Zusammenfassung Seit den 1980er Jahren mehren sich im Umfeld der Leichtathletik Annahmen, die der Sportart eine negative Entwicklung, u. a. hinsichtlich der Zahl der organisierten Vereinsmitglieder, besonders im Nachwuchsbereich, prognostizierten. Implizit wie explizit wurde bei der Erklärung dieser prognostizierten Entwicklung Rekurs auf Theorien sozialen Wandels genommen. Eine empirische Prüfung entwicklungsbezogener Aussagen blieb jedoch aus. Die im vorliegenden Beitrag dargestellte Längsschnittuntersuchung „Leichtathletik anbietender Organisationen“ schließt diese Lücke, indem spezifisch zur Mitgliederentwicklung in diesen Organisationen theoretisch ableitbare Hypothesen geprüft werden. Eine negative Entwicklung (...) kann hierbei weitestgehend nicht bestätigt werden. (shrink)

This article discusses the imbrication of racialising and sexualising scientific practices of gender testing and verification in elite athletics competition, and their intersection with social politics, using as a theoretical frame the feminist, anti-racist work of Hortense Spillers (2003), Judith Butler (1990, 1993a, 1993b, 2004) and Anne Fausto-Sterling (2000), among others. It traces the practice of sex-gender testing of ‘women’ at sanctioned International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) track and field competitions in order (...) to contextualise South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya’s experiences at the 2009 Berlin World Championships and the subsequent spectacularisation of her body through the discursive practices of representation. (shrink)

Machine learning, deep learning and neural networks are extensively applied for the development of many fields. Though their technologies are improved greatly, they are often said to be opaque in terms of explainability. Their explainable neural functions will be essential to realization in the networks. In this paper, it is shown that the bio-inspired networks are useful for the explanation of tracking and classification of features. First, the asymmetric network with nonlinear functions is created based on the bio-inspired retinal network. (...) They have orthogonal properties useful for the tracking of features compared with the conventional symmetric networks, which is also proposed on the biological functions. Next, the analysis for the independence of the subspaces between the Fourier bases and the asymmetric network bases is performed. It was that the asymmetric networks have better performances in the classification compared with the symmetric ones. Further, the layered asymmetric networks generate the higher dimensional orthogonal bases that improve the classification accuracies by the replacements of bases. Finally, we classified Reuters collections data applying the explainable processing steps, which consist of the linear discriminations and the sparse coding with nearest neighbor relation for classification. (shrink)

Referent tracking (RT) is a new paradigm, based on unique identification, for representing and keeping track of particulars. It was first introduced to support the entry and retrieval of data in electronic health records (EHRs). Its purpose is to avoid the ambiguity that arises when statements in an EHR refer to disorders or other entities on the side of the patient exclusively by means of compound descriptions utilizing general terms such as ‘pimple on nose’ or ‘small left breast tumor’. (...) In this paper, we describe the theoretical foundations of this paradigm and show how it is being applied to the solution of analogous problems of ambiguous identification in the fields of digital rights management, corporate memories and decision algorithms. (shrink)

This article introduces the papers contained in this special issue and explores a new field of interest in the history of science: that of measurement and self-making. In this special issue, we aim to show that a focus on self-tracking and individualized measurement provides insight into the ways technologies of quantification, when applied to individual bodies and selves, have introduced new notions of autonomy, responsibility, citizenship, and the possibility of self-improvement and life-course decisions. This introduction is an exploratory history (...) of measurement and self-making, and it provides a discussion of self-tracking in the past as part of the genealogy of present-day digital self-tracking technologies. It concludes that a focus on measurement and self-making highlights the relationship between measurement and morality, the making of the ideal of an autonomous self, capable of improvement, and the relationship between autonomy and surveillance. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

This study is to explore the gesture recognition and behavior tracking in swimming motion images under computer machine vision and to expand the application of moving target detection and tracking algorithms based on computer machine vision in this field. The objectives are realized by moving target detection and tracking, Gaussian mixture model, optimized correlation filtering algorithm, and Camshift tracking algorithm. Firstly, the Gaussian algorithm is introduced into target tracking and detection to reduce the filtering loss and make the acquired (...) motion posture more accurate. Secondly, an improved kernel-related filter tracking algorithm is proposed by training multiple filters, which can clearly and accurately obtain the motion trajectory of the monitored target object. Finally, it is proposed to combine the Kalman algorithm with the Camshift algorithm for optimization, which can complete the tracking and recognition of moving targets. The experimental results show that the target tracking and detection method can obtain the movement form of the template object relatively completely, and the kernel-related filter tracking algorithm can also obtain the movement speed of the target object finely. In addition, the accuracy of Camshift tracking algorithm can reach 86.02%. Results of this study can provide reliable data support and reference for expanding the application of moving target detection and tracking methods. (shrink)

Classrooms are unlevel knowing fields, contested terrains where knowledge and ignorance are produced and circulate with equal vigor, and where members of dominant groups are accustomed to having an epistemic home-terrain advantage. My project focuses on one form of resistance that regularly surfaces in discussions with social-justice content. Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when asked to consider both the lived and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience (...) daily. I argue that this dominant form of resistance is neither an expression of skepticism nor a critical-thinking practice. I suggest that standard philosophical engagements with these expressions of resistance are incapable of tracking the harms of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback. I recommend treating this pushback as a “shadow text,” that is, as a text that runs alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction. I offer this as one critical philosophical practice for making students mindful of the ways they contribute to the circulation of ignorance and epistemic violence during the course of their discussions. (shrink)

This article employs Foucauldian and feminist analytics to advance a critical approach to wearable digital health- and activity-tracking devices. Following Foucault’s insight that the growth of individual capabilities coincides with the intensification of power relations, I argue that digital self-tracking devices (DSTDs) expand individuals’ capacity for self-knowledge and self-care at the same time that they facilitate unprecedented levels of biometric surveillance, extend the regulatory mechanisms of both public health and fashion/beauty authorities, and enable increasingly rigorous body projects devoted to the (...) attainment of normative femininity. These technologies of surveillance, normalization, and discipline thus function to augment, and facilitate the cooperation of, neoliberal-era biopower and post-feminist patriarchal power. My analysis of digital self-tracking devices’ instrumentality to biopower and patriarchy contributes to the emergent field of critical digital health studies and builds new connections between political, social, and feminist theories of embodiment; biopower studies; fat studies; and trans-disciplinary body studies. (shrink)

Tracking technology has been heralded as transformative for animal ecology. In this paper I examine what changes are taking place, showing how current animal movement research is a field ripe for philosophical investigation. I focus first on how the devices alter the limitations and biases of traditional field observation, making observation of animal movement and behaviour possible in more detail, for more varied species, and under a broader variety of conditions, as well as restricting the influence of human (...) presence and observer bias. I reconstruct these as shifts in scope, objectivity, accuracy and fruitfulness. The second transformation is slightly less obvious but equally significant for animal ecology. Tracking devices generate complex data that demands both statistical and biological expertise, which has led to increasingly frequent and intensive collaborations between statisticians and biologists. Based on interviews, I examine how researchers in these interdisciplinary collaborations negotiate the collection, analysis and interpretation of movement data, integrating research interests, methodological constraints, previous field observations, and background theory. Tracking technology is therefore also shifting which disciplinary considerations are brought to bear on research into animal movement and behaviour and how this research is conducted. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Bodyheartminding” (xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and FieldRoger T. Amesin body consciousness: a philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics, Richard Shusterman expands upon a professional oeuvre in which his exploration of the phenomenon of “body consciousness” has effected nothing less than a somatic turn in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative.1 But his contribution does not end there. Over the (...) past two decades, the reach and influence of his “somaesthetics” has been extended to the gates of China. Indeed, it has become a theme engaged by scholars of China’s indigenous philosophical traditions, thus providing an opportunity for a further edifying conversation between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions.2 And it is this conversation, as it has been inspired by Shusterman’s work, that I propose to join in this short essay.In Body Consciousness, Shusterman tells the story of how John Dewey advances the pragmatic project of not only understanding the body better, but indeed of applying the Alexander Technique as his way of using his own body properly.3 Just as Dewey has been a prominent resource for Shusterman in his development of somaesthetics, for Dewey in turn, it was William James’s Principles of Psychology that was a self-confessed inspiration for the development of his own evolving interpretation of pragmatism.4 Indeed, one way of reading Dewey’s philosophical career and his thirty-seven-volume opus is that it is a sustained effort to take the radical “stream-of-consciousness” insights developed in James’s Principles to their logical, systematic conclusion. In pursuing this project, while appreciative, Dewey is at times impatient with James’s dualistic lapses in which he continues to separate individuals from community, mind from body, emotions from intellect, agents from actions, and theory from practice. Dewey takes these unfortunate reversions to old ways of thinking as serving only to confound James’s holistic doctrines of pure experience and radical empiricism. Given Dewey’s own postulate of [End Page 100] immediate and continuous empiricism, one way of tracking his journey from having been inspired by James’s biological naturalism to achieving his own philosophical coherence is to register his unrelenting aversion to dualism in any form.But Dewey himself was not always consistent in this respect. Shusterman gives an account of the early neo-Hegelian Dewey who, affirming the familiar transcendent conception of soul we associate with idealism, unsurprisingly embraces a clear soul and body dualism. And in spite of the philosophically mature Dewey’s best efforts to think “process,” he has no choice but to use both a language and a grammar freighted with substance ontology that resists his more holistic insights. On occasion, even while trying to remain consistent in his thinking, Dewey seems to fall victim to terminology that if not dualistic is at best ambiguous. Dewey’s struggle against this problem of equivocation is particularly apparent in some of the language he appeals to in attempting to put the Humpty Dumpty of mind and body together again. In his effort to register the irreducible continuity and inseparability of the nonanalytic abstractions we differentiate as body and mind—the ontological givenness or “hadness” of “bodyminding”—Dewey still at times invokes terms such as “combination,” “integration,” “unity,” and so on, that take as their suppressed premise “two things becoming one.” By way of contrast, in the correlative vocabulary of Chinese process cosmology, expressions such as yinyang 陰陽, the natural/cultural and the human (tianren 天人), and knowing and doing (zhixing 知行), primacy is given to vital relationality and the continuity it entails. It is not putting two things together that is referenced with these binomials, but the deepening of the horizon of constitutive, internal relationships that transforms the two aspects of the same phenomenon qualitatively into harmonics (he 和) for yinyang, sagacity (sheng 聖) for tianren, and acting wisely (zhi 智) for zhixing. In each instance, the two aspects themselves are simply conceptual abstractions from a complex relational process. The proper and effective measure (du 度) sought in this Confucian cosmology is not quantitatively more or less of two distinct things—taking mind and body as our example—but rather a qualitative and transformative change that... (shrink)

Consumer-targeted sleep tracking applications (STA) that run on mobile devices (e.g., smartphones) promise to be useful tools for the individual user. Assisted by built-in and/or external sensors, these apps can analyze sleep data and generate assessment reports for the user on their sleep duration and quality. However, STA also raise ethical questions, for example, on the autonomy of the sleeping person, or potential effects on third parties. Nevertheless, a specific ethical analysis of the use of these technologies is still missing (...) so far. The aim of the current analysis is to identify the characteristics of sleep tracking apps and to explore the specific ethical aspects associated with this form of self-tracking. Firstly, the field of mobile health applications was screened for STA to explore their typical functions and target user groups. Secondly, an ethical analysis was conducted focusing on the three ethical dimensions: (1) medicalization, (2) vulnerability, and (3) relationality. The analysis indicates that these three normative dimensions are decisive for assessing STA and that the ethical profile of this technology varies greatly depending on the respective user group. As the three dimensions medicalization, vulnerability, and relationality play a distinguishing role in the use of STA, they should be especially addressed in responsible development and implementation of STA. In addition, the analysis helps to evaluate the use of STA, in terms of different risks for specific user groups, the sensitive contexts of usage, and potential interference with the intimacy of third parties. (shrink)

The rapid spread of SARS‐CoV‐2 worldwide has triggered intense activity in the field of biotechnology, leading to the development and regulatory approval of multiple COVID‐19 vaccines in less than 1 year while raising sustained scrutiny as to the ethical issues associated with this process. This article pursues a twofold objective. First, it reconstructs and provides a thorough overview of the different steps, from clinical trial design to regulatory procedures, underpinning the “fast‐tracking” of COVID‐19 vaccine R&D and approval. Second, drawing (...) on a review of published literature, the article identifies, outlines, and analyzes the most ethically challenging aspects related to such process, including concerns around vaccine safety, issues in study design, the enrollment of study participants, and the challenges in obtaining valid informed consent. By scrutinizing relevant aspects of COVID‐19 vaccine development and regulatory processes leading to market authorization, this article ultimately aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the regulatory and ethical issues underpinning the roll‐out of this key pandemic‐containment technology worldwide. (shrink)

This paper works with the modern concept of the geological hotspot track – the building processes and movements of volcanic island chains – applied strategically to one of its illustrative formations, the Madeira Archipelago. By analogy, however, the concept works equally well to describe the important early 19th-century scientific knowledge-building activity that produced Charles Lyell's On the Geology of Some Parts of Madeira (1854). A central section of the paper uncovers the contributions to knowledge of this geology before Lyell's, (...) and in particular, Excursions of Madeira and Porto Santo (1825) by Mr [sic] T. Edward Bowdich. A thorough examination of this text then constitutes an important case study for literal and figurative investigation of geological hotspot tracks. The main argument proposed is that current specialist research forgets its submerged and longer histories to its detriment. Insights contained in older information often supply reminders of the key questions and contributions from the past that provide checks and balances for further developments of a field. By promoting multi-level, multi-stranded and multi-lingual investigation of the history of 19th-century geology in Madeira before Lyell (1854) as central to hotspot track research, this paper marks nodal conditions that constitute advancement in critical knowledge-building within and outside the discipline of geology. (shrink)

Unilateral spatial neglect is a disorder characterized by the failure to report, respond to, or orient toward the contralateral side of space to a brain lesion. Current assessment methods often fail to discover milder forms, cannot differentiate between unilateral spatial neglect subtypes and lack ecological validity. There is also a need for treatment methods that target subtypes. Immersive virtual reality systems in combination with eye-tracking have the potential to overcome these shortcomings, by providing more naturalistic environments and tasks, with sensitive (...) and detailed measures. This systematic review examines the state of the art of research on these technologies as applied in the assessment and treatment of USN. As we found no studies that combined immersive VR and ET, we reviewed these approaches individually. The review of VR included seven articles, the ET review twelve. The reviews revealed promising results. All included studies found significant group-level differences for several USN measures. In addition, several studies found asymmetric behavior in VR and ET tasks for patients who did not show signs of USN in conventional tests. Particularly promising features were multitasking in complex VR environments and detailed eye-movement analysis. No VR and only a few ET studies attempted to differentiate USN subtypes, although the technologies appeared appropriate. One ET study grouped USN participants using individual heatmaps, and another differentiated between subtypes on drawing tasks. Regarding ecological validity, although no studies tested the prognostic validity of their assessment methods, VR and ET studies utilized naturalistic tasks and stimuli reflecting everyday situations. Technological characteristics, such as the field of view and refresh rate of the head-mounted displays, could be improved, though, to improve ecological validity. We found no studies that utilized VR or ET technologies for USN treatment up until the search date of the 26th of February 2020. In conclusion, VR-ET-based systems show great potential for USN assessment. VR-ET holds great promise for treatment, for example, by monitoring behavior and adapting and tailoring to the individual person’s needs and abilities. Future research should consider developing methods for individual subtypes and differential diagnostics to inform individual treatment programs. (shrink)

The fast–slow paradigm of life history focuses on how individuals grow, mate, and reproduce at different paces. This paradigm can contribute substantially to the field of personality and individual differences provided that it is more strictly based on evolutionary biology than it has been so far. Our study tested the existence of a fast–slow continuum underlying indicators of reproductive effort—offspring output, age at first reproduction, number and stability of sexual partners—in 1,043 outpatients with healthy to severely disordered personalities. Two (...) axes emerged reflecting a double-track pathway to fast strategy, based on restricted and unrestricted sociosexual strategies. When rotated, the fast–slow and sociosexuality axes turned out to be independent. Contrary to expectations, neither somatic effort—investment in status, material resources, social capital, and maintenance/survival—was aligned with reproductive effort, nor a clear tradeoff between current and future reproduction was evident. Finally, we examined the association of LH axes with seven high-order personality pathology traits: negative emotionality, impulsivity, antagonism, persistence-compulsivity, subordination, and psychoticism. Persistent and disinhibited subjects appeared as fast-restricted and fast-unrestricted strategists, respectively, whereas asocial subjects were slow strategists. Associations of LH traits with each other and with personality are far more complex than usually assumed in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of technology to enhance the tracking and quality of clinical information available for patients in disaster settings. This paper describes the design and evaluation of the Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters (WIISARD).

Purpose This paper aims to discuss research ethics in mixed-methods research and MMR development with a focus on ethical challenges that stem from working with technical instruments such as mobile eye-trackers. Design/methodology/approach The case of an interdisciplinary mixed-methods development study that aimed at researching the impacts of emerging mobile augmented-reality technologies on the perception of public places serves as an example to discuss research-ethical challenges regarding the practical implementation of the study, data processing and management and societal implications of developing (...) instruments to track and understand human practices. Findings This study reports challenges and experiences in ethical decision-making in the practical implementation of the study regarding the relationship to research subjects, the use of mobile research instruments in public places and the interdisciplinary cooperation among research team members. Further, this paper expounds on ethical challenges and recommendations in data processing and management and with a view to societal implications of method development and the aspirations of transdisciplinarity. This study concludes that institutionalized ethics need to become more flexible, while applied ethics and reflection must make their entry into university curricula across disciplines. Originality/value Complex interdisciplinary mobile and mixed-methods projects that involve sensors and instruments such as mobile eye-trackers are on the rise. However, there is a significant lack of engagement with practical research ethical challenges, practices and requirements in both mixed-methods and method-development literature. By taking a context- and process-oriented perspective focusing on doing ethics, the paper contributes a concrete empirical case to these underdeveloped fields. (shrink)

Ecopsychology—the use of nature for understanding and healing the soul—has become accepted as a legitimate tool by theorists and practitioners alike. Yet one important dimension of the field has been ignored: metaphysical tracking. This article brings to light a number of mystical phenomena that trackers, ancient and modern, have experienced, and suggests their common root in the so-called energy body. The implications for psychospiritual growth are then described. Finally, alternative explanations and new avenues for research are discussed.

This study aims to investigate whether simple and convenient progressive relaxation training is effective in enhancing collegiate student athletes’ mental health and sports performance. An experimental group of 14 and a control group of 10 collegiate student athletes were recruited from among track and field athletes who were preparing for provincial competition. The experimental group was exposed to a PRT intervention in 30-min sessions conducted twice per week for a duration of one month. At baseline, the Competitive State (...) Anxiety Inventory-2, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised Short Scale for Chinese were completed, while only the CSAI-2 was reassessed at one, two, and three weeks after initiation of the intervention. Additionally, within half a day after completing all one’s individual competition events, the CSAI-2 was again assessed in the two groups recalling their memory of their precompetition state anxiety. Then, the differences in the three dimensions of the CSAI-2 between the two groups at the five time points introduced above were compared. This study also explored whether PRT affected sports performance, defined by the athletes reaching their best records or not, by logistic regressive analysis. This study found significant between-group differences in the self-confidence dimension score at the second and third time points. Through logistic regression analysis, a positive effect of PRT was found for the enhancement of sports performance. In sum, PRT showed positive effects on precompetition state self-confidence and enhanced sports performance among collegiate student athletes. (shrink)

Numerous authors indicate that the influence of academic education extends beyond the growth of specialized knowledge gained by the graduates. Scholars are trying to identify and examine the potential impact of higher learning on students’ attitudes and choices. One of the dimensions considered by the researchers is the effect of university training on students’ moral choices. Our paper attempts to identify differences between the students’ declared moral choices and their majors (fields of studies). Working with a sample of university students (...) of Economics and Sociology (N = 181), and using three variants of the Trolley Problem, the subjects’ responses are used to identify the similarities and differences between their choices. The participants were asked to respond to three hypothetical situations regarding a runaway trolley. Their decision in the first scenario could save a person’s life or let her be run over by the trolley. In the second scenario, their decision could either let one person die and save five lives or save one life and let five people be killed. These two scenarios required pulling a lever to switch the trolley from one track to another. The third scenario requires pushing an obese person in front of the runaway trolley to stop it from killing five persons. As expected, we found a significant difference between the two groups (the economists and the sociologists) in the case of our third scenario, however, we found no evidence supporting the indoctrination hypothesis. We conclude that the existing differences between the choices made by the future economists and sociologists may support the preselection hypothesis. (shrink)

Researchers have recently begun to question the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation effects, also known as sequential congruency effects, a highly cited effect in cognitive psychology. Some have even used the lack of reliability across tasks to argue against models of cognitive control that have dominated the field for decades. The present study tested the possibility that domain-general processes across tasks might appear on more sensitive mouse-tracking metrics rather than overall reaction times. The relationship between SCE effects on (...) the Stroop and Flanker tasks were examined for the first time using a mouse-tracking paradigm. Three main findings emerged: Robust SCEs were observed for both the Stroop and Flanker tasks at the group level, Within-task split-half reliabilities for the SCE across dependent variables were weak at best and non-existent in many cases, and SCEs for the Flanker and Stroop tasks did not correlate with each other for overall reaction times, but did show significant correlations between tasks on more dynamic measures that captured processes before response execution. These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting how mouse-tracking may be a fruitful avenue by which future studies can examine the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation and tease apart different theoretical models producing the effects. (shrink)

Clinical ethics, like the broader field of bioethics from which it emerged, is at a critical crossroads in its development, with conflicting paths ahead. It can either claim its distinctive place in the clinical arena, insisting unapologetically on certain minimal standards of professional training, practice and competence, addressing head on debates about various models of and methodological approaches to consultation, and establishing a shared vision of the purpose and meaning of the enterprise of clinical ethics itself. Or, it can (...) devolve into a hobby that untrained, albeit interested, and generally well intentioned individuals can dabble in for fun or even profit, as they see fit, and without regard to the deep history and rich disciplinary roots of the field, the serious debates in the academic literature of bioethics, the foundational case histories and legal theories, or even any sense of professional accountability. (shrink)

Two concepts of field of view are spelled out, the ordinary concept defined by the dictionary and the technical concept devised by Gibson and put to work in his ecological account of visual perceiving. The dictionaryís concept refers to an area of the environment taken from a particular viewpoint; from this viewpoint, there are some objects visible throughout the geographical area constituting the corresponding field of view. The technical concept refers to the total large solid angle of light (...) that projects to an animalís point of observation and is registrable by its ocular system. Consisting of photic energy, a Gibsonian field of view is neither a kind of experience nor a part of the ecological environment, although a field of view instantiates stimulus information specifying properties of the environment or animal and makes visual experience possible. Being a portion of the light by which we see the environment and ourselves, a field of view may not be itself a possible object of experience ó if Gibsonís account of visual perceiving is on the right track. Our visual system picks up features of the light that makes up our successive fields of view, but we thereby have visual perceptual awareness of what these photic features are nomically specific to, not of the features themselves. A concept of stream of view may be preferable to a concept of field of view, for a perceiver is typically moving, rather than occupying a point of observation. (shrink)

In three experiments, subjects attempted to track multiple items as they moved independently and unpredictably about a display. Performance was not impaired when the items were briefly (but completely) occluded at various times during their motion, suggesting that occlusion is taken into account when computing enduring perceptual objecthood. Unimpaired performance required the presence of accretion and deletion cues along fixed contours at the occluding boundaries. Performance was impaired when items were present on the visual field at the same (...) times and to the same degrees as in the occlusion conditions, but disappeared and reappeared in ways which did not implicate the presence of occluding surfaces (e.g. by imploding and exploding into and out of existence, instead of accreting and deleting along a fixed contour). Unimpaired performance did not require visible occluders (i.e. Michotte’s tunnel effect) or globally consistent occluder positions. We discuss implications of these results for theories of objecthood in visual attention. (shrink)

The perceptual-cognitive ability to track multiple moving objects and its contribution to team sports performance has traditionally been studied in the laboratory under non-sports specific conditions. It is thus questionable whether the measured visual tracking performance and the underlying gaze activity reflected the actual ability of team sports players to track teammates and opponents on a real field. Using a Virtual Reality-based visual tracking task, the ability of participants to track multiple moving virtual players as they (...) would do on a soccer field was observed to pursue two objectives. See the influence of different scenario types on the visual tracking performance of soccer compared to non-soccer players. Observe the influence of spatial features of the simulated situations on gaze activity between soccer players and non-soccer players. The linear mixed model regression revealed a significant main effect of the group but no interaction effect between group and the type of trajectories, suggesting that the visual tracking ability of soccer players did not benefit from their specific knowledge when they faced scenarios with real game trajectories. Virtual players’ spatial dispersion and crowding affected the participants’ gaze activity and their visual tracking performance. Furthermore, the gaze activity of soccer players differed in some aspects from the gaze activity of non-soccer players. Assumptions are formulated as to the implication of these results in the difference in visual tracking performance between soccer players and non-soccer players. Overall, using soccer-specific trajectories might not be enough to replicate the representativeness of the field conditions in the study of visual tracking performance. Multitasking constraints should be considered along with motor-cognitive dual-tasks in future research to develop the representativeness of visual exploration conditions. (shrink)

Background Executive functions (EFs) not only play an important role in shaping adolescent’s goal-directed, future-oriented cognitive skills under relatively abstract, non-affective conditions (Cool EF), but also under motivationally significant, affective conditions (Hot EF). Empirical evidence suggest a link between EF, exercise and physical activity, specifically elite adult athletes appear to outperform amateur athletes in Cool EF; however, no previous studies have examined the relationship between Hot and Cool EFs and impulsivity during the developmentally sensitive period of adolescence comparing different types (...) of sport (open- vs. closed-skills), and levels (elite athletes vs. amateurs). Methods A total 86 boys and girls between 13 and 15 years of age (mean: 14.0, SD : 0.79) from different sports (track-and-field; team handball) were recruited. Participants were further divided into two groups: (a) 40 elite, and (b) 46 amateur athletes. They completed four Cool EF tasks including Trail-Making Test, Trail-Walking-Test, Flanker task, n-back-task, and one Hot EF task on Game of Dice task. Data on subjective impulsivity (UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale; Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-15) was also collected. Results There was a significant overall effect for expertise in favor of elite athletes (Wilks’ Lambda = 0.61, F (14,69) = 3.19, p = 0.001, η p 2 = 0.393), but no overall main effect for type of sport or an interaction for expertise by type of sport. Specifically, elite athletes showed significantly better performances on dual tasks. For Hot EF, there were no main effects for type of sport, expertise level, training experience or training duration. We also found positive correlations among Cool EF and impulsivity measures, and between Hot EF and Impulsivity, but no significant relationship between Cool and Hot EF. Conclusion The current understanding of the decisive cognitive abilities does not correspond to sporting reality, so that the tests frequently used are not sensitive enough to distinguish between elite and amateur athletes or different sports. However, it should also be remembered that the factors underlying complex sporting performance are multidimensional and are obviously difficult to trace back to selected partial aspects. Without being able to answer this question conclusively, we proposed a 4-D classification of experimental paradigms, in which we differentiate between tasks of different specificity, between Cool and Hot EF, and between task complexity, and type of sport. (shrink)

Dynamic vision sensor is a kind of bioinspired sensor. It has the characteristics of fast response, large dynamic range, and asynchronous output event stream. These characteristics make it have advantages that traditional image sensors do not have in the field of tracking. The output form of the dynamic vision sensor is asynchronous event stream, and the object information needs to be provided by the relevant event cluster. This article proposes a method based on the event correlation index to obtain (...) the object’s position, contour, and other information and is compatible with traditional tracking methods. Experiments show that this method can obtain the position information of the moving object and its continuous motion trajectory and analyze the influence of the parameters on the tracking effect. This method will have broad application prospects in security, transportation, etc. (shrink)

Researchers in the fields of sign language and gesture studies frequently present their participants with video stimuli showing actors performing linguistic signs or co-speech gestures. Up to now, such video stimuli have been mostly controlled only for some of the technical aspects of the video material, leaving open the possibility that systematic differences in video stimulus materials may be concealed in the actual motion properties of the actor’s movements. Computer vision methods such as OpenPose enable the fitting of body-pose models (...) to the consecutive frames of a video clip and thereby make it possible to recover the movements performed by the actor in a particular video clip without the use of a point-based or markerless motion-tracking system during recording. The OpenPoseR package provides a straightforward and reproducible way of working with these body-pose model data extracted from video clips using OpenPose, allowing researchers in the fields of sign language and gesture studies to quantify the amount of motion pertaining only to the movements performed by the actor in a video clip. These quantitative measures can be used for controlling differences in the movements of an actor in stimulus video clips or, for example, between different conditions of an experiment. In addition, the package also provides a set of functions for generating plots for data visualization, as well as an easy-to-use way of automatically extracting metadata from large sets of video files. (shrink)

Sport is predicated on the idea of victors emerging from a level playing field. All ethically informed evaluate practices are like this; they require an equality of respect, consideration, and opportunity, while trying to achieve substantively unequal outcomes. For instance: limited resources mean that physicians must treat some patients and not others, while still treating them with equal respect; examiners must pass some students and not others, while still giving their work equal consideration; employers may only be able to (...) hire one applicant, while still being required to treat all applicants fairly, and so on. The 800 m is meant to be one of these practices: a level and equidistance running track from which one victor is intended to emerge. The case of Caster Semenya raises challenging questions about what makes level-playing-fields level, questions that extend beyond any given playing field. In the Feature Article for this issue Loland provides us with new and engaging reasons to support of the Court of Arbitration for Sport decision in the Casta Semenya case. The impact of the CAS decision requires Casta Semenya to supress her naturally occurring testosterone if she is to compete in an international athletics events. The Semenya case is described by Loland as creating a ‘dilemma of rights’.i The dilemma lies in the choice between ‘the right of Semenya to compete in sport according to her legal sex and gender identity’ and ‘the right of other athletes within the average female testosterone range to compete under fair conditions’ (see …. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:400 Feminist Studies 44, no. 2. © 2018 by Feminist Studies, Inc. L. Ayu Saraswati People, Professionalization, and Promises: Navigating the Politics of PhD Programs in Women’s Studies I have been housed at four different universities—all in women’s studies. My PhD is from the University of Maryland, College Park. I completed a postdoctoral program at Emory University. My first tenure track position was at the University of Kansas. (...) I am currently a tenured associate professor and graduate advisor at the University of Hawai’i. All of these places have strong women’s studies graduate programs. Yet, each program has its own vision of what a women’s studies doctoral program should look like. Some define their interdisciplinarity by asking students to master at least two disciplinary methods and methodologies as they focus on a particular major field; others offer “tracks” in other disciplines that the program has formally approved and collaborates with; and yet others ask students to credential themselves in two disciplines—the goal being students can then get hired in other disciplines, rather than simply banking only on getting a job in women ’s studies. Which model is best, one may ask? The answer, of course, depends on what one wants to do with a PhD in women’s studies. Hence, in what follows, I will lay out several factors to consider when deciding which program to choose. Then, I will share some challenges we have experienced as faculty members building women’s studies PhD programs so that university administrators can L. Ayu Saraswati 401 further build on and engage in this important conversation of shaping the future of women’s studies PhD programs. For Future PhDs: What I Have Learned as a Women’s Studies PhD Graduate The good news is that not all women’s studies PhD programs are the same. It is up to students to choose which one fits their goal. If students are wholly invested in being interdisciplinary scholars and willing to put all of their eggs in one women’s studies basket, then doctoral programs structured around areas of study or major fields may work better. The University of Maryland, for example, offers five major fields: Gender, Race, Racialization, and/or Diaspora Studies; Art, Culture, Technologies, and Social Change; Bodies, Gender and Sexualities; Gendered Labor, Households and Communities; and Women’s Movements, Global and Local. If none of these major fields fits perfectly—as the fields often reflect the faculty members’ expertise, students can create their own. After choosing or creating a major field, students will then take classes— in theories and methods—that will solidly ground their expertise in their chosen field. In this setup, students may take classes from many departments, such as history, anthropology, ethnic studies, and English, for example, that are centered around their field. The assumption (or the hope) is when students travel through and take these classes in different disciplinary locations, they will then synthesize and transform the knowledge they learn in each department to produce truly interdisciplinary knowledge. The drawback of this model, however, is that it may be harder for the students to land a job in a traditional discipline or in a discipline other than women’s studies. This may be because it is not uncommon that students end up crafting or adopting a more avantgarde method of analysis that does not simply sit neatly in one discipline, such as “literary ethnography,” for example. Many times, however, new and avant-garde methods that students design may not be perceived as innovative. Rather, they may be seen as incoherent. Indeed, as Mary Margaret Fonow and Sally Kitch argue in their article “Analyzing Women ’s Studies Dissertations: Methodologies, Epistemologies and Field Formation,” not devising and discussing a solid feminist methodology that would clearly link the argument and the evidence is one of the main 402 L. Ayu Saraswati problems found in many of these dissertations.1 Their suggestion, therefore, is to strengthen the “fundamentals of research design and writing.” (I will return to this issue later.) In cases where students would like to entertain the possibilities of securing a job in disciplines other than women’s studies, programs that offer concentrations based on... (shrink)

My task here is to articulate my own novel hybrid theory of (claim-)rights, namely, the Tracking Theory of rights. While new, it has historical antecedents. There is nothing (entirely) new under the sun. Its most vivid antecedents come from the fields of epistemology, in particular Robert Nozick's work, and legal philosophy, in particular Gopal Sreenivasan's work. I am happy to stand on the shoulders of giants. Here I want to freshly articulate the theory from the ground up. So the challenge (...) will be to keep the articulation of the Tracking Theory front and centre, but, naturally, indebtedness to Nozick and Sreenivasan will be woven in at multiple junctures. My Tracking Theory will neither stand nor fall with Nozick's. The relation is more subtle. The strategy is to trade on the indubitable subtlety of Nozick's epistemology to capture the structure of a central normative concept. (shrink)

Immersive 360-degree video has become a new learning resource because of its immersive sensory experience. This study examined the effects of textual and visual cues on learning and attention in immersive 360-degree video by using eye-tracking equipment integrated in a virtual reality head-mounted display. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: no cues, textual cues in the initial field of view, textual cues outside the initial FOV, and textual cues outside the initial FOV + visual cues. The (...) results showed that the cues helped learners achieve better learning outcomes and spend more time focusing on the areas with cues. In addition, the study found a serious imbalance in the distribution of learners’ attention in each region of the video. The attention directed to textual cues in the initial FOV is much higher than the attention directed to textual cues outside the initial FOV. Adding visual cues can effectively direct attention to textual cues outside the initial FOV and alleviate the imbalance of attention distribution. Consequently, adding cues to immersive 360-degree video can be an appropriate approach to promote learning and guide attention in immersive 360-degree video learning environments. This study provided new insights into the design and development of immersive 360-degree video instructional resources. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies have rendered multimodal analysis of operators’ cognitive processes in complex task settings and environments increasingly more practical. In this exploratory study, we utilized optical brain imaging and mobile eye tracking technologies to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological differences among expert and novice operators while they operated a human-machine interface in normal and adverse conditions. In congruence with related work, we observed that experts tended to have lower prefrontal oxygenation and exhibit gaze patterns that are better (...) aligned with the optimal task sequence with shorter fixation durations as compared to novices. These trends reached statistical significance only in the adverse condition where the operators were prompted with an unexpected error message. Comparisons between hemodynamic and gaze measures before and after the error message indicated that experts’ neurophysiological response to the error involved a systematic increase in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity accompanied with an increase in fixation durations, which suggests a shift in their attentional state, possibly from routine process execution to problem detection and resolution. The novices’ response was not as strong as that of experts, including a slight increase only in the left dlPFC with a decreasing trend in fixation durations, which is indicative of visual search behavior for possible cues to make sense of the unanticipated situation. A linear discriminant analysis model capitalizing on the covariance structure among hemodynamic and eye movement measures could distinguish experts from novices with 91% accuracy. Despite the small sample size, the performance of the linear discriminant analysis combining eye fixation and dorsolateral oxygenation measures before and after an unexpected event suggests that multimodal approaches may be fruitful for distinguishing novice and expert performance in similar neuroergonomic applications in the field. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroimaging technologies have rendered multimodal analysis of operators’ cognitive processes in complex task settings and environments increasingly more practical. In this exploratory study, we utilized optical brain imaging and mobile eye tracking technologies to investigate the behavioral and neurophysiological differences among expert and novice operators while they operated a human-machine interface in normal and adverse conditions. In congruence with related work, we observed that experts tended to have lower prefrontal oxygenation and exhibit gaze patterns that are better (...) aligned with the optimal task sequence with shorter fixation durations as compared to novices. These trends reached statistical significance only in the adverse condition where the operators were prompted with an unexpected error message. Comparisons between hemodynamic and gaze measures before and after the error message indicated that experts’ neurophysiological response to the error involved a systematic increase in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) activity accompanied with an increase in fixation durations, which suggests a shift in their attentional state, possibly from routine process execution to problem detection and resolution. The novices’ response was not as strong as that of experts, including a slight increase only in the left dlPFC with a decreasing trend in fixation durations, which is indicative of visual search behavior for possible cues to make sense of the unanticipated situation. A linear discriminant analysis model capitalizing on the covariance structure among hemodynamic and eye movement measures could distinguish experts from novices with 91% accuracy. Despite the small sample size, the performance of the linear discriminant analysis combining eye fixation and dorsolateral oxygenation measures before and after an unexpected event suggests that multimodal approaches may be fruitful for distinguishing novice and expert performance in similar neuroergonomic applications in the field. (shrink)

An innovative book that provides fresh insights into the neglected field of remedies in both international and domestic human rights law. Providing an overarching two-track theory, it combines remedies to compensate and prevent irreparable harm to litigants with a more dialogic approach to systemic remedies. It breaks new ground by demonstrating how proportionality principles can improve remedial decision-making and avoid reliance on either strong discretion or inflexible rules. It draws on the latest jurisprudence from the European and Inter-American (...) Courts of Human Rights and domestic courts in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Separate chapters are devoted to interim remedies, remedies for laws that violate human rights, damages, remedies in the criminal process, declarations and injunctions in institutional cases, remedies for violations of social and economic rights and remedies for violations of Indigenous rights. (shrink)

As medical professionals, we outline the science underlying disorders or differences of sexual development (DSD), discuss the nuances of sex and gender and how terminology can differ based on medical vs. non-medical context, briefly review the evidence of the ergogenic effects of hyperandrogenism, and discuss the medical complications with the hormonal contraceptive use currently dictated by World Athletics to allow DSD athletes to compete in the female category.

The Drake Relays are one of the iconic events of track and field in the United States. World and Olympic champions test their speed and stamina on the famed Blue Oval in Des Moines, Iowa, every April, and by spring 2013 they had set fourteen world records and fifty-one American records. But unlike most other top meets, this one also features college athletes from all over the country and high school athletes from across Iowa, giving them the experience (...) of a lifetime—competing on the same track with the elite in their sport. This mix brings many enthusiastic spectators to the stadium and makes for an unusually close bond between fans and athletes—it’s as if everyone’s family is there cheering. Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer David Peterson has been covering the Drake Relays for nearly forty years, but his love affair with the meet started earlier, when he ran on three winning relay teams there for Kansas State University. Now, drawing upon an unmatched personal archive, he offers the pictures of a lifetime spent on the Blue Oval. He captures on camera athletes of all levels in triumph and defeat, in mid-stride or leap, embracing their fans, their moms and dads, and their kids. In addition to the stars of the past, such as Carl Lewis, Suzy Favor Hamilton, and Herschel Walker, and those of the ’00s, like Lolo Jones and Jeremy Wariner, we see teenagers who may be the stars of the future, as well as the many athletes who will never be famous but nonetheless show themselves—and their sport—at their best. A beautiful celebration of the Drake Relays and the diverse sports that make up “track and field,” this book will evoke memories and inspire runners, throwers, and jumpers everywhere. (shrink)

The political articulation of sexual violence, as legally understood today, took place in India from 1970s onward. In succeeding decades, its definition broadened, positioning it in contexts of caste-based violence, of violence against women at workplaces, and of custodial violence. The Delhi gang rape case, in 2012, introduced another set of political and legal articulations, simultaneously revealing the very politics around them. This paper begins by tracking these phases and definitions, to emphasize one area where such violence has been vocalized (...) the most in recent years, i.e. institutes of higher education in India. Legal codes in this context, carry grave contradictions. Beside, altogether different interpretation occurs when these are applied within institutes of higher education via bureaucratic channels. Recorded cases have shown presence since 2013, except in some regions which appear in negligible measure. Therefore, alongside tracing the historical journey of political articulations of sexual violence in institutes of higher education, this paper takes the case of Raipur city, in the state of Chhattisgarh located in the central-eastern part of India, which has negligible presence in sexual violence crime records in the context of higher educational institutes. Based on a close reading of legal texts, and field visits conducted across institutions in Raipur between 2020–2022, I argue that the limitation of law in combating gender violence, appears not when it is neglected, but often when it is consciously reinterpreted against minority communities, despite claiming to protect those very communities. I attempt to reassess the potential of ‘law’ as a tool to combat gender violence, around existing debates around society and law. (shrink)

Internet users fill in interactive forms with multiple fields, check/uncheck checkboxes, select options and agree to submit. People give their consents without keeping track of them. Dominance of the machine producing human consent is ubiquitous. Humanless bureaucratic procedures become embedded into routine usage of digital products and services automating human behavior. This bureaucracy does not make individuals wait in conveyor-like lines (which sometimes can cause a collective action), it patiently waits or suddenly pops up in an annoying message requiring (...) immediate action and consuming time. It follows pre-installed procedures so cannot be distracted or appealed to. It lacks what Sofia Ranchordás calls ‘administrative empathy’. Users can hardly reach through bureaucratic procedures and communicate with another human. An individual involved in these sequences of actions contributes to increasing the quantity of bureaucratic procedures. The algorithmic bureaucracy power resides in the limited ability of human beings to make conscious and informed decisions when dealing with high complexity levels. This ubiquity makes it virtually impossible for individuals to track and verify statuses and control binding power of all legal actions on the platform. The authors apply critical analysis to explore social implications, threats and possible alternatives for corporate and governmental algorithmic bureaucracy in the emerging digital society. (shrink)

Are we on the wrong track, in terms of our expectations of a code of practice, professional ethics teaching or the wider field of moral philosophy, in our search for clear answers to the ethical problems that arise in clinical practice; or are we simply wrong in believing that there are always clear answers? This article examines a particular case, an account of which appeared in Nursing Standard at the end of 1996. The conclusion reached is that we (...) are likely to be misguided in assuming that there are always clear, straightforward answers to the ethical problems of clinical practice. However, more than a fleeting acquaintance with the field of ethics may help us to begin to think with greater clarity about what we do and why we do it. The hope is that this might lead to considered, humane practice by design, with the critical understanding and support of our professional peers and employers. (shrink)

The volume investigates the question of meaning of mystical phenomena and, conversely, queries the concept of "meaning" itself, via insights afforded by mystical experiences. The collection brings together researchers from such disparate fields as philosophy, psychology, history of religion, cognitive poetics, and semiotics, in an effort to ascertain the question of mysticism's meaning through pertinent, up-to-date multidisciplinarity. The discussion commences with Editor's Introduction that probes persistent questions of complexity as well as perplexity of mysticism and the reasons why problematizing mysticism (...) leads to even greater enigmas. One thread within the volume provides the contextual framework for continuing fascination of mysticism that includes a consideration of several historical traditions as well as personal accounts of mystical experiences: Two contributions showcase ancient Egyptian and ancient Israelite involvements with mystical alterations of consciousness and Christianity's origins being steeped in mystical praxis; and four essays highlight mysticism's formative presence in Chinese traditions and Tibetan Buddhism as well as medieval Judaism and Kabbalah mysticism. A second, more overarching strand within the volume is concerned with multidisciplinary investigations of the phenomenon of mysticism, including philosophical, psychological, cognitive, and semiotic analyses. To this effect, the volume explores the question of philosophy's relation to mysticism and vice versa, together with a Wittgensteinian nexus between mysticism, facticity, and truth; language mysticism and "supernormal meaning" engendered by certain mystical states; cognitive-poetic analysis of mystical poetry; and a semiotic scrutiny of some mystical experiences and their ineffability. Finally, the volume includes an assessment of the so-called New Age authors' contention of the convergence of scientific and mystical claims about reality. The above two tracks are appended with personal, contemporary accounts of mystical experiences, in the Prologue; and a futuristic envisioning, as a fictitious chronicle from the time-to-come, of life without things mystical, in the Postscript. The volume contains fourteen chapters; its international contributors are based in Canada, Israel, United Kingdom, and the United States. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Classics and Complexity in Walden’s “Spring” M. D. USHER In 1843, two years before Henry Thoreau built his cabin at Walden Pond, the Fitchburg Railroad laid down tracks through the woods near the Pond for its line connecting Boston to Fitchburg. The original Fitchburg Line, at 54 miles long, was, until 2010, the longest run in the present -day MBTA Commuter Rail system. And it is one of (...) the oldest railways in New England. By 1900, fortunes swelled and the Fitchburg’s Hoosac Tunnel Line took passengers and goods westward toward Chicago. The Lake Champlain Route connected Boston to points north like Burlington, Vermont. (See Figure 1.) arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 Figure 1 (left): Advertisement for the Hoosac Tunnel Route in The New England Magazine (Vol. 21, Issue 6, February, 1900). Figure 2 (right): Herbert Wendell Gleason. The Fitchburg Railroad and Walden Pond in winter, Concord, Mass., March 24, 1920. Courtesy Concord Free Public Library. The Railroad was literally a fixture in Thoreau’s landscape. Its tracks pass remarkably close to Walden Pond (Figure 2), and the Fitchburg Line—both its reality and the specter of it—is practically a character in his writing: “I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link,” Thoreau writes in “Sounds,” a chapter of Walden that contains what must be one of the most picturesque odes (or laments) to rail travel and commerce in all of American literature: The engine’s whistle, Thoreau complains, pierces the still silence of his idyllic retreat like a screaming hawk circling a farmer’s field, its billows of steam an ominous harbinger of “this travelling demi-god, this cloud-compeller.”1 Thoreau’s frequent, customary walks into Concord along the railroad tracks took him through a heavily excavated stretch of the line known as the Deep Cut, to which he returned again and again each year in early spring, even after leaving the cabin, to observe and to record his observations. The leaf-shaped sand flows and trickling surface erosion caused by melting frost in the banks of the Deep Cut are elaborately described in Thoreau’s chapter in Walden entitled “Spring,” what Laurence Buell calls the “high point of Thoreau’s epic.”2 And yet, in spite of the universal acclaim of this passage as a literary tour de force, it has not received the full attention it deserves. What warrants fresh consideration first and foremost is “Spring”’s deep-rootedness in classical sources. Many classical influences, allusions, and a good deal of etymological word play have gone so far unnoticed. The chapter is also important because it describes, by intimation, what contemporary scientists now call emergence. Emergent phenomena are properties or behaviors that arise in systems as a result of complex, dynamic interactions amongst constituent parts, including changes to a system brought about by human interventions3—not only, e.g., climate change and wildfires, but also traffic patterns and terrorist networks; kidney function in the body; the rings of Saturn. As he tries to capture the essence of the 114 classics and complexity in WALDEN’s “spring” Deep Cut and interpret its significance, Thoreau adumbrates this concept, but also grapples ingeniously with broader issues of perennial concern—the relationship of Nature to Culture, for example, of Wilderness to Civilization, of Science to the Humanities—making “Spring” not only a probing work of eco-criticism and environmental philosophy, but of scientific reflection and poetic experiment as well. In short, Thoreau’s “Spring” is that rare work of classical reception that transmits both literary and scientific insight. Perhaps at this point, in lieu of accolades, it is best to let Thoreau start speaking for himself. What I offer in the following pages is a commentary on the Deep Cut passage from “Spring.” Classical references and aspects of systems theory will be explained and contextualized as they emerge, as it were, from Thoreau’s text. The whole chapter corresponds to pages 289–308 in Cramer’s edition of Walden—26 paragraphs all told, of which only the relevant ones are printed and annotated here. (Transitions and extraneous material are briefly summarized, as needed, in paraphrase... (shrink)

The concept of nonpropositionality covers the vast field of those aspects of knowledge and experience that cannot be captured by a truth-functional approach or escape conceptual analysis. The book is confined to questions of theoretical philosophy. Its first part provides an orientation within the nonpropositional jungle by critically following a historically beaten track: the philosophy of Gottlob Frege. It not only explains the propositional focus of Frege's epistemology, logic and philosophy of language against the historical background of psychologism (...) but focuses on the limits of this propositional approach. The critical analysis of Frege's logicist project centres on its foundational basis: definitions, logically primitive terms, elucidations of these terms as well as aspects of what Frege calls 'colouring'. The second part of the book echoes many of the central elements which mark the limits of Frege's propositional conception by dealing with the systematically pivotal role that the concept of nonpropositionality plays in contemporary analytical philosophy, especially within epistemology and philosophy of mind. Two main areas stand out: theories of perception and the discussion of inner experience. The focus here is on non-epistemic conceptions of seeing, the non-conceptual content of experience as well as on phenomenal consciousness and self-consciousness. The pivotal claim is that the nonpropositional constitutes the basis of and a necessary condition for the propositional. Any attempt to embark on an analysis of the propositional and of propositional knowledge will float in the air unless the nonpropositional grounds are systematically secured. The book aims to close this gap. (shrink)

Among the central meanings in Büchner's Woyzeck, there is one that comes clear only when we read the play in the context of the history of ideas—specifically in the light of certain currents of thought about human history and eschatology. Aspects of the play's expression are thereby elucidated, that are forcefully brought forward through the organization and compositional procedures of Berg's Wozzeck. Near the end of the long third scene of the opera, Wozzeck appears suddenly at Marie's window and alludes (...) cryptically to the mysterious signs that had come to him in the field the scene before, confiding to her that he is "on the track of something big." As those signs had first been presented through Wozzeck's eyes, they seemed like the imaginings and fears of a simple man about Freemasons and who knows what other objects of superstition, But now in the third scene he gives them a scriptural context, as though through a sudden insight: "Isn't it written, 'And behold, the smoke went up from the land, as the smoke from a furnace'?" What Wozzeck has recalled here is a passage in the Book of Genesis, chapter 19: "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. . . . and, behold, the smoke went up from the Land as the smoke from a furnace." The image is repeated in the New Testament Book of Revelation , chapter 9: "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit as the smoke of the great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." Both passages are about a holocaust visited by a wrathful God upon a corrupt and debauched people, and that is the idea that begins to form in Wozzeck's mind as he stands for the first time on the stage before his mistress. And he asks, "What will it all come to?" The answer to this thematic question lies in the strange unfolding of the drama, pressed forward by forces that lie, as Büchner had once put it, "Outside of ourselves"1 and by Wozzeck, who guarantees the outcome as he imagines himself becoming aware of what it must be. · 1. Letter to his family, February 1834: "I scorn no one, least of all because of his understanding or his education, for it lies in no one's power not to become a dumbbell or a criminal—because we have all become alike through like circumstances, and because the circumstances lie outside of ourselves . . ." Werner Lehmann, George Büchner: Sämtliche Werke und Briefe , 2:422. Leo Treitler, professor and chairman of the department of music at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is the author of, among other works, "Dufay the Progressive" and "Homer and Gregory: The Transmission of Epic Poetry and Plainchant.". (shrink)

Are we on the wrong track, in terms of our expectations of a code of practice, professional ethics teaching or the wider field of moral philosophy, in our search for clear answers to the ethical problems that arise in clinical practice; or are we simply wrong in believing that there are always clear answers? This article examines a particular case, an account of which appeared in Nursing Standard at the end of 1996. The conclusion reached is that we (...) are likely to be misguided in assuming that there are always clear, straightforward answers to the ethical problems of clinical practice. However, more than a fleeting acquaintance with the field of ethics may help us to begin to think with greater clarity about what we do and why we do it. The hope is that this might lead to considered, humane practice by design, with the critical understanding and support of our professional peers and employers. (shrink)

Our eyes, bodies, and perspectives are constantly shifting as we observe the world. Despite this, we are very good at distinguishing between self-caused visual changes and changes in the environment: the world appears mostly stable despite our visual field moving around. This, it seems, also occurs when we are dreaming. As we visually investigate the dream environment, we track moving objects with our dream eyes, examine objects, and shift focus. These movements, research suggests, are reflected in the rapid (...) movements or saccades of our sleeping eyes. Do we really see the dream world in the same way that we see the real world? If we do, how could dreaming, usually assumed to be mind-generated hallucinations, replicate such an experience? This problem would be deflated if dreams are not hallucinations at all, but rather imagination, illusion or simply unrealistic. I argue that imagination and illusion views do not satisfactorily explain away the problem of vision and action in sleep. The imagination model is not a complete description of dreaming that is consistent with empirical research, and it is unlikely that the visual dream world is an illusion. Given that the dreaming visual experience is most likely active, hallucinatory, and at times a realistic world simulation, there are important implications for our understanding of visual perception and its relationship to movement. Evidence suggests that our dream eyes investigate the dream world as our waking eyes investigate the waking world. If changes to the unconsciously generated dream environment are perceived as external and unintentional while dream body movements are perceived as self-generated and intentional, current theory of visual perception may have to be expanded to account for how the dreaming mind generates a stable world in which we track and visually explore mind-generated objects. (shrink)