time and space). Self-image recognition impairments in the mirror are also discussed regarding a comprehensive developmental theory of self-consciousness. Then, a neuropsychological and neurophysiological approach to self-consciousness reviews the role of complex brain activation/integration pathways and the mirror neuron system in self-consciousness. Finally, this article offers new perspectives on self-consciousness evaluation using the mirror as an experimental paradigm to study self- and other- image and body recognition. (shrink)

"In philosophy," the author writes in his preface, "we have learned to get our satisfaction from showing that the other fellow is mistaken rather than from establishing the truth of our own positive tenets." The impeccably professional work of a mature and distinguished logician and scholar, Skeptical Essays propounds the view that the principal traditional problems of philosophy are genuine intellectual knots; they are intelligible enough, but at the same time the are absolutely insoluble. The problems Mates discusses are: the (...) Liar paradox and Russell's Antinomy of the class of all nonself-membered classes; the problem of determinism and moral responsibility; and the existence of the external world. Clearly written and effectively organized, the book will be an excellent text for advanced students. (shrink)

This paper both clarifies and broadens the notion of control and its relation to the self. By discussing instances of skillful absorption from different cultural backgrounds, I argue that the notion of control is not as closely related to self-consciousness as is often suggested. Experiences of flow and wu-wei exemplify a nonself-conscious though personal type of control. The intercultural occurrence of this type of behavioral control demonstrates its robustness, and questions two long-held intuitions about the relation between self-consciousness and (...) the experience of control. The first intuition holds that the conscious self initiates and controls actions, thoughts, and feelings. The second is the view that losing this self-conscious type of control is a negative and upsetting experience. By focusing on “the paradox of control” in these experiences of skillful absorption, I argue that a feeling of control can occur without a self that narratively claims control. Furthermore, this type of control can be a very positive and pleasurable experience. Therefore, the common views of the notion of control are in need of broader conceptualization and further refinement. (shrink)

The conceptual history of immunology is replete with encounters, overlaps, and confrontations between diverse images, metaphors, vocabularies, and rhetorical strategies. Today, the dominant immunological theory remains the self/nonself theory, which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s and was associated with the adoption of cybernetic vocabulary, which became widespread in the biological sciences against the backdrop of the Cold War. However, since the 1970s, a series of competing theories has emerged in immunology, seeking to move beyond the binary logic of (...) self/nonself and expand the semantics of immunological concepts beyond attack and defense. These theories emphasize the semantics and metaphors of flexibility, contextuality, self-regulation, and adaptability, gradually acquiring autonomy over the defensive model and shaping an alternative image of the immune system. While most contemporary critical studies of immunology focus on the militarism of immunological language and imagination, the author proposes to consider as a research problem not so much the dominance of a particular image of the immune body, but rather the coexistence of “two bodies” in immunology as such: on the one hand, the body as a closed, militarized system, strictly demarcated from a hostile environment; on the other, an open, flexible, adaptive body with mobile and permeable boundaries. This formulation of the problem allows for a slightly different perspective on the problematization of the historicity of the immune body: it is not only a body marked by the experience of fundamental biological vulnerability to infectious diseases and therefore dependent on biomedical interventions and corresponding biopolitical strategies, but also a body embedded in the economic and cultural regime of late capitalism, a “flexible body” whose interaction with its environment is mediated by the imperatives of plasticity that it must incorporate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transcendence and SensibilityAffection, Sensation, and Nonintentional ConsciousnessIrina Poleshchuk (bio)Over the years, the question of sensibility has largely been discussed in a variety of discourses developed in the humanities and has gained attention in psychology and the cognitive sciences. Sensibility has been seen as a constituent part of subjectivity, endowing subjectivity with meanings developed in different layers of subjective and inter-subjective life, but also as setting new horizons of ethical (...) becoming. In this context, Emmanuel Levinas represents a unique philosophical approach: sensibility reveals the core of the ethical encounter with the other person, including traumatic experience and ethical gift of this intersubjective encounter. The ethical event starts from sensibility and from the radicality on which the face-to-face relation is built, but it also results from the sensible life of subjectivity. I address here a famous line in Levinas’s Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence: “Only a subject that eats can be for-the-other” (OB 74). In its hunger, and in its constant search for the means of feeding itself, subjectivity is for the first time disclosed as a vulnerable and affected self. This vulnerability [End Page 1] is different in its nature from the vulnerability provoked by the appeal of the other. The satisfaction of needs, the ability to enjoy food, to enjoy laboring to acquire it, but also the memory of the pain caused by hunger all indicate fundamental levels of vulnerability whereby the self is exposed to the affection of the otherness. In the following sections of Otherwise than Being, Levinas moves further toward disclosing a sensible subjectivity endowed with transcendence. Sensibility becomes structured as the other-in-the-same, where the trace of the other is exactly transcendence impregnating subjectivity. Here, being affected by the other, the vulnerable and the sensible self takes its crucial forms: it is pure passivity, it is an ultimate exposure, and it is nonintentional. These modalities of sensibility are to indicate ethical mapping of subjectivity where responsibility for the other eventually becomes irreversible.To approach the novelty of sensibility as the central component of the face-to-face relation, I elucidate the function and meaning of mechanisms enabling subjectivity to be structured as the other-in-the-same. The face-to-face relation is, first of all, an experience of the affective trace left by the appeal of the other. Thus, my goal is to explicate how this affection, manifested as the address of the other, is embedded in Levinas’s reading of sensuous intuition and how the affection enlightens an ethical sensibility at the level of nonintentional consciousness and passivity. Beginning with Husserl’s view of hyletic data, I discuss the work of affection and sensation in intentional consciousness and how these feelings participate in constructing sensibility. I analyze the importance of Levinas’s innovative idea of nonintentional consciousness, leading up to the concept of passivity, which acts as the host of transcendence or, in other words, of the other-in-the-same. Finally, I turn to the phenomenon of two sensibilities and provide an interpretation of their structures and their role in building face-to-face relations.Sensation and AffectionThe first step toward unraveling sensibility is to address Urhyle. Urhyle plays an essential role in the dimension of affection, sensation, [End Page 2] and sensibility. In his earlier works, Levinas addresses hyle and, to some extent, follows Husserl’s reflections on Urhyle and affection. A discussion of Urhyle will help to elucidate Levinasian logic.For Husserl, Urhyle is “a foreign core in me” (Ichfremdekern).1 Being something foreign within consciousness, Urhyle indicates a core within consciousness, which leads to a constitutive bifurcation of the self and of the nonself. The appearance of Urhyle is indirect: it is not constitutive, it does not constitute itself, but rather Urhyle structures the constitution of the self. How can Urhyle be shown? Affected consciousness or sensible data is the first strange or alien content within the self, affecting and exciting the self as nonconsciousness (Unbewüßtsein) on the level of original hyletic (Urhyle) preconsciousness and allowing primary sensibility to grow, which apparently becomes a content of the self.2 Consciousness is, first of all... (shrink)

Traditionally, autoimmune disease has been considered to be a case of false recognition; the immune system mistakenly identifies 'self' tissues as foreign, attacking them thus causing damage and malady. Accordingly, the history of autoimmunity is usually told as part ot the history of immunology, that is, of theories and experiments relating to the ability of the immune system to discriminate between self and nonself. This paper challenges this view, claiming that the emergence of the notion of autoimmunity in the (...) 1950s must be considered as part of a long develolpment in thought about pathology throughout the twentieth century, namely the conceptualisaiton of disease as a reactive and self-destructive process. During the first part of the twentieth century this notion became one of the cornerstones of pathology and was increasingly employed for the explanation of the non-infections, slow-burning diseases. Thus, the category of chronic disease had been defined anew, now encompassing all those diseases characterised by a persistent inflammatory process. Inflammation, in turn, was conceived as double-eged physiological mechanism, which was usually the direct mediator of damage, of the essence of disease. The paper also shows how this kind of analysis could emable a unified historical discussion of autoimmunity and allergy, hitherto considered to have distinct conceptual origins. (shrink)

An allergy is commonly understood to be an overreaction of the immune system to harmless substances that are misrecognised as foreign. This concept of allergy as an abnormal, misdirected immune response—a biological fault—stems from the idea that the immune system is an inherently defensive operation designed to protect the individual through an innate capacity to discriminate between the benign and toxic, or self and nonself. However, this definition of allergy represents a radical departure from its original formulation. Literally meaning (...) ‘altered reactivity’, the term was coined in 1906 by Austrian paediatrician Clemens von Pirquet, to describe the fundamentally mutable nature of the immune response.This paper argues that the conventional interpretation of allergy-as-pathology derives from specific concepts of ‘organism’, ‘response’, and ‘normal’ immune function that have—for over a century—governed the perception and study of immune phenomena within immunology. Through an examination of Louis Pasteur’s conceptualisation of the host body/microorganism relationship, I argue that immunology is founded on a view of the organism as a discrete, autonomous entity, and on a concomitant notion of the immune response as essentially reactive. Revisiting the concept of ‘altered reactivity’, this paper points to the fact that allergy was initially posited as a general theory of immune responsiveness and, importantly, one that poses a significant challenge to orthodox notions of immunopathology. It suggests that Pirquet’s unique view of immune responsiveness presents an account of organismic or biological identity that encapsulates, rather than reduces, its ecological complexity. (shrink)

Scholars who wonder how the Buddha would take sides in the traditional debate on the existence of free will generally believe that it is possible to attribute to him a single point of view capable of reconciling apparent inconsistencies that arise from the reading of the scriptural pages that might be related to this issue. The thesis of this article is that the Buddha’s position on the question of free will is in fact far from being univocal. Rather, in each (...) of the three philosophical registers that can be identified in his teachings, different answers to the same question are implicit—in the personalist dimension of the Buddhadharma, a libertarian language is spoken; the reductionist register of the nonself doctrine, on the other hand, necessarily implies a hard determinist position; and finally, in the antimetaphysical context of the middle path, we find a suspension of judgment regarding the determinism/free will dilemma. (shrink)

Given how much the issue of the self and diachronic personal identity has been discussed in recent decades, one might wonder why something like Benovsky's pluralist-self view has not already been proposed and critically examined. It does, after all, look promising as a way to negotiate a settlement between the partisans of self and of nonself. For it gives the first party what it says it wants—ontological commitment to selves—while also granting the nonself theorists their core claim that (...) there is no single entity that is the referent of "I." But I doubt that any such settlement can last.Benovsky claims to have some sympathy for the view that I call Buddhist Reductionism, and his pluralist-self view does at first... (shrink)

Untangling Self invites us to see nonself, interdependence, and mindfulness as rational, real-world solutions to the human condition of suffering. In psychologically rich essays that equally probe traditional Buddhist thought and contemporary issues, Andrew Olendzki helps us to reconcile ancient Buddhist thought with our day-to-day life. His writing is sophisticated and engaged, filled with memorable imagery and insight drawn from decades of study, reflection, and meditation on Buddhist teachings. Seasoned Buddhist readers and anyone interested in the intellectual heart of (...) Buddhism will find this collection of fascinating essays rewarding. (shrink)

This chapter offers a new theory in order to explain the triggering of an immune response, called the “continuity theory.” According to this theory, the triggering of an immune response is due to a strong modification of the antigenic patterns with which the organism’s immune receptors continuously interact. The continuity theory is built upon the two observations made in the previous chapter in order to reject the self-nonself theory, that is, normal autoreactivity and immune tolerance. One of the main (...) advantages of the continuity theory is that it gathers under a unique explanation phenomena that have until now received different explanations, and even sometimes _ad hoc_ explanations: immune responses to tumor cells, the phagocytosis of dying cells, or the triggering of immune regulatory mechanisms, among others. I show how the continuity theory explains a wide range of phenomena, and how it can be applied to every organism, including unicellulars. (shrink)

This chapter compares the continuity theory that I propose with the other theories available in today’s immunology, including the self-nonself theory, the systemic theory of the immune “network” (Jerne), the autopoiesis framework (Maturana, Varela, Coutinho), the self-organization theory (Cohen and Atlan), and the danger theory (Matzinger). I emphasize the aspects that the continuity theory borrowed or inherited from these theories, as well as the many aspects on which it differs from them. I show that some frameworks elaborated to understand (...) the immune system are not genuine scientific theories, but rather mere “viewpoints” on immunity. I insist that no framework has, up to now, succeeded in taking into account the importance of both innate immunity and immune tolerance – two aspects that are at the center of the continuity theory. (shrink)

In this commentary of Koonin’s target paper, we defend an extended view of CRISPR-Cas immunity by arguing that CRISPR-Cas includes, but cannot be reduced to, defence against nonself. CRISPR-Cas systems can target endogenous elements and tolerate exogenous elements. We conclude that the vocabulary of “defence” and “nonself” might be misleading when describing CRISPR-Cas systems.

T lymphocytes circulate continually throughout the peripheral lymphoid organs, where they scrutinize the surface of cells to detect the presence of nonself protein fragments. During the last years, many facets of T-cell function have been unravelled. After being bound by major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, peptides derived from nonself as well as from self proteins are delivered to the cell surface. A few copies of a nonself peptide “presented” at the cell surface in the context of an (...) MHC molecule can be detected by specific T cells, and suffice to trigger T-cell activation. This paper reviews the requirements imposed on T cells to fulfill this exquisite sensitivity. BioEssays 20:412–422, 1998.© 1998 John Wiley & Sons Inc. (shrink)

In _Selving: A Relational Theory of Self Organization_, Irene Fast invokes the basic distinction between the self as "me" and the self as "I" in order to develop a contemporary theory of the self as subject. In a return to Freud's clinical finding that all psychological processes are personally motivated, she elaborates a notion of the "I-self" that is intrinsically dynamic and relational. Within this conception, our perceiving, thinking, feeling, and acting are not what our self does; rather, they are (...) what our self is. According to Fast, the basic unit of the dynamic I-self --of selving --is a scheme of personally motivated interaction between self and nonself. This notion, which comprehends development (and developmental failure) as a product of integration and differentiation among discrete I-schemes, provides a radically new framework for understanding those dynamic phenomena that Freud included within his structural model of the mind and that contemporary theorists have addressed within object relational perspectives. Via the notion of selving, Fast likewise brings fresh insight to a host of issues that have engaged psychoanalysts and developmental psychologists in recent years. These topics include the place of bodily experience in a relational model of mind, the organization of self as simultaneously individual and relational, the formulation of a constructivist model of psychic structure, among others. _Selving_ is not only a lucid demonstration of how a relational theory of self can reorder clinical observations in conceptually and therapeutically illuminating ways. It is also a convincing demonstration of how a constructivist model emphasizing the interactive nature of meaning-making provides bridges to Piagetian theory, developmental research, and observational infancy studies. (shrink)

Many innate immune response proteins recognize foreign nucleic acids from invading pathogens to initiate antiviral signaling. These proteins mostly rely on structural characteristics of the nucleic acids rather than their specific sequences to distinguish self and nonself. One feature utilized by RNA sensors is the extended stretch of double‐stranded RNA (dsRNA) base pairs. However, the criteria for recognizing nonself dsRNAs are rather lenient, and hairpin structure of self‐RNAs can also trigger an immune response. Consequently, aberrant activation of RNA (...) sensors has been reported in numerous human diseases. Yet, in most cases, the activating antigens remain unknown. Recent studies have developed sequencing techniques tailored to specifically capture dsRNAs and identified that various noncoding elements in the nuclear and the mitochondrial genome can generate dsRNAs. Here, the identity of endogenous dsRNAs, their recognition by dsRNA sensors, and their implications in the pathogenesis of human diseases ranging from inflammatory to degenerative are presented. (shrink)

The urochordates, whose stem groups may have included the direct predecessors of the chordate line, serve as an excellent model group of organisms for a variety of scientific disciplines. One taxon, the botryllid ascidian, has emerged as the model system for studying allorecognition; this work has concentrated on the cosmopolitan species Botryllus schlosseri. Studies analyzing self–nonself recognition in this colonial marine organism point to three levels of allorecognition, each associated with different outcomes. The first level controls natural allogeneic rejections (...) and fusions, in which blood‐shared chimeras are formed. The second level leads to morphological resorption of partners within chimeras while the third allows the development of somatic and germ cell parasitic events. Recent studies on multi‐chimeric entities formed in allogeneic fusions reveal evolutionary links between allorecognition, stem cell biology and ecology. Thus, the Botryllus system generates perspectives from different biological disciplines to yield a unique life history portrait. BioEssays 24:730–740, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This volume offers a rich and accessible introduction to contemporary research on Buddhist ethical thought for interested students and scholars, yet also offers chapters taking up more technical philosophical and textual topics. A Mirror is For Reflection offers a snapshot of the present state of academic investigation into the nature of Buddhist Ethics, including contributions from many of the leading figures in the academic study of Buddhist philosophy. Over the past decade many scholars have come to think that the project (...) of fitting Buddhist ethical thought into Western philosophical categories may be of limited utility, and the focus of investigation has shifted in a number of new directions. This volume includes contemporary perspectives on topics including the nature of Buddhist ethics as a whole, karma and rebirth, mindfulness, narrative, intention, free will, politics, anger, and equanimity. (shrink)

This paper explores the materialist and the object-based dimension of “the ideal” in Evald Ilyenkov’s thought and, consequently, his speculative technique of converging matter and idea. The philosophic figures that Ilyenkov relies on to legitimate such a convergence are Hegel, Spinoza, and Marx. The paper reveals the complexities in Ilyenkov’s task to reconcile his dialectics of the ideal with Spinoza’s studies of Substance, tracing the discrepancies in Ilyenkov’s attempt to conjoin Hegelian and Marxian dialectics and Spinoza’s nonidealist immanentism. The reference (...) to the researchers of Spinozism, such as Macherey, Deleuze, Badiou, Della Rocca, Oittinen, and Maidansky, confirms the difficulties in discerning dialectics in Spinoza’s thought. Ilyenkov managed to reveal that Hegel’s idealism was grounded in an objective materialism conditioned by the other-determined self, and merely needed Marx’s thought to complete the socialization of Subject; whereas Spinoza never truly needed to theorize the concept of the ideal. The key finding of the paper is in tracing how—due to developing Marxist epistemology out of Marxist political economy—Ilyenkov manages to consider social being and labor through noumenal parameters, proving that any material activity can be seen as thought-oriented. (shrink)

The immune system does not just fight pathogens but also engages in interactions with beneficial microbes and non-immune cells of the body to harmonize their behavior by means of cytokines, antibodies and effector cells (Dinarello, 2007; Moticka, 2015, pp. 217e226, 261e267). However, the importance of these “housekeeping” functions has not been fully appreciated (Cohen, 2000). In his new book Immunity: The Evolution of an Idea Alfred I. Tauber traces the history of fundamental ideas in immunology and refers to recent advances (...) in the field to overturn the notion that immunity is the ability of an autonomous organism to protect itself against pathogens. Indeed, as suggested by the author, the autonomy of the organism is illusive because individuals develop as holobionts: functionally integrated multispecies consortia (p. 98). Similarly, he suggests that pathogenicity also emerges from the lack of subordination of a microbe to social welfare of the holobiont rather than from context-independent properties of this organism (pp. 165, 181). Emphasizing the contextual character of the parasite and the host, Tauber redefines immunity as an active process of coordination of a cellular ecosystem, which allows this collective to navigate through challenges of the environment and to face demands of the communal living (pp. 10e16). From this point of view, the failure to modulate intercellular interactions by the immune system entails mitigating immunity and impairing resistance to infection and disease (pp. 103e104). Immunity is a groundbreaking work establishing a new framework for understanding the function and activity of the immune system. Its value also lies in the fact that it serves as an important stepping-stone towards an integrated philosophical, ecological and immunological study of our embedment in the microbial world. (shrink)

Thomas Pradeu’s The Limits of the Self provides a precise account of biological identity developed from the central concepts of immunology. Yet the central concepts most relevant to this task are themselves deemed inadequate, suffering from ambiguity and imprecision. Pradeu seeks to remedy this by proposing a new guiding theory for immunology, the continuity theory. From this, an account of biological identity is provided in terms of uniqueness and individuality, ultimately leading to a defense of the heterogeneous organism as expressing (...) the highest degree of individuality. (shrink)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Elie Metchnikoff presented the first theory of active immunity and implicitly introduced the notion of agency into immunology. In the mid-twentieth century, Macfarlane Burnet explicitly developed the notion of the “immune self,” which served as the model of immunology’s governing paradigm of self/nonself discrimination. However, their notions of identity differed: Metchnikoff regarded immune identity as a developmental process, whereas Burnet posited an immune entity with defined characteristics essentially formed at birth. These two (...) formulations now vie for dominance as controversy reigns over how to define immune identity. This chapter provides an assessment of the current status of the immune self and its problematic epistemological standing. (shrink)